Penning down her demons

SHAHEEN BHATT SAYS THAT WRITING A BOOK ON HER MENTAL HEALTH ISSUES, THOUGH NOT EASY, WAS CATHARTIC

- Priyanka Bhadani

For the longest time, actor Soni Razdan thought that her elder daughter, Shaheen Bhatt, was acting lazy, delaying school on purpose, locking herself up in the room for no reason and was just being a difficult teenager. Little did Soni realise that Shaheen was dealing with insomnia and depression. “What breaks my heart is that even after being so close to my daughter, I could not have guessed that she was having suicidal thoughts until she communicated the same to me much later,” said Razdan at the launch of Shaheen's book— I’ve Never Been (Un)Happier— organised by Penguin and Landmark Books.

The book, which has notes from her journal, is a searing portrait of life with depression. “I feel no good. Like a duck among swans. And somewhere I hate the world for doing this to me. Setting me up to these standards I can’t meet. Making it all my fault. I want to implode, to disappear,” read a journal entry of a 20-something Shaheen.

Another entry, from a 13-year-old Shaheen, reveals her constant battle of feeling like a “loser”; how she struggled with the thought that Alia, her younger sister, is “so good in everything she tries”, but she isn’t good enough. “I was feeling very inadequate,” recalls Shaheen, now 32. “That is how everything started for me—with this overwhelming feeling of inadequacy that I had all the time.”