Borderline beautiful: Call for a change

Borderline

Author : Shabri Prasad Singh

Publisher : Bloomsbury

Price :  Rs  399

The novel charts the journey of a girl who grows up blaming herself for everything that happens to her, but eventually finds the support and motivation to understand herself and her ‘disorder’ better, writes SNEHA

Borderline is the story of a girl (Amrita) who struggles to be at peace with both herself and her surroundings, all through her growing up years. Her approach is arguably escapist and even self destructive until she finally discovers that she has Borderline Personality Disorder and meets a woman whom she can relate with better than with anybody else. The woman, too, has BPD. But when that woman commits suicide, Amrita is thrown into a world which she feels the need to for the better.

The novel has been divided into twenty-three chapters, each informed by a pre-devastation and a post- devastation tone. The protagonist, Amrita Srivastava, is born in a family of ‘honourable’ men and women. Amrita’s great grandfather is revealed as a famous freedom fighter and her father Karna Sinha, a kayastha from Bihar, works for the government of India. He has to move to London as a spy.

Amrita spends most of her childhood there. Her mother is described as a beautiful woman, tall with radiant skin and a fair complexion. She is a housewife with a taste for the arts. Amrita’s sister Sati is self-reliant and responsible. Amrita, however, is far from that. “That was when all my problems began. I was so busy trying to absorb what I had learnt that while trying to deal with it, my mind let its guard down and an illness crept in,” the author writes.

In the middle of her parents’ failing marriage, her sister’s enviable ‘normalcy’, and her deep-rooted belief that she is manifesting her own troubles, Amrita grows up. But her constant anxiety over having to go through unpredictable situations and hearing what she isn’t mentally ready to accept turns her into someone who attempts to dissociate herself from potential heartache. She has to deal with series of separation pangs in her life, the worst being when her father dies. He keeps visiting her in her dreams.

As the story moves from her troubled childhood to adolescence and then adulthood, Amrita finds everyday tasks turning into a mesh of complexities for her. So, she tries to escape her own self by increasing her intake of alcohol and visiting pubs much more often than can be healthy. Patterns of failed relationships, constant fallouts, and anxiety plague her life up until the arrival of Pink — a society elite whom she meets at a bar inauguration. Pink is her only stable relationship. 

Amrita’s desperation at not being able to comprehend her situation lead to a desperate situation where she is found spending hours at the temples, crying to the lord to make her illnesses go away. This is around the time when her father dies. And that breaks her. She finds herself unable to take charge of things and really live.

It is at this point that Amrita’s mother finally comes to her rescue along with her stepfather Rana Gill. Together, they introduce her to Dr Chugh. Dr. Chugh, a psychiatric consultant, and later her Godfather tells her about her Borderline Personality Disorder and convinces Amrita to attend counseling once every week. She is assigned a personal counselor, Purnima who inspires her to let go of Karna Sinha’s memories, the excessive drinking and all the unhealthy indulgences.

Amrita soon takes charge of her life by fully understanding her personality disorder. She feels responsible and responds positively by making conscious attempts at altering her perception of life.

There are many sub-plots throughout the narrative. One such beautiful story briefly describes Amrita’s encounters with Sabrina or “Zoha Khan” — a ‘borderline’ who feels that the only solution to her disorder is to be loved in the same way that she loves.

However, Sabrina’s tale ends in suicide. The shock and pain from this pushes Amrita back down the ladders of self-improvement, self-reliance, and self-confidence that she had climbed with a lot of effort, after her discovery of her ‘disorder’. She is unable to sleep for many nights. She is consumed by anxiety and fears. It looks highly likely that she would soon drift back into the miserable situation she was in at the time of her father’s death. She is finally taken in by medics who transfer her to a rehabilitation centre without her consent. And there, she acts as a catalyst for change. The readers witness Amrita getting herself together. She takes things step by step, starting by making herself follow a strict daily routine.

Apart from this insight into Borderline Personality Disorder, Singh gives us detailed notes on the symptoms and definitions of BPSD (Behavioral and Psychological Symptoms of Dementia).

She encourages people

with Borderline Personality Disorder to introspect and take charge. Singh’s narrative gets the reader to understand these conditions better and brings them face to face with how the society’s inability to understand and deal with them has shattered the lives of many.

One can read between the lines and see that what Singh is really arguing is that Amrita could have easily been Sabrina and Sabrina could have easily been Amrita. Amrita’s tale, too, could have had a tragic end. But what saves her is support from family and guidance from experts.

A question that nags at the readers is, “Could the Sabrinas of our society have been saved had they been given support and guidance, too?’

The most important achievement of Singh’s book is getting one to think about mental illness. It opens up one’s mind towards the struggles of those who deal with it. Amrita’s problems are very real to her. And once the people around her start to understand that, there’s more hope for her.

The reviewer is a literature enthusiast