Dear Agony Akka,
I am a young woman in my 30s and I have a high-profile career in the software industry. I work for very long hours and sometimes I even don’t get any off days. On top of that, I work from home and this means that my mother, father and brother keep coming into my room to disturb me. Furthermore, each morning and night, before and after office hours, my mother talks about my marriage. My work pressure is fine but these other pressures from family I am finding very hard to manage. I think I will go crazy. Please can you suggest some therapy or cure.
— Miserable and depressed
Dear MAD,
One cannot help feeling miserable and depressed these days when it keeps raining like how it has been raining in Chennai. It has been non-stop floods and drizzles and showers and what not and what with the clothes not drying and the walls getting fungus, I am also finding it very hard to manage. Of course, nobody is forcing me to get married but whether one is forced into matrimony or whether one is forced to find new, new spots to dry wet clothes in the house, the effect of the pressure upon the brain is the same.
But unlike you I have found the perfect remedy for all mental strain. I have invested in a mosquito bat. As you must be aware when it rains in Chennai there is also a veritable storm of mosquitoes. They invade your house and buzz in your ears like the anchors of TV news channels. And they cannot be switched off either.
But offence is the best form of defence. So now each morning I pick up the mosquito bat and I go from room to room chasing them instead of vice versa. I hunt behind doors and under beds. I shake sheets and I move chairs. They slowly emerge from their hiding spots like how sun rays are now emerging in Chennai. Then I swat them. There is one sharp cracking sound, then sizzling sound, then smell of dead mosquito. It is the most satisfying feeling in the world. It is better than a dozen therapy sessions with your favourite shrink or one hour of yoga in the morning.
Sometimes they fall on the floor without any sound. I carefully find them and swat them again to hear the buzz. Ah the extraordinary gratification. It makes me forget all my problems. And a bat costs only ₹200-300, much cheaper than counselling.
I regret that scientists are not doing enough to invent a similar bat for use against annoying human beings. Naturally, I don’t wish for humans to sizzle and die like mosquitoes — I am a pacifist — but something equivalent that could temporarily shut up the aunties who nag single women to get married can be a rather useful addition to science. My only request is to retain the sizzling sound. It is a key component for the therapy to work.
Meanwhile, before another full lockdown begins, I strongly recommend that you find a café nearby with Internet facility and start working from there. Families are very nice and loving and they cook food and all that but spending all your time cooped up with them in a flat is like being quarantined with Goonjana Vilom Kashyap. Loud, pointless, and irritating.
— AA
agony.akka@gmail.com