Shoojit Sircar's tweet on mental health lacks nuance, willfully ignores joint family dynamics

In a pronouncement that would fill Sooraj Hum Saath-Saath Hain Barjatya’s heart with incalculable joy, a couple of days ago celebrated producer-director-writer Shoojit Sircar tweeted , “All may not agree, but we must move back to our old way of living like joint families.. This may be the only solution/Medicine to curb all mental insecurities, loneliness and most important depression. Family umbrella secures our Mind. (sic)”

Everybody certainly doesn’t have to agree with that sentiment — and many , many people on Twitter clearly didn’t — but there is nothing wrong with supporting a particular way of life, or extolling the virtues of a certain family structure over others. Except when you’re making a medically inaccurate claim.

Depression, as mental health practitioners and activists have gone hoarse trying to tell us, is not caused by loneliness or insecurities. Especially the more severe forms of depression such as depressive disorder or clinical depression. Which is not to say that loneliness, insecurities, anxieties and low self-esteem cannot trigger, exacerbate or precede depression, but when you’re a public figure talking about stigmatised and widely misunderstood mental health problems , it’s worth taking a minute to weigh your words and vet them for scientific accuracy. The causes for depression can be anything from a biological difference in the physical makeup of the brain, neurotransmitters, hormones, and even hereditary traits. Traumatic experiences such as physical or sexual abuse, death, chronic illnesses, etc. can increase the risk, but not necessarily cause depression.

But let’s assume that Sircar, like most well-meaning people, only meant to speak about lifestyle-enabled risks of depression. But to call joint families the “only solution” and “medicine” to “all” issues of the mind is overenthusiastic at best, and wilfully ignorant at worst.

Well-intentioned as it might be, it’s not surprising for a man to have this opinion, and for the women who hear it to dismiss it scornfully, and with a healthy measure of disgust. Sircar — like most Indian men who grow up relishing the fruits of their mothers, sisters, female cousins and aunts’ unpaid labour — has a rose-coloured view of what life looks like in a typical joint family middle class household.

Which is mildly surprising, because last year, Sircar himself directed a digital ad for a mosquito repellent where several generations of a large joint family sit around a table in anticipation of dinner while two women — ostensibly the daughters-in-law — hurry around the table, serving the battalion. One of the two women is also having her parenting decisions savagely ripped apart by the elders of the family while ladling steaming dal, rice, rotis and whatnot onto their plates. Her son has stolen money from his grandfather’s wallet and she, for having the temerity to decide that her spawn must be punished for the transgression, gets told by her brilliant husband — at the dinner table, within full earshot of his family, no less — that it was his money not her father’s that the child has stolen. Among other things, the mother also has to woodenly stand by as her husband’s family pillories her mother’s upbringing and mocks her father’s “chota ghar” financial status. How the woman keeps herself from dumping the pot of dal on her moron husband’s head, we will never know, but one can only imagine that she must have been sorely, and understandably, been tempted to. The family finally shuts up only when the patriarch of the house supports his daughter-in-law’s tough love approach to parenting.

The ad went viral, and within days garnered millions of views on Facebook and Youtube. The family’s obnoxious treatment of the daughter-in-law was hotly debated and widely criticised. The ad is also over-dramatised because why make a point with subtlety and finesse when you can bludgeon it into the audience’s head? But it undeniably touched a raw nerve. But hey, ours is a country where a years-long successful ad campaign revolves around the ‘revolutionary’ concept of men doing laundry so they can be baseline decent spouses to their overburdened wives.

Theatrics aside, Sircar’s portrayal of the stifling nature of most joint families got so many tongues wagging because anyone who has lived in a joint family will tell you this — we’ve all seen a variation of this scene play out in our homes, many times over.

Most of my growing up years were spent in a joint family. I spent years watching my mother and aunts waking up at dawn, cooking, cleaning and doing laundry before the men and the kids woke up so they could be free to assist them in their gargantuan tasks of getting dressed to go to office and school. The women in my house had routinely put in half of what we call a ‘work day’ before any of us had even woken up. I also watched as the men in the house came home and immediately proceeded to collapse on the bed or sofa in an exhausted pile, while their wives struggled to help the kids with their homework while also cooking dinner and responding to requests for one more cup of chai. In 16 years of schooling, I can count on one hand the number of times my father attended a PTA meeting, open house, or annual day. He never once bought my books or uniforms. He was also often confused about which grade I was in, a joke that is still elicits laughs at family gatherings.

I bet my father has yearned for a return to the joint family system many times in the 14 years since each family moved into separate houses; particularly when he’s had to cook, clean, or manage the house when my mother is unwell or otherwise indisposed. Anyone would, no?

It would be disingenuous of me to gloss over all the ways in which my neurotic, messy, filmi joint family shaped my personality and taught me valuable life lessons. It taught me the skill of negotiation and compromise. I learned how to adjust and engage with viewpoints and beliefs that didn’t necessarily reflect my own. And it taught me how to dig my heels and stand my ground when I had to. Growing up in a family where some cousins were old enough to be my parents’ younger siblings, and some uncles and aunts were young enough to pass off as mine taught me the invaluable art of being able to make conversation with anyone — from shrieking septuagenarian to babbling toddlers. There was never a dull moment, and yes, I was never lonely — there was always a cousin to squabble with.

But all of it came at the cost of my mother’s freedom, who spent the best years of her life making sure that her husband’s often thankless family could live their best lives. As a child, I couldn’t appreciate exactly how much my mother gave up to give us the rosy joint family experience; as a grown woman, the thought of idealising such a claustrophobic life as some gold standard of living fills me with horror.

There is a line in the cloyingly sentimental Hum Saath-Saath Hain. An uncle announces that a family where the “gents” and elders of the house eat together while the bahus and betis serve them lovingly, “wahi ghar ghar hai”, amid loud cheering and clapping. I bet the bahus and betis whose fate he was so enthusiastically sealing would beg to differ.