Amid rising concerns over mental health issues in the past few months, thousands of people shared thousand of stories on social media, claiming, “I am here, you can talk to me whenever you feel like”.
However, this statement, made with so much confidence, doesn’t turn out to be true in a lot of cases.
Pointing out the same is an actor named Prathamesh Barge, whose Instagram bio suggests that he ‘writes monologues and shows the reality of life’.
In one such monologue, which is now going viral, he is playing the role of a UP guy Mukund Mishra, who is alone in a big city like Mumbai and struggling with mental illness he cannot talk about to his parents.
This hard-hitting monologue starts with Mukund’s early life story. How he once told his father that he will make machines. And that was it.
That one line led Mukund to lead a life where education was a priority and friendships were not, a life where there was no place for anything except preparation for his ‘goal’, not even for his one true love: Cricket.
Ultimately, his father decided to send him to Mumbai. Now imagine, a person who wasn’t allowed to have friends and do anything that he wants, was sent to a new city to live on his own.
So obviously, when the initial amazement, born out of looking at tall buildings and huge canteens subsided, there was loneliness. Because Mukund didn’t know how to talk to people, he had not done anything except studying his entire life.
However, things changed somewhere around his second semester exams. People started noticing him, they wanted to hang out with him. This gave him confidence he had never felt in his life.
But little did he know, this was all to get his help, and his notes. Because when the same Mukund tried to contact them during the lockdown, they wouldn’t pick up his calls or respond to his messages.
This drove him to anxiety, something he never thought existed, let alone something that will happen to him.
Communicating this to his family was also not an option, because in his village, there were only 2 interpretations of a mental illness: That the person is possessed, or they are insane.
And that is when he brings up his college ‘friends’. The people who shared stories and posts about ‘being there for everyone’ after a celebrity’s demise, but did not even pick calls of a guy from their own class.
He then goes on to say how mental health has become ‘content’ that people use for likes and shares.
He also pleads everyone to come out of their social media bubble and look around themselves. Maybe they will find someone who has been waiting to talk, maybe they’ll be able to help someone for real.
You can listen to the complete monologue here:
