The Diary of A Psychiatrist, an extremely interesting film by my friend Khalid Hussain, a window into real life in Pakistan, including the conflict between the Muslim majority and the Christian minority.
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DIARY OF A PSYCHIATRIST Stress is needed in a society to move a painter, a poet or an artist to creativity but when it becomes too much the individual looses control. Over 12% of population suffers from serious psychological illnesses and 35% grapple with psychosomatic or another. But this is not unique to Pakistan as the statistics reflect the reality in the geographies collectively called ‘the third world’. Wasif Ali is a consultant psychiatrist and a celebrated painter in Karachi. He photographs and paints what he calls The Politics of Stress. He was trained under Pakistan’s most prominent painting maestro the late Sadequain. Violence and Terrorism in Karachi and Hyderabad cities in the 1980s and the 1990s moved him to paint the gory tragedies in the style inspired by his teacher.
In his work drug addicts are ‘the people with a dying soul’ and ‘freedom is the desire for everyone’. He wonders what is mental health, why a broken soul is ‘lonely and ‘hiding in a corner’ under ‘the hammer of stress’. He does not define what mental health is but thinks ‘being a prisoner of the broken soul’ is an issue which needs to be addressed.
His paintings depict his preoccupation with his people and the issues about which he is consulted as a psychiatrist. So he visits Shantinagar in Punjab when Muslim zealots turn the whole Christian village to ashes following an alleged incident of the desecration of the Quran in Shantinagar in 1997 on the election eve. Here he again shows the ‘helpless’ people that cannot cope with the stress obtaining in the day-to-day politics of a turbulent Pakistan and are ‘terrorized’. The assertion is that terror is induced and not natural. He wonders which side of the fence we really are and what lies on the other side of the fence?
He asserts that we are all victims of time and technology. It all started long ago as all dates of origin are arbitrary. The only way forward is to acknowledge the oneness of all of us in the human race that may have different colored skins but the color of their blood is red. So we must stand under the white umbrella of peace as the children of lesser gods to regain hope. Hope is the key to freedom. D. V.
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I have received a few words from the author of this film about what is behind it. I attach them below, together with his CV.
As for the “Diary of a Psychiatrist”, we call it an Art Film for want of a better description:-)
The film was made in Karachi in 2004. We used two BetaCam cameras for the shoots with Haroon John –presently working at NCA in Lahore–as the main videographer. We went through four takes for audio recording but ended up using the first one for somehow or the other, every repeat try failed to reflect the emotional richness we managed to capture in the original audio take!
It was based on the work of my friend Dr. Wasif Ali Syed whom I consider a true Artist. Wasif is a consultant Psychiatrist and has worked for many years with Pakistan’s leading specialist Dr. Haroon albeit only for welfare work. He is also an accomplished paint having been a disciple to Sadeqain for many years learning his craft from the maestro himself. He has won the Sadeqain Award in 2006 for his work as well.
What motivated me to make the film (I spent money out of my own pocket for it was not funded by any one) was the fact that states of mind he painted not only were rendered in the finest traditon of Sadeqain but that his visualization was informed by advanced knowledge of medicine, bio-chemistry and psychiatry. I do not know of any other painter in the world who could render a person combining refined aesthetics and the state-of-art in science. This to me represent what true art should be for I think that divorced of knowledge nothing new can take place.
The script of the film has been based on a peer reviewed journal study on the Shanti Nagar incident in 1997. The study was carried out by a team of four psychiatrists led by Wasif and followed meticulous methodology proving in scientific terms that the introduction of “terror psychosis” was a willful act of vilainy by the state.
The film proves its postion on this politics of stress through the Shanti Nagar case study. The argument being that willful introduciton of a terror psychosis in society is the cause behind major psycho-somatic disease patterns in the country.
The film talks about the symbolism of Bhutto’s judicial trial by bringing in references to the 4th of April three times in the script. There are three portraits of Bhutto included that show how his death symbolized terror for the masses yearning for democracy. Linkages are also drawn to the prevaience of violence in Karachi and Hyderabad that saw hundreds of murders during the 1990s.
Persona 