Of language and free will
Sanya Rushdi is the author-narrator of Hospital, originally published in Bangla (Bohiprokash, 2019) and translated into English by Arunava Sinha.
Shortlisted for the 2024 Stella Prize and long listed for the 2024 Miles Franklin Literary Award, two of the highest literary honours in Australia, Hospital conveys the emotions swirling around in a protagonist diagnosed with schizophrenia after her third episode of psychosis. Based on events that occurred in Rushdi's life, the autofiction takes us deep into the recesses of the narrator's mind and portrays a simple, yet powerful picture of the illness.
For all latest news, follow The Daily Star's Google News channel. A slim volume that packs a powerful punch, Hospital came about by chance. A few months after she left a hospital in Melbourne, Bangladeshi-born, Australia-based Rushdi commenced journalling her thoughts. She shared them with a friend—renowned poet, writer, and artist, Bratya Raisu—who recognised a novel in those notes.
Having only written for academic purposes before (as a student of biological sciences and psychology at Monash University, University of Sydney, and Deakin University), Rushdi was uncertain about her abilities to write a full length novel. So, Raisu suggested writing a few lines of a chapter at a time, which was then published in shahitya.com.
Once the novel was published in text, Rushdi's elder sister and writer, Luna Rushdi, sent a copy to renowned Indian translator, Arunava Sinha, who expressed an interest in translating the novel into English.
I spoke to Rushdi to find out more about her experiences writing Hospital.
What was the thought behind the title 'Hospital'? Was it simply a place, or the narrator's state of mind? Is there a deeper meaning behind the simple title?
I guess I ended up with a broader name such as 'Hospital' because the book can be read at different levels. What this name means really depends on how the reader is reading it. At first, I named it "Hospital and a Flock of Smoking Pigeons". In Bangla, the name was "Hospital o Ek Jhak Dhumpayi Kobutor", but the name was changed to "Hospital" later on.
As it happens with most autofiction, with yourself as the narrator, you put yourself 'out there', allowing readers a glimpse into your life and your illness. Did you ever feel a fear of judgement or an intrusion of privacy?
Well, the fact that the book is an autofiction after all, and not a memoir, saved me from a lot of fear of judgement and intrusion of privacy, because, although much of the book is based on real life, some of the events and dialogues that occur in the book are imaginary. Those could have happened, but parts of it did not actually happen. The other thing is that it was a story that was just waiting to be told. So, I was glad that instead of being denied, my right to speak out about what might have happened was recognised and well accepted.
The narrator has a strong awareness of 'the self' when she describes 'the self' being allowed to thrive in a community house while it is 'subdued with medication at every opportunity' in the hospital. Why was it important for the narrator to feel this way?
I think, if we take it out of the hospital and community house context for a moment, we find that a person living in today's society, who is not very politically aware or is very innocent and naïve in a lot of ways, is generally treated in two different ways. The first way is to just tell them what to do and what not to do, and in so doing, infantilise them or take control of their life; and the second way is to just let them be and let them go about their own business, but continue to have an undercurrent agreement that they are really not a member of the larger society, and so, eventually they have to be eliminated —I think, in Hospital, I compared this second way to the slow death of a frog in a gradually heating water-pot. I feel that both of these ways exist due to a sense of care for these people, but also, a sense of not knowing what to do with them.
'Still, this freedom I've got is very precious.' What was the implication of using the term 'freedom' for the narrator?
The writing of this book was initiated with the concept of freedom and free will in mind. The process of writing this book was an act of exercising some kind of freedom in an otherwise closed setting. Obviously, the narrator was hospitalised involuntarily or without their consent. So, she did not have a sense of freedom there, or could not exercise her free will. A loss of freedom is implicated with the diagnosis of psychosis by the CATT (Crisis Assessment and Treatment Team), even before the narrator is admitted to the hospital. So, when she finds that in the community house, she is free to go out all by herself, it means a lot to her, because freedom is something very precious to her and her ability to do any productive work.
There's a recurring piece of dialogue where the narrator says, 'Why do I have to explain anything to anyone? They will learn my language on their own if they want to.' This appears to sum up the whole novel regarding the narrator's experience. What was the thought process behind including this dialogue, and why did the narrator feel the need to repeat this a few times?
I think there is a two-fold answer to this question. First, the narrator is a very logical person with or without psychosis. So, she has to reason everything to herself before she can accept it. She does not usually accept ideas at face value. So, when she has psychosis, and repeatedly explains the same things to herself, the 'well-self' that is still within her is asking her not to do that. Second, during the episode of psychosis, she believes that other people have direct access to her mind, that they can hear everything she thinks of, and so, she does not have to explain anything to anyone because they already know.
The writing takes us straight into the deep recesses of the narrator's mind, unapologetically and without much exposition or explanation. Did you intend to write it that way?
Although much of the writing was spontaneous rather than planned, deep within, I certainly wanted to show rather than explain. And I certainly did not want to expose myself to such an extent that would harm my self-dignity. I think, yes, I was unapologetic, because I found no reason to apologise for what happened to me, and what took place within an artificial environment such as the hospital, which was very much removed from how real life within the real environment works.
As the reader is constantly in the narrator's mind, they can feel the visceral loneliness and helplessness of the narrator. What was it like revisiting these feelings as you were penning them down for the novel?
The helplessness and loneliness of someone like the narrator is very organic in the sense of their basicness to life's needs in general. What I mean is that they are not up there in the hierarchy of psychological needs, but down below. I mean, we all need people we can talk to, people we can open our hearts to. Yes, there were doctors and nurses and other patients the narrator could talk to, but none of them really shared her interests, not even family or family-friends. So, there was this real sense of isolation, confinement, and helplessness, because there was no green she could see and no real psychosocial purpose she could accomplish during her stay in the hospital. Revisiting those feelings was sometimes overwhelming because, although Hospital is fiction, it is nevertheless based on real life.
The narrator portrays a lot of compassion and empathy for her fellow psychiatric ward patients, whom she refers to as 'inmates'. What was it like to see yourself through the eyes of a character in a novel? Did you discover something about yourself you weren't aware of while penning your thoughts down?
There is a part in the novel about assertiveness, where the protagonist is in the courtyard with two other patients. There are pigeons on the floor that the narrator is a bit uncomfortable with. The dialogues that took place there about assertiveness between the narrator and another patient, where I, as a writer, was kind of shuffling positions between the narrator and the other patient, seeing the narrator or 'myself' through another person's eyes led to the realisation of this tendency that I have to react rather than to assert myself. There are lots of other little discoveries like that throughout the book.
The narrator's love for psychology shows in her justification of her mental health in conversation with a doctor. As a former student of Psychology, what role, if any, has it played in your understanding of your state of mind related to your diagnosis?
The perspective taken in Hospital is based on my academic learning and research—especially my PhD studies in Psychology. The project that I undertook during my PhD was to investigate the role language plays in the emergence and development of pride and possibly other self-conscious emotions in children. So, I was convinced, based on my research, that language should be taken into account when trying to understand human psychology.
You previously mentioned that writing has been therapeutic. How has writing helped you process the changes to your life post diagnosis?
Yes, writing Hospital to me was more therapeutic than anything else. I was hospitalised in 2015, and upon my release, I was unable to think much about anything. I was quite confused about what had just happened, and what was still happening around me. So, after a while, I started writing to make sense of things. Writing Hospital was a very emotional journey. I did not structure it consciously. But, I think, what I learnt through my academic studies and the emotionality involved in the writing process gave it some kind of structure automatically. As I kept writing, I remembered things that I would not have remembered otherwise. I think that's also what language, especially in the form of writing, can do. It can open up and spread out our memories and events, so that we can see it happening in front of our very eyes; we can see what was wrong, what was right, and what can make things better.
Your sister, Luna Rushdi is also an accomplished writer. Has writing always been a part of your life?
Academic writing has been a part of my life throughout school and university. My school teachers always encouraged me to persist with both creative and academic writing, and my university teachers always said I write well. Yes, my elder sister Luna Rushdi is an accomplished writer, and she always encouraged me to write during my high school years, especially in Bangla, along with my Victorian Certificate of Education (VCE) Bangla teacher, Sudeshna Bhattacharya. Luna also encouraged me to write when I was unable to do much during my post-psychosis and depression years.
This is the first time a Bangali writer has been shortlisted for the Stella prize and longlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award. What do you think this means for future Bangali writers in Australia?
I don't really have a lot of nationalistic feelings. Personally, I do not identify myself as someone who belongs to a particular nation. Instead, I identify myself as an honest writer, who has a lot to say. However, being shortlisted for the Stella prize certainly made me happy, and it says a lot about the value of honesty, innocence, and equal opportunity in a country such as Australia.
What are you working on next?
I have a number of books in mind. I am still deciding on what exactly my next project will be: "Soul", [which I] just started writing in English; Quintuple—[a novel] I started writing in English about a family [where] the children grow up differently to one another but still have unity; and "The Wombat and the Wheelbarrow"—a children's story that I am writing in Bangla.
Nabilah Khan was born and raised in Bangladesh and currently resides in Sydney, Australia. After more than a decade working in the global banking and financial services industry, she now works in the Australian public service.
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