We do understand about mental health that while darkness may be forestalled in different ways, it constantly lurks at the edges
Illustration/Uday Mohite
I read about a Ghanaian man, suffering from bi-polar disorder, who, 9 months ago, announced on Instagram that he would end his life with medical assistance in the Netherlands. But before he did, he wanted to experience as much connection as possible. So, he announced The Last Supper project, where he hoped to have dinner with different people. An extraordinary number of people reached out to Joseph Awuah-Darko then to invite him for dinner and conversation. These dinners ranged from Happy Meals to a 6-course repast. Mr Awuah-Darko has a substantial Instagram following, comes from a wealthy family, and has not yet initiated his journey to euthanasia. Doctors are sceptical about whether he qualifies. And right now he has a stream of curated connections which make life worth it — he never said when he would do it. Reading the story, I didn’t feel quick to judge the meaning of Mr Awuah-Darko’s choices, despite their Instagram polish. We do understand about mental health that while darkness may be forestalled in different ways, it constantly lurks at the edges.
But I did wonder about what moved the dinner hosts to connect. Some had felt they could do a good deed, perhaps talk Awuah-Darko out of dying. Some warmed to him expressing what they felt but dared not say. Maybe, for some, it was the liberation of thinking about someone else, instead of themselves. Some felt he was offering something “real”, something offline.
What is “real”? That’s a question death, in its finality, poses, as much as life with its illusory infinitude. An untimely death, reconnects families and friends who have been scattered by the road to success. The air becomes thick with promises – we must keep in touch yaar. These relationships are the real thing. But almost immediately the drift away resumes. There is l always that one person, who believes the desire for the “real thing” is real, whose earnestness, only to be awkwardly rebuffed. People say, “it would have been nice, but it’s not realistic in the end”. What is that distance between the real thing and the realistic thing made up of?
I think it is made up of ordinariness — everyday friendships as the fabric of life and not shiny hijinks; Desultory dinners of dal, for a functional togetherness; Everyday politics as an ongoing effort of big and small solidarities and private self-reflection, not serial flourishes and resounding denouncements of exposed villains. Work as something we do to sustain ourselves, materially, maybe, spiritually — not Cinderella’s ball.
Social media tricks us into thinking we are extraordinary as we are — we do not need to move ourselves to change, but nevertheless we must prove our extraordinary worth every day. This worthless exertion for the extraordinary makes us accept extraordinary violence as of a piece with the world — in Gaza, in the brutal public killing of a young Muslim man sitting with a young Hindu woman at a cafe. Ordinariness has become unbearable, because it asks a lot of us — forbearance, labour, and the thing that could save us, attention to each other.
Paromita Vohra is an award-winning Mumbai-based filmmaker, writer and curator working with fiction and non-fiction. Reach her at paromita.vohra@mid-day.com
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