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Affliction and Testimony

This paper is an attempt to map out the life-world of a young unmarried woman with a diagnosis of schizophrenia, whom the author met in the course of her ethnographic study of general hospital psychiatry in a Delhi public hospital (Addlakha 1999). It is primarily based on the author’s reading of Parvati Devi’s diary, a document meticulously maintained by the patient in the months prior to her hospitalisation at the Lady Hardinge Hospital, New Delhi. Using the concepts of testimony, experience, narrative and voice, the paper explores a range of issues that appear to be germane to the constitution of a life-world, precariously pitched on the shifting sands of the real, the possible and the unimaginable. Methodologically, the reading of the diary is juxtaposed with an analysis of the patient’s case record and interactions with her and her family in the ward and home spaces. The positionality of the author as a single woman with visual impairment of approximately the same age cohort, social location within the urban nuclear family and cultural milieu brings a critical reflexivity to the research.