CONFLICT AND ANXIETY: Linkon’s Story
With many ethnic community clashes, unrest of militancy and counter-insurgency operations of the state forces, people living in the state face severe backlash, with mere poverty and non-exposure with others state. In this environment, apart from virtual connection provided by social media, mainstream media and other television channels, the majority of the people residing in the region do not get any opportunity to connect with each other. The sense of losing hope is prevalent amongst a majority of the people, where government jobs are ‘selling’ directly or indirectly aggravated by the lack of infrastructure and alternate job markets, beyond the government. Also, the opportunities for education and employment made available to them in the context of the project of modernization projected in different media platforms have increased the levels of aspirations of young people at the individual level. But this has not been accompanied by concomitant transformations in the institutional and evaluational domains of their social lives. The acquisition of economic independence, for instance, has not diminished the influence of the traditional codes of honour and shame.
Linkon (44) from Churachandpur district, lost her husband in 2009. She went to work as a warden in a private hostel in Bengaluru, Karnataka. She said that she did not even look at her husband’s body at the time of cremation. At that time, she had a son and a daughter. After some years, when her son was in the 9th standard, he started using psychotropic pills (N10). One day, his grandfather informed about him to his uncle who serves in the Assam Rifles regiment when he came home for his holiday. His uncle beat him up to get him out of his addiction. However, the same night, her son committed suicide.
Linkon was shocked and could not utter a single word. The next two days were most painful and depressing, but she did not know that it might be the beginning of something much worse. In those two days she could not eat, sleep or close her eyes. Family members consulted a doctor who prescribed sleeping pills. Now, she is addicted to this pill and has been in the drug rehabilitation centre since October 2016. Before that, she was also in the rehab centre for six months in 2014. Linkon also drinks alcohol quite often.
With the request of her daughter, who is now enrolled in a nursing college in Chennai, she is in the rehab centre and will continue until she finishes her education. Both her parents and her father-in-law have financed her daughter’s study. She said, she finds ‘peace’ in the rehab centre and all the friends in the rehab centre are very good unlike the people in her locality. If she is in her home, she said, “the past haunts me and remember all things in proper sequences. I do not want to return. There is not a single soul to talk to back home. My only inspiration to live is my daughter. Although I know that doing drugs is not good, it gives me support and company.”