Deepika Padukone: When you're depressed

Deepika Padukone has spoken out about suffering from depression. In a society which treats mental illness as a stigma, this is an important moment. Instead of talking about the issue, we have the tendency to sweep such things under the carpet.

There is no need to. Depression is like any other illness. It can be cured with a combination of therapy and treatment. Depression is also a great leveller. Everyone, from the super-rich to the very poor, is susceptible to it. It doesn't matter whether you are a painter or a banker or a miner. Winston Churchill, who had it, called it his "black dog".

Kurt Cobain sang about it. Sylvia Plath wrote about it. What follows below is a fictional account of a depressive state of mind. While everyone experiences depression differently and uniquely, I hope that this little story, like all fiction, mirrors reality to some extent. It's about the sense of detachment and listlessness, the mood swings that one experiences when one is depressed, and how life can then take on surreal overtones:

"My mind is empty, an abandoned ruin. Outside, the clouds rumble, threatening rain. Sometimes I hear voices in my head. I hear the lapping of small waves, the screeching of parrots, the sound of a stainless steel spoon scraping the bottom of a coffee jar. I also smell smells: burning rubber, boiling milk, coconut oil, mustard seeds popping in a suburban kitchen. At times like these, my mind begins to race: I think about glaciers melting, mountains tumbling, lime water turning milky in a school laboratory. My eyes burn from lack of sleep. When the tip of my tongue rubs against the roof of the mouth, I taste a strange taste. I can never place the sensation. The closest I have come to describing it is sand fried in butter.

In the morning I was irritable, bristly. I brushed my teeth, shaved, trimmed my beard, had a hot water bath. For some reason the entire house smelled of rotten eggs. Usually I make myself an omelette for breakfast, but today the smell turned me off. I ate a banana instead. A curtain has fallen over my eyes. It's a bit like what Bone felt in Patrick Hamilton's novel Hangover Square - the world seems like a talkie with the sound suddenly switched off. The deadness, the indecision, the suspended animation. The terror, the utter loneliness of being trapped inside one's own body. Where does one go from here? I pick up my bicycle and go for a ride. There are cars and scooters and horns and cows and people. My bicycle and I stick to the left. I ride so far to the left that I am in serious danger of scraping my head against the corner of a low-hanging rusting hoarding.

I decide to go into a bookshop. For some reason it's called The Green Bookshop. I think I once knew the reason why. I no longer do. There's a girl sitting behind the till, reading a book, her spectacles sliding down her nose. She smiles at me and I feel better. I walk out of the shop without buying anything. I can't find my bicycle. It was here just a moment ago. I tap a fat man on the shoulder and ask him if he has seen a blue Hercules cycle.

He backs away from me, he looks scared, he's now shouting for help. I'm scared too, and confused. I find that people, shops, trees are flying past me. It's like I'm sitting in a stationary train while another goes past the window at full speed. I notice my feet landing on the pavement. I see my right shoe first, then my left. White tennis shoes, now brown with dirt. I think I am running. I don't stop running until I reach my house. I look at the familiar moss covered walls, the manicured garden, and I begin to feel better.

The front door is open. My landlady, Mrs Khosla, is sitting in front of the TV. As soon as she sees me, she switches the channel to live cricket hoping that I, instead of rushing off upstairs, would sit and chat with her for a while.

'I have discovered the perfect solution for my constipation. 1 Ducolex and 3 pinches of Isabgol. The Ducolex is absolutely crucial,' says Mrs Khosla, as Virat Kohli smashes a boundary through the covers. Sitting there, watching Kohli's extravagance, listening to my landlady talk of constipation, I find myself getting irritated, then angry. The 'moment of anger', according to Naipaul, is 'a moment of exalted, shrinking lucidity from which recovery is slow and shattering.' I go upstairs to my room with four windows and wait for my anger to subside.

There are still a few hours to go for dinner. So many things can happen in the course of an evening. The power can go once, twice, or three times. Your stomach might give way. Love might dissolve like sugar but sweeten nothing. A high-pitched whine might sail through your windows like an alien dinghy. A demon tiger might spring onto your terrace from the neighbour's jamun tree. This tiger might then start baying at the moon."