Motherhood, a familiar yet complex phenomenon, is informed by many factors whose consequences for women are often detrimental yet undermined. Particularly in India, discourse surrounding mothers' health often disregards the social and familial expectations and impositions that threaten women's authority over their own bodies. Amidst this, postpartum disorders, particularly the concept of postpartum psychosis, embody the anomalies of medical and social knowledge bases. Addressing the ambiguities and interconnectedness of motherhood and madness, this paper discusses the simplification of postpartum concerns as a biological condition alone and explores the complexities of diagnosis based on Em's aetiologies. Addressing the psychopathological and social nuances of postpartum psychosis, this paper also advocates for destigmatising women's apprehensions regarding the structural obligation of motherhood and broadening the discourse surrounding their reproductive autonomy.

Traditionally (in)famous for their grandeur, melodrama, and archetypical portrayal of family units, Indian soap operas have rarely represented neurodiversity and mental disorders sensitively. Barring a few Over-The-Top (OTT) media series and emergent productions that expose the Indian audience to globalised sensibilities, neurodivergent characters and those living with mental disorders are (mis) represented either by stigmatisation or romanticisation. The on-screen portrayal of people living with psychiatric disorders oscillates between the reinstating and demystification of stereotypes, reflecting the vacillations of contemporary Indian society, which inconsistently balances modern and traditional perspectives and, though increasingly aware, does not completely display a sincere effort towards sensitisation. Without undermining the practice of psychiatric diagnosis and cure, this paper studies the representations of mental disorders and neurodiversity in select Hindi series of the 21st century and locates them in the Indian context. It identifies predominant archetypes, such as the simpleton and the “psycho” criminal, which immensely influence the discourse surrounding atypical behaviour and thereby public perception. The paper concludes that psychological categorisation and diagnosis also factor into the representation and creation of archetypes, where certain conditions, like anxiety and depression, are more sensitively portrayed than madness or psychosis. Furthermore, while contemporary representation has increasingly leaned towards being informed and sensitive, the depictions of mental disorders remain predominantly incongruent.

The evolving discourse of health among indigenous people, subject to the influence of both traditional wisdom and contemporary practices, remains elusive. Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar’s novel The Mysterious Ailment of Rupi Baskey (2013) explores the complex dynamics of these concepts within India’s Santhal community. The narrative provides a lens to explore the complexity prompted by the process of assimilation and marginalization in understanding Santhal history and its profound impact on their perceptions of health and healing. The paper contends that the incapacity of both traditional and modern knowledge bases to understand and remedy concerns related to women’s health and disability emphasizes the need for both a medical and a sociocultural comprehension of ailments. Advocating the necessity of a more inclusive approach that respects individual experiences and the knowledge systems of indigenous communities, this paper explores the intricacies of linking mysticism with health and challenges the oversimplistic categorization of illness and disability.

The paper addresses the irreverence and disregard towards the ma(d)isabled bodies in Indian texts and contexts. It focuses on the relation between notions of disability and madness to examine the constructed nature of such terms. The basic proposition is that persons with disability are examined as bodies on the boundary: It is the boundary that defines normalcy. However, it is the same boundary that brings together those elements that challenge the boundary. What defines disability or madness is not its nature, but its relation to what has been institutionalized. The paper examines Jerry Pinto’s Em and the Big Hoom (2013) to analyze what terms like ‘disability’ and ‘madness’ are invested within the Indian context. It is interesting to note the multivalent meanings that ensue and how they are peculiar to a culture.

This paper studies the role of body as a trope of reversal and negotiation through the figure of a male pregnant body in Devdutt Pattanaik’s The Pregnant King (2008). The narrative posits the body in a zone that lies beyond the normative boundaries. Body being material in nature redefines itself by exceeding its boundaries and thus becomes a significant trope to embody reversals and negotiations. For this, it takes insights from Mikhail Bakhtin’s observations on the notion of the body in his discussion of carnival and grotesque realism. Pattanaik’s narrative maps the reversal that emerges in a non-dominant space by keeping the body in the center of discussion. It widens the notion of the materiality of the body by positing the male body in the experience of childbirth. It also brings the embodied experience into consideration: the experience of the lived body. Both the materiality of the body and its lived experience are brought into focus as distinct features of the body. The experience of the lived body is put at disjuncture with the materiality of the body in the narrative. Thus, the narrative celebrates this excessive nature of the body.

This paper argues that the act of storytelling is inventive and performative. Tracing the idea of truth and lie as discursive enactments, the paper discusses that stories cannot be stipulated by the binary of truth and lie. It is a discursive repetition that invents and produces the truth of fiction. The truth of fiction has to be mediated by the reality that it establishes for itself in the process of its creation. This proposition is developed further in this paper to understand how the mode of tell-tale institutes the phantasm or fictionality. This is examined while keeping Salman Rushdie's novellas in the background. The larger frame of the paper comes from the statement Salman Rushdie makes in Luka and the Fire of Life (2010). He defines the human as a storytelling animal and says that the identity and meaning of life are in stories. This force of the narrative that gives meaning to life enabled Rushdie to take up Haroun and the Sea of Stories (1990) under the fatwa. The narrative is also about the power of literature as an institution. Moreover, both the novellas become parables of the power of the literary.