[Neaz Subhan, Coming Back: An Escape From Suicide, Georgetown: Neaz Subhan, 2020. 221pp]
Without time to draw my gun, which was tucked in the backside of my waist, I impulsively and with all the strength I could muster, forced the door open. It swung inwards and my intention was to slam the intruder into the tiled concrete wall on the inside of the room. The door flew open, as if without resistance, causing me to stumble in. Instantly my face was doused with a liquid rendering me almost helpless.
In whatever time I had to think, I thought it was acid for the intense burning sensation felt, was immediate. Just as my eyes were about to be shut down, I saw the attacker about to light a match and I suddenly recognized what the scent was; gasoline.
Instinctively, I held on to the attacker’s hands to prevent the tip of the match from making contact with the strip of sulfur at the side of the box.
[…] I barely managed to prevent the attacker from igniting the match and in between the painful blinks of my burning eyes, I recognized who wanted to light me afire; the revelation was profoundly shocking.
This is one of the most riveting, gripping, suspense-filled passages in the book Coming Back: An Escape From Suicide by Neaz Subhan. The passage confronts the reader with the desperate, terror-filled narrative of an intensely tormented mind. It reads like a fast-moving, action-packed work of fiction and is characteristic of several sequences in the book; but this work is neither fictitious nor entertainment. It is a grim tale of an unhappy narrator in a prolonged struggle with overpowering thoughts of suicide, who candidly publishes his experience, and how he came back from the edge of a precipice, so that others will read it and hopefully overcome similar feelings.
It begins like a journalist documenting cases in the news and continues with a strong message against suicidal thoughts and how to defeat them. “The media landscape was constantly inundated with reports of cases of suicide and attempts. It seemed a fixture in the news over the past six years or so,” it reads. But it is partly therapy, and carries a Foreword by clinical psychotherapist Shane Mark Tull, who writes: “In this book, Mr Subhan has poured out his soul with the intention of helping persons understand that there is hope for everyone. Reading the script, I am struck by the bravery of the writer and his audacious undertaking to address the elusive topic of mental health in Guyana”.
It is indeed the courageous testimony of a man who trod the Dantesque journey through hell and emerged fortified at the other end. The poet Dante in Inferno, the first part of his Divine Comedy, encountered as he descended into hell an inscription that warned “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here”, but he learnt to rise over that. As Tull writes, “This book will provide a few obvious and subtle signs in detecting depression that can prevent suicide. It could also be the lifeline or a ray of hope”
Subhan is a Guyanese media and theatre personality; an accomplished broadcast journalist, prize-winning playwright, theatre director and actor, filmmaker, TV producer and presenter. He was a lead actor in Guyana’s drama for Carifesta in 2008 and appeared in many other plays over the years. As a playwright and director he has been very prominent on the Guyanese stage, winning acclaim such as the Best Playwright Award in the 2013 National Drama Festival for the melodrama When Chocolate Melts. He also made feature movies with Mahadeo Shivraj.
Other achievements are notable, such as his production of a series of plays to drive the development of Indian drama in Guyana. From attempting Indo-adaptations of mostly American plays, he ascended into the production of Tulsidas and other modern plays from India. But more importantly, he wrote deliberately Indian plays, including Maa Ka Pyar and Jhanjat. His greater successes in plays to reflect the East Indian lifestyle includes the satirical comedy Choti Baku, which was quite popular in its run on stage.
Subhan is an Indian cultural activist and an executive member of the Indian Arrival Committee (IAC), which is consistent with his dramatic pursuits in which he was committed to the creation of Indian theatre. He was also a Commissioner in the Ethnic Relations Commission (ERC) and stood out in that capacity when he wrote and directed a play I Am Us which was produced by the ERC as a public statement against racial disunity.
His career in the media has been rich. He served as Director of the Government Information Agency (GINA) from 2007 to 2015 and as Television and Radio Manager at Television Guyana (Chanel 28), in addition to various positions at National Communications Network (NCN) and in a number of private media houses. He has been a popular personality on air as he is renowned on stage. Yet, his academic studies were quite in opposition to media work, although he did receive some BBC training. He graduated from the University of Guyana with a B.Sc in Chemistry.
Here then is the portrait of, by all appearances, a successful man, prominent and recognised in public life. Where then were the demons that could have been tormenting such a man, to the point where they drove him to the very depths of depression the likes of which Subhan describes in Coming Back? It is an illustration that depression is no respecter of persons, further raising the warning that the book wishes to offer.
Contrary to that façade of the successful professional, Subhan takes his readers into the unseen corners of his family life, personal relationships and professional career to show an intertwined labyrinth of circumstances, insincerity and disappointment. At almost every turn he felt betrayed, ill served and bereft of good luck.
Several episodes of the narrative are very engaging, interesting to read, with the fictional characteristics of a novel. The book as a whole is in need of careful editing; the kind of attention that a publisher would have given it, but the work is self-published and like many privately published manuscripts, is without the benefit of professional readers and proofing. This leaves quite a few minor corrections and a few more important blemishes unattended to. Yet Subhan is capable of very effective prose with the infusion of dramatic qualities, irony and suspense. With the skills of a playwright that he possesses, he knows how to sketch character and build moments of conflict with the occasional high drama. Many episodes are deeply moving, some emotional, others having the higher qualities of pathos.
This means that there is often the touch of an accomplished storyteller that makes the work easy to read. The grim and tragic passages are counter-foiled by those of much less bleakness, allowing wit and even humour to produce variety and balance. There is enough suspense and management of detail to interest an eager audience – often drawn to the incidents and enthusiastic to find out what happens next.
Since the main plot is a battle against suicide and how the author returned from deep depression and the brink of despair, there are other passages of moralising, flirting with philosophy, and questioning with a tendency to be morose. These are the sections where the pace slows down, the document becomes repetitive and a reader might wish for a change in focus. Yet even in the middle of this Subhan never forgets the dramatic. Death is personified, courted, directly addressed, challenged and cursed, with the presence of a character in a novel. Sometimes this reduces the weight of the reading, but the author engages in a great deal of musing on the subjects of human nature – mostly human vice and inhumanity – depression, suicide and death.
The technique of personification extends as well to his attitude to an unnamed god or Supreme Being, who he often addresses and refers to as “he”. These discourses are not religious, spiritual belief is not identified, but this character is a caring being, often rescuing Subhan from bouts of poverty, periods when he is penniless, isolated and fragile or vulnerable. He narrates a number of miracles which he welcomes with the question of whether “he” had seen his plight and sent a Good Samaritan or a fortunate turn of events to his rescue. While this was often in times of material needs, there were times when he acknowledges suspected “divine” interventions in his state of health, both physical and mental, his spiritual well-being or emotional state.
Effective story teller that he is, Subhan provides several tales taken from his boyhood, his schooldays, his family, his home village. In his adult life, these tales turn darker and involves the many factors that drove him to depression, including politics, his job and income, concern for his responsibility to provide for his family and the inhumanity of humankind. Some of the most interesting stories are those of his time spent in New York with fluctuations of fortune and a number of remarkable miracles.
There are times when stories are half-told, names are not mentioned, and crucial details are hidden in a deliberate attempt to protect identities. This was most likely to preserve confidences, respect privacies, shield sensitive information or sensitivities or to avoid lawsuits.
Ironically, a part of this testament is set in the times of the COVID-19 pandemic, and Subhan tested positive. This ironically serves as another metaphor for his affliction by chronic depression. He describes his recovery and gives telling commentary about his time spent in the new COVID medical facility and the Georgetown Hospital. It is significant how positive was his attitude during that time when he had overcome his death wish and struggled for survival.
Coming Back is a complex narrative that uses many devices, including the artistic, the rhetorical and the argumentative to achieve the purpose of alerting readers to harsh social realities. All are drawn from Subhan’s personal experiences to warn against the destructive depths into which these realities can drive anyone. The other side of it is, he came back. There is shocking contrast in the accounts of when he courted death and when he fought fiercely for life against what he once welcomed.
In the end the book is about the fight to “come back” from the temptation of suicide in the first person narrative of a man who did it. As Subhan concludes towards the end of the account: “I saw depression. I faced it. .. It strangled me, but slowly I raised my brittle bones as courage imbued to confront that towering bully”. In this book “I vividly remember and painted a picture with words”.
Those words are well worth reading and provide effective therapy.
