Chennai: “I am in a room full of people, yet I feel lonely all the time.” In today’s time this has become a thought that surpasses every third person’s mind. Saint Mother Teresa once said, ‘Loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted is the most terrible poverty’ Though she might have meant it for the downtrodden or leprosy affected people of those years who were left alone on the streets to die, her words appear to be true even in 2018 for the masses.
The media industry has time and again brought several movies and short films on mental illness. What sufferers need is a shoulder to cry upon or a hand to hold in this fast racing world where people prefer minding their own business. Suma Sundararajan, a writer by passion, chooses to spread awareness through music.
It was in 2016 when Suma Sundararajan realized that though people work hard to live a luxurious life, they are lonely inside. She says, “I felt intrigued as the core of life is to live happily but nowadays happiness has gone missing from everyone's life.” From then, Suma collaborated with her musician friend and started the ‘Rising Corner’ to make albums on mental illness. Till now they have released five musical videos.
Still during the musical video Am I good enough.
Suma recounts how after releasing these videos some of her friends came forward to talk about their experiences. “Once we released our videos even our friends whom we think are cool and fine came out and said that even they had suicidal thoughts. With this our journey began,” she says. “Currently we have a team of eight members including Suchitra AD who is our doodle artist, Soundarya Gottapu, our illustrator who handles our instagram handle and Nicky Zodinsanga, who is our T-shirt artist,” she added.
On asking whether her team of eight members intend to bring another of her exquisite musical video on World Mental Health Awareness Day, she says, “Right now we are actually working towards pushing our message all around before we start working on a second album. We are targeting youngsters as we want them to understand that they need to speak up if they have had suicidal thoughts.”
Through the campaign she says, “We aim to gain visibility so that when we hold concerts in colleges, probably by the end of October or early November, our event does not become a formal event. We know that the topic of mental illness is extremely sensitive and the main solution to this illness is talking to somebody. Hence, we want like-minded people who have already suffered this illness to become part of the event as then only can the audience can talk about their thoughts without any hiccups.”
