Psychologists are starting to take note of a curious mental condition afflicting foreigners in India, says Marianne Alazard
Don't you dare touch me! Don't come near or I'll open my third eye and kill you!" The 22-year-old Swiss man's non-stop screaming doesn't distract the team of doctors and nurses treating him at the Privat Hospital in Gurgaon, on the outskirts of Delhi. Dr Kalyan S. Sachdev, who runs the hospital, deals with around 100 such cases a year. The patients, usually Westerners in their mid-20s and 30s, come in with the same afflictions: paranoia, schizophrenia or acute delirium.
Each year, European embassies typically repatriate 10 to 20 nationals suffering from psychological disorders. The numbers are hardly significant, given that around four million tourists visit India annually. How-ever, the phenomenon is extreme enough for psychiatrists to pay it attention.
Dr Régis Airault, formerly a psychiatrist with the French consulate in Mumbai, calls it the "Indian Syndrome", perhaps echoing the Paris Syndrome that afflicts Japanese tourists in the French capital. It is also typified by depression, paranoia and hallucination - some, for instance, have claimed to hear the voice of the Virgin Mary on visiting the Notre-Dame cathedral. Culture shock obviously works both ways and is not a phenomenon restricted to travellers to India alone. Anyone visiting foreign lands can be so acutely overwhelmed by their new environment that it impairs their mental balance. Doctors report similar psychiatric manifestations in Jerusalem, where the encounter with a city that is the religious centre of three faiths - Islam, Judaism and Christianity - can sometimes bring on a sense of spiritual shock. While doctors in the Holy City are used to patients who suffer from delusions of persecution or fancy themselves messiahs, mystical themes predominate in 'Indian syndrome' delusions as well. Impressionable youngsters embarking on a 'spirituality quest' are often overwhelmed by India's wealth and variety of religious practice, and being inexperienced lack the understanding to absorb the culture they find themselves in. A year ago, the Pondicherry police found the body of a Westerner who had starved to death in a cave. The French consulate identified him as a French citizen who had been in India for six years; he destroyed all his identity papers within his first week in the country and later started believing he was Lord Shiva.
Contrary to conventional wisdom, India is no longer the destination of hippies looking for cheap drugs. According to Sachdev, apart from a few places like Goa, the number of Westerners in India abusing drugs has decreased drastically since the hippie heydays of the 1970s. Airault agrees: "In Europe, obtaining drugs, even 'soft' ones like hashish, used to be pretty tough. But nowadays, drugs are available more readily in Europe and people smoke up more in France than in India. Moreover, the laws are more severe in India."
If it's not drugs, then what pushes many young tourists over the edge?
Delhi is just a nine-hour flight from London, Berlin or Milan. On deplaning, the European traveller often finds himself lost in the crowd, chaos and heat of India. Because of his light skin, he is an object of curiosity for many; he also discovers that he is considered "wealthy", and is therefore the centre of attention for beggars and all varieties of street hawkers. As a result, not a few feel disoriented and experience a strong sense of uneasiness. "For sure, it's better to see poverty on television" says Ines, a Spanish tourist.
Many tourists around New Delhi's Connaught Place say they came to India to see the land of the Taj Mahal, maharajas, palaces, temples, and saris - a mysterious, mystic land, an "Incredible India", wholly different from their home country.
And that's where the problems begin.
Dr Koulsoum Hussein, a Mumbai-based psychiatrist, cautions that it is often not easy to distinguish between "culture shock" and symptoms of mental illnesses which have nothing to do with being in India. Many people who would be considered 'borderline' by psychiatrists in their own countries choose to settle in India as they feel freer here. A Swiss man who has been living in Rishikesh for 18 years says that he found life "too straitjacketed" back home. He experiences bouts of schizophrenia, for which he seeks his guru's help.
Apart from some tourists' genuine psychological problems, there are also those making 'pathological journeys' - trying to settle abroad to escape worries they face at home and start afresh. Such moves seldom achieve the desired result.
Psychologists point out that symptoms linked to the 'Indian syndrome' usually disappear when the tourist is back home.
In hindsight, many tend to see the experience as rewarding. Their families, who often have to spend substantial sums at short notice to pay for their relative's repatriation feel relieved, but also wary, because once home safely, the adventurer now has an idea lingering at the back of his mind - to set off to exotic India once again.
