The summer vacations in May-June were always my favorite as I got to spend the entire two months at my grandparents’ house (Palace in my daughters’ lingo) in Kerala.
Thank God that neither the World Wide Web nor WhatsApp nor Email were launched back then. I didn’t have my head tied to a phone, tablet, or laptop all day long and doing homework that did no good to anyone I have ever known. We lived and breathed freely in independent India and learned all about real life without the pressure of having to excel always and outshine everyone else.
Day time meant roaming around the house all alone, collecting all things possible. Or walking hand in hand with the elders of the house visiting the local Shiva temple, the one or two little grocery shops known as ‘Chaaya Peedika’ or walking the long stretches of the paddy fields and supervising the workers. A Devaki, Kaali or Shankaran would ask me if I was enjoying my time at my grandparents and what they were treating me with.
Even the humble telephone and electricity had not reached the quaint little village of Cherukattupulam till about early 90s. Life was peaceful. No fear of missing out on what’s happening with the Kardashians or why one hasn’t yet seen Virat and Anushka’s duaghter. No FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) at all.
If you ask me, the brain was a cleaner space. There was no clutter and ample time to grow and develop natural creativity.
The lonely walks in the backyard, meeting all forms of life from a millipede to the King Cobra, I am one lucky little remenant of an era you missed living through.
Remember the lesson ‘Apna Kaam Swayam Karo’ from the Hindi NCERT text of Class 3? My fascination around birds and their lives started from there.
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I bought a feeder a few years back. Experimented with various seeds. No bird came. Not a single one. The pigeons couldn’t manage staying on the tiny feeder. The Mynas preferred hunting worms to having free lunches. The parrots only cared about a Guava or some peas or sunflower seeds.
Then, I found the fox millet. I refilles the feeder with it. Patience was the key. Two three weeks down the road and there was one tiny little bird that chirped more than it ate. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. And then I lost count. Mrs. and Mr. Munia had arrived with their flock. Few weeks, and they had literally accepted the space as.theirs. My constant companion while spreading the clothes on the terrace.
I started keeping a small bowl with the seeds at the Window of Hope. Soon, the Munias flocked there.
Munias feasting on Millets
Her nest is the cleanest, happiest, and most peaceful place I have ever seen. Her family seems like one big fat celebration every day.
She visits my window often to check if I have refilled the feeder with fresh fox millets. Then she spreads the word and the Chachas, Taus, Buas, Mamas, Maasis and ‘woh door ke rishte waale’ Nanaji, Phufaji and possibly her entire neighbourhood ever flocks together to the feeder and celebrates.
I observe them enviously as Mr.Munia and Mrs. Munia kept a watch, and their entire Tabbar feasted on the seeds. Why?
If I die today, I don’t think there will be many people to attend the funeral or to support my mourning family. Leave death. If I announce a gathering right now, there will be countable people who will attend and half of whom would be doing it just to gather information on my life or to find fault with the hospitality. And look at Mrs. and Mr. Munia. They had such a happening family. An entire neighborhood. Such a strong support system.
Mrs. Munia looks through the window pane and sighs. What a lavish house this woman has and what a grand life she is living. No fear of an enemy attacking from unannounced corners. No fear of running out of food for the family. Such a splendid life, she wonders.
I sigh back. Such a rich lady with such a magnanimous family.
‘Mediclaim hai na?’ We ask it, don’t we, the moment somebody in the family falls ill. For a night in a hospital, the answer is usually yes. For the psychiatrist’s room, the counsellor’s chair, the therapy hour and the strips of tablets that comes home with you, the answer is usually no.
That is the whole problem, in one breath. I understand that health policies in India are built around hospital admission. An insurer’s own explainer, last updated in July 2026, lays it out in a table: the hospital stay, the room, the nursing and the medicines inside the hospital are covered. Psychiatrist visits, counselling, therapy sessions and ongoing medicines from the pharmacy are covered only if the policy has an OPD (outpatient department: you walk in, you walk out) or mental health benefit. An insurance executive told Outlook Money in 2023 that nearly every product is built around hospital admission, while most mental health conditions need outpatient treatment. So the policy and the illness are standing in two different rooms.
On paper, there is a law. I understand that the Mental Healthcare Act, 2017 (Section 21(4), if you want to look it up) says every insurer must cover the treatment of mental illness on the same basis as physical illness. I read that IRDAI, the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (the body that keeps an eye on insurers), told insurers exactly this in August 2018 and again in October 2022, and that the Delhi High Court said in April 2021 that every insurer had to follow the law from 29 May 2018. To be fair, most policies don’t pay for outpatient visits for physical illness either, so ‘the same basis’ can sound fair. But a fever needs one visit, and a mind in pain can need a doctor, a counsellor and medicines for years. And ‘the same basis’ means very little when the treatment lives in the one place the policy doesn’t reach.
I am not perfect, and I am certainly no expert (not a lawyer, not a doctor, not an insurance professional). But I have experienced this from close quarters. So I read what I could find, and I can’t stay quiet about it. Please check the sources at the end, and speak to someone who knows, before you decide anything about your own policy.
The cover that stops at the hospital door. In a Marsh and Mpower study of 150 organisations, 61 per cent offered hospitalisation cover for mental health. Only 40 per cent covered outpatient care, and only 25 per cent covered psychiatric medicines. When researchers at the Centre for Mental Health Law and Policy in Pune read 268 health policies introduced or revised in 2020 and 2021, only 23 offered anything beyond hospitalisation. A 2025 review by NIMHANS (the national mental health institute in Bengaluru) even came across policies that say, in so many words, that any kind of psychological therapy or counselling is excluded. It is a garden where help arrives only after the plant has wilted, never for the daily watering.
What the gap costs. One man living with bipolar disorder told a reporter in 2022 that he has paid premiums since 2003 and has never once claimed for his illness, because admission is rarely what it needs. The reporter noted that there was no reimbursement for treatment outside hospital, for rehabilitation or for outpatient services. A 2018 survey by NGOs in Bengaluru estimated that families of people with mental illness spend anywhere from Rs 7,000 to Rs 60,000 a month on medicines, outpatient treatment and care, depending on the illness. In a Marsh and Mpower survey of more than 350 consumers, 45 per cent had used counselling and only 17 per cent had insurance that covered it. And I read that less than 1 per cent of health insurance claims are for mental health (Marsh McLennan and Mpower, 2025). Less than one in a hundred. Does anybody really believe the need is that small?
The diagnosis at the front door. A man living with bipolar disorder tried to move his health policy to another insurer. The new insurer rejected his proposal because of his diagnosis, with his old policy about to expire, and the regulator did not step in when he wrote to it. He ended up in the Bombay High Court in June 2021. Declare your diagnosis and you may be turned away. Don’t, and the claim can be refused later for non-disclosure. And over all of it sits log kya kahenge (what will people say).
Another man who has lived with bipolar disorder for years told researchers that a refusal over mental illness can become a refusal over physical illness too. And the Pune researchers point out that the regulator’s annual report says how many policies were issued, but not how many applications were turned down. So how would we ever know?
Even the hospital cover has needed courts. A man spent four days in a private hospital in October 2022 for psychosis. The bill was Rs 44,409, his mediclaim was for Rs 3 lakh, and the insurer said the policy did not cover hospitalisation linked to mental illness. A consumer commission has now ordered it to pay (Outlook Money reported the order in June 2026). Another man had paid for a Rs 35 lakh cover and found that for mental illness it would pay Rs 50,000, and the Delhi High Court asked the regulator on what basis it had approved such a policy.
And then there is a son admitted to hospital under his mother’s mediclaim, whose insurer argued that he could have been treated as an outpatient, though the policy did not pay for outpatient treatment either. The State Commission ruled in his favour in 2010. The Jammu and Kashmir High Court upheld that order in March 2025. Nearly fifteen years. I read these one after another and felt helpless, and then angry. Not their fault, any of it.
I do not think the person at the claims desk is a villain. In the same NIMHANS study, six insurance managers said they lack the data to price these products, that the regulator’s guidance is not always clear, and that stigma gets in the way. I read that a few insurers have now started covering outpatient consultations and therapy, sometimes as an add-on, though the Pune team notes that comprehensive plans can cost more than Rs 15,000 a year. The rule book was written for fevers and fractures. It is learning something new, slowly. Meanwhile, the families who can’t afford the add-on are paying from their own pockets, today.
So here is my plain lesson, and it is a small one. Let’s read the exclusions before we need them. Let’s ask whether the policy pays for the doctor’s room, the counsellor and the medicines, as well as the hospital bed. Let’s ask HR what the office cover includes, because in that survey only 40 per cent of organisations covered outpatient care. And if a claim is refused because the illness is mental, ask for the reason in writing. I read that you can then go to the insurer’s grievance team, then the Insurance Ombudsman, then a consumer commission, and that the courts have said the same thing again and again.
So, a few questions. Have you read the exclusions in your own policy, all the way to the last page? Does the cover you get through work include counselling and psychiatrist visits, or only a hospital bed? And if someone you love needed counselling every week for a year, do you know what you would be paying for yourself?
If you or someone close to you is struggling, Tele-MANAS is a free helpline run by the Government of India, open round the clock: 14416 or 1800-891-4416, in about 20 languages. If someone is in immediate danger, please call 112.
Reminds me of the first computer program we were made to write in the ancient language PASCAL that wannabe computer geeks like me started off with. It feels so funny at how excited we were to see that ‘Hello World!‘ as it flashed on the screen while we ran the program.
It’s been quite a while that I sat down to write something. And I had been wanting to come back to this space for a while now. I have understood that for free spirits like me rules don’t work. I was doing absolutely fine till I was on my own. And then I started aspiring to be like him and her of the online world. That’s when I lost the real me. It all started feeling like a whirlpool were in one is sucked into a whole new chaotic world of competition. I burnt my hands and took my time to heal.
I promised myself to not get into that mode of challenges and competitions. I can’t. I simply can’t. I love to be myself. I just don’t want to be like anyone else. I owe it to myself to be me. We all do. While it’s absolutely necessary to aspire something, I believe it is important to realize the break-even points. So now, you’ll see more of me here but not in any regular pattern. I’ll be here only when I feel like. Only when I have something really meaningful to share.
I spent the time I took a break from here doing what I love most. In my terrace garden. Spending time tending to my favorite living beings, plants. The greenery on the terrace and the warmth from the plants gave me company like never before. I worked real hard re-potting, pruning and fertilizing the plants. I also tried succulent propagation. All I can say is, it isn’t an easy task. Quite a few of the leaves germinated, but as the summer sun started showing its true colours lot of them just dried up leaving me heartbroken.
Succulent Seed Bed
The other thing I did was spending time with Mom. We spoke. Like never before. And when I speak with my heart, I don’t leave anything at all. I heard her speak about her time away from home at the convent school. Her fears, her apprehensions. I listened to her struggles as an unwelcome bride at her in-laws. The friends and the foes. The manipulators and the leeches. I listened to her journey as a parent, mostly a single parent. She too listened to my complaints from life, mostly my childhood. I craved for her love while she was busy disciplining me for fear of failing as a single parent. I really wish we both connected instead of disconnecting somewhere along. She repents. And I regret. But it feels so light having ‘spoken’ to each other as not mother and daughter but as friends or sisters. I wish we had done this earlier. We would have understood each other in a much better way. But glad that we did.
My portrait made by the little one.
And then I did what I have always been doing. Happily sharing the lovely little moments with the three loves of my life and learning and unlearning. The girls are dealing with a new school, new friends and lots of new changes in their life as well. In short, change has been the only constant in our lives for a while now. And we aren’t complaining.
So that was that. Life as they call it. Moving on with the tides and sailing on. Hope you guys are enjoying it as well. Good luck and best wishes.
