Not that crazy.
Solah baras ki baali
umar ko salaam, pyar teri pahale nazar ko salaam…(Salute to 16th
year of youth, Salute to first glimpse / experience of Love…)
But is there a first
and last stage in love?
Is it any different at
32 or at 64?
I decided to ask my
grandfather first and he said, oh? First love? It was when my
English teacher at my college smiled and touched my cheeks, when I
wrote the only essay on lost paradise, maybe gori mem’s are allowed
to do that in England; he trailed off… And me too.
Asking father about it
was beyond unthinkable. He’d mostly take me to that doctor who
calls me schizophrenic or to others who call it as ‘lack of will
power’…
But I am deviating from
my first question. Does love have a ‘first stage’? Isn’t it
the pleasure that accompanies it which makes it sought after thing?
Questions are a bad way to start off with, as they usually lead to
more complicated ones. Endless like the TV soap operas... it’s a
joke, you know. My uncle would have laughed at it, not the others
here.
Well, to get some answers
to my question, I waited till my favorite consultant came along, my
uncle who lived in a far off city. My mother called him ‘mad’
secretly. Of course I had told about this to my uncle, but he
reassured me easily by saying, “all sisters think of their brothers
that way”. Actually my uncle never talks; he has this lyrical way
of saying even the most mundane things as if it’s a poetical verse.
I would try to hang on to his every word. He also never called me
‘crazy’ and would explain that having schizophrenia is not a
crime, but it’s a disease I happen to have. It is caused by
imbalance of chemicals in the brain, one of the chemicals is known as
serotonin.
I remember everything
when he explains it, even the complicated things. Whenever others
ignore me or look at me with disgust I remember what he once told me.
I had returned form a short hospitalization as my parents had
stopped giving me medicines as they had found a new Baba who promised
to cure me fully. I was happy to get rid of the medicines in the
beginning, but later on wanted them back because of the terrible
unknown fears played with me until I couldn’t even scream against
them.
After my return from
hospital I was shunned away and usually told to stay in a far corner
of the house. It was as if I deliberately made everyone else fail.
“You made us lose our face even to the Baba” was repeatedly told
to me. I would feel very bad and sad and confused as I really
couldn’t remember much of that time. Used to feel that I am the
worst person in that whole town, worse than even the thieves &
murderers of our town.
One day, as usual I was
crying carefully over it in my ‘favorite corner’ (others had
labeled that corner as my favorite by then). I daren’t cry with
tears those days because if I am caught crying with tears in my eyes,
then my father would shout at me till I felt like running away, or my
mother herself would start crying unstoppably and my father would
shout and…
Well, to keep it short,
my uncle came and put his hands on my shoulder and smiled at me…
and told me, “hey buddy, you feeling sad because you are crazy?
“Somehow holding my tears I nodded repeatedly. He patted my
shoulders and said, “You know, almost everyone feels at times, that
it would be better to go crazy and lose all control”.
I was amazed, and just
stared at him. Then he looked far away and continued, “Yes, to
escape from all these rules, to do what one feels like and blame it
all on being crazy. Who has not thought that way more than once?
He continued his song, but I had heard what I needed to; because till
then it had never occurred to me that others might resent me for the
state I am in…
I also am one of them,
Of human beings,
And at peace…
Yes, after a year he
came, my uncle and my first question was about love. At first he
just ruffled my hair and said, “Oh, my boy is all grown up now,
eh?”, and walked away. But I followed him after lunch till he gave
up, (I also knew he hated to smoke with me near him). “Well, my
boy, just like there is no difference between being crazy the first
time or the 100th time or being crazy at 16 or 64; love
also doesn’t have such differences… He stopped his verse then
and asked me, “are you in love buddy?”.
I looked back at him
squarely and replied, “Even I am not that crazy”. My uncle
looked at me quizzically and then started laughing. Now I am the one
who’s cracking jokes…
But soon my parents had a
talk with my uncle and he became unusually quiet that whole after
noon. But I knew he’d talk to me during our evening walk together
to the temple. He never entered the temple but always would call out
loudly to my mother, “we are going to the temple to pray”, and
wink at me. I would also wink back at him. It was a routine thing,
but it always made me feel like being on the inside of a joke.
Anyway, as soon our house
disappeared from view, my uncle asked, “something happened,
something happened, right? I heard a new social worker girl had come
to rehabilitate”. He struggled with that long last word. “Is
that why you asked about love?” His words now sounded bit broken.
“Would you tell me everything?” He added ‘please’ as an
afterthought.
I looked at him back with
a strange realization. His face now seemed to have more creases and
his voice seemed to have lost some of its melody.
I felt even my uncle is
growing old like grandfather… “Well, of course I will tell you
everything my uncle”, I started with unconvincing hilarity. I
can’t make it into a song like him, I realized but braved on. You
see, there was this girl, yes she called herself a social worker but
she told me her name when I asked her. She would talk to me a lot
and her eyes would stare at me and she would smile a lot. Mother and
father were bit wary of her but she’d come every week to meet me.
Even though she talked
about a lot of nonsense things, I liked to listen to her. At times
strangely she would stop and tell me to talk and if I stop talking at
these times she would become nervous and try to get me to talk more.
At times I even felt like making up some problems and telling them to
her, but as I liked her I didn’t lie.
One day she wanted to
take me out to town. Mother was really worried but she let her. I
was really happy to go out with someone other than a nervous family
member. We went through the town and reached a new big building.
Even though it was early evening it was lit up by hanging lights all
over. There were many glass windows full of things. A new shopping
mall, a really big one, it was, as she had told me. Can we go in for
a look? I asked her with a big smile and to my surprise, she took my
hand and we went in there. A big x-mas tree all lit up and gleaming
new things were all around us.
I thought I found someone
just like you uncle and laughed. Go on, my uncle gently prodded me.
Yes, and as we stared around the mall, she still was holding my hands
and were both laughing happily.
Then a guy came across us
and she stopped smiling and our hands broke off. But I smiled at
him. He ignored me first and asked her, “So this is the new guy
who is crazy about you, eh? Or is he just plain crazy?” And made
a strange laughing like sound. Then he turned to me and said in a
slow drawl… “Helloo, good-evenijg, can-you-understand? Helloo,
can-you-talk?” It was really strange, so I just stared at him.
Then she suddenly burst out, “how dare you, he’s a schizophrenic,
you should treat him nicely”. I was bit scared now as well, and
the guy seemed shocked. Then she tried to grab my hand and drag me
away and I punched her on the face… not hard though, but at that
moment I couldn’t have cared.
“Then you ran away,
right”? My uncle broke the sudden silence and brought me to that
evening walk back. “Why buddy? Why did you do that? I don’t
believe you did it because you are crazy”, Then he calmly waited
for me to finish his sentence. “I was more angry at her than
scared, because she was being nice to me all along because I am
schizophrenic, not because I was nice to her and…” I somehow
vocalized my thoughts for him and anxiously waited for his reaction.
“So, even you are not
that crazy… now I get it”, my uncle completed for me and I too
joined him as his loud laughter echoed from the temple’s
stonewalls.
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