Being Mad

It was not about being angry. It is literally being mad. I need not have needed to talk about this (OOPs! Is it the beginning?) until I read (Should I say read or reading?) the book by name " Veronica decides to die". Mind you I have not chosen this. It was an abandoned venture and passed on to me like a heritage. I thought park was the right place to kill the time as well as the book. I preferred to spend a month's time to finish the book containing 190 pages which means on an average to read not more than five or six pages a day. That is too much of load in connotation with it's title. To my luck there were no compulsions to scan through the pages quickly either by means of absorbing tale or twister. I had my ample leisure to scrutinize every tiny word with comforting cool breeze touching my body.

As I do not pretend to be an intellectual at this moment, I did not comprehend why this brown haired pretty young girl with blue eyes wanted to commit suicide. Sitting in middle of this country surrounded by open drains and folks in tattered clothing, I thought she did not have enough reasons to die. Strangely people don't appear to die out of impoverishment but due to inadequacies. It appear as though she decides to die for being young, for being beautiful, for being loved. People die every where due to ailments, due to old age, due to family problems, due to catastrophe, due to belligerence. They die too due to madness like cause of a separate state, a dead hero, Skylab fall or Big Bang experiment ... as if humanity is in constant search for misery. She decides to die out of boredom, due to many reasons suggesting her powerlessness. In her failed attempt she eventually reaches mental asylum. The writer being Brazilian the concepts of madness and hospitalization are not very different from Indian.

An elaborate overview of a mental asylum in war torn country of Slovenia obviously leaves a bad taste in the mouth not because it is any worse than India, but because of apathetic attitude displayed by the staff or inmates or whatever.The mega doses of sedatives necessarily raise ethical questions about their usage. Who cares for mad? Probably all of us are saved from abuses in our everyday life because we can sanely cry foul. The employed brutal force by the care takers either in handling or manhandling the patience is a sure way to ensure their deterioration. The gripping fear which pushes them into the dark hell with no sight of exit is the most cruel experience one can pass on to them. Gradual helpless compliance with the torment is phased dehumanizing procedure which hospitals adopt.One time admit is probably a life time convict. Impossibility of escape from the asylums to ensure the safety of the sane in the outside world in a way looks injustice meted out to them. (Am I on my way?) I am happy, the lunatic on my street was given freedom to come out of his bouts naturally, next day on his way to buy his bread. The elaborate medication, ECT, sedation seem to do no better to them. Rarely we find them come out of the hospitals with their heads in place.

The rare flights of the mentally wrecked are better explained by writers who experienced them. No body ever thought being mad is virtue. Paul Coelho had the advantage of first hand experience of the condition and treatment, one should envy him for being sane to explain this to us. Strangely most mad are capable of complex thinking, yet enslaved by aberrant behavioral patterns. Oddity doesn't seem to bother them rather seen as entitlement. Normality is a matter of consensus Coelho says. . To him human adjudication works in similar way in most minds as matter of habit than judgment. Is a deviant man a psychopath or visionary? How it feels like to be perverted? Are bizarre kind of things not so weird? ? How is it like inviting the suffering like a kick? He had handful of anecdotes. Reading them you feel uncomfortable. You feel unhealthy. But you can not miss the brilliance with which they have been chronicled.

We are not exactly exited about analyzing the chemicals of our body which make us laugh, exited or love. We do not like to be identified as drab combination of some serotonin or adrenalin which are commonly present in every human body. We believe that we are unique individuals. We would like to be signified by our actions. Knowledge that loving our children is an act of hormone than choice, love precisely is a lust, spiritual awakening is just an act of some frontal lobes or portion of a cortex in the brain,lead us to despair. May be we are reluctant to capsize the grandiose vision of few emotions..

The eccentricities attached to the character or events in the book provide an insight into the unregulated mind. At one point of time it may occur that there remain very few who do not possess any kind of eccentricity or attachment. All the attributes explained appear to be befalling on us. It has the power to convince you momentarily that perversion alone is right thought. Instantly our shattered beliefs and usurped ideologies show our life in poor light. Our very self worth, importance and pride seem to be waning . Besieged by weariness, dreariness, and lackluster for a moment life looses focus. With due respect for some who think differently, I find it difficult to forge with alien thought culture having lived few fruitful years. It is a near catastrophe to completely reverse one's belief system otherwise instilled in formative phases. I found people roving in their midlife with defiant speculations come ashore conciliate in their twilight. May it takes too big a toll to swim against the tide.

Initially I never thought I would complete this book, but as I cruised ahead I thought it is worth finishing.