My house is calm today. I don’t know why I call it a house. It’s usually a mad house. Literally. I’ve heard people who came in from out on the on the street, call it an asylum. For me it has been one for the last 15 years (I’ve been counting the days), ever since I was put here by my parents, a handsome couple, as far as I can remember. I assume so, because I never saw them after that.
I remember that day in 1985. I woke up on a bright sunny morning, and found I was stuck to the bed. I tried moving my arms and legs, only to find them bound to my bed. I was in my favorite shirt and three fourths, my standard attire, and I was all of 15 years old. My clothes seemed wet, but I was not sure. I had no recollection of why I was bound, when I was bound and what I had done to be bound. I screamed, Mom, Mom, come here. There was no answer.
She heard me, I am sure. I am sure about these things, that’s one of my strengths – my intuition, my inside knowledge, being on the outside. I screamed again. Mom, Where are you? She didn’t answer, but I heard footsteps approaching the half open door and was relieved.
Three men with white coats over their drab shirts, came in. One of them held a syringe in one hand. I screamed again, this time angrily, Who are you? Where’s mom?. They didn’t answer. Simply gripped my hand roughly, and plunged the syringe into my arm. The rage in me overcame any pain that I felt. After a minute everything went black.
I woke up in a room on a bed by a wall which was painted white. I felt drowsy. My room had one window and two beds…Mine was by the window – which was barred. On the other was a rather scruffy old man. He was in whites, ready to play cricket, I thought funnily enough.
His name was Jeevan I learnt without even asking him. What is yours, he asked. I wondered why he was asking. Brian I said. He repeated it in a funny way, He said, your name is brain! And he laughed.
I was irritated but didn’t show it because I was scared – He was bigger than me, seemed stronger than me and he seemed to have a strange fire in his eyes. He kept on asking me questions… From where are you, why are you here? What did you do to land up here?
I found those questions quite strange. Why was he referring to this place as here? Why should I have done something to land up here? Was he mad? These were questions that sprang immediately to mind. But I kept my counsel- for two reasons, I was suspicious of his intentions and honestly didn’t have a clue.
Several injections and tablets later, my drowsiness came under my control and I developed a routine that included a forced exercise routine e in a room that I was compulsorily taken to everyday. Initially I resisted, but gave in when I realized, that my resistance made things worse – they would make me more drowsy.
But the building and its corridors became my home – I never got to see the outside world other than through the window which other than narrow stretch of land far below looked out at room level onto a blank concrete wall, strangely painted black.
My roommate Jeevan, became more friendly by the day. One day maybe after a year in the room he asked me, Brain, (he still called me brain, because I thought it best not to correct him), don’t you miss the outside world?
I had a faint recall of what it was to be outside, and said honestly, no I don’t – by then I decided I could be honest with him, as compared to the lady who used to interview me every day for two hours – She could get nothing out of me – I was too smart for her and too suspicious of her intentions to reform me from whatever put me here. I still couldn’t figure that one out.
But then it got me thinking, and somehow the desire to get wet in the rain started to obsess me. I linked it partially to my wet clothes the day I was incarcerated. As the days passed by it became an obsession. I decided to enlist the help of Jeevan in my endeavor to get wet in the rain. I came to this decision because I realized that Jeevan was allowed an hour outside everyday!
Jeevan, I said one day, I want to go out into the courtyard. Will you help me? He seemed happy that I’d asked him. He was not bitter at his incarceration as I was, in fact, he seemed positively happy, and said, “here’s the thing. You must be on your best behavior at all times – no screaming, no shouting, no resistance, be pleasant and tell them what they want to hear…
Tell whom? I asked – those doctors who talk to you everyday – tell them who you are, what u feel, what u felt, show remorse for your actions, accept that u want to change and put in practice whatever their suggestions are, then they will be happy and start to believe that they can trust you with yourself in strange environments.
I decided that this was the best way forward, and miraculously the next morning I woke up in my old bed, and from the moment I woke up in my own bed, I was a model teen.
Now I heard my Mom’s voice calling from downstairs…. Brian, Brian wake up. Its six O Clock – You have an exam today!
