this is something i wrote when i was twenty five years of age, living and working in (then) Bombay. i was undoubtedly hopelessly romantic, with giddy vivid imagination, introverted, steeped in books, living in my head, drunk with gibran and rumi and pushkin and so on...., and to complete the circle, wrote things like these.... the idea, or rather the instinct, of posting this is to both see and share if i was same then or different, and how in each of it... :)
For the first time he started wondering seriously if he was going mad. It had occurred to him yesterday afternoon suddenly, while he was walking down from the office to the station to catch the suburban to his lodging. It had come unbidden, apparently apropos of nothing that his mental status could be, in clinical terms, labeled as ‘disturbed’. The word ‘aberrated’ also crossed his mind. He also considered if it could be fit to be called a phobia, the specific kind of which, he was not sure though.
Ever since, the thoughts of related nature have been enticing him off and on. The theme itself has become a brooding presence at the back yards of his consciousness.
He could not, for all his worrying and nibbling at it, rightly sum his reactions to this new ‘sickness’ that has hatched in the grey recesses of his old top.
He tried to define it – he felt he is becoming increasingly out of phase with the humanity at large, which he thought is being manifest in the varying degrees of ludicrousness that characterised his various interactions with people.
He also felt that in a basic sense his gentlemanliness, chivalry and goodness are turning to be reflected as a fear towards human interactions during these interactions. In simple terms he wondered if he is becoming afraid of people. An inexplicable anxiety that gripped him at the threshold of a transaction, afflicting his voice, speech, deportment and expressions, and always left him with a distaste and a mild self-loathing at the end of these encounters, while a part of him feverishly reviewed the immediate past and flung unflattering criticisms with merciless candour of his conduct of the transaction.
The other part of him squirmed, he felt, in a weak indignance, calling forth the aforementioned genteel and chivalry to be the motive causes and operating forces, drawing up a sense of righteousness, while still a morsel of the larger part asking if it is not another form of rationalisation.
He varicated between the persecuting and penalised selves of his, dimly recalling the term split psyche from a memory that seems to be failing these days, wondering if this also would apply to his status quo.
Words, thoughts, and phrases of various stages of logical development levitated to the surface of his consciousness, there perishing like bubbles after varying intervals..
After all, madness is a relative term, that in the mental plane non-conforming to the majority in thoughts, words and deeds – this, in an aside, he thought, is also an excellent line of defence for him.
It also amused him to think further that it is a pseudo sickness for the individual, since it is not the afflicted that suffers but the others around. This somehow too pleased him.
It then suddenly occurred to him that all this could also be a simple case of cowardice. Inordinate in size, debilitating, but just cowardice and nothing more serious or dramatic.
This thought was at once soothing and unflattering, and also quaintly disappointing. He realised he has been drawing a latent pleasure, a sense of superiority, that comes from being one of the few among the many.
It is a blow to his ego. This made him think of his slavery to his ego. And that also shamed him. Ah, the subtlety of this! To demand to be freed from ego, to satisfy it?!
Diagnosis?
Cerebral narcissism ? !
- Early (jan/feb) 1986
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