As The Flowers Bloom

PART I: Inside The Cage

1.
The way I saw it, I was dumped in this hell hole with no way out. No accepted way at least. Nothing
that would in any way not make my life a living hell. And that was all that it took to crack my
independence. Hammered out into tiny very, very dependent pieces. But I wasn’t yet in the frame of
mind to maybe realise that my independence was a farce. It was a sort of independence that relied a
lot on unmentionable dependence from the powers that brought me here.

But the fact of the matter was that I had been admitted. For what, was a choice left to me. But
whatever the choice, I was here to stay. It might have an impact on me or it might not. And what
troubled me the most was that I couldn’t see any light. But for now, I had just checked in without
any check out date.

The tree outside seemed to be dead. There were no leaves and it stood stark naked for the whole
world to see. Was that very poetic? Maybe not. But it seemed to be an ominous reminder of my
current state of being. Just like nature had decreed on the tree to be naked, similarly, my brain was
telling my body that I had no control.

2.
“Take off your clothes” the Person of Little Authority (PLA) said. The cold bit me as I did. Not used to
the cold, I stood naked shivering to the beats of my heart. Handing me a change of clothes in
exchange for all that I was carrying, the person said “Wear this”
Still not enough to ward off the cold; I was given my last meal for the day and my first in my new
makeshift home for no fixed amount of days to come. Stomach rumbling with hunger, I devoured
the tasteless meal without question and finally mumbled a weak “Thank You” which went without
an acknowledgement. Maybe it was the physical coldness of the place which turned it people so
metaphorically cold, I thought.

As I was led to my home for the next how many months I didn’t know, even in the darkness of the
moonless night , how beautifully picturesque the place was. The few lights that were shining,
seemed to highlight this to a ten-fold. Maybe more so because I wasn’t really used to finding nature
so close to my bed; coming from a city, where the only beauty would be the occasional shining new
cars that would pass outside the road right outside my bedside window. To me, this place, no matter
which angle I looked from, I always saw a post card perfect scene. And this privilege, I soaked in with
delight. Forgetting for a fraction of a second the true nature of this place and mistaking it, for that
one fraction of a second, to be a piece of heaven.

But this happiness was not to last for very long. And this happened the moment the PLA took me
into my ward-what would serve as my home for the duration of my stay in this mystical yet
saddening place. As I took my first steps into the building with the nametag “Male Ward”, I was
beginning to see how congested the place was. All the rooms contained eight to ten beds, each
occupied by a person with a different disease. Soaking all of this in, I was led to my bed which
happened to be in the emergency ward, a practise followed for all new entrants to this place. The
highlight of this ward was that the bathroom, if you could call it that, was connected to this ward-the
bathroom for four such wards. The ward that housed the hedonists. And because of this proximity,
instead of emanating the beautiful musky smell of the pine trees, it reeked of piss. A bitter
realisation that helped bring me down from my initial views on the views of the place being
comparable to heaven.

As I finally lay down on my makeshift bed, I observed groups of inmates going down to the bathroom
to get a quick smoke. But all of them forgetting to close the door behind them, resulting in blasts of
cold air coming in from the very well ventilated bathroom and hitting me in my new found cold
wound. But I didn’t know any of these people and I was not in the state of mind to do anything
about the cold situation. I was too busy thinking about my dilemma, trying to find a quick fix so to
say. But I didn’t know then, that quickness is a relative term; as I would soon find out when I started
initiating conversations with the “others”. From people stuck for ten years who didn’t seem to think
them as caged, to people leaving in a day, there was little any two entrants had in common. It was
very individual based. So for now, I couldn’t find any constants in the equations.

Blocking all this information for a while, I managed to drift off to sleep in my new found cold made
colder(by the plastic mattress that served as my bed) home, despite the frequent “OOH!!”s and
“AAH”s made by one of the older entrants in the ward below. And I slept a dreamless sleep.

3.
“PT!! PT!! CIGARETTES!! BIDIS!!” I woke up with a start. 6:30 AM, the clock said. Earliest I’d woken
up in in days, no, months. I’d slept later than that, especially in the past four months. And the feeling
I experienced was a strange one. I didn’t know whether to be happy with this new beginning or to be
sad because of the life I had left behind.

But the drowsiness slowly faded as I walked to the physical training court which also served as a
makeshift ground for football, badminton and cricket,whatever sports the old timers felt like playing
for the breaks. It had a certain makeshiftable quality that allowed the old timers to turn it into
whatever they wanted it to be. This, I would later realise, was the best quality of the place; that you
could make it into whatever you wanted it to give you. But right now, I was too busy cursing the
place for ruining my very proud of bohemian lifestyle. Something I had been proud of ever since I
discovered the word and its meaning.

Not that the physical training had any real benefit other than the fact that you had to wake up for it,
it was still attended by almost all the entrants because of just one, very well thought of rider behind
the scenario. You would not get your daily nicotine quota if you didn’t attend it. I did not know of
this yet and so I wondered how so many people, who weren’t up to the standards which society has
put up, which just by the way happens to be very low, were able to wake up like such disciplined
hardworking individuals. The answer I found in another half an hour. “Those who do not attend PT
will not get cigarettes” was what this very quaint, highly miss able notice inside the ward said. And
suddenly, the world as I saw it made sense once again. I also discovered a pretty profound fact, that
given the right incentives, a man is capable of anything no matter how herculean the task.

Hot tea and some really good tasting bread was what breakfast comprised of and it was served right
after PT. A fact that made me realise that the MAN running this joint wasn’t really as uncaring as I
figured a while back. As PT lasted for half an hour at the max, an entrant only had to sacrifice half an
hours’ worth of sleep to earn his sanctioned smokes. And also to feel good about his earning.

And like that, sipping my glass of tea, observing all the entrants around me; their mannerisms, social
awkwardness and sometimes even the lack of. It was then that I decided that there was more to this
place than what caught the eye. Though I didn’t know it just yet, I had just let go of the anchors tying
me to this place.

4.
Why I had been sent here, I really didn’t know. I came up with a variety of reasons, each making
sense when viewed from the right angle. But I had been told it was none of them and that I had to
look inside myself to find the answer. And this thought really made my mind uneasy- for knowing
the fact that maybe saying a few rightly chosen words could help me get out of the place. Even
though it made me very anxious, it never gave me a sleepless night.

In the quest to leave this place, I began to look for all the luck I could find- from the occasional
wandering eyelash, to the fabled four leaved clover to even shooting stars. I left no stone unturned. I
had also begun to convince myself that spotting the right number of sparrows at the right time of
the day could get me good luck. Ideas that came into my mind during my elementary school years.

5.
The nut case who spat around everywhere, Junior, the middle aged gentleman, Oscar and the
teenager who seemed to be just like me, Munez. These three were to be roommates for the time
being in the emergency ward.

The emergency ward was in principle, the same as the other wards but the beds did not contain the
normal fabric mattresses, but ones covered with a plastic material. I initially though it was to put a
cold shock into the entrants so that they would be better prepared to face the cold in their
permanent wards, but it was more than that. And I realised this that very night.

Waking up to something really foul smelling, I got up and started looking for the cause of it. The
ward was dark with only the duty rooms exuding any light. I could not find anything wrong. But soon,
a pretty biggish crowd of people all got up, complaining of the same issue. Finally it got to a point
where all the lights had to be turned on to look for the cause of the stench. And we soon made a
pretty horrific,(at least to me) discovery. The nutcase, Junior, had taken a dump all over his bed and
was sleeping all over it. This gave me the chills and made me wonder what exactly the reason was
for me getting stuck in a place like this. I didn’t get the answer that night, but I made myself feel
better by convincing myself that at least I wasn’t in Juniors’ shoes. And that it was only the smell that
I was getting and nothing more. For when I went to the bathroom, I saw on one of the doors,
modern art splattered all over. It was only after discovering the cause of the smell and the colour of
the substance that I drew my conclusion.
I slept that night to the soothing smell of jasmines sprayed out of a can. And I drifted off to sleep
thanking god for the technology available to this generation.

6.
“What are you in for?” the “others” asked me. And I was at a loss for words. What do I say, I thought
to myself. I knew and believed that I was not so much of a hedonist that I had to be brought to a
place like this. And so the right answer came from know what the wrong answer was.

“I’m mental” I said. Without a care in the world for the implications. To me, a nut is more acceptable
than an addict. For an addict is usually a huge leach. To his family, friends and society in general. And
this is something that I despise. I would rather be a nut, who might be the same but out of
compulsion. Not of choice.

I held closely with me that pharmaceutically prescribed pills are useless. The only exception being
aspirin. The medically approved wonder drug. Two of the most frequent ailments that haunt me are
headaches and fevers, and boy! does aspirin do the thing for you! Pop one and an hour later you’re
free to roam about as you please. This is exactly why aspirin held a close place to me in my dislike for
pharmaceuticals. But as my stay would progress, I would come to approve of a few more “meds and
pills”.

But the “others" weren’t convinced. Not at all. I had hair covering my face and long enough to tie a
pony with. Something that I always wanted to do with my hair. So in other words, I was reeking of
drugs. At least to the untrained eye. I felt that cannabis was not a drug. It was a herb that made one
feel good with one losing out on not too much.

“So you mean to say you’re totally clean?” they pestered on.

“No, I like the occasional beer and I thoroughly enjoy my pot”

“So stop saying you’re mental and accept the fact that you’re one of us.” They demanded.

Now how could I explain to them that just consuming a substance that is addictive in nature doesn’t
make you an addict? I tried my best but they wouldn’t budge. So I just gave up. I didn’t surrender,
mind you. I just gave up.

“Sorry team, I’m no addict. I’m a nutcase” leaving the others puzzled. For they considered addiction
more acceptable than being a nut, not realising how nutty they were themselves.

And it wasn’t like these comments made no mark on me. It made me ponder on the subject of
addiction. Why some addictions were acceptable while being more harmful in the long run, than
those which weren’t. And what exactly is this thing called addiction. What is it about the word that
makes acceptable citizens condemn it without a second thought? And how exactly do you know if
you are one? Is the doctors’ word really the final say?

And if it really was a disease, why did I not come to realise it? If I have a fever I come to know first
myself without consulting a thermometer. If I have an upset tummy, I find out by the number of
times I’ve gone to the loo, before any test results come out. I realised I needed glasses when I
realised I couldn’t see. The thing I’m trying to say is that you realise something is wrong with yourself
when you have a disease. Why did I not feel sick? Why did I always immerse myself in the arts-
literature, music and graphics, and see the beauty in the world when I’m “on the stuff”? This, to me,
didn’t make sense.

7.
“This place is not for me” I thought. It is dirty, and is inhabited by a bunch of weirdos and
freakshows. At this point of time, the place seemed to me to be like a circus with an adults only
rating. And I was never a fan of things with circus like concepts- observing people trying really hard
to give you your kicks. If it was the fact that the circus tries to do dumb things to make you laugh,
that was bad, or the fact that people actually paid money to get these kicks, I didn’t know. But I
knew that would get my kicks not from a clown but the thought that the world had come to a point
where this sort of a thing was an acceptable form of entertainment.

I’m not really someone who lets myself be caged so easily. This was apparent right from my
childhood. The first day of school to be precise. After requesting my parents to stay and wait for me
outside the school gate, I went in. And even before the break came on, I made a run for it, evading
people by running in through between their legs. Very Indiana Jonesy, I would come to think in
retrospect. But a cage. Was not something I could come to terms with.

So after a quick survey of the area, I found two spots that promised me a plausible escape. For the
first, I would have had to make an at least fifteen foot jump and for the second, I would have to
make a jump of only ten feet, but only after braving a wall covered with barbed wires. Not knowing
the geography of the place and thinking only about the security of the cage I was in, I decided on the
latter as it seemed to be more isolated in comparison to the former where I would have had to make
a jump from the institutes’ stage. An area that was the centre of attention for everyone inside. And it
was something I hadn’t yet conquered- stage fright.

The path till outside decided, I would now have to think of a route back home. I was penniless, in a
strange new land and home was a hundred kilometres away at least. I had heard of people walking
the distance but I had no idea of the directions and the routes concerned. And walking around
penniless in a highway is not something highly recommended. Finally, I came up with a master plan. I
would jump out the cage, keep on walking till I reach the main road, ( I mean c’mon, there has to be
a main road somewhere along the road) and then take a cab home whom I would pay once I reached
home.

This plan I was plenty proud of. It seemed to me, to be flawless. I tried rummaging for a pair of shoes
to make my escape a bit more comfortable, but they weren’t to be found.

Finally, when the time came, I slipped away from crowd and made my way to the scene of the crime.
I climbed up the cage and tackled the barbed wire like a seasoned pro only leaving behind pierce
marks in my clothes as traces of the deed. Even an army colonel would have been proud of my swift,
calculated movements. Once at the top of the fence, I jumped down. Praying to God and thanking
him, I took a step forward, not believing my luck.

Before I could take a second step, I was caught by a guard and dragged back in. Only then did I
realise what had happened. We were not stuck in just a single cage as the Man had made us think.
Oh no! Life isn’t that easy. What we were trapped in, was a cage inside a cage. Not knowing if there
were any more cages beyond the second cage. It would take me a while before I would come to
realise that a cage is not a barrier, it is a state of mind.

8.
“How’d you do it?” “Where did you find the broken link?” “How did you get caught?” These were
some of the questions I was flooded with upon my bodyguard equipped return. I answered most of
them, as a student answers after a question is put on him by the teacher.

It was my second day and I had already done something most people take at least a couple of
months to muster up enough courage to do.

As a reward for my determination(?) the Man changed my bed from the emergency ward to WARD
5; five being my favourite number. And in this ward, were quite a few characters. Good and bad.
There was Humas, who happened to be the appointed godfather of the block. There was Suren, the
guy with the annoying accent. The jolly guy who smiled so much it made me sick, Rogers. Bruiser,
who slept all the time. And finally Fidel, the guy with the kind face.

They all intrigued me, but I didn’t interact closely with anyone. Initially. Instead choosing to observe
from the side-lines. There were far too many characters, each one seemingly more entertaining or
more annoying than the other. There were guys singing, dancing to their own music. Played on a
free for all guitar played by one of their own. And no matter how bad I wanted to go and make
peace with them, I couldn’t bring myself to doing so. Maybe I was too much of an introvert, maybe I
didn’t want to or maybe I just didn’t want to accept my fate yet. “Might be released by the end of
the week” is what I would think to myself, giving myself temporary relief. But believing, deep inside
me, knowing even, that it wasn’t going to be that easy. And that sooner or later I would have to
accept all these “others” as brothers of the same cloth that we were. That these guys were my only
hope at not losing my mind in this ship for the lost. And that I might even have to stoop down to
asking them for favors sooner or later. Mostly in the smokes dept.

9.
This sooner came earlier than expected. Humas was, or at least appeared to be a really cool guy.
Someone who might guide me through this jungle. To show me the way? The right from the wrong?
That even macho men indulge in cosmetics? The last, I observed first hand. And it wasn’t like it was
hard to see. It was all over. Manly men stashing up on fair and handsome. Now, that’s a sight to see.
Reminded me of Dylans’ Desolation Row- “The beauty parlour is filled with sailors.”

Dressed in a fashionable track suit, wearing an even more fashionable goatee and donning the latest
of glasses, he was the quintessential cool guy. Not giving a damn about anything going wrong, being
cool and calm all the time, externally at least. He was one of those people who took going to the
gym as a very serious activity. Downing shakes made of protein powder and the likes, and helping
himself to a hardboiled egg god knows how every morning without fail.

Above all this, what really caught my eye was that he always seemed to have a stash of cigarettes on
him all the time. Which was something very rare here. You are sanctioned five smokes a day
depending on whether or not you’ve gone for PT and been a good boy for the rest of the day.
Whenever I would ask Humas how he got his smokes, he would coolly say “I’ve got people who
respect me”. In a very Mafioso manner.

The concept of five cigarettes a day being relatively new to me, I went through my quota before the
sun even set. When the craving for nicotine, one of the few socially acceptable addictions, set in, I
started looking around for people I could bum a few drags off of. I thought of Munez, but he wasn’t
to be found.

After a couple of minutes of scrounging around the campus, I caught sight of a group of people with
smoke blowing out of their side of the wind. And I also noticed that Humas was with them.
Mustering the courage to make my first of many requests to come, I walked up to him and asked
him for a couple of drags. Pointing at the people around, he said, “Wait for your turn” as coolly as
ever. And as I stood in the queue, the group slowly began the small talk. To me, it seemed like they
wanted to know me better as I was now joining them on their boat. Maybe they wanted to know
how I could contribute for the betterment of the boat and the journey? The questions varied from
“How much do you smoke a day?” to “What does your father do?”. Basically, the A to Z of small talk.

And as my turn came, taking the last puff of a really tired and worn out soon to die cigarette, a
thought came to my mind. “The people aren’t all that bad.” At least some of them, I concluded,
finishing my smoke.

10.
My locks of hair were a prized possession. Long, unkempt and wild. And I wanted them to grow even
longer. To possibilities endless... Maybe a dreadlocked rasta, or the long flowing woodstocky hairdo.
Woodstock being the destination I would type out on a time machine if I ever got my hands on one.

Ever since my dad introduced me to the world of music, I had a fantasy of living out all these
concerts, to be looking like all my idols whose images I had etched on my wall and my brain. And all
of them from Hendrix to Knopfler had the same unkempt long hair look. So it wasn’t much of a
surprise that when I was old enough to half decide when to get my haircuts, I would delay it till I
could delay no further.

My hair is the only things that brings out the narcissist in me. I would run my fingers through my
locks and think to myself that maybe, just maybe, they have the Morrisony curvy/wavy look.
Someone, I idolised. But only parts of him. Not the whole package. The look and the voice and the
creativity. Yes. But the drug use? No. The acts of total madness? Let’s just say I have no official
statement to that. The other two- Joplin and Hendrix. Idols too, but not lifestyles to be followed.
Maybe the other guitarist in my life, Santana, was living my dream. Happily married with a drummer
for a wife. Experimented with all that should be experimented with. Played in Woodstock. And the
hair. Plus what he was tripping on in Woodstock. The band he played with. It is this very reason that
psychedelics intrigue me. They bring you to yourself. At least that’s what they say. As of right now,
discovering the insides of my soul was something that would have to be done with a crystal-clear
mind. Only after I’d done this could I start my quest for “The Truth”, drug induced or not. And maybe
it was this bent of mind that always made me want to grow my hair. To refuse to just go with the
accepted flow of ideas and expressions.
Now the Man authorised the PLA to come in and chop down my locks. Crop it short, so to say.
“Keeping with the norms” as they would say it. And this too, on the centre stage. Where it would be
too embarrassing to shed a tear. The Man met Delilah and punished me like the Samson I was. And
this brought on to me the stark realisation that I am powerless. Everything that is dear to me can be
snatched away without a seconds thought. I was a kid and the cold cruel world wouldn’t stop until it
had snatched all my candies. And I couldn’t bring myself to cry because I thought I was being a man.
But I was soon to discover that a man wasn’t really what I thought a man is supposed to be. And this
was to be one of the more mind altering realisations I was to make. Things I were to discover only
because of the mini version of the big bad world I was living in.

11.
PT. Physical training. Even though everyone attended it, at least tried to, it brought out the will
inside each person concerned. The males basically. The will to procure the days cigarettes. The
inmates over here were a mixed bag. Some in for self-betterment, some in because their families
wanted them here. Some in just for the sake of it. To escape the cold harsh realities of life. For three
months, at least. Which was a duration that could be shortened anytime you desired.

And you could make out who was here for what just by their reaction to PT.

There were guys who were fully involved in the activity. Who would wake up in the morning with
more than just the intent to earn their smokes. They would jump around, do everything that was
instructed for them to do by the PT in charge. These were the guys who brought them in for a
change. To make themselves better people by the time they were out. But these people were fewer
in number than should have been. Instead, these guys were far outnumbered by the other kind. The
kind of guys who went just for the sake of their daily smokes, trying to bribe the Man by dragging
their bottoms to the court so that he would give them their smokes. And these guys were readily
identifiable. They would be half asleep on the court for the entire duration of PT, waking up only to
make a run for breakfast.

I belonged to the latter and had no qualms about it. I made it very clear that I would not be getting
rid of any of my “bad” habits and that I was putting up with this place only because of its natural
beauty, and maybe, just maybe, because of the locks they had managed to put on the exit door. And
for the reward of going back home to start indulging in my poison in full glory. I would be woken up
just in time to make it to the court before they closed shop and started taking down names for the
“PT Not Attended” list. And for the entire duration of PT, I would be soaking in the beauty of this
place. And I was very grateful for the occasional gusts of fresh air that would go through my body.
Was the air cold? Yes. Was I shivering because of it? But did I enjoy the feeling? YES. This was the
freshest air that I had allowed to enter my body in ages and I was loving every caress the wind was
making on me.

For no matter how much I talked about nature and its beauty, it was only here that I could say that I
was at one with nature. And despite missing quite a few PT sessions, for the ones I did wake up for, I
made the breeze my bride. Trembling with satisfaction at all her touches. Something I knew I
wouldn’t get once I was back home. And I chose to forget about this one tiny detail, that I was in the
place I was in, and continue breathing deep breaths and feeling the feeling that I was here to stay.
But I still resented being here. And that was because I hadn’t found the light.
12.
The shitpot was a mere hole in the floor. Only difference being that it was covered by a white
marble. “Hindustan” said the logo. And a shithole like this I hadn’t seen for years, decades even.
There was no flush nor was there a tap with running water. One had to go equipped with one of the
many canisters, cut open to serve as a flush as well as a tap. The mere sight of it shook me up. I tried
to console myself by saying that I would be out before I had to take a dump. And I tried to lighten my
load by eating the bare minimum and to stop my intake of snacks and the likes. I would only go for
the main meals and totally blank out at the idea of having to take a dump here.

And this seemed to work, at least for the time being. Convincing myself that I would be home soon, I
conquered day one, day two also wasn’t that bad. Then came day three and four, where I had to do
my best to keep the feeling locked up inside. Not many more days left, I told myself. But then came
day five. With no sign of home anywhere around, and five days worth of food inside me, I couldn’t
control any longer.

More than disgust for the bathroom, the reason I held on for so long was that I wouldn’t have to
accept this place as home. And that all the built-up pressure would be relieved only in the bathroom
in the place I liked to call home.

But the fifth day broke me. And I had to admit defeat, carrying a canister of water to the shit hole
cabin, which was , in the local language, called, not falsely, “Pain Khana”. And once I was free of the
load inside, I felt like a different man. I had conquered my initial fear and had flushed out all the
acquired waste from the past five days in as many trips to the pain khana.

And this is when I admitted defeat to the powers that be and accepted my fate of not going back
home anytime soon. That there would be many more trips to the same cabin, that I knew. The same
cabin because there were three cabins out of which two couldn’t be locked. The same was true for
the bathing cabin. There were two but one couldn’t be locked. There would have to be a lot of
understanding amongst us to avoid embarrassing situations.

Unknowingly, I had conquered one of my many fears. A lot of which would be conquered by the
time I was out.

13.
The cold was biting. Just returning from a temporary stay in a desert where the days were hot and
the nights were spent in air conditioned rooms, the cold hit me like a punch in the face.

The place I was in, was a hill station. A small town on the hills. A very laidback town with most of the
people heavily into music. To be more accurate, my kind of music. Classic rock. Geographically in the
north-eastern part of India, with the attitude of the youth of Woodstock in a way. But with a lot
more tradition imbibed in the people. There wasn’t much ambition in the people, instead relying on
the Indian traditions of family as the primary value.

But the highlight of the place was its altitude. A place where the people from the plains around it,
would make frequent trips to in the summer. But this influx stopped in the winter. For in the winter,
unless you are well equipped, which I wasn’t, to take on; would feel like a dive in a pool full of ice in
a regular winter. And I was never a fan of the winters. Something that is changing fast maybe
because of the current hikes in temperatures which is again, being caused by the same air
conditioners we use to cool the temperature down with.

I thought I was tough enough to take it on face first because I thought walking around in shorts in a
desert in the winter is enough experience. But I couldn’t be more wrong. I thought layering my
clothes would provide respite, and starting with a t-shirt at the bottom to a sweatshirt at top, I had
managed to put on eight layers of artificial warmth. But then came the issue of my feet, for which I
couldn’t do the same, for quite frankly, I didn’t have enough socks.

I had seen a couple of people filling their hot water bags with hot water and successfully beating the
cold. This I decided would be the only solution to my problem. Only glitch being I didn’t have a water
bag. Having a practical bent of mind, I began a thought process to devise one myself. I started
looking around for the raw materials available. Hot water was running freely in the taps so that
wasn’t an issue. Now I only needed a container to store the water in. And the answer struck me as a
ball strikes a wall that stands in the way of its projection, the answer was too simple. It embarrassed
me for not having thought of it earlier. Lying around everywhere in my vicinity, were bottles. Empty
juice bottles of premium quality plastic. Not the cheap kind that gets disfigured the moment it feels
any heat. And putting these two together- the water and the bottle, placing it under an insulating
material like my blanket, I devised my own water bag.

So proud of this innovation that I wrote my first technical report. A subject my father emphasised I
pay attention to because it is one of the few subjects in college that come to use in the real world.

But this glory was short lived as the doctor I handed it over to said it was nothing new and that it
was not as common right now as the cold had subsided substantially.

Not having yet conquered my fear of the cold yet, I had managed to find a way to tiptoe around it.

14.
All this while I hadn’t really put in any effort to make conversations with the guys from my ward,
instead choosing to stick with Munez. This was, in a way, more than anything else, an attempt to fit
in in a place where we were aliens. No one speaking our language other than us, I was told there was
a doctor who was one of us, but I hadn’t met him as yet. Also, Munez didn’t mind sharing his
smokes. And we were both around the same age, the only difference being that he got his kicks from
pregnancy pills. In the real world, we probably wouldn’t even exchange glances, but the real world
this was not. It was a mixture of all the rejects who didn’t fit in in the real world. It was a human zoo.
And if one was interested in observing human nature, like Miss Marple maybe, he would have
enough material for months if not years.

Even though we didn’t speak too much or make too much small talk, whenever we would, we would
ask each other for our reason for coming here, our poisons and our likes and dislikes. And as the
conversation went on, I realised that this guy was more of a nutcase than an addict. He might have
been on some stuff, but he was on that stuff BECAUSE he was a nut. The things he’d said he’d done,
would never have been done by any self-respecting addict. But what did I know of addiction?

The stories that came out of this guy were something else. Like this one time, he was on whatever
his fix was and as the trip slowly progressed, he started bathing himself in the sewage drain. And
when asked by passers-by why he was doing so, his answer would be something along the lines of
“Balls to you, sir” Emphasis on the cruder bit.

And as I went on observing this guy, all his mannerisms seemed to intrigue me a lot. He was , over
here at least, as sane as the person besides him. But that isn’t saying a lot owing to the nature of this
Institute. But he didn’t seem like that big a nut. Keeping to himself, making the required small talk,
sharing a smoke with the others, he seemed pretty normal. At least to the untrained eye. But I was
soon to realise that there was more to this guy than what caught the eye. That the Man had a
master plan for all the inmates and that this guy, maybe because of his difference, might not feature
in the finale.

15.
The food given to us, was bland, to say the least. Breakfast consisted of bread- three slices, which
could occasionally be stretched to six; and a couple of glasses of tea. For lunch, there would be rice,
dal, veggies and the occasional accompanying chutney. Dinner was a grand affair in comparison to
the previous two. There would always be some sort of meat- where the usual choices would be
chicken, fish, beef and pork, and if none of these appealed to you, you could always get yourself an
egg. The complete food. And even though this was all quite grand, the food still managed to taste
pretty bland, almost as if there was some crucial ingredient missing.

But no one gave the darndest of a darn, everyone racing to be first on the queue and to beat the
crowd. All the lazy bums hanging around the whole day doing absolutely nothing would turn into
Olympic athletes doing the hundred-meter dash. With little regard for how pathetic they looked, for
no one had the right to judge another because of the place we were in. And no matter how hard the
authorities tried to enforce discipline, it would always, without fail, turn into pure madness;
“organised chaos” as one of the older, more articulate amongst us put it.

These meals were not by any means simple grab-your-plate-and-get-your-food affairs that most
places would have. Oh no! It was so much more. It was pure poetry in motion if you would keep your
eyes open and observe the intricate details. The tables and benches were limited and they only
catered to a fraction of the crowd at a certain time. Something not to uncommon especially in an
overpopulated country like India. And no one bothered to let them in in batches. It was a first come
first serve thing which made the situation so much worse for everyone. As a result, everyone would
crowd around the serving station and wait for their turn to get served. And because of all the chaos,
there would be first timers, second and third timers as well all waiting in the same queue leaving
their sitting spaces vacant. And because the number of people entering was more than the number
of people exiting, a lot of people are forced to give up their seats in their quest for a refill. Leaving
that person with no option but to move around waiting for some other innocent gone-for-another-
helping inmate so he could be then thusly displaced. Survival of the fittest, at least in this frame of
the picture, took on the form of a kind of musical chairs in a way. Except without the normal music
playing, instead everyone swaying to the sound of the food being served.

And these sessions reminded me, that wherever I would go, subjects like social science and science
would never leave my trail. For I saw everything in the world as an example of the numerous lessons
I had been taught in my twelve years of formal education. Which I, at that time, brushed off saying
they wouldn’t be of any use.
16.
I had soon slowly come to the realisation that this place, unique as it was, housed a motley crew of
people, each with their own set of positives and negatives, each with their own story. Most making a
mark on my story. Some comically, while some dramatically, but each leaving a unique etching on
my memory.

To start with, I thought of the two physically most prominent people in the ward. These two guys
were the places’ very own sumo wrestlers. The combined weight of whose might be able to bring
down a helicopter from mid-air. And even though these two were similar physically, mentally, they
couldn’t be more different. While one was a proud citizen with a bizarre and unfortunate affliction,
Bobby, the other was a soul who had sold his soul to drugs, Batman.

I once got to make a phone call with Batman sharing the same privilege, him getting the first turn. So
I got to observe him from close quarters, which was really quite fascinating. And this is how the
conversation went, from Batmans side.

“Hello.” There was a pause

“Yes, when you come next week, get me biscuits, chocolates, some salty stuff and a couple of packs
of juice.” There was another pause.

“Ok. Thanks. Bye”

Now this might not seem too out of the ordinary, a fat man asking for food, but consider for a
moment the position he’s in. Stuck in a hell hole for the past half a year. No family. No friends other
than the other inmates, gets to make a call back home and all he is concerned about is his calorie fix.
That’s what I meant when I said sold his soul. And considering his size, food was also an addiction for
him. But it was a much more acceptable addiction and one, again considering his size, that was much
more rampant. He looked to be the type, who, if given any money, would spend it on food rather
than anything else. Gluttony, without any doubt, would be his sin.
At first glance, which is how the name came up, I thought the fatman to be a superhero named
batman the fatman in the city of Got-Ham, where it was a crime to waste food. With Mr.
SuperCooker as the villain who would cook too much food and go around throwing it everywhere
and Batman the Fatman would then come around cleaning up the city by eating all that food. And
this would carry on until they both met in the final confrontation in a kitchen where Mr. Cooker was
equipped with a pressure cooker.

When I realised that all of these ideas I came up with just one look, I wondered just how much
thinking my brain did. Were the doctors actually right? Was the pot starting the change the chemical
balance in my head? And finally, if the creativity IS boosted like this, where a story could come up
with just a glance at the right person at the right time, should it not be treated as a wonder drug?

And with all of this in my mind, I was feeling pleased with myself and the way I had managed to look
at things, a way to look at the world as a story that was waiting to start.

And if, as the doctors said, this was the kind of change in mental makeup that is being observed
shouldn’t and wouldn’t everyone come and get their eyes opened? But that’s the whole catch. One
mans’ elixir might be another mans’ poison. But the people of authority were hell bent on not giving
it any credit, but rather all the disgrace. As if that one substance has spoiled the sum and substance
of me as a human being.

“One day, maybe one day” I thought, as I bid my day goodnight.

17.
Now that we’ve covered the physically prominent characters, let’s move on to the little characters,
the kids, who haunted the place day in and till lights out. I had noticed four kids in the place, one of
them being relatively bigger. Out of the three young kids, only one of them had been certified to
take on the rigours of school life. The other two, though not officially in school, had been taking far
more important lessons on life in the Institute. And I would often wonder which of these two groups
would be able to take o0n the big bad world when they were kids no more.

The kid who went to school, Timon, was the definition of the perfect young boy. Spoke when spoken
to, won medals in school sports events and was all in all, preliminarily at least, a delight to interact
with. And this intrigued me, as to why he was here in the first place.

Now the other two, I was sure, that if I could only understand their language, I could’ve written
volumes of books on their interactions alone. They were the physical incarnation of the good old
Tom and Jerry cartoons. But with a slight deviation. Jerry, in this case, happened to be a compulsive
cry baby, and was the cause of many four letter words being uttered, in a relatively four letter word
free environment.

Tom was the self-titled boss of the institution. This was his territory. He had the other two kids as his
cronies who would follow him with whatever new ideas he had to buck the system. When I inquired
as to why he was here, the answer kind of hit me on my face. Tom, who didn’t even look ten years
old, apparently, was a cannabis addict. Now this didn’t make any sense to me, but then I realised I
was in a part time mental institute. Things weren’t meant to make sense here. Another interesting
thing about Tom, was his voice. He liked to sing and after he started, two lines down and you would
know for sure that it was Tom who was singing. And not because his voice was loud, or melodious or
something of that sort, but rather, the exact opposite. His voice was like fingernails being scraped on
a blackboard. Okay, maybe that’s a bit too much, but you get the idea?

Now, coming to Jerry. At first glance, he was a timid, young boy. Very respectful of his elders and
always looking for company. I had taken an instant liking to Jerry. I would always see him walking
around doing something very wacky, and I would admit, very interesting. From crushing rocks with
bigger rocks on gift wrapping paper, to playing around with water levels and applications of suction
on pipes, he always seemed to be having a ball of a time. At least it seemed this way for the first
couple of weeks. At nights, after sundown, he would have a completely different persona. He would
be crying, no, howling at nights for no apparent reasons, but when confronted, his fingers would
always point to Tom. And the most frightening part would come when he would started banging his
forehead to on a metal railing and would continue until his forehead started bleeding, giving him a
Harry Potterish look.

Initially, I felt really bad looking at his condition. Trying to give this condition a magic touch, I would
keep him near me, treat him to chocolates and packets of milk powder(a delicacy over here). What I
was trying to do was to train him, like you would maybe, a dog. Using positive reinforcements to
make him see sense. But then came a point when he was crying two weeks straight, with his first
reaction being to pick up his sandals and threaten anyone near him. And then he would be tied.

The Institute also had a few tricks up its sleeve. And this was apparent by the way it treated anyone
who crossed the boundary. These perpetrators would be tied to their beds without a moment’s
hesitation. And no matter how inhumane it seemed, I had come to accept it as the best treatment
possible. It was basically a time out for adults who won’t honour the spirit of a time out and who
would want things to carry on as it had before his transgression. And this I can say with authority, for
I had experience, the first hand kind. The theory, my interpretation obviously, if you are tied, you
lose can’t move, thus depriving you of your freedom. And during this time, you can’t do anything
else but think. And once they free you, you realise how important freedom is and how insignificant
your transgression was compared to the punishment. But Jerry never had this realisation. And that, I
told myself, was the very reason he was here.

Now the final kid, the one older than all the others, Manilow. The only thing a little off about him
was maybe the fact that he was a little too feminine for society’s liking. I didn’t make any
judgements because I had no authority to. He had a job a job in a bakery, a loving grandmother and
all that. So that, yet again, left me wondering. The only thing wrong in him was maybe the wiring in
his mannerisms. Maybe it was something or maybe it was something that came naturally, I didn’t
know, but it seemed as if he was the kind of guy who wasn’t interested in the fairer sex. And this
behaviour, was just recently put up as a criminal act by the Supreme Court. Maybe his parents didn’t
want him to be a criminal, I thought. But then another thought struck my mind- if all the bills passed
by the Supreme Court was taken as cardinal rule, wouldn’t half the Indian population be behind
bars? Especially the guys who passed the bills in the first place?

18.
With all sorts of these prominent characters, there were a couple(precisely) of characters only
because of their lack of prominence. This they achieved by not opening their mouths. Ever. It was
like they had taken a vow of silence. They would walk around the campus like normal ( well as
normal as you could be in this place) God fearing inmates, but when they were addressed, they
would simply turn a blind eye and walk away. Of these two, one would play the guitar, occasionally
mumbling a few words; and the other, as I heard from inmates who were admitted before me, was a
good rapper and also played the guitar. The story behind the rapper was a little surprising. He had
been admitted before and had come out fit and vocal. But when he got back home, he went and
smoke a reefer and he went back to his silent phase. The healing process would have to start again.

Now, this really intrigued me. I had smoked reefers, spliffs, blunts, the whole shebang basically and
what I always noticed was that instead of quieting you, it made you vocal. About whatever
philosophical or philanthropic thing that was going on in your head.

My take was that these guys had seen too much negativity in the big bad world and that’s what
caused their breakdown. If they were able to go about doing their daily business by themselves,
wasn’t it proof enough that they weren’t senile? That they were sane enough to look after
themselves? These guys, though branded as nutjobs, knew who to and who not to share their food
and smokes with. Who to turn away from. Isn’t that proof enough that they were sane? Just without
the ability to express themselves vocally?
 My justification might not be too strong or might not even make sense, but that was stand I was
forced to make. Mary Jane was my girl and I wasn’t about to take any shit about her from anyone.
The other inmates were, one attack after the other, turning me into one of them. This they did by
putting up a wall on a concert stage. From where I couldn’t see who was doing what. Whether I was
listening to actual live music, or some pre-recorded music they were playing.

19.
The bathroom. This was the place where most of the social interaction took place. Especially after
dinner. The interactions mostly being requests to bum a few drags off of someone else’s smoke. The
place that disgusted me the most initially, was now a place I would frequent the most to satisfy my
nicotine cravings. I could now see a stairway to heaven in the dirty stairs that were there, a fountain
of water in a leaky tap and a throne in a tool to sit on. I didn’t see them initially, but as time went on,
and I made more and more trips to, my brain got more and more accustomed to and slowly, part by
part, changed this place to a place I dreamed of- The Garden of Eden. But little did I know that just a
couple of steps outside, waiting for me, was the real deal. The closest to Eden I could get in my
worldly quest.

But till I actually got to see it, this leaky, wet, stinky bathroom was to be my Eden. An Eden made of
concrete, plastic taps and dirty shitholes. Plus a couple of bathing cabins. With the green grass
acquired from the green coloured flush cum tap serving cut open canisters. And the open ventilators
serving as windows, supplying the freshest of breezes.

This just went to show the adaptability of the human psyche. That if you wanted something badly
enough, you could create it with whatever has been given to you. And this delighted me.

20.
The jolly old man, Monty, the first time I saw him, was working on a painting. And he exuded of
eccentricity, reeked even. He had been here for the past ten years but he didn’t break. He took it in
his stride. But when I went to look at him and his work, I was pretty rudely asked to leave him alone.
“You’re blocking my light” he said. I was used to worse so I just went aside a little, allowing the light
to pass; but still keenly observing him. He had the most number of baggage on him. Ranging from
suitcases, to cylinders to keep his rolls of canvas in, buckets of water as a back-up supply for his own-
which he shared with anyone who would bother to ask, and finally, a big stack of books. Books that
gave me company in my darkest days in here, books that let me fly out of my chains in this cage.

In the same ward, there were two other old men who I would slowly come to acknowledge. One of
them, Haresh, was suffering from manic depression, something, before this place happened to me, I
knew only as a song by Hendrix. He would have a sour look on his face all the time and was the polar
opposite of Monty. He was the kind, who would speak, when NOT spoken to. He wanted his point of
view to be heard, no matter what the issue. His story was that he was dropped here by his family,
abandoned and exiled from home. Hearing this made me a little sentimental and made me want to
offer my help to him. But not right now, I hadn’t fit in well enough to be at a position to offer my
services to anyone. Another reason why Haresh struck a chord in me was because he was in
possession of an Oxford dictionary, the same edition I had when I was a kid.

The third elderly man I met was a simple, decent man like most old men. He was referred to as the
Elvis Presley of the place and would sing his heart out whenever requested. And that was all I knew
about him. He also happened to be one of the few people, who took the trouble to or made the
sacrifice of sharing his smoke with me. And this is exactly why I remembered him.

21.
While Monty and Presley gave me hope that old age might be a little, if not a lot of fun, there was
another old man. One who showed me what old age might or could in reality be. That life might be
all fun and games right now but that after you cross the seventy or even the sixty line, it’s a whole
other game.

This man, Motu, was in such a terrible state that he spent all his days, all the time in the horizontal
position. He just didn’t have it in him to do anything else. Not that this was anything new to me- my
grandmother and my grandaunt had both succumbed to Alzheimer’s. But the problem was that I was
too young to remember anything about my grandmother and my grandaunt I only saw once in a blue
moon. And when I did see her, it was for an hour or two at the most. Nothing severe enough to
leave a mark in my mind.

But over here, the situation was different. I stayed under the same roof as Motu. And it wasn’t as if
he had lost only his physical abilities, but his mental faculties as well. Every moment he had spent
awake, he would be screaming out in pain. All the time. And nothing that made any sense. It would
only be “AAH”s and “OOH”s. he would make his presence heard throughout the ward, and
occasionally, when he would be brought out to soak in some sun, he would be heard throughout the
campus. And he would only be yelling out two syllables. That was what his life had come to.

The only respite to the bystanders would be his wife, who would diligently come in every day. With a
bag of adult diapers. This was something the staff would take care of. But all his meals would be fed
to him, with a lot of effort, by his wife.

And this made me think, what of all the other old men in similar situations, who had no one? Such
are the cruelties of life, I concluded. Better make the most of the few years of youth I still had in me
before submitting myself to the world.

22.
Despite all these going-ons, the place was not a setting for a tragedy. Far from it in fact. For every
sad case that came in, there would be an influx of ten cases of comic relief.

And this was physically proved true when Mr Crow walked in. he happened to have the face of a
crow and the confidence level of a rock star. Whatever it was that he lacked in talent, he made up
for with confidence. The moment he walked in, he took the guitar in his hands and started playing
Hotel California. And the first thing I noticed that the volume of his voice was inversely proportional
to how well he could play it on the guitar. And he played it all wrong. Not a single chord he played
was right. And this fact was made known to him the moment he put down his guitar, only for him to
pick it up again and play the same song with the same chords but after a fifteen minute break. It was
almost as if he’d perfected the song in those fifteen minutes.

Now, for a person of the same raw ugliness as him, they would eventually come to realise that no
amount of cosmetics would change this fact. And that maybe even plastic surgery wouldn’t help too
much. But that didn’t stop him from trying. He had more cosmetics than all the others combined.
And he would be dressed in his Sunday best, every day.

Though he came in as an alcoholic, I would eventually see that he had a mental issue as well. One
commonly known as OCD- obsessive compulsive disorder. He would bathe more than a couple of
times a day, despite the scarcity of water and he would also wash his clothes every day. This might,
on the face of it, not seem to obsessive, but once you find out that he’s been going through three
buckets of clothes every day, your perspective might change. Where he used up so many clothes in a
day, god only knows. And it wasn’t just the usual soak the clothes in water, take them out, squeeze
out the water and you’re done kind of wash. He had a three layered washing system where he would
soak, brush and then soak again. And such was his love for the system, that he finally went up to
eight nine buckets of clothes a day. All given to him by the lazier inmates who would give him a
payment of a smoke or two, depending on the intensity of the wash. And this pleased him to no
ends- to be the unofficial washing machine of the institute. Working on cigarettes rather than
electricity.

And to top off all these qualities, he would occasionally become Sinatra, singing his heart out;
sometimes become Michael Jackson, dancing his feet out, giving the impression of a comic
Broadway musical. As of right now, he was the walking-talking comic show of the Institute, and to
further add to his baggage, he had a lisp. For now, he downed all the sadness of the place with his
talent, or to be precise, the lack of.

23.
And I haven’t come even close to covering half of the inmates.

I had always been scared of horror movies. They scared the crap out of me. Wanting to keep away
from the world of ghosts and ghouls, I only indulged in comedies and the occasional drama. But I had
come across a being, who resembled something from a nightmare. He had a face even his mother
might have been scared of, if encountered in the middle of the night. Maybe even susceptible to a
heart attack, if the room was dimly lit by a dying candle. He had, very appropriately, been named
Looney. And he had been a passenger in the place ever since its inception some twenty years back.
In a real world situation, this would not be very politically correct, far from it in fact. But here
everything was looked at with a comic eye, to maybe try and dowse the tragedy of the inmates. Even
the fact that he had only four teeth was a thing of comic relief.

But what surprised me was that despite him spending almost all his life in this place, he was in sync
with all the songs that were being played in the nightly jam sessions. Eyes lighting up with joy
whenever someone played a song he recognised. And what surpised me even more was that he was
a pro smoker. Whether a bidi or a cigarette. And that he would go around asking for a drag or two
from other inmates. This coming from a special needs patient was commendable- that even
someone like him was making socially acceptable gestures. This made me realise the Man knew
what he was doing.

24.
If one were to look at the Institue as a jungle and all its inhabitants as animals, the analogy couldn’t
possibly better. From the carnivores (addicts), to herbivores (nut jobs) to producers (the guys with
authority), the place had it all. And needless to say, it also had its fair share of scavengers.
Scavengers who didn’t scavenge around for food, rather nicotine- bidis and cigarettes. They would
arrive at your footstep the moment you lit one. And they would also make it pretty difficult for you
to refuse them by stating the kind of situation they were in. These were the acceptable kind- coming
to join you for a smoke. But there was another kind as well. The kind who would look around the
place for stubbed cigarette and bidi butts with a bit of tobacco left in them. Not even stopping at
garbage bins or the wet bathroom floor. They had managed to turn nicotine into a hard drug. Not
stopping at any expense to go without it. These guys, I thought, if nothing else, at least polish off the
wasted butts, but it was a tad bit too extreme, was my take on the matter.

25.
By now, I had completed a couple of weeks in the Institute and had settled in, more or less, to the
rigours of daily life. Something I would never have been proud of, had the situation been different or
had I been left to my own devise.

We would all wake up at 6:30AM and go out to the exercise ground for PT (to get our daily nicotine
quota, obviously). And the interesting thing about this was that the guys who didn’t smoke, were the
only guys who paid any heed to the instructor. The others would just be swaying their bodies to the
instructors’ rhythm

After PT, we would rush, some even managing an Olympic style dash, to the canteen, equipped with
a glass to get our caffeine fix. Black tea with bread was the fare for us. Sometimes, on weekends
especially, the bread served would be the Indian kind with a side dish of some boiled veggies, which
would be devoured with delight.

After breakfast, we would be kept locked back in the ward for an hour and a half, where we could
choose to go back to sleep or just wile away time. This is also when we would be given the first of
our three doses of medicine for the day.

At 9 AM, we would all be herded to the hall for our morning session where there would be singing
and dancing. And this was one of the three to-do activities we had every day, except Sundays. There
would be games being played, songs being sung, dances being danced. To put it from a different
perspective, what we had to do in our morning session would have been a ten year olds dream
birthday party.

After this session, smokes would be distributed. Those who attended PT would be given their five
smokes or six bidis for the day, and those who didn’t might just get a bidi or two. If they were lucky.

Then came lunch, which was very vegetarian and very bland. But we had to eat to keep our engines
going. And sometimes, just sometimes, the food would actually taste pretty good. And I would go for
seconds.

An hour of handicrafts or house-keeping followed lunch, where we either had to make envelopes
out of cut up paper, or make crafts with wood or bamboo, or, on Thursdays, clean the campus.

Tea was served after this and we would always get something different to enjoy our tea with every
day of the week.
After tea, we were given our second dose of medicine for the day, finishing which, we had to go for
our second session. There were two such sessions happening simultaneously. One for the nut jobs
and the other for the addicts. I had chosen to go for the former, because, like I said, I had chosen to
be a nut job. This session concluded all our duties for the day and we were left to our own devise
after this till dinner, which was served at six in the evening. On the dot.

Following dinner, we were all taken back to the ward and had to stay up till 8:30 PM which is when
we were given our final dose of medicine after which we were to go to our respective beds and drift
off to lala land.

This right here, was a day in the life, in the Institute.

26.
The female ward. This ward had so much more interesting characters. For, there were only a couple
of addicts, the rest were all cuckoo. And one didn’t have to go inside to realise this. There were
enough nutjobs running amock in the open to figure out what sort of a Pandora’s box was waiting
inside.

There were girls running out butt naked outside the ward. There were fourteen year old girls who
had children waiting outside for them. There were old women making aviary mating calls for hours
at a stretch. Doing nothing else at all. There were ladies abandoned by their families and there were
sixteen year old temptresses, who would gyrate their hips seductively at almost all the morning
sessions.

And amongst this mixed ward, lay only two addicts. At least till now. And they were hit on
relentlessly by their male counterparts. This place was indeed a jungle, with Darwin’s concept of
survival intact. And this is when I realised I was fitter than I thought.

27.
And just like in a jungle, where the herbivores are kept in control by the carnivores, here, the males
at least were kept in check by their quota of cigarettes. The Man had kept us all on a leash all the
time because of our dependence on nicotine. And to us, this was one luxury we had from the outside
the world. The Man knew this very well, and thus, his concept of the leash worked so well.

If we were doing anything we shouldn’t have done, or if we were not doing something we should
have done, there would be a blunt question asked to the perpetrator- “Do you want me to cut off
your smokes?” And the moment this question was put through, even the bravest of lions would
submit. Something that just went to show how well the Man had thought out the theories to put
into action in this place. There were absolutely no loop holes, and this I realised in my third week.
Still hoping I would be out before the conclusion of one complete month. And disappointment
wasn’t far away.

PART II: Outside The Cage

28.
A new face had just walked inside the gates. Not that this was anything new, but the man who
walked in definitely was. Dressed like a sartorial work of art, he was sticking out like a sore thumb.
Silk suit, black tie, he was the proverbial sharp dressed man. And what added to the mystery was
that he was walking around with a walking stick that looked more like a shot gun. He was more like a
yuppie on his way to a meeting than a junky on his run to get his daily fix. And this sticking out was
what drew me to him.

And so I went. One of the few instances where I took the first step in getting to know someone. And
we really hit it off. After the required amount of small talk that follows any new meeting, he got to
the point.

” Young man, what I would really like right now, is a cigarette. Any chance of you being able to
produce one?”

Not yet having mastered the five a day quota, I wasn’t, directly at least, able to procure the goods,
so what I did was what I would usually do if I was out; go and get one from Munez. How Munez
always had smokes on him I didn’t and fear never will find out. But that’s another story. Procuring it
and then producing it to him, he was in bliss, thus beginning a friendship, symbiotic in nature, that
would bloom for the duration of our stay.

Taking him around the ward to show him around, I asked him if he would like a cup of tea. “I
wouldn’t mind” he said. And so I started my treasure hunt for the ingredients for a cup of tea.
Rogers was the unofficial chai wala in the ward, and so I began my quest with him. The lack of his
presence brought upon the need for swift action, that being me looting him of his precious supplies.
But only enough for two cups, you have to understand. Then began the quest for the essential- hot
water. For which I made a trip to the bathroom (yes, we did eat where we shat), where, to my
pleasant surprise, was flowing, boiling hot water. It wasn’t like I was so engrossed in the quest that I
didn’t have time to think about what such a sharply dressed, obviously successful man like him was
doing in a place like this. I did. And it was a question that would flood my mind more than just a
handful of times. But it was only a few weeks later that I would realize his problem.

After the late high tea session concluded, us downing the last sip like it was some delectable elixir of
life, we started on some more small talk. Relevant small talk, so to put it. He had apparently had an
accident caused him to go into coma. After being released from the hospital a month later, the
doctors had asked him to check out the institute. But this checking out was, like my own fate, turned
into a checking in event. Admitted on spot, without question or reason.

An elaboration on the story was that he had gone out for a meeting to a hotel where he happened
to have had one drink too many and on his way back to the room, he slipped and fell on the ground
head first, causing him to lose partial function of his left foot, which explained the shot gun like
crutch.

We went on talking and bursting out into laughter on the randomest of things, like we were old
friends meeting after decades. We were interrupted by the call for dinner, which we both agreed,
though filling, was not replenished with feeling. TLC, anyone?

Once back in the ward, he, like a magician, took out a pack of smokes. I knew then and there that
this was not some run of the mill, ordinary chappy that people meet in these kinds of institutions; a
mere smoke bringing in me feelings of connection so strong, I hadn’t felt in a long time. The only
glitch in the situation being that we weren’t alone in the emergency ward, and thus our session was
interrupted by a parade of what’s-his-faces coming in and expecting a cut. The first to interrupt,
Kurt, the hot shot piece of shit who got his kicks from denying the other inmates their kicks, swung
into the scene the moment he smelt smoke. He was, of a particular generic community, and this I
knew about, only because he emphasised it so much. And the moment he stepped in, the whole
sanctity of the conversation was ruined.

But me and the gunner, man did we have a night! We were an unstoppable force. Only after we
butted a few more smokes did we find out that we were neighbours. Not just in this place, but in the
real world as well. Our houses were five minutes away. Funny how life works- that we had to meet in
a place like this.

Continuing the conversation, the gunner, who shall be called Tony, told me that he would be leaving
the very next day due to the fact that he had a meeting with the Chief Minister of the state. This
made me a little morose as I had begun thinking that the powers that be hadn’t released me yet only
because I hadn’t changed. At that point of time, I thought change could be made in a week. While
that might actually be a possibility, the question was about sustainability. Which I hadn’t given a
seconds thought. And to which I wouldn’t give a seconds thought for a very long time.

So I made a decision- to show them the change that I had brought on myself in the duration of my
stay. Which was the thought in my mind as I went to sleep, ready to take on the world, guns blazing.

29.
The first thing that came to my mind after the initial euphoria of having found someone to hold
meaningful conversation with, was that I now had someone to share cigarettes with. Which took my
initial quota of five a day to a combined quota of ten. No doubt in my mind that I’d also have to
share the quota and that effectively it would still be at five, it felt good to have a pack of smoke to
your name.

According to the laws of the Universe, good and bad come together. Which preceding which a
thought I’m not going to get into. So with the positive of Tony, I had, on my hands, the unbearable
Kurt. And since we were in the same ward, we had to do our fair share of interacting. And sharing
that ward was the only reason why we did. Kurt was into heroin. But there also he goofed up. He
didn’t have the balls to do it right. Balls and not good sense because someone who would get into
heroin in the first place had jack shit good sense. But if you ARE actually going to get into something,
why not get into it right? Lot of criticism I might face for saying this, but that was my thought. At
least that’s what it says in my journal. So coming back, he didn’t inject it, he didn’t put a spike in his
man, but as far as he’s concerned, it did make him feel like a man. He would inhale the stuff.
Textbook example of sitting on the fence. But in retrospect, now that I don’t have to deal with him
anymore, thank god he didn’t.

But etiquette and social expectations were just completely lost on him. Taking our initial interactions
as a que to join the club, he started appearing before us whenever he was out of smokes and pulling
the vanishing act whenever we were. Following, nagging, and being an absolute bad trip for us, he
managed to scam a manageable portion of the pack we had to our name. He had managed to
change our initial “awesome twosome” to a dastardly “terrible threesome”, making it clear that he
was there to stay.
But coming back to reality, our hopes of leaving, especially Tony’s, was put to a halt. At least till the
next day. Tomorrow, we decided, would be the lucky day.

30.
We had not yet been able to perfect the Institutes slogan “One day at a time” but we had managed
to make one of our own “One smoke at a time’. We had been taking each day, ten smokes a day.
And as we were perfecting slogans, theirs and ours, a lot of people had come in and a lot went out.
Of both the kinds. The nut jobs as well as the junkies.

I had come to observe that most of the junkies had very generous, if not loving families. They would
get their weekly quota of food every Saturday and most of them got it delivered in person. The nuts
not being so lucky. But then again, till that time I also hadn’t gotten any packages because of which I
could afford to leave my cupboard unlocked. Which was very against the norm. the only possessions
I had being a notebook I picked up from the canteen and a pen I had found lying around. Getting
back to the junkies, I had seen that most of them were married and had at least one child if not
more. The same applied for the alcoholics but then alcoholism is much more accepted than drugs
and so to be honest, I wasn’t really surprised.

More than anything I had heard from the powers that be about the dangers of substance abuse, this
spoke ten folds more to me. Once you get into the whole business, it’s a downhill slope from there
on. No matter what responsibilities you might have, you put all behind getting your daily fix. As the
Eagles had so eloquently put it “You can check out anytime you want, but you can never leave.” And
this could be observed practically every time an inmate came in, with an air of familiarity, for their
third or even fourth time. And no one was surprised. I mean, if you’re trying to help these people
out, keep them out of the goddam place, why don’t you? But then again, it just went on to speak
about the pull of these substances. And the funny part was that when the time came for them to
leave, they’d leave saying “Never again.” And this was exactly why I had rejected the idea of
accepting the fact that I was abusing anything. Or even making the statement that I was hooked. I
had lied a lot of times in my life, but I was trying to make a change. And I was trying my best to make
a change. Having confessed all my sins, not to a priest, but to the crucifix inside the empty hall, I had
promised myself that all that was behind me.

And now, more than ever, I felt the pull of the higher power. Not just for the sake of it, I could
actually feel it, albeit, a little selfishly. I was getting a lot of my prayers answered. Maybe I was make
the right requests? The only prayer that was being denied was my prayer to leave this godforsaken
place, which I still hadn’t come to terms with. Still believing the next day would be different, and that
I would be back home for dinner. But till that moment came, I was perfectly happy chilling with Tony
and smoking my now increased quota of ten a day, which was more than compulsion or addiction, a
means to making the day go a little faster.

31.
There were too many people in this place for me to be thinking about at one point of time. Right
now I was just focusing on one of the more talented, but very understated inmate; not that there
was a dearth of talented people here, it was just this man’s demeanour that got me wondering. He
was one of the more talented guitarists the place had, and that was saying a lot, more than half the
people in were guitarists and could kick anyone’s ass at any given point of time. This old man, Mr.
Funky Monk, had a bald head and a clean shaven face. Now Mr. Monk would spend the whole day
inside the covers and would get up only for the sessions and his meals, and for his smokes of course.
Whatever else he did besides this was for procuring extra smokes. He was an insane guitarist and the
irony was that he was brought in for actual insanity.

I had seen enough guitarists in my life to separate the good from the bad, and Mr. Monk was one of
the better ones I had seen. And this was the least that I could say. His talent wasn’t the kind you
were born with, but rather, the kid where you persevere to achieve. Which was the kind that earned
more respect.

What was the most fascinating was that he wouldn’t play just for kicks. He would only play, upon
request and upon agreement of being provided with a prearranged number of smokes. And play like
how! It was all about the incentive. That was the name of the game here. Incentives.

32.
The cold was still biting and I still hadn’t gotten used to it. I was wearing, and I am not exaggerating,
around ten layers of whatever clothes I could find just to face the cold outside. Not that it was much
different inside, there might have been at the most a two-degree difference. And the idea of having
a bath scared the living shit out of me. Firstly, and obviously, there was the cold. Secondly, taking off
and putting on ten layers of clothes can be quite a challenge. It was a major pain in the backside,
which I gathered from the one two times I did have to.

But then came the Big Doctor and her sole intention with me was to change me into a functioning
self-reliable adult. To make me do all the things that I should be doing but didn’t because I didn’t
think I really had to. Like let’s say, maybe a bath in the cold, or even washing my clothes. Washing
my clothes was an especially challenging task considering the fact that I was wearing all of them. So
basically, she wanted me to do things which I weren’t doing or didn’t consider worth doing because I
had been taking for granted that someone else will do it for me.

We both knew this change wouldn’t happen using quick fixes, and till the time I could show her my
grit, I would forever be a wet cat in front of her. Scared of what she might say or ask me to do next;
avoiding her like the plague, at least trying my best to.

When I was on my own, walking around the place, I would feel the cold and also see the naked tree
that I saw on my first day. Still not showing any signs of life, I had come across a pretty decent idea, if
I may say so myself. That of starting a bon fire. So I went ahead and met the Person of Little
Authority and put forth my suggestion.

“It’s not Christmas.” He replied.

“But that dead tree is just lying there, we could put it to good use.”

“That’s a magnolia tree. Looks dead now, but in a couple of weeks, it will be in full bloom.”

I wasn’t sure if he was kidding, making a fool out of me or genuinely meant it. But that was my
whole outlook on the brought-into-the-institute business.
33.
The institute always had its fair share of dancers and this could very clearly be observed in the
morning sessions that brought out the hidden talents of all the inmates. From guys who would just
shake their rears to people who could actually teach Bollywood a thing or two about the rudiments
of dancing.

When the new inmate walked in the big green gate, he brought the institute one more dancer to add
to the already sizeably numbered resident dancing crew. But it wasn’t seen till he got a little
comfortable with the place- with the place as well as the people. Our first conversation, like most
others took place in the bathroom, when he asked me for a few drags off my smoke. Which I
surprisingly didn’t mind sharing. Maybe because he had a kind face or maybe because I would’ve
wanted someone to do the same with me. And after this encounter, I rarely spoke to him, except for
maybe when I had to take a few drags off of him.

While sitting for the usual morning session, when the time for the dance came up, the dancer,
Michael, blew all our minds. He was a regular Jackson, complete with the moonwalk and the tilt.

Michael, like so many others, had managed to join the gang with a bang. And I sat thinking how
much talent was going to waste, with people putting their priorities of being a good, hard working
member of society as the top priority. With their options being only a few handpicked careers that
would make you a “accepted” member of the community. But then again, these guys didn’t choose
life. They chose not to choose life. And the correlation between talented people and substance
abuse was too high to write off as just a mere coincidence.

34.
But it wasn’t that I didn’t make a stir myself. During the initial couple of weeks, when I had to go,
upon enforcement, to the evening session for the addicts, I didn’t introduce myself by the accepted
convention of saying my name, then the statement that I was a recovering addict and then stating
how many days I was sober; maybe because I didn’t know how long it had been since I indulged
myself. It was all too hazy. I went with the name and then my own statement, inspired my Mr.
Hendrix himself “And I’ve been experience life for the past twenty years.” So I was, in my own way,
Experienced. The man, Mr. Baldy, holding the session wasn’t that much of a stickler for rules. He
seemed to be with it and that was why I actually said what I said. And it cracked everyone up.

But when I had my session conducted by the Big Doctor, I quietly put my gun down and conformed.
She didn’t seem, at least till then, as someone who appreciated the occasional joke here and there.
And to be very honest, she scared me. So much so that when it was her turn to conduct the session, I
would not go and instead attend the one happening parallely with the nut jobs. But only after
instruction by Mr. Baldy, who had some authority.

The session for the nut jobs was very laid back. More than a session, it was a brief, one to one
interaction. Something I forgot how to do sober long back. But I thoroughly enjoyed these talks
about cleanliness and wisdom and all that jazz. Things you would, in a normal world, talk to about
with seven year olds. But it seemed to have a positive impact on the inmates. A sense of normality, it
created.
And after Tony walked in, it was our scene. Going and attending talks with these loonies. And
occasionally, when I was in the mood for some system bucking, I would buck it by stating some views
going completely against what the counsellors were talking about.

35.
Even though my first attempt at escape was a failure, that didn’t stop me from devising new plans to
escape. I would diligently spend at least an hour a day plotting escape. And the only common
denominator in all these plans was that instead of choosing the earlier scene with the barbed wires, I
jump out of the stage into the garden. But this spot was nothing innovative. Just a few weeks before,
a couple of the more enterprising inmates had made a run for it from that very spot. But not literally.
They had made it a stealth operation. No one knew of their absence till they had a good fifteen-
twenty-minute head start. And the worst part about this, was that they had asked me to be a part of
the escapade. And the only reason I refused was because I sincerely believed that I would be
released that very week and that I would leave gracefully.

The very same spot was also the scene for another, though unsuccessful, attempt at escape. The
suspect being this annoying guy with an even more annoying accent. And if getting caught wasn’t
bad enough, he sprained his foot on the fifteen foot drop. But instead of being sadistic and feeling
good that he got caught, I was upset by the fact that I would now have to tolerate his presence
again.

Coming back to the point. I now had my eyes set on the stage as my way out. And I had thought of
more than just one plan. All of them varying on the finer points like time of escape, follow through,
and the approach.

And so, when I was chilling with Tony after dinner, I had as a matter of factly brought up the topic of
escape. This was because we were tired of waiting for D day to come. The desperation coming to the
point where we had sent a letter accusing The Man of forceful captivity and threats to file a case
against him. Which was promptly ignored. Tony’s face lit up the moment I told him I had a plan to
leave. And his immediate response was to say that he was in, without even bothering to listen to the
plan, forgetting for a moment that the plan involved a fifteen foot drop and that he had lost function
of his left leg. The master plan, as I unfolded to him, took a bit of surveying. So basically, the train of
thought was that the ward would have its doors locked at around six thirty, after dinner. There
would be two nurses in the ward for night duty. The Man would come into the ward at around eight,
which was also the time when we would be given our last dose of pills for the day. And lights out
would happen an hour after that, after which the nurses would be enjoying the heat from the sole
heater in the ward, inside their cabin, which could be locked from outside. The gate leading outside
the ward would be locked., but was surrounded by glass panes which were big enough for an
average sized person to go in and out of. So the plan was to wait for the nurses to go into the duty
room. Once they were settled in, I was to go and lock them from outside, break the window panes
surrounding the door, go out and take the leap of faith from the stage. And then go out as planned
before- taking a cab back home and paying him once I reached.

After saying it out loud to another person, I realised that the plan was very intense. More like a plot
from an old Western than a regular escape plan. And we both left the plan at that. An idea, if not
applicable in real life, as a plot in a Bollywood movie consisting of goons, crooks and the lone hero.
And we had just waited another day. Without even realising it.

36.
As the days kept on rolling, so did the activities. From Lazing around during PT, to fooling around in
the handicrafts session, to thinking about greener pastures during the evening counselling session.
And a lot could be inferred about the character of the inmates during these times, mostly by their
response to these activities. From figuring out if they were here just for the sake of it, or to really
bring about a change; if they were team players or if they were lone wolves; to knowing if they could
plot out schemes to take the easy, yet unapproved way out of the place.

And this gradation I saw mostly during the handicrafts sessions, where the smart ones would take a
couple of sheets of paper and in the entire duration, pop out two envelopes, while the others would
be churning out envelopes by the dozen. And yet, both the categories would be given the same
credit and would be released at the same time. and this I also observed during the house keeping
sessions where the smart ones would take up the duty of filling in buckets of water whereas the
hardworking (dumb?) ones would go about actually cleaning up the place.

37.
By now, I had seen enough of everyone to know who was what. Some I admired, some I detested,
but most intrigued me. And the couple of inmates I did detest, was mostly for frivolous reasons.
Maybe they had an annoying tone of voice or maybe they had wronged me in some way or the other
(in my mind, at least). Nothing major, maybe something like stepping on a piece of pine bark I held
dear, and my gut reaction was to never turn a glance towards them.

But Jerry was the one who intrigued me the most. He was someone I couldn’t understand at all.
Some mornings and evenings he would be the happiest person in the world and then suddenly,
without the slightest of indications, start wailing like a banshee. And for the whimsiest of reasons,
like maybe someone asking him not to waste his food. He would tear up like it was his calling. Which
more than just occasionally, it seemed plausible. On occasions, he would raise his voice, but every
time an incident happened, he couldn’t help but tear up. And these tearing up sessions weren’t just
your run of the mill temper tantrums that kids his age would throw, this was something I had never
experienced before. His fits were just that, fits. His physical movements, during these moments,
reminded you of a possession, and this was why he was brought here. They couldn’t handle him at
home. For fear of the tantrums itself or for what the neighbours might think, was anyone’s guess. He
would bang his head on the wall till his forehead started bleeding. And this cut never got the chance
to get dried up and heal, as this was a regular occurrence to say the least. Even if it would heal and
stay untouched for a day or two, the third would definitely see him at it again, with all his devilish
fervour.

If he were born a couple of generations ago, the only cure for someone like him, by popular vote,
would be by a witch doctor. And even though I was never a keen horror fan, their inspirations I
found closed between the four walls of the ward. The only way to restrain him, would be by tying
him up to a bed. So that movement was a freedom he no longer had the privilege of.

38.
This recollection of events, is not a story of directed purpose, rather, it is a look at the day in the life
in a rehabilitation centre. And there were never too few characters, when one would leave, like a
Hydra, two more would pop in. and this time, the new entrant was a borderline case. Something
wrong in the wiring, but not so much that it would need intensive medical care. What he was
suffering from, was insomnia, something, if he was in the Golden State, would have been taken care
of by a prescription of the finest greens. But he wasn’t there, he was in the outskirts of India, and
thereby, would have to be satisfied with pills. And he was, apparently, a regular to the place. In and
out. It would seem like he only got a goodnights’ sleep only when he was in. Something that
reminded me of Hungry Joe.

His name was Out and didn’t make much of an impact on the place or on me. The only impact he
had on me, was the reminiscence of a simpler time, and this he managed with the song that he
would play all the time. and masterfully at that. I saw her standing there. And during his whole stay
here, I had managed to scavenge at least one play a day. Consider the bliss I felt by also considering
the fact that no electronics or music systems were allowed. But then, just like he came in, one day,
he wasn’t there anymore. He, it seemed to me, got his share of sleep for the month.

39.
Now, Toni and I had been persistently waiting for our respective discharges, every day without fail
for a week. We would be looking for, and occasionally, actually signs that would indicate our release
the following day. We had planned on how to synchronise our release so that we could put in a
chilling session before going back home. From where to spend the night to what to drink in
celebration of our release, we had it all planned. And we had been denied this luxury, without fail,
every day. And to make things worse, Toni had started behaving a little oddly, asking the other
inmates if they could drive us back home in exchange for a couple of hundred bucks. Even going as
far as classifying some of the inmates as taxi drivers, which they took very sportingly. Too sportingly
even. He had also, on a couple of occasions, asked one of the inmates to go out and bring us a
couple of bottles of the good stuff.

As Bob Marley had so eloquently put it- “Every day the bucket goes to the well, one the bottom will
drop out.” Being positive and expectant every day and then having this streak of optimism replaced
by dejection had taken a toll on his mind. He had had enough and could not take it anymore. He felt
like an abandoned puppy with a bleak expectation for the future.

Even I wasn’t immune to this treatment. As anger and sadness took over, I lost my mind and with a
lack of outlets for me to make a statement, I broke my glasses into two. I reasoning was that I didn’t
want to see any more of what was going on, that I’d rather be blind. I went as far as contemplating
suicide. I had taken a blade out of a pencil sharpener and was thinking about whether to go for the
neck or the wrist. Trying to gauge the sharpness, I decided to make a cut on my finger. I winced as I
saw the blood flow out and that was the end of my attempt at suicide. As a consequence of this, I
was tied up to my bed for a day. The second time in my time there. As I lay on my bed, looking at
things in retrospect, I saw the comedy of errors that was happening to me. I had tried to renounce
all things material, dressed in a pair of Levi’s and a designer shirt. And there I was, ready to turn into
a monk.

As the night crept in, I had realised, from the unmistaken shouts, that Toni had been tied as well. If
my life had been a movie, the genre would definitely had been comedy. This is not just life over
there, but past events as well. And this comedy I had further cemented by answering Tony’s cries in
the middle of the night.

“WADALA!! MY SON!!” Tony would shout.

“HE’S NOT HERE” was my prompt reply.

And because of these dialogues, we had managed to keep everyone up, but not without
repercussions. When I felt like taking a leak, I cried out to the staff requesting them to untie me to
make a trip to the bathroom.

“Piss on your bed” was their very serious response.

The inability to move made the act of sleeping somewhat unattainable. But I somehow managed to
drift off, only to wake up a while later to the sound of the everyone leaving for PT. While I still
remained tied up. They opened me up for a while in the morning, to attend to natures call, and then
tied me back up again.

When they finally opened me up for lunch, I was a changed man. Clinging and cherishing every inch
of the freedom to move with gratitude. And trying to forget this chapter at the earliest possible,
returning to the dull routine with utmost delight.

Only to realise later, that this was how good the institute was at doing what it did.

40.
But this gratitude was short lived. After the initial euphoria of getting to move again, I was victim to
something a lot of people are prone to- taking things for granted. And I had again started my quest
for looking for a way out. But this time, lacking my single most important accessory- my glasses. I
really was a blind man without them. Even though I felt like I could do without them, there was a
nagging voice from the innards of my heart telling me it wasn’t possible. But this was something I
just couldn’t bring myself to believe, and the words “Run like a fugitive” were what had taken over
my thoughts.

I would go over to the stage are for recce four times a day. Without the aid of my glasses. And then I
would walk around trying to see how far I could see without my glasses. By then I had already
decided the time for the mission. After sundown, so that I could hide behind the dozens of trees
growing all over. And I had started doing something I had never ever done in my life before- praying
to the crucifix in the hall everyday asking Him to make this jailbreak possible. Even though, in a way,
it was Him that I was escaping from. And He had somehow given me a lot of leeway, even though he
didn’t completely answer my prayers. It started raining and the power would randomly go off. The
rain would also end up fogging the whole area. Could I really ask for more?

But I still hadn’t mustered the courage to take this leap of faith. There were too many ifs and buts.
Also, I had realised that I would only get one shot at this and I had to make it count. And the loss of
20/20 vision made things a tad bit more difficult.
41.
Even though my vision was impaired, I didn’t really need it to realize that a new patient had been
admitted. I only needed my hearing faculties. The bang this new patient came in with was like
nothing I had seen before. The only thing I could make out of this fellow was that he exuded, reeked
even, of energy. As I was on my way to check out this new entrant, I could see a crowd gathered
around him, and as I approached, I could see that he was dancing around like a drunk. For popular
demand or for personal satisfaction, I couldn’t know for sure for both the reasons applied to this
particular situation.

This guy, Mr. Private, was a relapse case. Not for addiction (obviously?) but for the nut ward. He
made it a point to ensure that if he couldn’t sleep, he wouldn’t let anyone else either. The sort of
stuff that he came up with, could be the subject of a book way more interesting than this. He would
dance when asked to dance, sing when asked to sing, and also, flash his privates when asked to. Mr.
Private was the perfect human puppet, moving with the strings pulled by the more enterprising
inmates. But there was one thig he refused to do. And this one thing was what everyone else
wanted him to do. Stay quiet.

Every other inmate, other than me, had a strong love-hate relationship with him. Love because of
the pureness and kindness in his heart and soul, the hate, well, because of his inability to stay quiet
for more than a minute at a stretch.

He would randomly walk into, with any even more random set of words, chosen especially to let the
world know what exactly it was that he thought of them. And this surprisingly, didn’t get only
resentment, it got mixed emotions. When everyone else was looking for kicks, and private would
walk in, he would be lauded. The situation would be something else entirely, obviously, if he walked
in, let’s say, at three forty-five in the morning with a couple of wisecracks. For no man, high or sober,
nut or non, would want to be a subject of lame wisecracks on them or someone else at the said
hour. Especially when they had PT to think about in the morning. The well enforced eight hours of
sleep that they were subject to, didn’t take into consideration the admission of Mr. Private.

But Mr. Private never budged. Tie him up once, twice or even thrice, he would only come back
stronger. It was a source of inspiration for him. That he was making a difference. A dynamo walking
around with two feet was what he was. And what gave him an even more lust for life, was marriage.
He had manged to propose to more than half the nurses there, and had even manged a couple of
divorces with a few of them.

He happened to be, like most of the other nut jobs, treated like a human punching bag. Because of
his, no, their, rather, crying wolf, managed to remove all the faith the Authorities had in him. Safety
in number, thus proved. And the addicts took quite a pleasure in delivering the punches. Venting out
all their innate frustration on these lost souls. And even when the authorities were informed, or
0even tipped off, all the addicts would unite and place the blame squarely on the victims. United we
stand?

And through all these people, I would, during my stay here, see all the cruelties some people had to
face. Things that I had only heard, or read of before. And what the change in me would be, because
of the stay here, was the million-dollar question.
42.
The people in the institute might not have given a shit for change, but farts were for spare. And like
how! IF the Man was planning on selling the place, ‘Farts for Change’ might have made a good and
credible selling point.

43.
The morning session. It was a mix of song and dance. And a lot of other times, games. But this only
happened when there weren’t enough people to showcase their individual talents. It was a filler to
somehow extend the duration to an hour. But the keyword here, was most definitely not talent. It
was initiative. Anyone willing to take to the stage to do anything (ANYTHING) would be applauded.

If you were thinking of performing a piece by Mozart, but in the process ended up slipping and
falling on your face, you would still be applauded. With the same or maybe even a more intense
fervour.

The goal here wasn’t to just cut an hour of your life, it was to cut that hour of in a way that you could
gain some self-confidence. “I might suck, but I’m getting clapped at while sucking” was the attitude
they were trying to foster. And self-confidence was something the majority of the inmates lacked.
But the flipside was that the ones who didn’t, managed to up their confidence game even more than
before.

44.
And then came the leader of the outlaws. The one guy who could lead the group of us misfits.
Confident and fit, he could have run for president here. Dropping in by choice, it made me respect
him a lot more. His name was Marcus Jakaria and my first encounter with him was with him sitting
on the steps writing something on a piece of paper. I was genuinely shocked as I had never seen
anyone pursuing literary pursuits in the place, other than Haresh with his hard bound copy of the
Oxford dictionary. Slowly approaching him, I asked him what he was doing and he showed me a
sheet containing the lyrics to a song he was working on. We spoke for a bit and then I went my own
way, trying to hunt for a smoke. I left thinking that this guy might actually leave a mark here.

And this prophecy was fulfilled that same night with Marcus playing the guitar, absolutely rocking it
with a couple of songs he had written. And a couple others had suggested, the only thing in common
being the rowdy element of the songs. Songs which, if heard by feminist activists, he would have
been whacked right across the face for. But in the male ward, he was the new de facto minstrel, for
the very same reason- the unapologetic rowdiness. And he wasn’t even halfway through showcasing
himself. After the nurses had confiscated his guitar because it was too late for music, he displayed
his adeptness at making small talk, funny talk, and all the other kind of talks. And he was a hit, to say
the least.

He seemed to have a complete change of heart the next day, going from this latest composition,
where he had likened the place to a jail and had sung about his wholehearted desire to leave.

45.
The male ward was, now, slowly becoming a den for the escapists. A kind of renaissance was in the
air. Quite a few of the inmates were thinking of making a run for it. Munez, Kurt and me. We are out
of patience and needed a way out. Marcus was the newest entrant to the club and once we, Marcus
mostly, had had enough, for being denied his quote of smokes for sleeping through PT, we all got
together and planned our plan of attack. Marcus apparently, had a young and accepting uncle based
in a hospital an hour’s drive away.

The plan was mostly mine, the one I had thought out so scientifically, the only change being that
instead of taking the cab all the way back home, we take it to his uncles hostel room and spend the
night there.

The plan was debated on and then finally unanimously approved. We decided to make it final by
finishing whatever food we had left in our storage cupboards. A dig at symbolism, more than
anything else. This would signify that we had nothing over here to justify any further stay. Also, we
needed the much-required fuel in our systems to make our systems run in the moment because the
plan was to be executed right before dinner.

46.
All doubts and worries swept aside, just before the moment of truth, we suited and booted up,
gathered all the smokes we could gather, and stood there waiting for the perfect opportunity. And
going on to prove that God works in a strange way, on this particular night, there were no male
attendants in duty to put up a physical barrier for us.

Waiting for the moment, we stood as inconspicuously as possible near the stage, even going as far as
lighting a smoke as a safety net in case the whole operation seemed out of place to the powers that
be. And just then, in the middle of the dinner rush, came the command “RUN RUN RUN!!!”. And we
ran.

Blanking out our minds from any kind of thought and worry caused by the commotion we had just
managed to create by making our intentions so bloody clear, we just took the racehorse approach,
by only looking ahead and ignoring all the stuff that was going on around us. And I was a little
panicky as my eyesight wasn’t at par with the rest of the crew.

I was running as fast as my lungs would allow, the smoking had definitely made a difference. I saw
Munez fall just before he made it to the stage, not once but twice. I didn’t know how I would make it
to the stage or how deep the fall would be, only knowing that I was just a leap away from freedom.
And I took the leap. Freefalling for, in my mind at least, five seconds, I landed on my head and
somersaulted all the way to the foot of the slope. And then after a couple of seconds of calibration,
got up and started running for it. Going straight through the garden, trying not to think of all the
plants I had stepped on. I was genuinely panicked as I couldn’t see the others, but I kept on running,
following mostly my gut feel as I couldn’t see. The darkness dint help my cause, at least in the
directional department. After continuing for around fifteen minutes, I reached the highway, crossing
in my dash, a bridge, a couple of huts and a few stray dogs as well.

“I am free.” I thought, allowing myself a feeble smile at the thought that I was finally out. I had made
it through the fire and the flames. Also, knowing that I would never in a million lifetimes, be able to
pull this off for a second time. And I started humming free bird to myself feeling genuinely pleased,
thinking about where the others could be, looking around with my substandard vision.
Part III: Beyond the Cage

47.
Walking down the road that I could only manage to make out because of the cars passing by, I
started sticking my thumbs out in an attempt to hitch a ride back home. I thought I heard voices
calling out my name, but I couldn’t see anyone around. Other than the road I was standing on, I was
surrounded by big pine trees on either side of the road. The voices started getting louder, and that’s
when I realised that it was the others looking for me and not the security cover. They were hiding
behind the trees and were calling me to join them. And this I did after making my way over a ditch
and crossing a barbed wire first. Not my first barbed wire experience after being put in.

Only after I had joined the rest was I in a state of mind to contemplate the gravity of the situation.
We had managed something extraordinary- jumping out of the cage with the spotlight unfailingly
focussed on us and in the presence of the Big Doctor. We got around to agreeing that this stunt
would go down in the history of the Institute and that no one would be able to replicate anything
nearly as blatant as this in the near future. And then we spent another twenty minutes thinking
about what measures the Man would take to prevent future break outs.

Coming back to ground reality again, we were thinking about our next move. Should we make a
move right then? Should we spend the night in the jungle? Would the authorities come looking for
us? Were we fugitives on the run?

Once we were sure that whoever was looking for us, had given up the attempt, we treaded outside
the fence again. Then we began our search for a cab that would take us anywhere but there. After a
couple of futile attempts, a car with a yellow number plate stopped, the front of which was occupied
by the driver who was, we guessed, accompanied by his wife. And since none of us were locals, we
didn’t have much of a chance at haggling or even choosing the shortest path because we had no idea
where point A was and where even point B was. All we knew was the name of the Hospital we were
going to. As a result, we were at the mercy of the cabbie when it came to charging us. Finally, after
all the shop talk was done, we got into the cab. Tried to, at least. The car was a small one and the
back seat could fit only three mid-sized people. The only thing to be done was for one of us to shift
to the front and share a seat with the wife. None of the others volunteered, so I decided to go up
with thoughts of seeing civilization after a month of being stranded, and what better seat for that
than the front seat of a moving car?

All worries swept aside, we executed the second part of our journey to complete freedom- to
Marcus’s uncles hostel. From where we would choose our individual paths. But for now, I was too
busy looking at the city lights- the ones from homes and shops and the ones from the street lights. I
was going through, in my mind, dozens of songs that would be apt for the situation.

Before I even realized it, the cab had gone into a majestic gate, beautifully lit, but not overdone, by
rows after rows of street lamps. Slowly, I saw, unveiling itself slowly with every turn of the cars
wheel, a sign on a big and dull building that said “MALE RESIDENTS HOSTEL”. We had arrived.
48.
As the car came to a halt, Marcus slowly got up with the driver, instructing us to stay put till the
transaction was complete. Sitting on the passenger seat, I saw a pack of Navy Cut in the dashboard
and the cravings came in. this particular brand, I had a particular affinity for, because of memories
from the past. Trying to see if I could control my cravings with a cut from the pack, I realised that
God isn’t that kind. He might cut you slack. He might cut you major slack, maybe more than once in a
day, but then Murphy’s law would kick in and things would go wrong. The pack was empty. But how
it mocked me!

After a few minutes had gone past, we were all getting restless. Not being able to be in the frame of
mind to even waste a few minutes of this new-found freedom, we had to get out of the car, letting
the feeling of freedom soak us in. Marcus came back after a while, with the cabbie and another
person who assumed was the man of the hour- the uncle. This assumed uncle summoned us follow
him into the building.

The building, or rather, the hostel, was big, to say the least. It had interconnecting passages and
corridor leading to god knows where. The whole stairway system somehow remined me of a muggle
run Hogwarts. We made our way past a room with a table tennis board, into a narrow stairway,
taking a few lefts and rights until we reached a room marked as D-10. As we made our way inside, I
smelt a smell very different from the smells I had gotten used to in the past month. It was pungent,
but not unpleasant. I figured it to be the smell of freshly cut bamboo shoot.

We were given a very warm welcome and asked to sit as the assumed uncle started making the
transaction with the cabbie. He tried haggling around a bit saying what the cabbie was asking for was
too much, but the cabbie played his cards right. He had made it clear that the price was agreed on by
all four parties concerned, and this was done before we even got onto the cab. Having found no
other way out, the cabbie was given the money and all of us proceeded on our way out, led by
Marcus.

Once we were out, the cabbie started his engine and was on his way out. The four of us sat down on
the ledge that was so obviously made for sitting and we started the conversation that was waiting to
be made the moment we made it into the hospital, our plan was a grand success. The assumed uncle
was not actually his uncle but one of Marcus’s relatives who had come for treatment. Marcus’s uncle
was making a trip around the hospital, looking for us- the fugitives, upon no doubt, due instructions
from the Man.

Not having any smokes in hand, nor the money to buy any, we went into the hostel again; this time
welcomed by a lady, who, upon exercising the grey cells with the same kind of elementary that
people so often relate with Mr. Holmes, we assumed to be the patients’ wife. She had already
cooked us a hot meal of rice, lentil and a most delightful side of steamed chicken. As we sat down to
devour the meal with a ferocity not uncommon in starving hyenas, the actual uncle walked in. with
the introductions made, he told us that the Institute had given him all the contact details for all of
us. He had called the powers that admitted us into the Institute in the first place and had told them
that we were safe and sound. When I was put on the phone with my dad, I spoke in the most jovial
tone I could muster and shot some bull, forgetting entirely of the trauma they had most obviously
been going through. My dad didn’t help matters in this regard, as his voice was no less jovial than
mine. We spoke about how we should forget about the past month and start afresh. And that I
possible, he should come and pick me up the same very night. He gave out a bit of a chuckle and said
“All in good time.”

49.
Free of all our burdens and inhibitions, we went out feeling like birds that have just been released,
and also, very rich. Marcus’s uncle had given us a hundred bucks, a petty sum, but enough to satisfy
all our cravings for the night. No one had to guess where we’d be headed, after a month of rationed
nicotine supply, we were preparing ourselves for a nicotine binge. The only obstacle in our paths was
the fact that there were no shops in a five-minute radius; this was a love hate thing that was going
on, we didn’t want to wait any longer for our smokes and neither did we want to stay inside the
hostel all cooped up. Reaching the shop just in time, barely in time rather, the shops were about to
pull down their shutters. The venture, being a success, we proceeded to place our orders. A pack of
goldflake, the only brand available there, and two packs of bidis. Realising we had quite a of the
original sum left (bidis were cheaper than a bottle of water) the other three got themselves some
betelnuts dabbed with lime.

Smoking with all the passion we could muster, we made our way back arguing and pondering over
what we should and what we should not do with our newfound freedom, a new leash on life, so to
say. And a variety of ideas had come out of all of us. Who would start with what. Who would stop
with what, what was acceptable, what wasn’t, all of that. All this even though we knew fully well
these were just impulses that had come out because of our great escape. A reverberation of ideas
that had been drilled into our minds by the Man without us even realising it. We spent well over an
hour sitting around, smoking and thinking. With the occasional lewd remarks coming out of a couple
of us whenever a lady who wasn’t old or overweight seemed to pass. Not a care in the world, was
our state of mind then. Euphoria. But this feeling came to pass us by pretty soon and then gradually
we all felt our energy levels going down. Holding on to all our hopes for the following day, we went
inside to call it a night.

Once we stepped into our makeshift home for the night, I looked around trying to figure out the kind
of people the inhabitants were. The common room, the one you reach once you step inside the
door, had two beds on either side, and a makeshift kitchen on one side. It was pretty well equipped,
considering the size of it. It had a two-segment water filter, the ones you would find in the good old
days, and a polar opposite of that, in terms of the era of usage, an electric stove. There was a door
leading to the master bedroom, which had a table and a double bed. The bathroom also, was
accessible only through this room. And it was a far cry from the shithole we had gotten accustomed
to. All in all, I really wouldn’t have had an issue staying in a place like this. And it was especially
conducive for developing your grey cells.
Sitting in the common room, we had decided on the division of the beds- two in the one on the left
and two in the one on the right. And of all the rotten luck, I had to share my bed with Kurt. Pulling
the blankets over us, after wishing everyone a very heartfelt goodnight, we drifted off to lala land. To
be precise, not all of us, everyone except me. I was a little uncomfortable with the makeshift
arrangement and at the risk of sounded a little entitled, I wasn’t used to sharing my bed. And the
fact that it was Kurt that I had to share it with, gave me a case of the heebie jeebies. To make myself
a little comfortable, I took two chairs and put them on two sides with a bit of a gap in between to
make it into an even more temporary bed. And an uncomfortable one at that. But that could all be
overlooked as I had my own space and the heater that was running was just too much comfort. And
on this arrangement, I slept a sound sleep, without much concern for the cold that I was just getting
used to.
50.
I woke up pretty early. Not surprising because of the comfort or, the lack of it. No one else was up by
then, so I took a pack of bidis and headed out to survey the new environment I found myself in. I had
to take note of the lefts and the rights I had taken on my way out so that I could navigate my way in.
On my first step out of the building, I thanked God. For the little things, like this venture into the
external world, the big bad world. Outside the cage and into the beyond. To be able to tread on
wherever I wanted to tread on. And thus began my trip into the unknown.

The campus was beautiful, to say the least. With planned pavements and strategically located street
lamps and even more strategically located patches of lawns and trees. And I enjoyed every step of
this trip, inhaling in the fresh air purified by Mother Nature herself. Something, I thought to myself,
wouldn’t be this easily available in the very near future. Quite a bit of natures gifts of greens had
been turned into patches and cuts of dirty, unappealing shades of brown and red. All of for the
purpose of satiate a greed of the human race that will never be satiated. For the purpose of
increasing the number of mouths to feed so that these new mouths can then work to feed more
mouths. It’s a vicious cycle. Cutting down natural greens to be replaced by artificial greens. Greens
that could and would later be manipulated to serve their purpose to man. There was no natural
beauty just for the natural beauty anymore. And the select few people who are trying their best to
fight this phenomenon, were fighting a losing battle. A lot like the battle the inmates were trying to
fight. The only difference being that these men hadn’t admitted it yet, thinking, hoping and begging
for things to change in the near future. But deep inside, knowing it won’t. it couldn’t. not with the
way things are going.

But the time in question, I thought, was not a time for pessimism. It was a time to soak in all that
Mother Nature had to offer, going by the Institutions slogan of taking things “one day at a time”. and
very soon, walking around randomly, I found myself in the middle of a jungle, where I tried peeling
out the barks from pine trees, trying to take back something as a souvenir with which to make a boat
out of. And for no other reason that I could think of. It was something my father had taught me and
my brother when we were kids. And this boat making business was a craft that I could actually make.
More than a craft, it was just sanding things down to the desired shape. Pretty easy stuff.

Randomly walking around the by the trees, I found a lot of bottles of glass, broken and intact, that
were just lying around there as if they belonged there. Amongst the trees and bushes. They were
almost like broken off pieces of rock and stones that were covered in bird droppings, managing to fit
in with the level of camouflage that made it part of the scene. And I added to this jungle of man and
nature working together, a couple of cigarette stubs, justifying the act saying that it was
biodegradable. And then I started my way back to the hostel, guiding myself by reminding myself of
the turns I had taken to get there. Almost like Hansel and Gretel, except the bread crumbs were in
my mind.

51.
On my way back, my second turn in the maze, I was greeted by the rest of the gang. They were
apparently scared about my whereabouts as the route back to our room was a little confusing.

“Not for me!” I retorted.

“Then you lead the way now.” Marcus responded.

And lead I did, because I already had the route mapped out in my mind. All the necessary lefts and
rights to take. Only thing to do was reverse them. The rest of the gang was quite shocked by my
accuracy.

“Elementary, my dear Watson.” I thought in my mind.

As we entered, the lady served us a cup of tea each accompanied by an assortment of biscuits and
other munchies. And we wolfed it down because to us, it was a luxury, an exotic meal even. For we
were used to a completely different breakfast in our month inside. After this meal, we very politely
told the lady that we would go out for a walk to freshen our minds. Although it was our lungs that
needed the freshening.

As we started walking down the same route we came in through, it seemed to us that the corridors
were made especially for us to walk through. On our way, we made a bit of small talk, talking about
our addictions, our families, our interests, and finally the changes we were planning on bringing to
our lives once we reached our respective homes. Although we all knew it was a load of gas, we
played along. Not for anything else, but for the sense of righteousness it made us feel. At least at
that moment.

This conversation lasted till the very moment our nicotine supply lasted. Once we were out, we
started our journey back. Once inside, we saw Marcus’s uncle who was in the process of parking his
car. And in another five minutes, he was inside the room, being served his cup of tea. He then
proceeded to tell us that he had spoken to all our parents and that they were on their way to pick us
up. And this, at least to me, caused me to feel a bit uneasy. For I knew, inside, that things weren’t
the way to go about things, things might have seemed okay superficially, but they really weren’t.
And that there might possibly be a bigger barrier than the one we had just escaped. Because I knew
that there was no scope for a guilt free conversation with my dad or the rest of my family in the
state that I was in. and this feeling of guiltlessness was my one point agenda.

And we waited.

52.
The recovery crew started coming in a little while later. But only after we had been served lunch.
And what a lunch we were served! It might have been the least spicy meal in quite a while. Boiled
chicken, leaves, and a bit of ginger. Served with rice. Just the smell of it got me drooling. I had the
least amongst the four of us, hoping to grab lunch with a dad afterwards. But it was a meal I would
dream of for the quite a while after.

And then the first crew came in to pick up Kurt. From a 600km distance. And the moment his family
came in, all his hotshotness went bust. He was a regular lamb to the slaughter. Coming up with
stupid justifications as to why he ran out.

We left the room, leaving the family to sort things out. And then came my dad, but not with the
smile that I expected but with a very different expression on his face. Something that was a mix of
anger and disappointment. But I was happy nonetheless. At least I had the opportunity to see him
after a long time. And a very vague conversation followed. He asked me why I ran out, and why I ran
out with so many people without even bothering to know their histories, their addictions, and their
reasons for being admitted. Munez, apparently, had a very violent background. He would get into
brawls with not just anyone, but even his own parents.

Not particularly happy with the turn of events, I started talking about going and getting lunch and
getting as far away from this place as possible. But my dad said that there were formalities to be
completed and papers to be signed. I protested vehemently, with all my heart, but my dad assured
me

that we had been expelled from the Institution and that they wouldn’t take us in even we begged for
it. Only after hearing this did I agree to go back.

We went for lunch first. To one of the better eateries in town and I ordered myself a chicken sizzler.
Wolfing it down like a maniac, I then proceeded to finish whatever my dad hadn’t. after this we went
down and I got myself another luxury- a goldflake king-size cigarette. Which I smoked with a rare
delight. After this, we went down to complete the “formalities” and be a free man. Officially. I got
down with quite a pace in my gait. Walked in, hoping to say my final goodbye. And two figures came.
Held me by my arms. Took me through the green gate. Past the naked tree, into the ward. They then
proceeded to tie my hands, took my pants off, tied my feet and left.

And I cried. Unashamedly. For the whole Institute to hear.

53.
I wanted to move, but I couldn’t. At least not to my, or for that matter, any normal functioning
person’s definition of movement. I wanted to take a leak, but I was asked to relieve myself in the
bed. This bit me more than the bite they had expected to make. I was overcome by a feeling of
helplessness. It was as if I was a baby without any power to do or say anything. But I didn’t wet my
bed. I couldn’t. I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. Instead, I maneuvered my body in such a way
that I could stick out from the edge of the bed and then proceed to wet the floor. Which felt so
much better than what had been suggested by the nurses, because like this, no one would have to
do anything with me or my property- my bed. I had soiled neutral property. Not mine, not theirs.

In a couple of hours, what, to me, seemed like eternity, I was moved to the emergency ward and
given the unluckiest possible bed, the one right next to the bathroom door. Where I had to bear the
biting gusts of freezing winds that would come every minute, the repulsive smell of human excreta,
and the feeling of helplessness every time I heard the other inmates go down for an obvious smoke
break and knowing that I couldn’t go down and join them. They, the nurses, had brought me dinner
for the night and it was my favourite- pork stew, but I wasn’t in any state that would allow me to
enjoy it. I couldn’t help but think about how close I was to complete freedom, and how the others
had succeeded. All that I could think of now were the ifs and the buts of the whole operation.
Mocking me with the obvious authority that they had. To so easily control my thoughts with just a
couple of lines of cloth.

Despite the turmoil in my mind, I managed to drift off to sleep. Praise the Lord if I knew how!
54.
I was woken up with a start by the attendant present. He had taken off the chains and to make up
for the nakedness of the body from the waist down, they gave me a towel. As is I were in a perpetual
state of walking to and from the bathroom. But I knew I was guilty and so I didn’t oppose anything
they had decreed upon me and I very graciously complied. I had also lost my daily cigarette quota.
But my guilt made these acts as motions to wipe the guilt off of my head. So, I never complained,
instead, I took it in my stride as an act of pride. I did the crime so I was doing my time. but it wasn’t a
false sense of pride, I was paying my dues for my acts and I was doing it as an honest man would.

The other inmates had been warned of the consequences of giving me company or anything else.
And they got the message. But after the first night passed, they came flocking to me. With all sorts of
questions. More or less like the first time I had tried jumping off, except, this time, I actually pulled it
off. There was a certain emotion in their eyes. Whether it was admiration or contempt, I couldn’t
figure out. And I didn’t want to find out either. But what I knew was that the people I was close to,
wouldn’t let me wallow in my misery too much. The misery of being publicly found guilty, walking
around with no pants. Somewhat like the scarlet letter. And whenever I had strong urges for some
nicotine intake, I was never denied. Maybe because of the calculations in the people I asked and the
people I chose not to ask, or maybe because of sympathy, pity even. But again, I didn’t care. The way
I saw it, I was living just another day in the life, except, my trousers were replaced by a long skirt
fashioned out of a towel that had a strong tendency to come off anytime. Also, that the cigarettes I
was smoking were not my own.

55.
I was sitting in the court, beating the cold with the morning sunshine, lost in my own little world,
trying to fashion a boat out of a bark that I had found. Enjoying every moment of it, forgetting where
I was, or even if I didn’t, yet again, I couldn’t care less. And in the middle of this creative outburst, a
faceless man had come up to me.

“You’re being called to the canteen.” The man said.

Instantly coming back to reality, I wondered what they wanted to take away from me this time. As I
entered, the attendant, and very cheerfully burst out “Welcome back! And here’s todays quota of
cigarettes for you! And we hope you don’t leave us like this again”

I smiled. I felt a surge of helpless love for the institute.

“They aren’t all that bad after all!”

Now, equipped with my own cigarettes and a new-found freedom from the constant lockups, I was
ready to take on the world once again. The only trouble was the skirt that I was donning, but I wasn’t
in a state to give two hoots about that.

For handicrafts, I went and made small houses out of sticks of bamboo, smoothened these same
sticks when I had woodworks and made paper envelopes for the sessions dealing with paper. For the
evening sessions, I was attentive and was answering questions for which I had not an inkling of an
idea. Sometimes I was right, sometimes I wasn’t. I just wanted to look clever in front of the multiple
rejects that society had to offer and they were my competition in this place. But I was yet to accept
wholly the fact that I was an addict and I carried on like usual in this regard. But all in all, I was happy
once again.
56.
My vision, all this while, was still blurred because of my self-inflicted damage. And I had been in this
state for a long time. since the breakdown, to the escape, to the capture, finally to the release. I
realised that I could make out what was what, but the details weren’t clear. Was that an analogy on
life? I wondered. But I also realised that if I focused on my other senses, I could more than just make
do with the temporary disability.

But that Saturday was a little different. Through the past four weeks, there had not once been a
package of food for me. And this, I thought, was how the rest of my time there would go. That I
would not get anything to proclaim as my own, instead feeding off of the other luckier inmates.
Flitting like a bee, from one flower to the other, choosing what I liked best, by those who would
consider giving me a share.

That Saturday was a first because, I had received a loaf of bread, and a lot of chocolates. These were
things that I had been asking for, no, begging, for in my request letters, which I sent everyday hoping
that they would get answered one day. But what I was blinded by, or unblended by, was the new
pair of glasses that had just arrived. The latest, most fashionable pair of frames. Not the huge
bifocals that I had been asking for. And then, in another hour or so, another package had come for
me, a drawing book, a notebook, colours, and a pen. They had been sent with the intention of
keeping boredom at bay, but they would, eventually come to inscribe in me a new identity. Not the
scientific minded one that people always told me I could be, but as an artist, born out of the need to
curb boredom.

While lying in bed with my towel on, the Man came up to me and said “You should have a bath
tomorrow.”

“But I won’t have anything to wear underneath if I wet my towel drying myself with it.”

“That will be taken care of, don’t worry.”

And with this air of calmness, the Man had told me that I had served my time and that there was no
need for me to let the guilt linger on. The calm coolness of this man, the Man, a man of authority,
THE man of authority, had never ceased to baffle me with an awe that no one else could.

The bath I took with whatever little warm water I could gather, (the cold was still biting) and the
people with little authority came and handed me my suitcase that they had confiscated after my
return. I got myself a pair of trousers, not the pair I wanted, but one I could do with, with the
addition of a belt, without which, it kept falling down. And the belt I had devised with the same
pieces of cloth that they had tied me with. And that same night, I had been called out after dinner,
out of the main gate and as the gate opened, I saw the higher powers- my parents, standing, waiting
for me. Though the meeting was for a couple of minutes, I dozed off that night with a smile on my
face. And with an even more delightful dream, one that I couldn’t remember once I woke up, but
with a conviction that it had been one of my all-time bests.

57.
The very next day, I was called upon by the Man. But where, was the question in my mind. I was
asked to follow the attendant. Going past the green gate, the doctors chambers, and on to a dirt
path which I had seen but didn’t think much about. From there I could see a pond covered by a
plethora of pine trees. I finally reached a makeshift shed, where I saw the Man standing with an air
of elegance and authority, attending to what I thought were regular potted plants. Once I reached a
point from where I could make things out properly, I realised what they were- bonsai plants. Mature
plants that had been so delicately tended to that they still looked like small plants.

This brought to my mind one of the inmates. A very young looking boy who I thought couldn’t be
more than three or four years old, who wasn’t, at least in my mind, old enough to talk or follow
orders or be able to do any of the things that required a proper mental functioning. But only later
did I come to know the issue with him, he was actually fifteen but he didn’t have the required
hormonal functioning for him to grow any more.

The difference between the plants and this boy was that even if they, the plants, had their size
regulated, they would, or they could, still function as a regular mature tree. Which unfortunately,
wasn’t the case with the boy. His maturation completely stopped after a point. He was very lucky
that he had grown to the point where he could walk around on his own.

As I reached the Man while he was on his off-duty business, he asked me to look around. To soak in
the beauty of the place. And this I very readily did, and would’ve done even if he wouldn’t have
asked me to. The entire area was, or could have been, classified as a museum of natural art. Could
have because museums are generally open to the public. The trees aspiring for the heavens, the
plants shaped as sculptures, and the flowers giving well established painters a good run for their
money, with all their various hues and shades. Of all colours bright. And it was all the work of nature,
other than a bit of moulding by the Man. The only thing that didn’t seem natural, or maybe a little
too naturally enhanced was the placement of a few of the plants. And a few paces ahead, I found an
actual museum, one where all the plants had been arranged for display on a man-made shelf. There
were rows and rows of bonsai plants, all placed on very subtle pedestals made of brick and cement.
On the other side of the shed, there was an expanse of light green grass with another dirt path
leading to the pond. And to add to this raw, untapped beauty, the walls enclosing the boundary
were not made of bricks or stones, like the rest of the world was, which added to the ugliness and
pollution caused by human intervention; the boundary was made of lines and lines of the greenest
bamboo trees. If there was a Garden of Eden in this world, in my opinion, this place would have
been it.

“What do you think?” the Man had asked as I was walking around.

“Too surreal to comprehend in one shot” I replied.

“Do you know why I brought you back?”

“Because I’m not one of them” I replied matter of factly

“Exactly” the Man replied, going back to his work.

As he worked on his plants, he explained to me that these plants needed a lot of nurturing- trimming
and wiring, and chopping necessary growths whenever they would make an unwanted appearance.
And this I thought, was an innuendo on what I was going through as an attempt for me to
understand.
Shoving all of this aside, I started asking questions, none of any real significance, just an attempt to
keep the conversation going. I had started liking and respecting this man more than I ever could
have imagined. How could I? Till then, he had been the man responsible for my entrapment.

After a while, I went to the bonsai display and lit a cigarette there, contemplating if I could ever, in
my lifetime, make anything as beautiful as this. Maybe not, I thought, but not for the lack of trying, I
further thought. And just about then, my stomach started rumbling. It was a Sunday and you could
sleep in without the risk of losing your smokes. And because of the couple of extra hours of sleep, I
had skipped breakfast and my body needed some fuelling. And after such a long session of fuelling
the soul, my body had had enough. And the Man seemed to know this without a second look, and
sent me on my way in through the green gate.

I relished the lunch with a sense of contentment that I had never found. Inside the Institute.

58.
Now armed with the ammunition to combat my boredom, I set out to work like a man deprived.
Starting with the drawing book and the set of colours, I set out to make my own interpretation of
whatever I had seen inside that filled me with a sense of beauty. The first few sketches were just a
trial. To knowing the intricacies of the craft. What strokes to make, what colours to use. I had set out
on a teaching spree where I was both the teacher and the student. Discovering the techniques I
could use, the colours I could use to glorify the scenery to the zenith.

Finally setting out to make proper, serious work of art, I sat outside the ward with my set of pencils
and paints. I told myself that this would be my make or break attempt. Looking for approval only
from myself. As a result of this conspicuous anchorage, I had managed to create quite a stir. I was
hounded by the countless inmates as to what exactly I was doing and why on earth I was doing what
I was doing. Feeding them with a lot of ‘oh nothing’s to “Just something I’m working on” depending
on who it was who had asked the question, I sat for an hour and a half making primary sketches,
rubbing it out, making another until I was finally satisfied. And once the outline was done, I picked
up a very limited number of shades to fill in, very subtly, the areas of the sketch that needed
highlighting.

It was a very trying effort, and I had managed to please myself. Impress even!

59.
I had now started living a very luxurious life. Between Toni and I, we were receiving a lot of food on
Saturdays. The weekly quota which had never come to me before. Putting these together, we
managed to create a massive loot, which was more than enough for just two people. Added to this,
we had a combined quota of ten smokes a day. Smoking like kings without a care in the world,
except for the occasional flashes of things we could have been doing had we been back home. We
made it a point to drink at least one cup of tea a day with an assortment of snacks. I had even
started eating an apple a day every morning even before lighting my morning smoke. It was, by any
standard, easy living. But to us, like anyone else, the grass looked greener on the other side. We
craved for home more than anything else. And not only for the wrong reasons. I had only wanted to
go back home to correct all the wrongs I had made in the past. And the best part about staying in the
Institute was that I could recognise all the wrongs and also how to right them. And I had enough
time to think about how I could right the wrongs perfectly, even if it was only in my mind.
60.
Even after all this, every time I came face to face with the Big Doctor, all my confidence would just
melt away and I would be feeling like a wet kitten. And what caused this wetness was the lack of
wetness in my daily routine- my unwillingness to have a bath or wash my clothes. I had a valid
reason for not doing the latter, which was that in this day and age, there was no place that didn’t
have a washing machine installed. But the hitch was the former. A bath, no matter where you are, is
a necessity. Hot water or not. Whenever I had the luck of being able to hoard a couple of buckets of
warm water, I would go in for a long, luxurious hot water bath, getting a lot of thinking, singing and
dancing done in the process.

But over the previous few days, the water situation had gone to the pits. There would be running
water only for a couple of hours each day; and hot water for a maximum of twenty minutes, which
would be furiously collected by a lot of inmates for a lot of purposes- tea, throat irritations, baths,
anything basically, which could be accentuated by a bit of hot water. And because of this, and my
lack of survival instincts, my weekly bathing sessions had come down to a disgustingly low figure
each week. As an attempt to make things roll again, I started trying out sponge baths and that was
when I realised that my problem wasn’t the cold water, but the eight layers of clothing I had on
which I had to take off every time I wanted to have a bath. To take a bath would mean me having to
take off these layers, brave the cold water, come up and put on these eight layers all over again, in
the correct order. It seemed to me to be too much effort. Not something worth fretting about. And I
doused the issue by avoiding to have to be in the Big Doctors line of sight.

And it was like this that I manged to do what I had always been doing with issues- avoid it entirely.

61.
I was still attending sessions meant for the nuts, with Tony as my companion. Both of us would
diligently go for this every day, sit through and even pay attention to whatever was being said.
Because this session was designed keeping in mind the target audience, it held little meaning for the
two of us. The counsellors would sit and talk about cleanliness and how it was next to godliness, how
a bird in the hand was worth two in the bush, and all that jazz which you would really talk about to a
third grader, mildly boring him in the process.

But this didn’t stir the two of us. We just saw it as a necessary evil to be able to procure our quota of
five a day, killing another hour in the process. It was another stop on the day on our journey to the
next tomorrow. Without the sight to delve into any of it, taking every hour as it came. Floating along
the current of a stream in the way a leaf might.

62.
After I was brought back, I discovered a lot of new faces in the ward. It was as if the one day I decide
to escape, was the one day when the whole jing bang lot decide to drop in. But upon usage of the
scientific method, I realised that before I jumped, I didn’t have my glasses and wasn’t in a place to
differentiate between a Tom, a Dick, and a Harry. They were all the same to me. Okay, so my eye
sight wasn’t that bad. But because of the excitement of making a break for it, I had consumed all my
energies on plotting the escape, leaving little time for social mingling. But after I was brought back, I
was a bit of a star in the Institute. And the little memo that went around asking people not to
interact with me, made things even more exciting. I was an outlaw.
Of all these faces, there was one character who seemed to be the nicest guy around. This guy named
Buddy. He was tall and dark, his handsomeness I cannot comment on right now. After our first
conversation, he had declared me to be his younger brother. My fight was his fight. But sadly, he
wasn’t, at least till then, a part of the fight. He didn’t smoke. His own cigarettes at least. His situation
was somewhat twisted. When the authorities had asked him if he smoked, he said no. But what
didn’t seem to add up was him saying that because of this interaction, he was getting only two
smokes a day. Go figure!

Let me get back to his handsomeness now. He might have had the physical characters of a
handsome man, but his intellect put all that to shame. He was a loud mouthed egotistical son of a
gun. He seemed to have the answers to all the questions. Even those that hadn’t been asked yet. His
whole cigarette story was the cherry on top. Rather imagine everyone to be a dumbass than tell
them he didn’t want to share.

And a few days in, he completely transformed. It was like he was in a reality show- he wanted to win
it. Whatever “it” was. But then again, it was the other inmates who were fuelling this. They gave him
all the rope for him to be whoever he wanted to be. Maybe sharing in a collective joke. All the
character shaming aside, he was an entertaining guy. He had a lot of stories to tell. Mostly the tall
kind. And these weren’t stories that would come out to lighten the mood, it was a competitive thing
for him. They would come out only after someone else had finished one and he would make sure his
beat the one told before. All in all, he was an individual with no individuality. But equipped with a lot
of one-upmanship.

63.
Then came the break dancer and the veteran. Both of them were very dynamic characters. The
dancer, Jack, I met in the bathroom when he came and asked to bum a few drags off of mine. I gladly
handed him my smoke and with the to and from motions of our hands, we engaged in some small
talk. It seemed he had been here before as an alcoholic and that he relapsed the moment he got
back. Then a renewed interest in starting afresh struck him and here he was.

A very nice and down to earth kind of guy, I though after he left. His talent I discovered only in the
morning session the following day, when he started “movin’ to the groovin’” with the pure finesse of
a professional. And I couldn’t help but think about how talented almost every there was. Talents
that 90% of the accepted population had no chance of acquiring, no matter how much time they
made off their weekend to weekend, 9 to 5 lives.

The veteran, Pal, had been in and out of the place maybe five times. And his family was puzzled as to
why he wanted to make a trip again. “Wouldn’t it be a waste of time?” He was a very outgoing
fellow, mixing in with everyone, finding guys he had met before, talking about the good old days
when they would get ten cigarettes instead of five. By the end of the day, he had fit in so well that it
seemed as though he had never left. He was very descriptive when it came to him talking, and he
treated everyone the same-well. And he also happened to have a very foul mouth, especially when it
came to things he didn’t agree with.

64.
By this time, Private had cooled down drastically and his voice was heard very occasionally.
Sometimes when he was getting beat up, other times when he was trying to court one of the many
nurses, but he had more or less become invisible. His presence was advertised only in one of the
above situations. And finally, after a week of this behaviour, he was told he was getting discharged.
More than anything else, it told me of the efficiency of the Institute- how they managed to quieten
and calm a man who was a human dynamo.

But when one nut leaves, one more pops in. This time it was a guy with pretty long locks. At first
glance, he seemed like your regular addict, almost everything about him seemed normal. Except for
the smile. Sane men didn’t smile the way he did. It was almost as if the world was perfect and that
smile of his absolutely and completely went off to support that. And it took a sane man to realize
that the world isn’t perfect. Quite a paradox, you’re sane if you think the world isn’t perfect and if
you think it is, you’d have to be insane.

The full-frontal evidence of his nuttiness came out soon enough. With a guitar in his hand, he was
strumming along violently to no obvious rhythm. Plucking random notes, singing with hundred and
ten percent efficiency a song which I thought he was speaking in his native tongue. He looked like he
was having a blast. No obstacle to his pure and simple happiness. When I asked another local what
the guy, Igor, was singing about, the answer was a little disturbing. It seemed Igor couldn’t speak.
Speak a language, his body language more than made up for this ability he lacked in, shaking his
head and body violently to make his point known.

And like everything else in the world that didn’t fit into a predetermined norm, he was ruthlessly
taken advantage of. The locals from the addiction wards would come and ask him to do a lot of
things. He was made to dance around, to sing, to do hand stands (something he had mastered), and
sometimes even to do a circus act. During one of his hand stands, he slipped and fell flat on his face,
which to the audience, was funnier than his circus act. They might not have had a television set, but
they certainly did get their share of entertainment. Igor had turned out be the circus freak, in a
crowd full of circus freaks.

65.
Tony had apparently been a heavy drinker back home. He had been missing the drink so muc that he
had started asking random inmates if he could somehow procure a bottle of the good stuff inside the
ward somehow. Money was obviously not an issue. Everyone had been very amused by this and
finally, Rogers said that he could. He went in to the bathroom, filled a bottle with hot water and
served it to Tony in a glass. Tony was satisfied.

This went on for quite a long time, Tony paying Rogers with various treats. Biscuits, chocolates- the
works, in the ward. Finally, it got to a point where I couldn’t take it anymore. Especially from
someone like Rogers because in the short time we had spent together, we became partners of sorts,
sharing all our smokes and our Saturday treats.

So I went to Tony and asked him to stop taking anything from Rogers and that I would bring the
booze from then on, and that I was making it myself. When asked how, I gave him a lot of gas with
words like yeast, fermentation and respiration. And I managed to become the producer of booze for
the two of us.
66.
Mental asylums, at least as far as I knew, in the decades behind, used an electric shock treatment on
patients. Where the patients would be put down on a chair and jolts of electricity would be passed
to induce seizures. As a treatment to cure their illnesses. The Institute also had a kind of shock
therapy, would of an entirely different kind.

The water heating facility being conked off, the only water available was the cold kind. And this
made me very reluctant to take a bath because, more than anything else, a cold-water bath in cold
temperatures scared the living shit out of me. And I would spend days at a stretch without touching
any more water than was absolutely essential. But the Big Doctor had had enough of telling me to
bathe and now had taken the matter into her own hands. She had asked the PLA to give me a bath
by any means possible. Since there was no running water at that time, so he took me to the garden
which had a well full of nice, clean and cold water. The weather also, wasn’t particularly warm, with
the occasional gust of extremely chilly wind blowing. I had been taken there and stripped of
everything but my undies. To answer natures call, I went a few steps ahead and relieved myself in
the open. On my way back, before I reached the well, I was ambush. A bucket full of sub-zero water
had been launched at me. The shock of it, I couldn’t take. Shivering and panting, I tried to
comprehend what had just happened. Which was when the second wave came at me. It was like a
trip to the north pole in a pair of shorts, which was aggravated even further by the gusts of wind.
Even though I was expecting a holi party, this was not the kind I had in mind. Mine had more to do
with flirting around with Mary Jane.

At the end of the episode, I was laughing in pure delight. It was like I flipped the cold a big birdie.
And there was nothing it could do about it. The shock therapy had done me wonders. Another
mental block blown to shreds.

67.
At our next session in the garden, I had asked The Man about the possibility of taking guitar lessons
from one of the better guitarists in the region who also happened to stay quite close by. Added to
that was the fact that he was a friend of The Mans’. More than a lesson, I had been thinking of this
as an escape. For a situation where I had to be sober all the time, a guitar lesson after sunset in a
place where sobriety wouldn’t even be an option seemed too good to be true. And also, I wanted to
improve my guitar skills in the process. The guitar was something I stopped working on quite a while
back. I played the guitar, but I wasn’t practicing and I was only playing whatever it was that I already
knew. There were occasions where I picked up something new, but occasions like that were the
exceptions, not the rule. So obviously, I had the desire to learn from a professional, but it was
something that wasn’t at the forefront of my mind.

The Man, as usual, replied with a very diplomatic “Sure, sure. When the time comes.” Maybe he
knew my intentions before I even got around to thinking of this plan or maybe he was just blindly
addressing a dumb request, but whatever it was, he was dealing with it exactly how he should have
dealt with it- no promises or expectations, and also, without downright rejecting it. He just went
with the flow.

Two nights later, Jimi walked into the ward.

68.
I was reading a book when a new figure walked in. Notice how I didn’t say a face. That’s because I
couldn’t see it. He was wearing a cap under the hood of a hoodie. I thought he would be just another
face in the ward, another person I would get accustomed to. But that’s when I heard the sound of a
guitar coming in. initially, I thought it was just another one of the inmates having some fun. But then
the music shifted from amateur love songs to songs that required real skill. Naturally curious, I
walked into the ward saw that it was the new guy who was responsible for all the belting outs. But I
didn’t approach him right away, thinking he might be another one of those arrogant SOBs you so
frequently come across. I just stood there, absorbing all the music.

The next morning, I woke up to the sounds of Hey Joe, and this was just the icing on the cake. I
didn’t know too many guitarists who could pull off Hendrix with that ease. Now that I come to think
of it, I didn’t know any guitarist who could. And I knew quite a few guitarists. So I went up to him and
initiated the conversation. It might have seemed, to a third person, that I was kissing his ass, but
believe me, I was in awe of his skill and I couldn’t hide that. I had never seen anyone, or been in a
conversation with someone who could handle the guitar the way he did.

“I don’t care what your name is, but I’m going to call you Jimi.” I said.

“Jimi is my god” replied the newly crowned Mr. Hendrix.

And thus, began a friendship based on a mutual love for the same music. Something I had never had
with peers my age. Maybe a few rare exceptions here and there, but they couldn’t move their
fingers the way this guy did.

The Man had just sent me exactly what I was looking for. Except, the packaging was different from
what I had been expecting.

69.
Now started an era of organised chaos, emanating from the rusted strings of an old guitar and from
the vocal chords of a few concerned. But I was in a fix. I still had to “cook up” the liquor for Tony
every night and these liquor sessions had gone up to well over three litres a day. We were in the big
leagues. Even when Tony asked me to carry on with the others, I couldn’t. we had spent most of our
waking hours together ever since he came in, plotting escape, drinking tea, smoking our cigarettes
and finally getting boozed up. I couldn’t leave him be, at least with a clean consciousness.

But I managed a way around it. I would spend most of my time with Tony and only when the
“others” playing a song that held any meaning to me (you would be surprised to know how many
songs had that effect on me), I would rush into their ward and start contributing to an already well
contributed cacophony. And then I would come back to finish off the peg I had made for the two of
us.

I didn’t want to be a part of this double dealing and had already requested Tony more than a couple
of dozen times to come join in on the fun. Only after quite a while did he open up to me

“How can I go and make a damn fool of myself in front of people who refer to me as ‘uncle’”.

I had no comebacks to that and gave up on my pursuit.

70.
The night had now become the most awaited part of the day, with so many options as to how to
bide my time. I could do a couple of pegs, have intellectual small talks on the arts and the sciences,
or move it with Jimi and co. The activities were all ripe for the picking. And what was so much more
liberating was that in this place of pseudo allegiances, I gave mine to none. I was free to do all the
flitting about I wanted. It was a ball. I had no idea being sober and having fun could ever go hand in
hand. To me, till then, it was an oxymoron.

Day were going on as if life was in fifth gear. With not much recollections about the days past and no
anticipations for the day to come, I was in the present, and I was loving it. And seldom came days
that weren’t entertaining. With new patients, I realised came avenues for new combinations of
entertainment.

And Igor never failed to disappoint. I was told that he would randomly go on violent streaks but I
couldn’t believe it. As far as I could see, he was the idiot box personified. And his most powerful
impact on me was quite a scene. He was going around and begging everyone for something which
we could, understandably, or because of the lack of it, not understand. And begging was an
understatement. This was deviant behaviour and because of that he was, like everyone else who
indulged in deviant behaviours, was tied to his bed. But he didn’t submit. Instead, he started
gyrating his body, not very unlike the way he would whilst freaking out on the guitar. The crowd that
had gathered, had soon dispersed and instead, had chosen to view the scene from the secrecy of the
bathroom window. Igor was making quite a show of himself. Using his mouth in ways you could
never imagine a mouth being used, until finally, he was free of the chains that bound him.

Everyone applauded, and to their even further amusement, he had taken the ropes with him and
threw them on the faces of the guys who were responsible for tying him up. Such fervour may never
been seen again. At least from any other inmate. And had this been pulled off by anyone else, they
would have stood like a gladiator who had just slain the lion. But not Igor, who behaved as though it
came effortlessly, without a second thought.

71.
The toons had, by now, started rolling in in the dozens. Each one a delight, particularly when
entertainment was what you were looking for. The first of the lot was a timid, earnest looking little
boy named Romeo. At first glance, I was a little annoyed by him. The kind of annoyance that grows
on you when you see someone walking with the full Bollywood swagger. Two minutes into this
sighting, he was contributing half the weight on a man to man confrontation, kicking and shouting at
his opponent, Crude. It finally got to a point where Crude had to be restrained for the confrontation
to not elevate to a fist fight.

Later that evening, when I was attending to natures call in the bathroom, Romeo appeared, and in
whispers, told me that Crude was beating him up. And again, in less than two minutes, Crude
showed up and started thrashing him left, right and centre. Till it reached the point where Romeo
broke down and started wailing like a child. It took a couple of bulky inmates to pull Crude away.

Then came two very loud crashes, of glass breaking apart, from the ward below. Everyone went
rushing down, expecting to see bloodied hands, and it was a relief when they realised he hadn’t used
his hands. It was such a relief that they didn’t bother finding what exactly it was that he used. The
nurses on duty proceeded to, as they so obviously would have, to tie him down. I felt a sharp pang of
guilt as I had thought this was unfair as he had already been tied to his bed earlier for the
confrontation, but Crude wasn’t. And wasn’t tied even after his pugilistic efforts.

The next day, a friend of Crudes’ came up to me a began telling me his side of the story. Apparently
Romeo had started, without any instigation, abusing Crude and calling him names. Going as far as
telling him that he would get a sound thrashing when they were discharged. I quietly listened, not
being able to believe a word of what he said.

But the guilt slowly faded away as I saw Romeo free of the chains. Doing the whole swagger routine
all over again. Taking his shirt off to show off his body, which was, more than anything else, a result
of insufficient calorie intake. He had gone around telling people that he wanted to be a fighter, and
not just any fighter, the best fighter there was.

And again, that very night, came the same cries that came the night before. He had been beaten to a
crying pulp, again, by Crude, and again, because he didn’t know when to shut his mouth.

Although he stopped expressing his desire to be a fighter, he was still making a show of his upper
body as fervently as he had been doing before. It seemed to me that these toons, didn’t learn from
history, or more practically, from the previous nights’ experience.

When I spoke to The Man, he had described Romeo to be another Private, and this turned out to be
a very accurate description. As the weeks passed, Romeo had started walking into random wards,
telling the occupants about how much he missed his wife and child. More than the missing bit, what
surprised people, and by that, I mean me, was that he had his own family. He didn’t look old enough
to legally buy a drink, let alone have a wife and a kid. And so I did what everyone does when they
hear a toon talk big, assume that it was all a load of bull.

A couple of weeks later, on visitation day, I saw Romeo walk around with a woman. And he made it a
point to go up to anyone who he saw looking, and introduce the lady to them as his wife. Shock
ensued, but it was quietly swept aside.

Later at night, as I was pondering on the days events, like I would do every night, one thought stood
out particularly.

“Did Romeo have a child because he was married, or did he get married because he had a child.

But then again, what could one expect from someone with a name like Romeo?

72.
Then came another toon. Igor had just been discharged, and this new guy, Decent, came in to take
his place. He seemed like a regular Joe except when he would randomly start mumbling to himself.
And as the night went on, the mumblings grew in intensity until he turned into a self-talking jumble
of a man.

In the mornings, he would not be talking, but shouting to himself while kicking on the nearest object
he could find. Venting out all his frustrations as he would take huge backswings before kicking
whatever he was kicking to another part of the ward. And as he went about this motion, all the other
males in the ward would follow the PT instructor to the court, still half asleep.
In the afternoons, before medicine time, he would fall to the ground, crying out to anyone who
cared to listen, that he couldn’t bear the medicines. He would then be escorted back to his bed, and
then get inject with the medicines which he wouldn’t ingest.

During the sessions, he would break down without a rhyme or a reason and would lie on the ground
without a care in the world, until he finally drifted off to sleep. To wake up as a completely different
person.

When asked why he behaved like this he would have two standard replies ready. Depending on his
mood at that particular point of time, it was either “It’s because of all the medicines they are giving
me.” Or “They aren’t giving me the right medicines.” I had come to my own diagnosis of his
condition and I thought bipolarity was what he had.

On one of our talks, he had declared that all the toons were acting and not suffering from anything
real. That they were totally fine. That they were doing what they were doing as nothing but a
gimmick. So much so for himself, I thought.

73.
With each patient being discharged, there came two new patients. This time, the two that came in
had the same issue but they were of opposite genders. And they brought out the mating season in
the Institute to a bright highlight. The short man Ferdinand, and the giant Su.

Right from the moment he walked in to the ward, Ferdinand started playing the guitar with the
spotlight his voice. For the whole Institute to hear. He didn’t walk around the wards randomly
breaking out in song, it was the decibel with which his voice was transmitted. It was sometimes
enough to blur out the roaring cries made by the not infrequent helicopters that crossed by. He was
the Morrison to the already admitted Hendrix and together, the two of them started a new wave of
musical appreciation in the wards.

Of Su, I only knew that she was quite tall. Quite tall indeed.

And Ferdinand had his eyes set on her from the very beginning. Trying to break the ice between
them with a casual “What food are they serving?” to “How was the food?” to finally, “Did you enjoy
your food?” And he very successfully managed to break the ice.

The female ward, more than goons, had toons. There were also a couple of mentally stable patients
who were wilfully not. And the entire herd of male inmates made it their life’s mission to claim one
of them as their own.

This was not unlike the honorary cats whose presence graced the Institute. Two males and a female.
And their mating season was one that was very public. Whenever and wherever they were seen.

74.
The cats were not just guests of the Institute but guests of honour. The Man had done his best to let
the nature of the place blend in with the human constructs. And the cats here were royalty. Treated
almost as royally as the Egyptians had treated them. They got much more than what their appetites
craved and that too thrice a day. They could help themselves to all the food left over from the daily
meals and added to this were their specially constructed shelters, in case of rain.
There were bees who would always be buzzing about, gathering all the nectar from the flowers that
were everywhere, the birds that had made their nests in the mini forest spread around. There were
all sorts of bugs and insects, in a variety of shapes and colours. And finally, there were snakes.
Colourful, dangerous snakes. Yet the only life form that was being targeted for elimination were the
common houseflies. Even the snakes were captured and then released to a safer area in the campus.
Nothing, other than the houseflies, was to be killed.

75.
I had finally thought that we had crossed a bridge when in one of the nocturnal music sessions, Tony
walked in with great joy and started swaying to the music. Even if it wasn’t for a full song, I was
happy that this moment lasted for at least half a song.

This incident opened in my mind a variety of prospects as to how we could manage our smokes
during the night, now that the possibility of us killing time listening to music had opened up. Not
having to depend smokes as the sole time machine. A new way of life, I thought this would bring
about. Being able to save smokes for more crucial times.

Tony was discharged the following morning. Leaving me with only five smokes a day.

Part IV: What Cage???

76.
The fact that I now had to survive on five smokes a day hit me pretty hard. At least on the day Tony
left. I had, on that day, inherited his quota as well. Which I had specially stored aside for rainy days.
But as the day went along, I had realized that my system of rationing out smokes, was brilliant. We
had one smoke right after they were sanctioned, from one of the guys. Tony had apparently struck a
deal with him, the details of which were not revealed to me. We would light our first only after
lunch. The next would be after tea and the last before dinner, was the one after the evening session.
And our final smoke outside the ward would be after tea. Two smokes I would keep for myself, as a
reward mechanism for after having done something that required effort to be put in. of the
remaining four, three we would smoke inside the ward after the doors had been shut for the night.
And the one that was left was reserved as a cure for the morning PT sickness blues.

Once Tony left, I had only five smokes to myself of which I would, in a day, smoke only one complete
smoke. The rest were to be smoked, a half at a time. which was anyway the case before he left, we
would smoke one between the two of us, logically smoking half each. This way, I had, from five
smokes, a practical nine sessions of escape. Excluding what I could scavenge from a few friendly
faces here and there.

This would be one of the first results of being able to walk before I could run. And for this, I had only
the Institute to thank, and maybe my dad. Because it was because of him that I was looking t it the
way I was.
77.
And this was not the only positive that I saw. After another session of shock therapy, with water of a
temperature that might have been able to refreeze a molten ice cap, I had actually come to enjoy
the incredible freshness that I would feel. And soon, I lost track of how many shock therapies I had
purposely signed up for. More than a therapy, with all its negative connotations, I came to look at it
as a reward after collecting all the grime that I did in the day.

And now, I felt no guilt in coming face to face with the Big Doctor, as I now had a clean conscience as
well as a clean body. Which paved the way for something else that I had come to perfect- small talk.
And I was thoroughly pleased with all the conversations I had now seemed to pull off with precision
and ease.

With all these changes in personality, I had decided to go one step further and also change myself
physically. Instead of waiting for my hair to grow back like I always did after a haircut, I decided to do
the exact opposite this time. Go and get it shaved. The logic behind this was that if I couldn’t grow it
beyond the permissive length, I would do the exact opposite, make it shorter than the norm. and I
had enjoyed the new look. So happy I was, in fact, with this look, that I decided that it would be my
new look. At least till the foreseeable future.

78.
During one of the morning sessions, I had been called for a private session with The Man himself.
Thinking there might be news about my discharge, I entered the chamber with a pounding heart.

“Come in. Have a seat. Have you realized why you were brought here? To the Institution?” The Man
asked.

“Not exactly, but I have a few ideas.” I replied.

“Which are?”

“To earn my right to smoke the green stuff?” I replied as earnestly as possible.

He started laughing and asked me to attend the sessions meant for the goons- the addicts. The one
went on simultaneously with the sessions I was attending with the toons. The one I had so
vehemently opposed to attending. But I thought with my research and good faith, I could teach the
teachers a thing or two. And so I went in, very reluctantly, to attend the classes with the group I had
been in with a month back.

But I didn’t say the required introduction, very obviously cutting out the part where I had to say I
was a recovering addict and to attribute all my efforts to god’s grace. This was because of nothing
else but the inability to procure contraband over there. Had this not been the case, I would have
been chilling in orbit.

Apart from the misdemeanour, I was the ideal attendee. Listening, understanding, and putting
forward a couple of questions here and there. Trying to answer any question placed upon the group.
I had turned into what I despised the most in my school days- a teachers’ pet. But then I convinced
myself by thinking that this wasn’t the kind of crap the authorities drill into you to get you to
saturate, this was life. And I wanted to be a topper. At least at living, if at nothing else.
79.
Just as how Tony came in to the place and left, dressed in his best, there came a new inmate, Joy
who came in just as sharp. He had no recollection as to how he reached the Institute. The only thing
he remembered was being injected with some liquid and the next memory of his was from inside the
green gate.

Not paying him much heed initially, my curiosity grew as I observed his mannerisms. He was a loon
as well as a goon, alcohol being his fix. The loon bit being obvious with his attempts to engage
everyone in what seemed perfectly clear to me to be very loony affairs.

The usual questions ensued, “Why have they brought you here?”. Down on his bed, getting the drip
treatment, he replied “Fear psychosis”.

“Fear of what?”

“Fear of tigers. I fear one will come and kill me” He calmly explained.

With an attitude like that, he had no choice but to be one of the main events. Very soon, he turned
into one of the resident jesters, even though it was without his being aware of that fact. Apart from
his out of the ordinary views and beliefs, what struck the onlookers was his very prominent paunch.
Almost as if he had been in his final trimester. But despite its prominence, not a word was spoken
about it.

During the music session that night, with a very concerned look, Joy would walk into the ward and
offer anyone who was willing to listen, a contract to go and play in his town. And this offer, if nothing
else, offered a lot of scope for potshots at him, without him realising.

“We will do a 60-40 contract.” He said

“That’s too less. We want 60, you take 40.”

“ No, no. We will do a 50-50.”

“Nothing doing. 60 for us, 40 for you. Plus, you need to make all the necessary arrangements.”

“What arrangements?”

“Amplifiers, speakers, girls, booze. All of that.”

“Ohh… All of that….”

Finally, mumbling to himself, he retired to his bed.

He had also walked into one of the Big Brother meets in the afternoon and when his turn came to do
the introduction, his was “I was brought here because of a slight headache that I had in the
morning.” And finally, at the proper evening session, he had confessed his fear psychosis, but this
time, not for tigers, but for invisible people who were out to get him and his family.

What surprised me most, was not the person, or even his stories, but the people taking in all this
information and not giving him any gas. But this was not to last for too long. One sunny afternoon,
while I was pacing around the ward, I see two inmates, sitting on their beds, looking out the window.
Very innocent, I thought. Till the moment Joy walks into their field of vision. Which is when the
shouts of “Eh Motey!! Motey!!” start. My faith in humanity restored, I proceeded to join the two and
throw in a couple of shouts myself. Not my proudest moment, but I had fun. So much fun, that I had
to reconsider my feeling on the kind of fun innocent name calling could provide.

80.
The Institute had decided to organise a talent show for all the inmates. And it created quite an
atmosphere inside the wards. Everyone started to hone their individual skills and started practising
whatever it was they were planning on showcasing. And to my surprise, I found out that my name
had also been placed in the roster. But as usual, I didn’t pay much heed. Deciding to play one of the
few songs I could actually play, this one by Dylan, one very close to my heart.

The show was scheduled to take place in the hour reserved for housekeeping activities. The rest of
the day passed by pretty uneventfully, and on came the big day. Awaited by all for varied reasons,
some for the music, some for the dances, and most for the hour they could spend doing nothing
when otherwise they’d have been labouring around the wards, sweeping floors.

I was fast asleep when one of the inmates came in, woke me up, and announced to me that the
show had already started. I cursed the preponement and reluctantly made my way to the hall where
the event was happening. There was a dance act going on when I walked in, and even though I didn’t
want to accept it, I quite liked it, the dance. Jerry was putting up quite a show with his very pro level
moves. Then came one of the females, doing quite an intense dance. But no one was prepared for
what came next.

A loon with a big behind took the stage. Staggering like a drunk, he fell face first in the middle of the
stage. A heavy round of applause ensued before the song even began. And when it did begin, the
crowd was out of control. He was making a fine show of his balloon like buttocks and was joined by
not one, not two or even three, but all the dancers, who obviously wanted to be a part of this show.
What with all the out of control applause and cheer that he was getting from the crowd.

Anyone taking over the stage after this would have been booed off had this been a pay to watch
event. If for nothing else, but the cheer anti-climax that would’ve happened. But the show did go on,
and finally my turn came. I refused to take the mike, because the song was about the feels and I
never used a mike before and wasn’t sure if I could recreate the feels. But I didn’t feel it at the
moment, and didn’t put too much passion into the performance, deciding to go with the bare
minimum effort required. I left to go pass out again after the performance. The results were to be
announced in the following morning session.

I came second. Applause followed. But what amused me was that I was second in a category with
two participants. Quite like almost all the events I had taken part in after my stint in. But at that
moment, optimism was of the essence. And inside the Institute, whenever the there is a question of
the glass half empty or half full, the latter was always the answer. I received the second prize. And
when I thought I was at the heights of optimism, even the audience were given prizes. For being a
good audience.
81.
I had now, for a long time, been giving myself a lot of alone time, where I would stare out the stage
and introspect. The view was amazing, with fields of green, blue skies, and rolling hills. On this one
particular day, whilst I was introspecting, contemplating life with a smoke I my hand, I saw a figure
making a run for it in the fields. I realised it was an inmate attempting a break. I didn’t do the right
thing and inform the authorities, but looked on with satisfaction and praying for a successful break
out, something that I couldn’t do myself. No one, for the longest time, realised there was head less
than the official number.

And this created quite an uproar when they realised, by which time, the inmate must’ve been
opening a celebratory bottle at home. Or maybe, if he learned anything from the Institute, enjoying
a cup of hot tea.

The next couple of days were pretty uneventful, with tight scrutiny being on the security situation.
But once the security was lax again, two other inmates tried a breakout. Obviously inspired by the
success story, they jumped off the stage and made a blind run for it. Fortune might favour the brave,
but every once in a while, there is an exception, and this time, they were it. The statistical anomaly.
They couldn’t even make it out of the campus, falling into a pond under construction.

They were brought back in, stripped of their pants, and tied to their respective beds. Just as I had
been, except, this time, I was the onlooker. And this amused me to no ends. Made the most pf the
situation, advising them on the best course of action now that they were tied up and without
smokes or pants.

82.
Things had become very interesting by now and everyday had something new and eventful in store,
compared to the duller days of yore. And this particular day just happened to be a striking example
of that. Two patients had just walked in, both the toony kind- Sharma, an engineer with a knack for
taking out his academic frustrations on his mother, the other, Caw, a local, whose entry I had
completely missed because of the bang caused by the former. Sharma came in, a shouting bundle of
mass with the occasional screams of pursuing legal action against any physical interventions. Owing
to the illegal nature of physical interventions, which he so conveniently seemed to forget when it
came to his own frustrations. He was finally tied up, but he didn’t give up hope for the longest time,
he kept on blabbering; but this wasn’t the regular kind of low decibel blabbering you hear. Oh no!
This was something completely different, making the blabber a cross between a mumble and a
scream, something I’d never witnessed before.

And that very same day, Jerry also had an episode. With all these new toons, the old timers had to
make a statement. Maybe they felt they were being left out? Instigated by Tom, as usual, Jerry went
into one of his usual attention seeking fits, with the difference being that this time, all the attention
was on Sharma, who was also putting up quite a show. Which meant Jerry had to take up a notch
higher. Things were already pretty eventful as it was, but this was on a whole new level. With all the
cacophony created by these two, Caw decided to join in on the scene which finally resulted in being
a screaming show that people would’ve paid good money to observe. Only, here, in the Institute,
this was one of the perks that came in with the admission.
Finally, Jerry was calmed down, Caw passed out, until, finally, it was only Sharma who stayed up. The
last man screaming. Which came as a happy relief to all those inmates who had put in their smokes
on him. Yes, the gambling tendencies came into full frontal glory at such a display. But eventually,
even Sharma drifted off to sleep, sleeping with a calm that was really unexpected, really causing a
sigh of relief to all the other inmates who had no hopes at sleeping because of the chaos that was
happening all around.

83.
I had often wondered about the point in all the discipline that was being enforced on the patients,
who were very obviously people who didn’t run by the clock. It might not be too exaggerated to say
that the clock ran by them. What with their vices and all their mutated biological clocks. What
exactly the point was in waking up at six in the morning to attend a PT session of all things, to get
breakfast at seven, the morning meeting at nine and lunch at eleven, handicraft till one, tea at one
thirty, evening session at two thirty, and finally, dinner at six really seemed to go past me. Even my
grandfather, a stickler for time, had a more relaxed schedule than the one that was enforced on us.

The answer, really, was quite simple. “Aim for the moon, and you might land up on a star.”

84.
During my duration of stay in the Institute, I had come to see very clearly the most important human
emotion- love. More specifically, love for a family, from a family, and by a family. Too see with vivid
clarity the trouble parents go through to get their offspring back on track, when they feel they have
gone off the rails a bit more than they could take. The trouble they go through to right their kids’
wrongs, to make them responsible members of society, despite their history. And in the process,
take even more shit from them. All for their improvement. And how blind these kids can be. To all
this love that is all around them. To all the effort their parents are putting in, the sacrifices they
make, the kind of humiliation they face head on. To know that no drug, or no quantity of drug will
give them the satisfaction that will be felt by their parents, if only they could overcome and conquer
this sickness.

Of the love the brothers, sister, grandparents have for their family in the Institute. Making ends
meet, despite their circumstances, to just get them an apple on Saturday so that they have
something nice to eat. To maybe forget about the nature of the place they were in. To give them a
brief glimpse of normalcy. In a place that is all about abnormality.

A glimpse of this love I saw one morning, when a young boy had been admitted into the Institute,
with his father coming in to take care of him, making his transition as smooth as possible. They
didn’t seem very well off, maybe even struggling to keep his son in the Institute. And in the
afternoon, his father walked in with a bottle of Fanta in his hand, which he proceeded to keep in his
jacket till he met his son, which is when he handed it over to him. The son took a couple of sips and
kept the bottle back in his cupboard.

This little act showed me how ungrateful and spoilt I had been for all the things that I had always
taken for granted from my parents without even a thank you. I felt really guilty.

In the evening, Romeo had the bottle in his hand and was handing it out to anyone who was near
him.
And this completed the parent child relationship of the current generation. No respect, no
gratefulness, no word of thanks for the people who would willingly put their life on the line for their
kids had they been put to the test.

A tear carelessly ran down my cheeks. I didn’t know how to let my parents know that I had always
been grateful and thankful for everything they had done for me. How to let them know that they
meant the world to me. And in my mind, I said a silent thank you.

85.
Addiction. I had finally been beaten into submission when one morning the Man had called me into
his cabin for small talk session.

“I have finally mastered the art of living one day at a time.” I said joyfully.

“You’ve learned nothing” the Man replied.

“You’re still in denial and the day count for you is still at zero.”

This very simple statement served as another shock therapy session, and finally, that evening, in the
session for the goons, I did my introduction the way it was supposed to be done.

And I had also conceded to that fact as well. How all my arguments had been invalid. I had, all this
while, been speaking about the legality of the substance and how, in certain parts of the world, even
the recreational use of the substance had been permitted.

But this was not the issue at all. It was about the quantity of the intake. Even alcohol wqas perfectly
legal after you crossed a certain age, but that didn’t stop people who turned into alcoholics and
ended up needing treatment. And for the first time since I started smoking pot, I had come to accept
that treatment was necessary for certain patients.

I had given the matter a lot of thought and during one of my garden sessions, when I saw the Man
cutting off branches of his bonsai trees and carving off dead matter, I had come up with an analogy
for addiction and its effects

“Like a novice gardener who might cut off one branch because it was dead, and to count er the
damage to the integrity of the tree and to balance the effect of the first cut, he might cut off
another, and then ended up cutting more of the branches, achieving happiness as he kept on
shaping the tree to his whim and fancy, he will end up destroying the tree and be left with a dead
mass of timber. You need to know where to cut the branches and when to stop. Without which,
you’d end up with a dead mass of little character.”

86.
Then came the morning of the coup; at least a feeble attempt at one. One fine Sunday, a scene
ensued when Igor, after borrowing a mouthwash from a fellow inmate, was accused of theft of the
same. Being a very emotional person, his emotions burst out before he could even register what was
going on. He started shouting and yelling, making it clear that he was no thief. That someone else
must have flicked the bottle. This carried on until the big doctor came in. she was a little harsh on
him, an him being a very delicately balanced time bomb, he went into a frenzy of denial, calling
everyone unflattering names. After which, he left the ward, leaving me and the big doctor free to
indulge in a bit of small talk.

Once we went out, Igor started another onslaught at the Big Doctor and was joined by Haresh as
well. The only problem with this mutiny was that it was only the two of them who decided to make a
stand against the authorities, but nonetheless, it was very entertaining. Two underdogs going
against the machine. Something I had read about only in history books on foreign countries.

87.
The Institute was going through a severe water crisis and it would run from the tap only after dinner.
This caused a lot of issues, especially when it came to the issues in the bathroom.

Inmates would have to walk either to the tank outside the canteen or to the well in the garden, all to
fill a bucket of water. Which didn’t last as long as the walk to the source.

One particular morning, as I went to take a leak in the bathroom, I saw the shithole covered with
pieces of newspaper. “Necessity is the mother of all invention.”. But this was not an act of invention,
but of substitution I thought to myself, amused by my own thoughts.

88.
I had, by now, overcome all my fears and barriers that had kept me from enjoying my time inside.
From cold water, to no water; retrospection to introspection; and finally, spending nights without
fearing what to do. In fact, this was quite the opposite of what was happening. The nights were the
most happening around that time. Mostly at the expense of the toons. From circus stunts, to flashing
of the privates, all for the princely price of two bidis, it was quite a happening scene at a very non-
happening place.

I stopped caring about leaving and had surrendered that part of my life to the powers that were. I
was quite happy to be where I was. A place where my biggest fear and limitation was my supply of
smokes. “Where else could life be so easy?” I pondered.

Epilogue
I had been documenting the day’s events for two hours a day, every day, right after the evening
session. The book was something that helped me pass my time productively. I never imagined that I
would ever sit down and get it out in an electronic medium. After a month and a half of writing every
day, hoping to leave the next day, I had given up and completely stopped thinking about when I
would be out. Having had enough of writing, I somehow convinced myself that there was no point to
it, and ended the book on a very abrupt and random note. But after finishing it, I had decided to do
things more actively. Life was going up in terms of morale and I have realised that I picked the wrong
time to stop. The events described here on might be more of a romantic notion than actual events,
but the events did happen, some of them completely rocking the boat that was the Institute. More
characters had come in, more interesting than any I had encountered, which, as you might think,
cannot be possible, but they were. Honest to god.
89.
One morning, there was hushed excitement in the air. Before coming to this particular morning, I
would like to recount the happenings of the previous evening. After the handicrafts session, which
involved cutting and sanding stuff, a plier had just disappeared into thin air. There was some ruckus
that precipitated because of this, but eventually, everyone just accounted to the plier being
misplaced and managing to stay undiscovered. Ulterior motives not being taken into account.

Coming back to the morning and the hushed excitement, there was a lot of it. But not to the public
eye. Because I used to chill with Jimi, I heard a bit of the excitement, although not understanding
because of the language barrier. But I could decipher that things were in the works. When I asked
him what was up, he just brushed it aside saying something about some festival. Not quite
convinced, I let the matter pass. The day passed by uneventfully, nothing about anything off the
record. But come evening, the excitement was at its peak. The gang of the young locals up on their
toes, plotting and conspiring, pointing to the windows in the ward and such like. I was made
obviously aware of events when finally, this kid came up to me and asked me of my route to the
outside world. They hadn’t forgotten of my escapade. I told them and asked them what was up,
which was again brushed aside. Finally, smoking my last cigarette, I decided to call it a night.

The next morning, I was woken up to more excitement than even the previous morning. The nurse in
charge of the night duty was all worked up and was going around asking questions. PT and breakfast
followed, after which we came in to the ward. Which is when I saw the attempts to cut open the
metal grill that covered the window. The gang was looking very guilty and was in a state of muted
anxiety. I put two and two together and thought “Wow! A properly planned, but poorly executed
break out plan.” Mostly a case of too many cooks, and too much calculation. A while later, the PLA
walked in announcing that The Man wanted to meet a few of the young guys.

During the morning session, we were informed that a random check was going to take place to look
for the missing plier. No one said much, I wasn’t concerned at all, I wasn’t even an accomplice; in
another world, I would have been the perpetrator. After the session, I walk in to see The Man
standing in this one particular ward. Two of the kids walk in, and we were asked to leave. Outside, I
heard quite a few whacks being handed out. They had found the plier. It was in a bag, and the owner
of the bag was to be denied of his smokes for a week. Thus ended the mystery of the missing plier.

90.
Around that time, The Man had sent for me, and on our meeting, he asked me if all was good and
why I didn’t consider joining the gym. Telling him it was too artificial, he asked me if I wanted to
work in the garden, to which my face lit up. Out of the usual cage into a new cage! Man, what
prospects! Having received the message, he told me I could start that very morning after the session.
I collected my daily five and was standing looking around, when the PLA came in and asked to hurry
up and follow him. Which I did. Going down a route which passed the mess, I was wondering what to
expect. I knew I could expect a few bidis, because that was why most of the inmates went to the
garden. You were paid in a few bidis for your effort.

First thing I thought of when I went in was that I had run down quite a few of these carefully planted
plants, mowed down, to be more honest. Except, on the night, with no light and without my glasses,
it seemed like a chicken run. Chicken run because that was what was being constructed in the
garden when I went in. But I was too uninitiated to be working on something as major as a chicken
run. My task was to collect gravel from one part of the garden, load them into sacks, and carry the
sacks to another part of the garden. What fun! My hands were finally getting g some dirty work
done, aside from cleaning out some dirty pot every once in a while. After a dozen rounds, I realised I
was very thirsty and that I was sweating like a pig. Being the first time, I didn’t carry my bottle and
had worn regular clothes. Looking around I found a well where I managed to get a drink from, but
about the clothes I could do nothing. We continued for a while after that and had to take a break for
lunch. Hands looking like a part of the earth, I decided I needed to wash it. But telling myself that the
earth as pure, I just superficially washed it with some water, not using any soap. Using the same
hands for lunch, i was very pleased with myself. Having my post grub smoke, we carried on again
into the garden, the PLA asking me to get, my towel and a change of clothes. Realising I would get to
have a bath, but not knowing where, I carried on with an air of mystery about the afternoon. After
another dozen rounds, we decided to call it a day. After being handed our pay for the day, I was told
that if I wanted to have a bath (which I obviously did, with dirt over everything I was wearing), I
could use the well. Like I was made to the last time. And I did. The cool freshness of the water really
rejuvenated me and made me decide that this was how I was going to spend the rest of my time
here. The perks being an excuse to skip handicrafts, a couple of extra doses of nicotine, and a feeling
of freshness after all that grimy work.

That evening, I scavenged around for a pair of jeans that I never wore. The intention being to cut it in
half to make a pair of work denim. To get in the feel of things. Not being able to find a pair of
scissors, I saved that task for the morning. Which, when came, I made another enquiry and got my
hands on a big pair of scissors. When asked why, I told them of my intentions, which he didn’t really
buy. So, I asked him to cut it himself, which he did and which is how I got my hands on “work
clothes”. Days were really flying by, by then and I had not a care in the world. But the specimens
never stopped coming in.

91.
The first of the two blatantly obvious specimens came in one morning, after I had gone for a meet
with The Man. On my way in, I saw a military truck accompanied my men in rifles. I was wondering
what could have happened. Once I went in through the green gate, I saw more military men, all bulk
and fit. Inside the ward, I heard screams. A big built man was in the process of being tied to his bed.
This man happened to be some officer in the forces, judging by the interest by the men. The usual
staff wasn’t able to put him down, so his troops had come in and had to push him down. The PLA did
the rest. You had to give it to him, the PLA, he never hesitated, in tying men down. The screams
continued, all mumbles, but in a high decibel. There was nothing really exciting that was happening
till then. But in the afternoon, when I had come in to take my towel, I hear more coherent screams.

“I want to pee, let me loose!”

“We can’t let you free, you’ll have to pee in the kettle.” Said the staff in charge.

“How can I pee here, I’m an officer” he was nearly in the verge of tears.

What added to the scene was that the staff asked his caregiver, an officer of a lower rank, a hulk of a
man, to convince him to pee in the kettle. Which was when his face went red. Making a weird face,
he attempted to talk to the man who wanted to pee. The scene that ensued, I can’t describe, but
just imagine the situation. An officer, rip-roaring drunk in the morning, is admitted into the Institute,
with an army of officers in charge of getting him there safely, the man is tied down, something very
unfamiliar to the lower officers, then, having the urge to pee, he asks that he be let loose. To pee.
But the Institute didn’t discriminate. He wasn’t let loose. Not wanting to pee in a kettle, he asks his
junior to make a request, which after being denied, places on him the responsibility to get his senior
to pee in a bottle.

These are the facts. I’m not as accomplished a wordsmith to make the situation any funnier. Truth
being stranger than fiction? I agree.

92.
The other specimen was and will always remain a mystery. What he had come in for. One morning,
two men were let in inside the green gate. Two brothers, one very smart, the other looked like a bit
of a wildchild, complete with a clean-shaven head. No one suspected anything, everyone welcomed
them in. They seemed amiable enough and they fit in perfectly. The older and the more respectable
of the two was the (obviously) the caretaker for the initial few days.

We got to talking in the night, in the bathroom for our post grub smoke session. He was talking
about how alcohol was prohibited where he was from and the kind of stuff he had to drink to make
do. And how upon arriving in the city, he got himself a bottle of the cheaper brand of whiskey and
how that went in like the smoothest thing he had ever had to drink. The talk carried on about
alcohol, prohibition, and addiction, but I walked out after I was done. The music session was going
on and the wildchild, Vin, walked in. He joined in for a couple of the songs and requested a few of his
own. One which stuck was “Macy’s Day Parade” by Greenday. I absolutely loved the song and made
it a point to come back and get the song in my library. As the night was closing in, we started playing
a classic, “Creep”, and Vin felt all the feels and when the song went to ‘What the hell am I doing
here?’ he stopped and asked Jimi what the hell he, Jimi, was doing there.

The next morning, during the PT session, while everyone else was half asleep on the court, Vin was
up and about. He was in the centre stage, doing frog jumps, jump kicks, and what not. It was hard to
imagine him being controlled by anything. He wasn’t affected by the regimental lifestyle at all. He
carried on to lead the days’ session. His brother left after the morning session, and we carried on
with the day.

I had to report to the garden for my regular dose of menial labour and such I didn’t get to see him
after that. On coming back for lunch, there was the regular queue and nothing seemed amiss.
Apparently, Vin was extremely hungry and had gone in to see when lunch would be served. We
assumed he did and he was sitting in. Which is when we realised. He wasn’t there, he wasn’t in the
ward either. He had pulled a disappearing act. Everyone went around looking for him, but to no
avail. He had vanished.

That night, when we sat down to discuss the happenings, we realised that his brother had taken all
the luggage with him when he left, and Vin had nothing on him except a small satchel. So, the affair
seemed to be pre-planned. But what the point was to the whole affair was what confused us. Did he
come in for addiction and deciding that he didn’t like it, pulled a great escape or was the great
escape the whole plan behind the affair. That he come in to see if he could break out? And had he
pulled this stunt before? In another Institute? Just for kicks? Well, we will never know.
93.
Another incident that happened when I was in was one that I couldn’t write down in my journal.
Owing to the fact that I would occasionally show it to a few of the doctors, mostly the big doctor just
to let them know that I wasn’t all that looney tooney. I was in the habit of writing down the
occasional poem or prose and then I would show them to the big doc. What my point of contention
with her was that pot was my muse and it left me feeling inspired. It really didn’t, but at that point, I
liked to think it did. I mean, with my stance on its usage, I had to back it up with some claims. My
claim was not a very original one, it made me creative.

So, I had made a contact inside who had access to the outside. He would flit in and out and we
became quite pally. Usually sneaking in a couple of smokes, one day, the thrill seeker inside me got
the better of me and I ended up asking him if he could get me some of the good stuff, to which, to
my surprise, he replied that he could. But that he would have to wait for the proper setting. And I
waited. But not in vain. The day finally came, and he brought in a cigarette filled with the good stuff,
and he handed it over to me. I made it a point to go out on my own and have a scene for old time’s
sake.

Waiting for the day’s events to get over, I went over to the stage, where I would usually go for my
evening smoke, I sat down, looking at the view of the hills and the sky, the greens and the blues, and
I lit up. And somehow, I managed to have a good time, in spite of all the negative connotations in the
place. Maybe that’s what they mean when they talk about controlled settings? All my wishes
seemed to have been granted as I did manage to have a surge of inspiration. Maybe it was the weed,
maybe it was the setting, or maybe it was just placebo, I don’t know, but I did manage to write a
couple of heartfelt poems and then immediately went to meet the big doc. Showing her the output, I
waited for a critical analysis.

“This is really nice. What inspired you?”

“Ah, nothing much. Just the set- the sky, the hills, the clouds, the whole composition really. It called
out to me. How could i miss it?”

“See! You don’t need substances to inspire you. Inspiration comes from within.”

Having considered both the battle and the war won, I retired to my bed to drift off to a heavy
sleeping session.

94.
Another fascinating thing that happened was one that brings in more depth to the title of the book.
Initially, I had thought about the tree being dead and then waking up to a full bloom of flowers
which were then shed to be replaced by the brightest green leaves. That was the initial idea.

But even metaphorically, other flowers were blooming as well. There were guys who had come in
mute, not saying a word at all. They would spend their time inside, not talking to anyone, going over
to people they liked but again, not saying a thing to them. But slowly, very passively, they would
change. They would start grunting, from their usual nodding. Not something people would realise
immediately, the grunts. They would then start saying a word or two, finally, the competition where
I came second, Tommy, the guy who refused to speak, came in first. He started singing his heart out,
rapping, even at times. So, it wasn’t just the literal flowers that bloomed but the metaphorical toons
as well. A change that I couldn’t comprehend initially as to how it came about. But The Man seemed
to know his way around.

95.
Finally, we come to Mike. The one person who I actually stayed in touch with even after I left. He
was brilliant and he was something else. Conventional was what he was not. And I will never be able
to do justice to the man he was with any number of chapters or paragraphs. He was like no one I had
ever met before. But I want something with me to remind me of him and also pay my respects to the
man he was. This is my attempt at that.

One evening I was sitting on my bed reading my book, when I hear a voice talking to one of the
doctors. He had an accent and I was a little intrigued. When I hone in on the conversation, I hear this

“So doc, if I don’t behave like a naughty boy, I’ll be out in three months?”

The doctor was at a loss for words as this was a completely unique patient here. Will get onto the
details later, but I was intrigues and I went in for a bit of a bull shooting session. I go up to him and
introduce myself to him. First thing I noticed was that he was drunk and reeking of booze. But he
had a thermos filled with tea spiced with cardamom. I ask him what he was in there for and he told
me addiction. To a lot of substances. Asked him for his backstory, apparently, his brother had done
himself in and he had come in to sort out the matters regarding the legality of properties left behind
and all. He was drinking too much and he decided to try out the Institute as he had heard quite a bit
about it. It wasn’t as easy as he thought it would be. The first time he came in was after a party and
he was, again, drunk. Coming in alone, he was denied entry as he had come alone and a patient
needed someone to take responsibility. He came in the next day with his girlfriend, and he was
denied entry again as that person needed to be family. Came in again the next day with his mother,
who was suffering from Alzheimer’s, entry denied again as that person had to be accountable. He
flew his sister in the next time and finally got himself admitted. What a glorious change from the
usual inmates who had to be sedated, tied up, and forced inside the green gate. And then we have
this man, who makes it his life’s mission to come in.

He had come with a caretaker, who I assumed helped him around the house. As the night set in, he
started taking out cigarettes, the man, Friday, not Mike. I immediately took a liking to the pair of
them and we got to talking. Apparently, Mike had walked in with a trunk full of books which was not
allowed in, apparently, the library was good enough and aa trunk full of books was unprecedented. I
took him over to my cupboard and he spent some time looking at my books, taking one for the
night.

I wake up in the morning and he’s already up, waiting for me to wake up because he was done with
that book and wanted another, but not without asking. I told him we’d get to it after PT and he
agreed. We countered a cigarette after breakfast and we were chilling generally. He spent a bit of
time in Iraq and he was in charge of pressing the red button after these buildings had been fitted
with explosives. The place being a warzone, he got used to the adrenaline rush. Coming back home,
he couldn’t somehow get that rush anymore, so he got into the habit of injecting adrenaline shots.
He had also been part of an IED attack that took the life of the officer who was in the car in front of
him, he somehow survived, but the scars remained. After he got back, he went for a few PTSD
counselling sessions where he was prescribed certain drugs which he would crush, mix with a shot of
whiskey and shoot. He was a mess, but a brilliant one at that.

Another thing that was very different about him was that because he wanted to come in himself, he
was not scared about the consequences of his actions. He could leave whenever he wanted to and
he made it a point to have fun while he was in. Initially, he went with the flow, doing what he was
told, but as time passed and he tried to gauge the logic behind the sessions, he started revolting. He
started bringing in books to the handicrafts session, which is what I was doing as well, but off the
records. No one could see me, as it is people were just killing time, I thought I might as well read and
make the most of it, but on the sly. He would walk in, with a book in his hand, stand by the window
and read, visible to the whole crowd. Which is when he was told that he shouldn’t be reading and
that he should be doing what everyone else was doing, sanding pieces of wood with a to and fro
motion. He did that, but he also made it a point to ask the big doctor if there was some sexual
innuendo behind the method. Which got me cracking.

Sunday sessions when we would have the hymns going on, he would sit outside and smoke his
cigarettes. When The Man would ask him to come in, he would say he converted to Islam and going
for hymns would be against his religion.

We had a lot of fun, he would tell me about his times in the army, in California, in other rehabs he
had been in, in jails; he seemed to have done it all. We would go check out books in the library, and
we found Dianetics, the book which got people into Scientology. He had been telling about this very
book and of other books and substances, that The Man wouldn’t have wanted me to find out about,
especially not in the Institute. So, when I found the book, I immediately let out a hushed and excited
squeal, telling him the book was there, which made obvious to the librarian sitting there that we wer
up to no good. So, when I went with the book to issue for the week, she said she would have to
check with the higher authorities and then let me know. The answer was a “No, you can’t issue this
book, we’ve kept it aside.”

On another day, he was telling me about this technique he had picked up in some shanty
somewhere on making jungle juice. Places where you couldn’t come across alcohol. So the theory
was pretty simple, you put in a lot of sweet stuff, like juices and fruits, grind it all and add some
yeast. You then tighten the lid and let it sit, stirring it every alternate day. We obviously couldn’t
come up with yeast over there, so he had a quick fix for the technical difficulty as well. Take a few
slices of bread, crush it, and put it in. I was in awe. The theory made sense. So, we spent the next
few days scavenging for juices and fruits and some bread, which was the easiest to find. All you had
to do was sacrifice a couple of slices during breakfast. We got a container and we let the stuff brew.
As strange a brew as it could get. We hid it under our bed and waited for it to bubble, which it did.
Although not as soon as he had hoped as the temperatures were a little on the lower side.

I had always planned on going back home for good, not taking the weekend leaves that patients
could opt for. But one Saturday, The Man called me to his chamber and told me that I had to get
home for the weekend before he could properly release me. I didn’t know whether to feel good that
I was going home, or to realise that I could have been doing this for quite a few weeks. But I packed
my stuff, left for home that evening. With the brew in my bag. I got home and I don’t remember
much about the trip, except about the brew. I had built it up for a long time and finally, that night, I
took out the bottle, kept a glass aside, after straining it, and put the bottle aside. My dad walked in
and saw me in the process of keeping the bottle away. He asked me what it was and I told him it was
an experiment, but he was more intuitive than that and got the truth out of me. Finally, I had to
flush the rest of the brew down, but I still had the glass kept aside. Sipping on it that night, with
some good canned music, I had a good time. Maybe we didn’t let it ferment for long enough or
maybe the quantity wasn’t enough, but I wasn’t as drunk as I thought I’d be. On my way back to the
Institute, I bought a twenty pack of cigarettes, but I knew the staff would do a full check before
letting me in. I had the pack in my bag but I knew that was too obvious a place to keep something as
valuable as a pack of smokes in. At our stop for lunch, I decided to do some out of the box thinking. I
went in to the loo, took my belt off, and belted all the cigarettes to my chest. Sure enough, at the
reception, the staff took me aside, checked my bag, took my pants off and checked, but they didn’t
think anyone would hide their contraband on their chest with a belt.

I had come in victorious and that week was one that flew by the fastest. Equipped with twenty
smokes, we could afford to skip PT, to stick it to The Man whenever we wanted to, because he didn’t
have any control over the twenty that I sneaked in. that weekend, The Man called me in again, and
told me that I would be leaving that very evening. I don’t remember what I felt, but I definitely
wasn’t as euphoric as I thought I’d be. I had seen a lot, done a lot, and also, learned a lot. Things I
could never have learnt outside. I had changed, maybe not in the way the Institute would have
wanted me to but change I did. And as I walked out, after saying my byes to everyone, and then
separately to Mike, I made my way outside the green gate for the final time. The flowers had shed
off, but the leaves were there, and the tree could not have had any more life even if Mr. Gogh had
painted it himself.