When does the story of a man like me start? Is it when he is born or is it when he shows his first symptom? Is it when he meets the triggering circumstances or is it when he is under a full-blown episode? I am confused where to start this story. The experts are divided on it. Our condition is not well understood. Over the past century, experts have given many explanations to this problem I face. Some say it is a genetic disorder, some point out to bad parenting. Some call it an infection while there are a few who refuse to call it a disorder or illness at all. None of these reasons have been unanimously accepted by the scientific community. The verdict is split and I am confused where to start.

But thankfully, life gives us closures and new beginnings. For me, joining the PhD program was a new beginning, so I will start from here. I entered the PhD program of an Indian business school. We were around twenty odd PhD scholars in the new batch along with around four hundred and fifty MBA students. The PhD students had been called earlier for a preparatory course before the actual classes began. Some MBA students had also been called for the course. The preparatory course consisted of classes in basic math, computer science and English.

I started making friends. Every night after the class the cohort would gather either at the lawns or go out to dine. One of the group members used to play the guitar, another one played the drums. We jammed in the music room on Hindi songs. I used to sing with them. I was in a pretty good mood in those days. There was a promise of something new happening in my life. I was happy.

The preparatory course ended within a few days. Every new student had come on campus. Classes started in a few days. The Institute provided us with a number of books and case materials for the first semester. The new students were young and energetic. The PhD students were supposed to take classes with the MBA students. There were five sections of the first-year students, each section had around ninety students. PhD students were equally distributed within these sections.

The design of the classes was tailor made for the first-year study. Seats arranged in a semicircular arc in a step well structure. The faculty could see each student whereas every student had clear access to the board and the faculty in the well.

I heard new terms in class called cold calls and class participation. At the beginning, the students would vie to take part in class discussions. There were extra marks for Class Participation. It was difficult for me to focus my attention on what was being taught in class. My mind wandered around. Sometimes I would day dream. Occasionally, I would make pictures in the notebook. Sometimes I would just notice students in the class.

My attention was always drawn to the students who were good speakers. In a small way, I would be jealous of them. Some of them were pretty confident in speaking without any qualms. It was not their knowledge that impressed me. It was the ability to articulate their thoughts well. I had always been a bad speaker and resisted speaking in class. But they, they were like firebrand activists articulating their thoughts clearly and concisely.

Many assignments we got were group assignments. The office had already divided us into groups. Groups were like municipalities in the big city of the first year MBA program. Every group had to submit assignments together and give presentations when called upon. Our group was a peaceful mix of students, a municipality of five people. We jelled well.

Till then, I had lost my willingness to compete. In fact, I would run away from academic competition. I had become what friends in college used to call, enlightened. Like a swami. In Hindi we say ‘sab moh maya tyag diya hai’ which means ‘I have sacrificed all my wants and wishes’. I worked with a visible aura of indifference. Moreover, I was not fighting for a high paying job like the MBAs. My only requirement was to get a B in all the courses of our area. That is, I needed a B in all the Economics area courses.

There was only one Economics area course in the first slot: Microeconomics. For some reason, I was confident in this course as I was generally confident in all the other courses. I could see some people suffering in particular courses. Some students could not understand the graphs of Microeconomics. A few had problems deciphering the formulas of math. Further, the course in computer science was a pain in the ass for some. They sought help in whatever courses they were struggling in. I helped a few of my dorm mates in microeconomics as well.

Apart from the academic environment, I found myself in a new culture. The crop of students joining the MBA program was elite. They spoke good English and were well versed in the western way of life. Our country is a strange country. In my country, if you can sing American songs, read American books and have watched American movies, you are branded a species of higher quality. India’s elite institutions are full of half Americans or a better word would be wannabe Americans. Every elite Indian young person has to make a choice of whether they want to be American or stay Indian.  Most of them turn out to be a hybrid with the traits mixed in varying proportions. As a student in an elite undergraduate Institute, I had watched a lot of American movies and read some American books. I could speak decent English that is when I spoke in muted lines. Hence among the cohort that joined the business school, I was a species of high quality.

A number of perks come when you belong to that species. People want to be friends with you. You get invited to parties often. Added to that, if you play football like I did, you get a little popular among women. I considered this the single biggest advantage of joining this program, my interaction with women. I had grown up in a conservative small town where having a girlfriend was like playing with the shark. I spent my undergraduate life at an Institute located in a forgettable town where the number of women was like a drop in an ocean of men. You can guess how I felt when I arrived into a culture where women and men could talk freely and as far as I know sleep together with the full knowledge and acceptance of the people of the community. It was like I had come to heaven.

When I was at my undergraduate Institute, our seniors had an advice for us. Never marry the first girl you fall in love with. The reason was simple. We were so thirsty for female company that our choice would more often than not be suboptimal. My situation was worse. I had never had a relationship in school. I had to be content with the few stories of underground romance of my friends.  And with the romance I watched in Hindi films. I especially liked the Delhi girls shown in films. They were beautiful, idiosyncratic, sarcastic, and full of love. There was a batch of Delhi girls at this Institute. They reminded me of those film actresses when I met them. 

I made female friends. I made male friends. It’s easy to make friends when people are happy. The MBA students who were jumping into a bright future were a happy bunch. Happiness like sadness is contagious. I caught some of the bug. The sadness of my past had receded deep down somewhere inside my body. I had forgotten I was angry at my father. The tight course structure in the first year hardly gave me an opportunity to mull over other things.

One group of friends I made was those in my dorm and from adjoining dorms, who were smokers and drinkers. This bunch was not new to me. The people were, not the activities. The smokers and drinkers’ group at my undergraduate Institute talked in jokes, making fun of each other. We discussed politics and science. During work, the group bitched about the managers in the firm. Here at the business school, the group was nostalgic bunch, or you could say a little narcissist. They talked a lot about their past and their achievements. Sometimes we discussed the business school professors and other students.

Another difference was that these new friends of mine talked in English. My ex-friends were majorly Hindi speakers. In the elite Institutes, students make an effort to get American. Indian languages are the first casualty. Students, who are Indian to the core at their homes, start developing an accent and pick up the American slang. I had seen a number of students at my undergraduate Institute who came from villages of Bihar and Rajasthan become diehard fans of Metallica and U2 in their first year. This transformation goes hand in hand with the efforts to learn and is as much a parameter of success and social standing as are your grades.

Another group of friends I made were from my PhD cohort. Ideally, this group should have taken the primary position in my friends list. We were there for the same purpose and supposed to stay the longest with each other. I did not have that sense. And neither the structure of the PhD promotes this kind of camaraderie. We were put up with the MBA’s and split into different sections. We hardly had the time or the incentive to bond with each other in the first year. We were like different members of a band playing alone in different cities with no coordination and nothing beautiful coming out from us.

The slot ended. I got average grades and sufficient ones in my core subject. I had turned a cynic of the kind of greedy behavior the MBA’s had been showing. I had seen this in my undergraduate days, people fighting for single marks as if their life depended on it, and trying to gather CV points by hook or by crook. I was more on the peaceful side.

  Time flew fast and the second slot started. There were many courses to be covered. Working late in the night was a norm with so many assignments to finish. The library was open twenty-four hours, so were the eating joints. You met your section mates in the library and at the joints, sitting with their groups. People were all very busy, engrossed in their studies. Sometimes this kind of pressure could be repulsive to the one looking for peace. But that did not seem to be the case here. There was a sense of energy in the first-year students. I have already told you that they were a happy bunch. Studying alongside them was not a herculean task. The energy and happiness took some pressure away.

I studied not to maximize but to satisfice. I did my part of the group assignments and also studied enough to face the cold calls. With so much to study, comprehensive study of the materials was not possible for me.

In January of the first year, the annual inter Institute sports competition was to happen. I had been selected in the football team to visit Kolkata. We took a flight to Kolkata and then a bus to the Institute which is located at the fringes of the city.  The different teams were raring to go and the four Institutes vied hard to win the cup. On the first night, the football team went to a night club in the city to watch the English Premier League on big screen and drink together. It was a nice outing even though I was not a big fan of the premier league like the others in the team. These guys cheered like a fan on every goal and cursed at every mistake their teams were making.

The matches in the tournament were vocal. Supporters would surround the arenas and shout hard to cheer up their team and demoralize the opposite team. There were few spectators for the football matches but the basketball and the volleyball matches were a cacophony of sounds. On the second night, I smoked marijuana with strangers in a hostel room. Later that night, I drank booze with a childhood friend of mine who was studying there in the MBA program. Next day, after a reprimand from my captain, I played like a zombie in the match, never giving a proper pass to my teammates. We finally lost in football. The Institute had won the first position overall.  

There were many parties on campus. Even though, we were in a state which had banned booze, illegal booze flowed in these parties. Marijuana was also available. There was always a group of smokers in a room smoking it, talking and laughing on jokes. I had been to parties before, at my undergraduate Institute, at my workplace. But the parties here felt different. In my undergraduate days, we had parties only with boys. When boys party with each other, devils smile. People drink like mad. They do the Nagin dance after a while of listening to American rock bands. As the party progresses, the topics of discussion become cruder and the jokes more abstract. More often than not an argument breaks out. I had attended similar kinds of parties at my workplace as well.

Here the crowd, I would say was sophisticated. The language was a mix of Hindi and English. There were ladies in the mix. The presence of women lent a different hue to a party. The songs were different. The booze was different. The discussion topics were different. Women, at least the women here, did not drink like mad. People held their drink talking about matters relevant to them. They discussed college matters, placements, internships, and companies. They argued about American songs and artists. I was not into all these. The only thing I could discuss with experience was the movies. I contributed my cent or two when such topic came about.

Life was fast with lots of things to do in little time. It was well structured in the sense that you knew what you had to do. The Institute provided the readings. The faculty distributed and checked the assignments on time. The students knew the exam syllabus and timings well in advance. It was like you lived in the best planned city in the world.

The environment with new friends, hard work, and joyful parties gave me a sense of ecstasy which I cannot define. I felt as if I had come to heaven. Till now, when I reminisce about those days, it fills me with a sense of elation. It was as if you have entered an underground cave to find all those goods which you had yearned for all your life.  With many good memories, I felt my true potential would be fulfilled if I stayed in the system. It was La Dolce Vita, the good life.