At the end of the semester in which I was assisting, I had to go home. When I reached home, I saw my mother’s room full of dirt. She had applied vermillion all over the room, and filled it with gods and goddesses. She was sleeping on the floor most of the times. She was ill again. She was in one of her episodes. She had stopped taking medicines. I urged her to take medicines. My father, as usual, was indifferent and cribbing. He had given up on my mother long back and left her to her perils. I was the only emotional support my mother had.

I took my mother to my village. She wanted to go too. We surprised our village folks. We told them we had come to do a pooja to the deity. We did not tell them what had happened with me. We performed a lavish pooja in which my mother assisted me. I bowed down to the deity with all the voices in me, telling me to run away. All the time, I was in the three-hour long pooja, I wanted God to give me instructions. I waited for Shiva to tell me what to do. But I heard only the voices in me laughing and making fun of me. I felt my psychic energies rising. Finally, God asked me to go back to the Institute. 

I saw my mother’s situation and gloom descended over me. She wanted a divorce from my father. She had already talked to a lawyer who was going to help her out. I tried to talk her out of it. I told her that to answer your adversaries, you should live happily. I had read it somewhere. I told her that her enemies, including my father, would be happy if she took a divorce. She understood what I had said and decided not to go for it for the time being.  My mother also wanted to get her job at the University in her hometown. She had been forced to quit her job by my father and her father. A case was still going on where in many University faculty wanted to get their wages. The devil, the captain and the wheelchair man were telling me to bring my mother out of that place to my place. I asked her if she would go. She said yes. I booked a flight ticket for her as well for my return. We came back to my Institute. My mother enjoyed the coffee and breakfast on the plane. It was her first flight journey.

We started living in the small hostel room I had. I would sleep on the bed while my mother would sleep on the floor. She would cook for me on the small induction stove I had bought. We used to talk a lot. I told her about The-light and that I see people in my mind. My mother, being the superstitious type, told me that people had power over other people. That some people knew tantric practices and they could influence you from a distance. I started believing in her even though I was never convinced.

Those days I used to take long baths. In the bathroom, I would stand with the coin in my hand waiting for the right directions from God for the day. Sometimes I would stand hours under the shower to take simple decisions on what to do. It was getting difficult for me to make them. Like a friend sent me an email asking me about her decision to do a PhD. I stood with the coin under the shower asking God to give me directions. Once a decision came into my mind, I came out and typed a reply.

One day, I came out of the bathroom and sneezed. A sneeze in my culture is not considered an auspicious thing to do while someone is starting a work. I emitted a dejected sound on sneezing. My mother told me that sneeze was good. Now it settled on my mind that sneeze is a good thing. Immediately, I deduced that if someone sneezes while a particular thought was going on in my head, the action which follows the thought would be good for me. On the corollary, I deduced that cough was a bad thing. If people cough on a thought of mine, I should not do that particular thing.

From that day on, cough and sneeze became my guiding force. If I was walking on the campus, going to the library, and someone coughed in the cafeteria, I would turn back and go home. Once I had to turn back again and again, and oscillate on the road because someone would always cough on my way. If I was sitting at the tea stall outside the Institute, I would wait for a cough or a sneeze to decide future action. I reasoned that coughs or sneezes are natural answers to the bug people had put in me. That they may control my mind but they cannot control people around me coughing or sneezing. Following such a routine, I could get rid of the controls on me. It will randomize my actions rather than doing everything which the voices tell me to do.

A month later, I had to take my mother to Delhi to a relative. I was occupied by my voices and delusions. I would go down the market where there was a tea and a juice shop side by side. I would order either a juice glass or a tea cup, and with a cigarette, sit on the basement talking to my voices. Many people had joined me inside my head. The story had built up. The faculty and friends would discuss how to solve the problem I was suffering. Subplots to the story had built up. There were so many issues to address. The marriage of The-light, her affairs, the problem of corruption, and of the method they had chosen to interact with me. I was not comfortable hearing voices. I wanted them to interact with me in person and solve the problems by mutual discussion. But none of them would come to me in person, not even reply to my emails.

I had become completely restless with these voices. I was finding it difficult to sleep in the nights. One night, I looked at a photograph of The-light and the common friend with me and wailed. Another night, I went out on the road, sat on the footpath and talked to her. She told me I was the only person who had understood her. Others had used her body. The whole night I kept sitting on the footpath staring at the streetlight as I talked to her in my mind. Another night, I saw my faculty having fun in their lives: going to movies, travelling and water rafting. I had been reduced to a heap of garbage doing nothing, smoking and solving the mess they had created.

One day I accused my mother of not letting me marry The-light. That poor lady had no idea why I was doing that. But as mothers are, she did not fight back. Maybe she was trying to understand my situation. Or maybe my situation was completely evident to my mother. She asked me to give her the number of The-light. I gave it to her.

I started believing that The-light was a witch who had bewitched me. She had the power to bewitch other men as well and she had done so landing us all into trouble. If she had been a normal woman, none of us would have lusted for her. I remembered her searching eyes. It was through their eyes that witches bewitch. I said this to my mother.

She took me to the Hazrat Nizammudin Aulia dargah in Delhi. Amid narrow lanes, with shops full of incense smell and flowers, we prayed to the saint. The place had a calming effect on me. My mother took me to a preacher who said he could get the witch off me. He took some money, put a powder in my hand, and said few words. I kept sitting for the whole time he was speaking. He said I will be free of her in a few hours. I waited the whole day but nothing happened. All the voices and hallucinations were still there.

 In the midst of this, I realized that I could talk to birds. That they were communicating with me. A crow would sometimes perch on my balcony. I would try and talk to it. She would caw and I would understand what she was telling me. When I went out for a stroll or to have tea and cigarettes, I would talk to mynas on the tree branches. Talking to them added to my story. I thought God had sent them to rescue me out of this trouble.

I started believing that all the people connected to me were animal or bird forms. The-light was a white pigeon, the devil a crocodile, birdie a humming bird, warrior a cheetah, feminist an eagle, elegant woman a dove, wheelchair man a hawk, captain a squirrel and the strategist a crow. I saw a child in a canoe in the river with the crocodile beside it protecting it or scaring it I was not sure. For a while I did not believe that there are white pigeons. I had never seen them. But on the same day, on the balcony, I saw a white pigeon for the first time. I was not sure if it was real. I touched it and it let me do it. It was real. I felt The-light wanted to send me a message.  

I was feeling that my mind was losing control with an emotional and auditory overload. I told myself that my mind was going through a recursive process where one level of thoughts commanded another level inside it. I had reached almost the end of this recursive process now that I could understand the language of birds. Something in me wanted to burst out. It’s as if I was carrying a huge load inside my body which wanted to splatter itself tearing my body into pieces.

I meandered on the streets of Delhi talking to my voices. The female voices wanted me to go and meet her. They were not happy that she had stopped communicating with me. The little birdie kept telling me to meet her properly. That I should go all dressed up and handsome looking to her house and ask her out. I heard someone sneeze when she was saying this to me. I decided to go.

 On the internet I got her house address. The whole time I was thinking if this was a good idea. I took the Delhi metro to her place and every time I thought of going to her house, someone sneezed or coughed. Accordingly, I changed my mind. Once a person coughed, I got out of the train to take the backward journey. Then someone coughed and I got back on the next train. I was terribly confused. My mind was only focused on the coughs and sneezes on the train. I could not focus on anything.

Outside her metro station, I felt as if The-light had come in me to dissuade me from going to her house. I still made way for it. I reached her apartment building, got in. In front of her home, I asked a lady if The-light lived here. I whispered and she nodded her head slightly. I ran away from there. I wrote to her immediately after coming back. She did not reply to me.

My relatives took me to a psychiatrist in the Apollo hospital. I got into an argument with him. He was not ready to believe that I was connected to people. I told him I had studied at the best Institutes of this country and he ought to take me seriously. He told me he had gone to Oxford and he could restrain me if I did not follow his advice. He wrote me some medicines which my relatives bought and gave it to me. I started taking them daily.

Few days later, my uncle died. I had to go for his funeral. In my mind, I thought that his soul would come into me now. That The-light would be like my aunt. In Patna, where his funeral was held, I performed some of the rites. My uncle was a nice man. He was humorous as well. He loved his family. His death broke my aunt. She asked me if I will take care of her from now on. It was a heart wrenching scene. I said yes.