My mind has now become an ideological battleground. Battle lines have been drawn; people have taken sides. Some of the new voices join the first camp and some others join the second camp. The primary focus is to convince me that each side is better than the other side and then to get me to their side. The song ‘Baar baar haan, bolo yaar haan, apni jeet ho, unki haar ho,’ from the movie Lagaan is playing in my mind.

‘We have power with us. We have the people who can take you places. You are smart enough to understand this.’ I saw the faces of all the cabinet ministers connected to me. ‘You are with the right people. Just keep on doing your work with them and see yourself soar in the sky,’ said the Prime Minister. I see the faces of my committee members. They are all looking at me.

‘They are chutiyas,’ said the film director. ‘You are their student and they do not have any concern for your condition. Have they ever called you and asked you what the problem is? They just want you as a prize and nothing more. These people are vultures. They haven’t spared their own religion and their own country. Stay with us. Get better and live your life freely.’

‘Sold our country, how dare he say that!’ said the road transport minister. ‘These artists have no sense of how difficult it is to run this country. They have a narrow view of everything. Don’t listen to them.’

‘Tell him that we are the soul of this country. We have been the soul for thousands of years. We are in every part of you, your parents, your grandparents, and before that. This land is the land of our mothers. And these men of pain are trying to sell it to foreign agents. You have been a good student till now. Don’t get into all this. Continue quietly with your studies and the idea that you have. Work with us,’ said the finance minister.

‘That’s exactly what they want, for you to shut down and be quiet and submissive. Don’t be that. You can ask questions and raise issues. Their side is the one with too much rigidity. They do not support questioning and fair discussion. You cannot be like them. You have to question things from the roots. Question them and you will find the filth inside their patriotic minds,’ said the writer.

‘His problems come from being sexually repressed. He needs to release this sexual energy, not through the chip, but in the real life with real women. I think you are missing the point here.’ Said the psychoanalyst with whom I had a conversation earlier about my sexual history.

‘You keep quiet. Nobody cares what you think,’ said the Prime Minister. ‘She is completely wrong. We are the most flexible culture of the world. Look at our history. It is their fathers who are rigid. People who finance people like them. The one who does not respect their elders is not fit to go up. So, you have to respect your professors, irrespective of what they have done.’

The writer laughed at this. ‘Flexibility and their culture are like oil and water. They never mix. Look at what they have done to the lower caste, the homosexuals, and the women of this country. And you will know.’

‘Our past culture had promoted homosexuality. Our women were equal to men in history. Read it and you will know.’ I saw the manager dancing with men, trying to tell me that the first camp accepts the homosexuals. ‘She is in with the Naxalites, the ones who are hell bent to destroying the fabric of this country. Are you going to be in their camp?’

‘They have forced the Naxals to take up arms. There is no other way they can make their voices heard with the political class of this country. Your heart should go to them. They have been oppressed since centuries by the Hindu caste system which throws them into the lower rungs without any plans to get them out of it,’ said the writer.

'Lets talk about his thesis,' said the devil.

‘His faculty is right. He should complete his thesis and get out of this place. That should be his first priority.’ said the film director. And for a little while things were quiet so that I could write my thesis. There was no common point of peace in my mind except when I worked on my thesis. It was always flaring, day and night. The song had changed to ‘Aa ja re aa ja re, aa ja re aa ja re, bhale kitne lambe ho raste ho, thake na tera ye tan ho, aa ja re aa ja re, sun le pukar dagariya, rahe na ye raaste taraste ho, tu aa ja re’, from the same movie. 

Then there was the problem of marriage with The-light and the collusion problem.

‘Now that you have had pleasure of this poor woman, you should marry her,’ said the head of the Hindu organization. ‘Women in our culture do not sleep with many men like the other cultures. She has given pleasure to you. So, she is yours now. You cannot deny it. And stop working on the collusion problem. The Prime Minister is doing enough for this country. Solar is the future. Do not interfere in our plans. Our people are there,’ I don’t know why but his voice filled me with fear.

‘Then ask her to marry your faculty. They have had pleasure with her as well. Why can’t they marry this woman and does anything like this happen in our culture? And you should work on the problem and bring out the truth. We all know that collusion is a part and parcel of the business culture in this country,’ spoke the writer.

‘We cannot listen to this lady who is against the very spirit of this country. You are not of her type. You are from our type. We know you are a Brahmin. Follow the culture of your forefathers and marry her.’

‘Then ask her to contact him. Why is she not replying to his emails or meeting him?’ said the film director.

‘You too are like her. She is afraid. She has gone through much. She will only meet him if he accepts to marry her, and stops working on that problem,’ replied the head of the Hindu organization.

‘He will not marry her. He has already decided, and he will work on the problem,’ said the writer.

On this the head of the Hindu organization roared. ‘We will cut him and his family into pieces. He should have said no earlier. Now there is no way he can turn around. And I will see how he works on the problem, he will not come out alive.’ A wave of panic engulfed me.

‘Don’t worry, we will help you out,’ said the writer.

‘We will take out your whole family from pataal and extinguish them from this planet,’ roared the chief once more.

These conversations about marriage and the collusion problem continued for another hour. The song ‘Mehdi laga ke rakhna doli saja ke rakhna, lene tujhe oo gori, aayenge tere sajna,’ was playing in loop in my mind. I go through all these emotions as if the conversations are happening all around me in real. Then a face emerges in my mind. It is one of the faculty from my undergraduate days. I say hello to her. I am surprised at her connection.

‘Aye, what am I hearing? You are not willing to marry this woman.’

The faculty of my Institute are smiling. So now people from my undergraduate Institute are also connected to me. I try to explain to the faculty what has happened here.

‘No, whatever has happened, she is a daughter of the land. You have to marry her. Otherwise, you will face dire consequences and even we won’t be able to help you.’

‘She is helping you now? Has she ever helped you!’ scorned the writer.

‘Aye, you keep quiet. You are dirtying his mind. He is a good boy. And this girl is also good. Now they should marry fast so that we can get along with our work. And stop working on that stupid problem of yours. This thing has been troubling us for a long time now.’

I was in two minds now. I respected the faculty from my undergraduate days. I said:

‘I will marry her on one condition. She has to meet me at least once. Once I meet her in person, I will give my acceptance. But I will not stop working on the problem.’

‘Then it’s fine. We will arrange for a meeting,’ said the elegant one.

They say she would come to meet me on the campus in the evening. That she would be standing near the cafe. I go to the cafe but there is no one there. They further inform that she is waiting for me in a hotel in the city. I take an auto and go to the hotel. The initial deal is that she would come down to meet me. When I wait for a long time and she does not turn up, I decide to go into the hotel. The voices especially of my faculty are laughing at me all the time and making fun of me. They say how big a fool I am that I could not plan to meet even a girl. What kind of low standards I am setting for the Institute! The whole time I hear them urging me to meet the woman and fuck her proper for bringing this upon us. I go into the hotel lobby and then take the stairs. They tell me the room number in my mind and I keep searching for the room like a madman. Unable to find the room, I stand at the door of each room to listen to her voice from inside. A hotel boy sees me and asks what I want. I run away on the stairs and arrive into the lobby to think what to do. Finally, I give up and return back to my room unable to meet her. Later in the night, they tell me she has taken shelter in the home of one of the faculty. I take off from my room but am stopped in the middle when the voices tell me she has a gun and could kill me. I sit on the red brick walls near the library and chant gayatri mantra for the well-being of everybody.

I am exasperated in the night as all the people in my mind discuss what to do next. I write her name along with her boyfriend’s name on the wall and throw curses at both of them. The-light is laughing at me.

‘I made him run at all places, loved it!’ This makes me angry.

‘She will never meet you. She loves the fun of it. She never came to the city. This was all to frustrate you. She is a bitch,’ said the writer.

‘You don’t say anything to her. She is the light of the house,’ said the Hindu chief.

Conversations like these occupy me the whole night. I have forgotten to eat dinner as well. I do not feel hungry at all.

The next day, a new issue comes up. The Prime Minister and the finance minister confessed to me that this chip on me was American. They express interest in making a chip like this in India. They say that I have a great mind wherein I could bring all the stakeholders together. I am a student of India’s best technical and management institutes. My mind is split and everybody has a place in it. Nothing like this has happened to any other mind connected to the chip. So, my mind could be used to secretly organize meetings for making a national chip. This will get rid of the American dominance. The song ‘Jiya ho Bihar ke Lala, jiya tu hazar sala,’ from Gangs of Wasseypur is playing in my mind.

For the next few days, we engage ourselves in connecting to different parties that could make the chip. I invite some of my undergraduate friends who are working in the chip industry to come join us. I invite professors from both Institutes. We discuss the details of the projects and the finance minister sanctions funds through my mind. I love this job, it makes me feel important. The projects have started and it would take some time to be able to reach the capabilities of making a chip in India.

Seeing me doing all this, the writer became emotional. She tells everybody that this man who has the whole country in him and is working for the betterment of the nation deserves applause. He is the inheritor of the problems that we have. He is going through the same conflicts which we all go through in this place. He is nothing, but the conscience of the nation. People seem to agree to this even though I hear murmurs of dissent. I am so happy at hearing this. After a long time, I feel a sense of peace. So much peace that I sleep well that night, sleep like a baby.