Writing and reading are not easy for me anymore. Among the cacophony of the voices and the emotional overload I am undergoing, it is almost impossible for me to read and write. I am a fast reader but if I try to read fast now, I lose the plot completely and the voices mock me. So, I reduce my speed. I try to read word by word. Even that is getting difficult for me. There is so much going inside I am not be able to connect one word to another to form a coherent sentence. The voices mock me on my inability.

Finally, I decide to read and write one alphabet at a time. I go about a paper or my thesis this way. It is like drops of water in an ocean but there is no other way I can complete my work. Day and night, as the voices in me talk, I write my thesis alphabet by alphabet. Sometimes when voices overpower me, I write the same sentence again and again. I am Jack Torrance in The Shining. Many a times I am distracted. The-light would accuse me of stealing her ideas or the Prime Minister would talk to me. After the issue is discussed, I again get back to writing my work one alphabet at a time.

Even though the voices are persecuting me, there is a general consensus that I should write my thesis. The devil helps me out in this, not in reality, but through my mind. He would get into a rhythm of his own: ‘Tatatatata’ which would drown all the other voices and force me to write. As long as he is in this rhythm, I would be able to focus on the alphabets.

I write at a snail’s pace for months along with these voices. It is helpful that I am not doing anything else. I am sitting on my chair the whole day and night, either glued to the walls when I am talking to the voices, or glued to my laptop when I am writing. I must have lost a lot of weight but by then real issues like these have stopped bothering me. Dark circles have appeared below my eyes on account of not sleeping. I feel weak. The only physical effort I make is to go to the cigarette and tea shop.

Another issue is the great idea I had had. As I have written earlier, everybody wants me to work on the idea and produce a Nobel Prize winning work. Sometimes, instead of my thesis work, I work on the idea. Every hallucination is interested in this work. The devil would promise me that he would get me in touch with a Nobel Prize winning economist who is his friend. From the other camp, the wheelchair man would promise me to get in touch with the former governor of the Central Bank. Both of these high-profile people also come into my mind and start wooing me to get on their side and work with them. I start discussing with them about the options I have. Every time I have an opportunity, my mind is indecisive and I can never choose. Even in this case, I find it difficult to choose a partner.

Overtime, many great economists come into my mind. I get connected to them through the connections of my faculty. We start discussing my idea. I write a few lines while discussing with them. The plan is to find a neat mathematical proof of the idea in around four pages. The economists are in agreement that my proof will change the face of economics around the globe. They urge me to go and meet somebody on the campus and tell them about the idea.

The person on the campus I should have been touch with in real life is The Professor. I had not met him in many months. I believed I was in touch with him through my mind. He had not bothered to get in touch with me as well. He must have known I was ill based on the mails I had sent about the grand story earlier. I am not sure about the role a guide should play in your life. About how involved the guide can get with you? Can the guide talk about the personal problems you are facing and so on? I had seen him chat with his other students for hours and laugh and tell them his stories. He did not do this with me. He never got involved in any of my issues or tried to understand it. It would have helped if the Professor had been a little empathetic with me, especially given the enthusiasm he had shown in taking me in as his student. I needed that, given I had voices of these people in me, and he was the person on the campus who was sort of responsible for me. This kind of a behavior shows how difficult it is for mentally ill people to make it big in society even though they may be willing to work hard. There is no encouragement and the idea is to get the mentally ill person out of the system until that person is normal again. Everybody wants to stay clear of you if you are ill, something I am experiencing at the Institute.

But I decide to discuss the idea with the Professor. I take an appointment with him in real life and go to his office at the appointed time. Many people from the other group suggest against it. They say I should go to the other camp. But I finally decide to speak to somebody. He gives me an appointment. I go and sit in his office. I must have looked ill to him. When I tell him I have an idea he suggests to work on it and publish it. I look for clues of our mental connection. His behavior in real life is different to that in my mind. I have the urge to tell him about the connection but do not. I come back and it is clear that he does not want to work with me on the idea.

As my thesis writing continues alphabet by alphabet, the stories in my mind are taking complicated turns. Over time they have turned into a tight knot. Now that it is clear that The-light would not meet me in person, the tables have turned against her as well. The chief of the Hindu organization is now threatening her too. They say that they are going to annihilate both her and me for all this trouble. In my story, she is living alone in a posh house in Delhi, the address of which I try to get out of her mind but cannot. She is already showing signs of pain now. I see her drinking and wasting her life alone in the house. I am afraid for her.

Love is a strange beast, the deeper the trouble, the stronger it becomes. My love for The-light has grown stronger during all these times. Everything she does, I can find a reason to explain it, including her refusal to meet me. I feel remorse for her pain. I am angered by the reaction of the people in my mind towards her. The writer and the director suggest I should get away from her. That she will take me to hell. I know I am already in one.

I decide to look after The-light, to care for her in whatever capacity I can. I talk to her as a lover and praise her as the top of the tops among all the women I have met. She too responds to me in a positive way now that they have threatened her. But she has lost her way. I can see that with all this happening to her. How can a woman used by so many men survive on this planet? I sing for her and write poems which I read out aloud alone in my room. I play music for her on laptop replaying it in my mind so that it will cheer her up. I try dancing with her step by step, hand in hand, so that my The-light gets lively. Oh, what have we done to her, she was someone else when I knew her on the campus.

I have started washing my own clothes. She is with me then. I have also started doing pooja, reading Durga Path (Prayer to goddess Durga) to dampen my anxieties. Doing pooja fills me with a psychic energy and I get agitated. Every day after pooja, I go out and take her to the different places she had been on campus: the dorm where we had partied, her own dorm, the basketball court where she played with her teammates, and the cafeteria where she had spent so much time. I show her all of it through my mind. She says she can see through my eyes. I show her all of it plodding through the campus. I remind her of the wonderful times she had spent here, reiterating again and again how beautiful and lovely a person she is. This all brings a smile to her face. I can die for that smile. I am happy moving with her through the campus.

One day she tells me she wants to die. I persuade her not to do so by encouraging her talents. I tell her how beautiful life is. To strengthen my case, I tell her about Abbas Kiarostami’s Taste of Cherry. The scene I want to show her is on YouTube. An old man is talking to a young man who is looking for someone to bury him after he dies by suicide. The old man tells him how one day he had decided to die by suicide as well and went to a cherry tree to hang himself. Few boys arrived to pluck cherries from the tree and asked him to pluck some for them. He did so and decided to taste the cherries himself one by one. The wonder of that taste finally dissuaded him from dying by suicide. He went back to his house with cherries for his wife. I tell her that there is wonder and beauty in this world and one should not end a life without having an experience of its joys.

But the people in my mind did not like it. They say she has to meet me in person and get married as soon as possible. Otherwise, they are going to storm her home and kill her. I get afraid and decide to write to her brother. I cannot write an email or call her as the people who have bugged us would know. I had to find a way that nobody knew I had written. I decide to use a postcard and close my mind when I write on it so that nobody in my mind can get it. I bring a bunch of postcards from the post office on the campus and write on one of them: ‘Your sister is in danger. Please help her,’ along with the address of her brother. The other postcard, I write to a faculty on the campus who was her favorite teacher: ‘Both of us are in danger. Please help.’ I try not to bring this act of mine in my mind so that nobody connected to me can know. I post them stealthily in the post box on our campus.

These acts of love, which I cannot not hide, finally get me the applause of the writer, the director, the Counsellor and the psychoanalyst. They say I am an honest man and the world is not good to honest people. But it antagonizes the other people: the ministers, the head of the Hindu organization, the faculty. These people hate me for it and persecute me even more. They say they will punish my family for bringing me into this world and giving pain to them. I see my parents connected to me. The head of the Hindu organization updates them on my misdeeds and threatens them with my death. My mother starts crying while my father urges me to follow the Prime Minister’s advice. I tell him The-light is not willing to meet me, it is not in my hands. They curse her and vilify her. It becomes a great drama in my mind. The chief of investigative agency connects the parents of The-light. Her father is angry at me and says he would fuck my whole family if I did not marry her. It is strange everybody is angry with me. I am the one who has accepted all the demands.

It is getting very scary in my mind now. I cannot see my family like this. My mother, who is now living in her hometown, fighting for her case, cannot sleep in the nights as well. I cannot take their anger anymore. I have done my best to pacify things but it has all come to this. I am convinced that my presence in this world is detrimental to all the people I love.