Next day is a holiday at the University. I wake up at 12 p.m. with an irritating feeling when I look at the clock. I have that feeling inside me, the feeling of me being a great man. After brushing, I go to my laptop and start reading about John Nash, the economist who suffered from schizophrenia. He is my guru, I say to myself. I will follow his path. I will work on game theory. What is your aim, I ask myself. To win the Nobel Prize, is the answer. Can you do it my friend, is it possible? I shout in my middle room where my laptop table is. Don’t you understand how difficult it is? You are Arjun, I say. You can do it.

I get into my kitchen to prepare tea. The song, ‘Banda ye bindaas hai, banda ye bindaas hai, ras peene ki pyaas hai, banda ye bindaas hai,’ is playing. I am dancing on it.  In between, I would ask myself. Can you do it my friend, is it possible? Can you make your parents and the country proud? If John Nash could do it, you can too. You need patience my friend, patience is the key. Remember the story you read when you were a child. What story? I am talking to myself now in a loud voice. There is complete silence outside except the occasional sound of spices frying in edible oil and the hiss of the pressure cooker from the kitchen of the neighbor. I am feeling good with all the imagination in my mind. I start thinking of the day the Nobel Prize is announced in press. The whole country will awaken with the news. One of their own has won it. What a moment of pride. Not only won it but won it staying and working in the country. Not like the others who run away and try to make a good future somewhere else. I have stayed in this country, I shout, even though I had many opportunities to get away. The water is boiling and in my own way of making tea, I put sugar and milk in it. Bastards, all of them. Traitors, running away at the first opportunity. I will show them that it can be done staying back as well. Can you do it my friend? The country awakens, I am getting calls after calls but I am a reclusive man by then. I do not take these calls but walk to my University to take my class. People are waiting outside the University to welcome and congratulate me. I shake hands with them but politely go away saying I have a class. In the class, I start teaching but all the students stand and clap for me for some time. I wait until the clapping ends. Then I teach them. Once I get out the press has already come to the University. The officials ask me to say something to the press. I go out and everyone is there. I thank them for coming and thank all the people in my life. I put some tea leaves in the boiling mixture. The press asks me a lot of questions and I answer them wittily. The most difficult question is whom do you dedicate the prize to? My answer is my mother. I carry the pain of my mother. She assigned me the job of getting her out of the pain she was in. That has been the fight. She gave me the fight, a tough one. But I am thankful she did. I start crying while pouring the tea in the cup. Emotions well up in me. Cars after cars arrive at the University with academicians from all over the country. They gift me a pen, the normal practice for Nobel Prize winners. I shake hands with all of them in my office, one by one. This is my reply to The-light for rejecting me. I will make her repent, in a small way. She has to think she made a mistake. I light a cigarette and stand in the middle of the room with the cup in my hand. Deep down I am feeling like a very big man. Someone great. What will you do after that?  I will thank my wife, go to her. What a beautiful woman she is. But you cannot fall in love with a woman unless you forget The-light. Have you forgotten her? No I haven’t. Then it will be unfair to any other woman if you get into a relationship with them. Maybe you are destined to love The-light all your life. Just like the protagonist in Love in the time of Cholera. What a sad love story! This means you will not marry. You will go alone. You have to go alone, my friend. The fight is lonely. I finish my tea, keep the cup on the table and go into the bathroom. While peeing, I look at the wall. There is a parrot on the tree, you can see it. I stretch my hand as if I am stretching a bow. You are Arjun, aur nishana hamesha totte ki aankh pe (You are Arjun and the target should be the eye of the parrot). My pee starts wandering, so I get some control and make sure the liquid does not spill away. Once I am done, instead of zipping, I go to the same pose of a bowman saying aloud Nishana hamesha totte ki aankh pe. (The target should always be the eye of the parrot).

The whole day I keep hallucinating. In between my hallucinations, I would find some time to read news articles. I try to find if there is a role model like Prof. Nash in India who has succeeded despite having schizophrenia. I cannot find any. I go back to my hallucinations. Whenever I am hallucinating about winning the Nobel Prize, I feel so good deep down. I feel my pain vanish, my inhibitions, my disappointments, all melt and dissolve in the feeling of greatness. The interesting thing is that I completely believe what I am hallucinating in. There is not an iota of reality left in me. All the people whom I know would react to my prize. I determine how they react. Such is the control of life I have with me in my hallucinations.

In the evening, my father calls. He seldom calls me.

‘Hello, how are you doing?” A tinge of repulsion comes into me when I hear his voice.

‘Doing well.’

‘It’s been long since we talked last. Why don’t you call me ever?’

‘Busy with work.’

‘Oh I see. Do they make you work very hard?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, if they pay you, they will take it out of you. It’s the private sector, you see. The world is a tough place and it gives you trouble, makes you sad. The more the things change, the more they remain the same. How are you feeling otherwise, everything all right?’

‘Yes.’

‘Are you eating well?’

I want to go back to my hallucinations.

‘Food, no problem.’

‘Good. Take care of your health. It is one of the few things that we have control over. One can never say that for other things.’

‘Yes.’

I sit down on the chair. I want to work on the Nobel prize idea. I open up my notebook and start writing in it.

‘You know we are still there. You can still come to me with the idea,’ said the wheelchair man.

‘I will be his if he is able to prove his idea.’ Said The-light.

‘We can get you to the best,’ said the captain.

‘And we can too,’ said the elegant one.

I saw a Nobel prize winning economist based in the US asking me to write to him. I had taken his online course in Financial markets. I wrote an email to him telling him how much I loved the course and his way of teaching.

‘You are not well again.’ said the Counsellor. ‘Are you taking your medications?’

‘He has reduced his medications on his own without consulting the psychiatrist,’ said the female warrior.

‘That is not good. You should never do that. Go and consult the doctor,’ said the Counsellor.

‘I don’t want to. I am fine.’

‘You are not fine. You are ill and you need a doctor.’

I try to focus and work on the idea. But the voices would not let me. I talk to them the whole night. They want me to go to someone at the Institute and work with them to make my career. Except the voice of the Counsellor which wants me to go to the psychiatrist. She asks me to say this to Sabina.

In the morning I go to Sabina. She sees me disheveled and understands immediately.

‘You haven’t slept?’

‘Working on the idea.’

‘You don’t look well Kabir. Did you take your medications?’

‘Don’t need. Fine now.’

‘Let’s ask the psychiatrist about this. Have you brought your mobile?’

I hand it to her. She looks at the contacts. My psychiatrist’s number is saved as Psychiatrist_Max. She calls him and takes an appointment. She brings me to my house and asks me to take a bath. She prepares an omelet for me and I have it with orange juice. We take a taxi and go to Delhi to meet the psychiatrist.

He hears me out patiently. Then he says that I will not be able to work on the idea if I am not able to sleep. I understand this. He increases the dosage of my medication and Sabina buys it from the store. We come back. She stays with me for a while and then says she will come back in the night to give me medicines. I tell her there is no need, I will take them. She asks me to call her after I take them. In the night, I do exactly what she has asked me to do. I sleep well.