The Illicit Happiness of Other People (30 page)

‘Yes.’

‘And what is the story?’

Alpha looks at the floor and does not speak for a while. He is probably deciding whether he must tell the story. The boy, obviously, has psychiatric problems. Why was Unni interested in Alpha? Maybe Alpha is an extraordinary comic artist? Unni and Alpha have nothing in common. But when Alpha begins to tell the story of his graphic novel, it sounds like something Unni might have written.

‘In the beginning,’ Alpha says, ‘as in the beginning of the universe, the beginning of time, there is Story and there is Anti-story. Story wanders through the entire universe searching for a Storyteller who would, as you may have guessed, tell the Story.’

It finds a small blue planet that orbits around an average-sized yellow sun in the outer edges of an ordinary whirlpool galaxy. Story tries out many ways to create the Storyteller and arrives at the idea of the carbon body, and after millions of years of creating and discarding species, it finally invents the human ape. Story enters the human body as a hallucination. The purpose of the human race is to pass the hallucination down the ages, across all of eternity.

Meanwhile, Anti-story gets wind of where Story is and what Story has done. So Anti-story infiltrates the human body and becomes thought, which is so powerful that the human race becomes trapped in thought and is unable to see the hallucination of Story any more. The world is now filled with Anti-storytellers who are entranced by thought and logic and the associated hallucinations that thought and logic together create. Thought takes over the world. But there is something about the brain, some kind of an evolutionary glitch. One in a million brains, by pure chance, escapes from thought and sees the original primordial hallucination and becomes the Storyteller. These people are so stunned by the vision that they isolate themselves for exactly thirty-two days, and when they emerge into the world again, something about them has changed. There was a time in the history of man when Storytellers were worshipped by the Anti-storytellers. But the power of logic is so strong now that the world now thinks of Storytellers as mentally ill, so they put them in cages in an asylum.

‘So, the fellowship of Storytellers has to come together and find a way to reveal the original hallucination,’ Alpha says. ‘They have to find a way to tell the Story.’

‘So there are many hallucinations that the human brain sees. And one of the hallucinations of the mind is the original Story?’

‘You are right.’

‘Why can’t the Storytellers just stand on the street and tell the Story?’

‘The Story cannot be transmitted through language. But Anti-story has trapped mankind in language. That’s why it is difficult for the Storytellers to tell the Story. They don’t know how to tell the Story. They can only see the Story.’

‘Why can’t a hallucination be told through language?’

‘There are many ordinary hallucinations that cannot be explained through language.’

‘That can’t be true.’

‘Can you describe the colour red through language, describe red without using its wavelength or comparing it with other colours of the spectrum? If you cannot describe the illusion of red through language, obviously the highest order of hallucination would be impossible to describe through mere words.’

‘Do they succeed, the Storytellers, do they win in the end?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Are you on the side of Story or Anti-story?’

Alpha laughs. It is a surprising, booming laughter.

‘What about you, Mr Chacko?’

‘I want the Storytellers to win because that appears to be the happy ending.’

Alpha laughs again, and nods his head.

‘Did you and Unni talk about this story?’

‘Yes.’

‘How did you meet Unni?’

‘Beta brought him home.’

‘Have you ever met Somen Pillai?’

‘No.’

‘Alpha, do you know why Unni killed himself?’

‘No.’

‘Can you tell me what you and Unni talked about?’

‘We met only eight times,’ Alpha says. ‘We spoke about this and that, I don’t remember. Yes, we had conversations. But it has been a while.’

‘Still, I am sure you remember something.’

‘We spoke about many things, things that do not interest people. We spoke about the eye, how the eye sees.’

‘How does the eye see?’

‘What the eye really sees, the image, is registered at the back of the retina, at the back of the eye; yet what we see, the visible world, is in front of us. How is that possible? Why is sight in front of us and not at the back of the eye, like a thought?’

‘Why?’

‘Because what we see is a projection of the brain. The world we see is a projection.’

‘What else did you talk about?’

‘What do you mean, “what else”?’

‘I mean what else did you talk about?’

‘Just this and that.’

‘Can you think of something specific? Like the eye.’

‘We spoke about the corpse.’

‘Who is the corpse?’

‘The corpse is a corpse.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘You would understand everything if you met Psycho.’

‘Who is Psycho?’

Alpha laughs. He repeats the question – ‘Who is Psycho?’

‘Is Psycho a cartoonist?’

Alpha looks away and laughs hard. ‘Psycho is Psycho,’ he says. ‘He spent a lot of time with Unni. Psycho is different from me. Psycho has conversations. Psycho has very long conversations.’

He writes something on a piece of paper and hands it to Ousep. It says, ‘4 Anna Salai’.

‘Is this an address?’ Ousep asks.

‘You’re a very clever man.’

‘What will I find there?’

‘You will find a white building with six floors. Go to the third floor. On the third floor, there is a long corridor. At the far end of the corridor is a white door. Behind the door sits Psycho.’

‘What does he do, Alpha?’

Alpha laughs and shakes his head. ‘You’ll understand everything when you get there,’ he says.

‘Is this his real name? “Psycho”, is that his real name?’

‘What’s real about a name?’

‘What’s his name, Alpha? You know what I mean.’

‘Yes, I do. His real name, his real real real name, his very real, absolutely truthful name, is Psycho. You have to be very careful with Psycho. He is on the side of the Anti-storytellers.’

‘Does Psycho know why Unni did what he did?’

‘Mr Chacko, you’re not listening to me. You have to be very careful when you meet Psycho. You cannot tell him why you are there. You have to invent reasons. You have to be smart. He is a very dangerous man.’

‘Does Psycho know why Unni did what he did?’

‘I don’t think that bastard knows anything. But Psycho will lead you to the corpse. Only Psycho knows who the corpse is.’

‘Who is the corpse?’

‘I just told you. Only Psycho knows. I have never met the corpse. All I know is that Unni was very close to the corpse.’

‘And what will the corpse tell me?’

‘The corpse will tell you everything you want to know.’

OUSEP FINDS IT HARD to accept what he sees in front of him even though there is no doubt in his mind that he is at the
address Alpha had given him. It is a white building with six floors. A giant board over the dark hollow of the porch says ‘Institute of Neurosciences’.

In the waiting area inside there are not more than twenty people and they appear to be in good health. At the reception desk three women in starched cotton saris are in the middle of a conversation about a man they do not like. Behind them is a wooden board that announces the speciality of every floor above. The third floor, the board says, is the Schizophrenia Day Ward and Research Centre.

Ousep takes the stairs. Good for the heart, he says. Did you hear that, Unni? Even Ousep Chacko wants to live. On the third floor there is a long, dim corridor flanked by shut doors, river-green doors. At one end of the corridor, which is now behind Ousep, is the gloom of a yellow wall. The far end is dark, but Ousep can make out a broad white door. There is nobody in the corridor but he can hear voices coming through the walls, sudden solitary laughter, a hard object falling on the floor, soft conversations that do not intend to be whispers. As he walks to the far end, a side door opens and three middle-aged nurses in white frocks walk towards him, laughing and talking in Malayalam about bananas, about yellow bananas and green bananas. As they pass him they look at him with suspicion as if he is a patient who has gone astray. That makes him walk more briskly and call on all his daylight dignity.

As the white door approaches, the corridor gets cleaner, and a short red carpet appears and leads all the way to the door. He can see that there is a nameplate on the door and it is so large that it probably says much more than ‘Psycho’. When he finally arrives at the door he feels that one part of the Alpha puzzle is beginning to fall into place, but he is still not very sure. The nameplate says:

Dr C.Y. Krishnamurthy Iyengar
DM, FRCP (Glas), FRCP (Edin), FRCP (Lond),
FAMS, FACP, FICP FIMSA, FAAN
Neurosurgeon, Neuropsychiatrist
Chairman Emeritus
The Schizophrenia Day Ward and Research Centre

Ousep considers the door for a moment. Behind the door, somewhere inside the room, sits a doctor, a grand old man in all probability, a neurosurgeon, a neuropsychiatrist, whom Alpha calls Psycho. From what Ousep has seen, Alpha is not a normal person. The nature of the association between Alpha and a neuropsychiatrist is not hard to guess. It is natural that the boy would imagine Psycho as an adversary. But then Ousep does not want to dismiss Alpha’s warning. He has to decide. Should he reveal to the man the reason why he is here, or should he play.

He opens the door and finds a surprisingly large room, with no windows. In the middle of the room is an ancient wooden desk, and behind the desk sits a small old man with rich silver hair that has been neatly combed back. His head is bent, he is reading something engrossing on his lap, and if he has heard the door open he is not curious to know the nature of the intrusion. Ousep walks in and stands still. The old man is in a checked cotton shirt buttoned at the collar and the cuffs. There are eight fountain pens clipped to his shirt pocket and one small black object, probably some kind of a torch. There are three silver medals pinned on the third button. The room is filled with shields and framed citations, most of which contain the unsmiling face of a younger man who has undoubtedly become the person in front of him.

Iyengar lifts his head and is not surprised by what he sees. He
does not stare in incomprehension, does not ask any questions. He points to a chair. This is the old man in
The Album of the Dead
, one of the four unidentified characters in the series. Ousep tries to assume an apologetic inferior face that still retains considerable dignity. Iyengar puts the book he was reading on the clean desk. It is the Bhagavatgita, in Sanskrit. An old philosophical man with a lot of time, which is a good sign.

‘Dr Iyengar, my name is Ousep, I am the chief reporter with UNI. I apologize for coming here without an appointment.’

‘What is UNI?’ the doctor asks, leaning back and looking amused. His voice is deep, but feeble.

‘United News of India, it is a news agency, like PTI.’

‘I get it now.’

‘I am working on a story. A feature story on schizophrenia in Madras. The condition of schizophrenics.’

‘The condition?’

‘How people with this condition go through life, what is being done to help them.’

‘So, Ousep, you are going to write a story about schizophrenics, and what you write will be carried by all the newspapers that subscribe to UNI. Is that correct?’

‘That’s correct.’

‘But this is not news, it is not a current affairs story. As you say, you are working on a feature story, which means it can appear at any time. It can appear in a week, in a month. Is that correct?’

‘That’s correct.’

‘Would it appear in
The Hindu
?’

‘That’s possible.’

‘But you don’t know?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘I’ve never seen a feature story that has the name of a news
agency under it. I see PTI stories all the time, which are all news stories.’

‘Yes, it is a bit odd but I am very interested in the subject.’

‘Why?’

‘I just am interested.’

‘Ousep, I have a friend. He is a sexologist. Do you know what a sexologist does?’

‘Yes.’

‘Good. Because I don’t know what a sexologist does. He meets a lot of journalists every week. Senior journalists like you, elegant men, smart men, but more importantly they are not young men. They go to his office, just turn up, as you have come here to see me. They tell him that they want to know something about the sexual problems of men and women in Madras. The sexual condition of men and women. They tell him they are working on a story. That’s what they tell him. But he knows what they want. They want to get their penises up and they want a free and discreet consultation.’

‘I am here for the story.’

‘I am not disputing that. I am merely telling you something I know about journalists. Do you have any mental condition?’

‘No.’

‘Do you suspect that any of your family members has a mental condition?’

‘I am not here for a free consultation.’

‘You’re here to do a story.’

‘Yes.’

‘And you came without an appointment because I am an old man, unimportant, useless.’

‘That’s far from the truth.’

‘I am sure you interviewed all the bright young neurologists in Madras before coming to me.’

‘That’s not true. You are, in fact, the first person I am interviewing for the story. You can verify this. You belong to a small, tight community. You can call up a few people and find out.’

‘Why am I the first person you chose to meet?’

‘I wanted to meet the patriarch first and then move downwards.’

‘You wanted to meet the patriarch first and move downwards. All right, Ousep, if that is what you want.’

‘Before we start, Doctor, I am very curious,’ Ousep says, taking out his scribbling pad and pen from his trouser pocket. ‘Why do you carry eight pens in your pocket?’