An Amor with El Loco (In Love With the Insane)

The first time I heard of Abdala Bucaram was in 1996, when I read about his being elected to the post of President of Ecuador in the Time magazine. Bucaram, a former sprinter with the 1972 Natianal Olympics team, invited the whole nation for the Presidential inaugural dinner, declined to move into the Presidential palace because it did not have a football field, called the former President a burro and then apologized to the burros for insulting them. All in all, Bucaram was a colorful personality.

Within a few months, he would cut an ablum entitled, El Loco An Amor (The Crazy Man in Love) and for its release would sing and dance in a live performace with a few scantily-clad women. He would also promise to the millions of poor and homelss families a home each.

Sadly, Bucaram's populist plans would not do much good to his people, and he would end up being unconstitutionally dismissed from the Ecuadorian presidency by congress on alleged grounds of mental disability and exiled to Panama.

I loved the man's antics.

Looking back, I now see that I have always liked crazy people and their antics, and that dates back to my childhood.

There was this guy in my hometown, son of a very respectable family, who went to Luncknow to do his Masters in Tabla (an Indian Musical instrument, supposedly made by a Nawab of Awadh by chopping of a Mridangam, another traditional Indian musical insturment, into two parts) and came back totally insane. My earliest memories of him are of a man holding his trousers from falling down with the left hand, while pointing his right hand towards the sky and talking. He often talked about meeting the Deputy Commissioner for collecting Rupess 1000 and doing something; I am sure, it was something constructive, but I never clearly heard what it was!

Then there was this person in my father's village, whose infinite desire to buy more cultivable land drove him crazy. It was said that he almost struck a deal to buy a huge plot of such land; but finally his rival managed to buy it, and the failure to be the man with the maximum amount of land drve him crazy. He was a school teacher, and by the time I saw him, it was a periodic event; a single harsh statement by someone he loved (for example, his brother) could make him analyze and re-analyze and then go nuts! He was sent to a lunatic asylum and would each time get back to normalcy without a few months. People used to say that while being unstable, he used to mention only two words: land, and money!

At my father's village, I also met Das, who was supposedly a brilliant student and then went mad. He used to drop by, whenever there was some festival (and the mandatory community feasting therewith) uninvited, have a hearty meal and then clean up the big cooking utensils on his own. There were pots in which they could cook a whole, big goat with vegetables and other stuff, and he has no problem cleaning all of them on his own.

All he wanted was a good meal, and nobody ever declined that. When in an entertaining mood, somone from the crowd would ask Das, "Das, please speak something in English." and Das would recite some essay or some news item he had read maybe 10 years ago in non-stop English.

My God-fearing mother never let us tease a madman; she insisted that the Lord Shiva resides in every madman, and so, insulting a manman is insulting the Lord. Back then, I was suspcious of that fact; but now I think that is the best way that a society can give some resepct and reprieve to a madman, oblivious to his surroundings. If I remember correctly, her mom (my grandma) once made her, or her brother, go touch the feet of a mandman and apologize to him after (s)he teased that person.

Then there was Half Paytara (Half-Style) who was a source of both interest and fear. His browls with Kanu Daroga (Police Inspector) had reached fabulous proportion in the town. We were told that he carried a big knife with all the time him. None knew for sure where his name came from. Some said that it was rderived from the fact that he wore fashionable clothes as far as possible; but a more reliable source once told me that that name had nothing to do with style. According to him, it came from his stealing a bunch of ducks in his teens: Hahn Paikari (Duck Wholesaler) --> Half Paitara.

Murgi Chor (Chicken Thief) was even more colorful a character. A pitch dark, middle-aged, bearded man, Murgi Chor often used to be bare-bodied, carry a wooden sword and, if teased or annoyed by someone, shout, "I will sacrifice you at the alter of Maa Kali", Maa Kali being the Hindu Goddess who wears a garland of Demon-heads.

When I moved out of my town to do the Higher Secondary level of schooling, I missed my hometown, and interesting, I missed those characters as much as I missed Sambhu (the big Bull donated by someone to Lord Shiva, and who used to roam the streets of the town. Everyone used to feed him with fruits, and he used to have sex with all the cows in the town..what a Royal life Sambhu had!).

Then I read a story by Sheelabhadra. [RMDC, a Mathematics Professor at the Engineering College started writing short stories at the age of 40, after being fed up by the jokes of his colleagues, who claimed that he did not know how to speak the language properly; he was born in a place at the border of two states and so their language was not pure. He took this as a challenge and started writing using the pen mame Sheelabghadra. Always down-to-earth in his writing, he often wrote about small incidents about insignificant people of Gauripur, the twon he had grown up! His writing was probably not bad (I loved it!), because in 1994 he won a National Award in literature. Not bad for someone who started writing just to show that he could speak the language.

Incidentally, I would be present at his felicitation ceremony at Delhi, and,after his speech would ask him if it were him or PBK who first started bringing in themes related to Sexual Psychology into the literautre in my language. He would at first say that he had never written explicitly about sex in his writing, our society being traditional; but on being bombarded by me with quotes from his novels (that I churned out from my memory), he would finally agree that he had written indirectly about sex and yet give the credit to PBK.

After his return, he would write a column about a college student asking him about sexual psychology, and he would express his happiness that people of young generation read his books so well that they could remember parts of these line by line. After reading this my friend P., who did not meet me since 1992, would ask A, who was with me that day, if it were I who asked that question. On being answered in affirmative, he would reply, "I knew it. Only he is crazy enough to ask this question, and at the same time, informative enough to back his statement with evidence."

Sheelabhadra's story described an old gentleman, D., who was very rich and yet believed everyone. Thus everyone took loans from him on verbal terms, and none returned the money. He even lost all his buses to people, and then the impending financial calamity drove him nuts. When S. went home that time, his uncle proposed that they go and pay a visit to D., because he may not live much longer. What S. noticed was that D. constantly asked people if they owe him anything, and if so, to return the amount because he was under a rough patch. After coming out of his house, S.'s uncle said philosophically," He talks of money; who knows what I will talk about?"

But I really saw mad people from close quarters during 1989-1990, when we (my friend B. and I) started waking up early in the morning and going to the Teashop under Apex Bank building. It was run by someone named P. or S.; I will call him P. here. We always tried to reach by 5-00 AM, so that we could have the first cup of tea there; it was a lovely experience.

By 5-30, his regular customers would arrive, many of them autorickshaw drivers, and they would carry with them all the news from all the corerns of the city. So one can, in principle, just talk to them and be updated with all the things that happened during the previous night.

Then there were this bunch of old gentlemen: retired Army officer, retired Reserve Bank boss, Businessmen and Renowned players of the yore. Their highly decent behavior and warm treatment towards us made us feel close to one another. It was fun to talk to them; they always waited for special tea to be made: no sugar, more milk. And so they always had time to talk to us and read all the National newspapers that came for the bank, and which the night watchman kept for them to read (which only after then he collected).

However, the most fascinating characters to us were a stream of mad people, who were very punctual in their arrivals, precise in their behavior and very articulate with their choice item of food. For example, if one of them wanted jalebi, another would only eat samosa. A third one would patiently wait for Lal, a helping hand at the shop, to come from his morning bath at the Brahmaputra and give him the cold rice and vegetables cooked the previous night and kept aside for him. There was one of them, who obsessively touched --bicycle, door, wall, scooter, windowpan-- everything, with the outside of his hand while holding a food item in his hands.

Sarma used to play the same monotonous tune (without ever any change of the rhythm) on his flute. Someone once told us that Sarma had used to run one of the busiest panshops in the whole area, the most important part of the city; but when his 17-year old died suddenly within a couple of days of falling sick, Sarma lost his mental balance. He also lost his shop and everything else he had, obtained the flute and started a nomadic, aimless life!

I now live near downtown LA, an area flooded with homeless and mentally disturbed people. Most of these people are very lonely, unhappy and totally at loss! When I look back at all the mad people I met home, I somehow feel that most of those people were not unhappy. They knew where to go if they eneded food and where to go when they wanted a smoke. (I remember once someone asked P. how he could offer free food to a dozen of mad people. P. nonchalantly replied, "It's the rich people who are very worried about their wealth. I run a teashop and am always living on the edge. Why should I bother if a few nuts can feeel contended because I could offer them something to it?". Of course, to prove that what he did was completely insignificant, and to camouflage his big-heartedness, P. used the choichest Hindi abuses to describe himself and the nuts; yet both his humility and his affection for those nuts were obvious!)

And in my opinion, that is the binding force that keeps the nuts back home from going any nutter, because they know that they always have someone to go talk to, if they really wanted some company.