Story of a Lunatic

Amit was squatting on the grass, meticulously sketching on the white paper the smiling faces of Ranbir and Anu, who were sitting on the other side of the fire. Ramesh came out of the tent, carrying several platters and bowls on a tray. A snake passed near Ramesh’s feet, and he tumbled over. The tray fell over Amit.
The white paper got drenched in the spicy yellow dal; it looked in Amit’s hands like a lump of yellow shit. He threw it at Ramesh’s face and said, “You—you—bastard—son-of-a-bitch.”
Ranbir leaped up and stood in font of Amit.
“Calm down, calm down,” Ranbir said, “It was just an accident—”
Amit pushed Ranbir aside and picked up a bamboo stick from the ground. Ramesh had been leaning till now by the tree, unperturbed by the scorns, like an inanimate object. As the bamboo stick struck his chest and shoulders again and again, he uttered not a sound and there was not a blink in his eye. Ranbir snatched the cane from Amit’s hand and shouted, “For God’s sake stop it! What are you doing? He is a human like us. It was just a mistake!”
“You are always trying to protect him Ranbir,” said Amit, “get out of the way. He is a useless creature—brainless—mentally retarded” – he turned towards Ramesh – “—haramzaada. My father kept him in service just out of pity. He wasn’t able to feed his parents. He could do nothing in life. He is a bloody animal. He does not know how much I toiled over the sketch.”
For a minute, they looked at each other. The only sound that issued was Amit’s heaving. Anu remained unconcerned; it was a regular sight for her.
Amit was looking at Ramesh with his flaring eyes. Ramesh’s passiveness and impenitence enraged him further. He tried to leap over Ramesh, but was stopped by Ranbir.
“Stop it I say! Enough! Ramesh, you go back and cook again. After that you can sleep.” Ramesh walked back inside the tent, without saying a word.
Amit brushed off Ranbir’s hand and threw the stick in the fire. He took out a packet of biscuits from his backpack, and nibbled at them; his eyes, still red with anger, were fixed on the fire.
After some time, Anu kept her cell-phone in her backpack and said, “I am feeling bored.”
Ranbir said, “Let me tell you all a story.”
Anu looked at him with puzzled eyes.
“A story?” asked Anu.
“Yes—a story.”
“What is it about?” asked Anu.
“It’s about the world’s most amazing man,” said Ranbir. “Ok now, I need two names. First, the narrator’s, um . . . let us call him—”
“Ranbir,” said Anu and gave a wry smile.
“Ok, let us call him Ranbir. And the main character, let us call him,” – Ranbir saw Ramesh passing by the tent – “let us call him Ramesh.”
“Shall I begin?” asked Ranbir. “Amit, come on yaar, I’m sorry. Come here and listen.” Amit reluctantly came over and sat next to Ranbir.
“Start now,” said an excited Anu.

*

It does not take more than a few seconds to notice a noise, but it can take a long time to notice silence; it took me twelve years to notice Ramesh’s silence. The teacher had made me sit at the last bench, next to him. In the classroom, he always looked at the blackboard with his unshakeable gaze, and in the recess, at the air; I knew nothing about him other than this. But it was only after I got to sit with him, after twelve years of being in the same school, that I realised his silence. He had completely concealed himself from the world. I came to know that he had no friends; he didn’t talk to girls; he didn’t play cricket; he didn’t study; he didn’t come to school in a coloured uniform on his birthday; he didn’t fight; he didn’t eat ice-cream; he didn’t bully juniors; and he didn’t speak.
In fact, no one claimed to have heard his voice. Some juniors were convinced that he was mute. Once, some students of 2nd Class took to teasing him in the recess. They would throw paper balls at him and shout ‘mute, mute’. They were met with such indifference from his part that after a time they started feeling that he was partially blind and couldn’t even see them. They never teased him again, and became very sympathetic towards him. They would hide behind the tree and take turns in peeking at him.
I sat with him the whole year and came to know a lot of things. But what I came to know was what all he didn’t do; I didn’t come to know what he did, because he never did anything (except one thing): he never stood in groups, never smiled or laughed, never ran, was never excited, never teased dogs and never danced in the rain. He was the only boy who didn’t crowd around the ice-cream walla after the school hours. The only thing I came to know that he did was: he spoke—but not more than a couple of monosyllables in a week, and that too were almost inaudible. It was hard to believe at first, but I had heard him with my own ears.
Just a day before the end of our session, I offered him my ice-cream. He shook his head and went away. I stood there, with my eyes trying their best to pop out of their sockets. My classmates crowded around me, asking me to give them my ice-cream if I didn’t want it. I brushed them aside and followed Ramesh. He walked inside the woods and then, sat down on a stone near the lake. A sparrow perched on the ground next to him. He picked it up and caressed it. There came a smile on his face; by God, I was shocked. It was the second thing I came to know of that he did. If the boys of my class had caught the bird, they would have forced it to eat paper pellets, tied thread around its limbs or would have even stuffed it in their smelly bags. And if the boy was a kinder one, he would have thrown it in the air with a jerk, as if it were a stone. But Ramesh wasn’t like them; he gently placed it back on the ground, from where it flew away. He turned his face towards the lake and looked at it. His face was like a rock and his eyes fixed, almost frozen at a point; it seemed as if he was searching for his reflection in a water droplet in the lake. I went away from there and came back later in the evening. He was still there. By God, he had looked at it for a longer time than I had ever slept in my life, perhaps.

The more I came to know about him, the more I wanted to. The next year, I again sat with him. He didn’t bring lunchbox with him anymore; he slept during the recess. Soon, he started sleeping during all the free periods also. I was puzzled. Three months after our summer vacations, I saw him smiling again. All the classes had gone to Fun Fair. For three hours, while we sat on merry-go-rounds, slides, and even on roller-coasters, he sat on a chair and played with a leaf. A five-year old girl came and sat next to him, with a large bunch of flowers and a crutch in her hands. When I returned one hour later, with my hands full of Cadbury’s Dairy Milks that a rich man was giving for free, I saw him plucking the petals, sepals and leaves from the flowers; he was making a collage of the face of Mickey Mouse on the chair. The kid sitting next to him was jumping in excitement. When the collage was complete the kid clapped, and, that was when, for the second time, I had seen Ramesh smiling. He was the only person I ever knew who preferred playing with a disabled kid to roller-coasters and free Dairy Milks. He amazed me beyond limits.
You might find all that I am saying about him a bit improbable. I can understand it. Even I, who had seen all of it with my two eyes, found it hard to believe.

It was our games period. I was feeling sick and was told to go back to class. Rather than keeping my head down, I opened Ramesh’s bag. Nothing struck me as odd in it, except for a small blue notebook. I took it out. It contained, as I felt then and as I feel now, the world’s best sketches: minutely detailed; lifelike; every stroke, every line, every dot was harmonious with each other; they looked so real that it seemed as if the world itself came alive and sketched them. The notebook contained ten sketches. My heart throbbed in myriad awe. The more my eyes devoured on the beauty of one, the more they became reluctant to move to the next; and as they moved to the next, the beauty of the first looked diminished. Every mark of pencil on the pages spoke of the genius of the man who held the pencil.
On our next games period, instead of playing, I went and sat besides Ramesh.
I said, “I saw your blue notebook. I didn’t know you sketched.”
My words didn’t produce any effect on him.
I said, “They were amazing.”
He turned his face towards me.
“You really liked them?” he said.
“Liked them? I loved them! They are the best I’d ever seen.”
For the whole period, he questioned me on what I liked about them and what I didn’t. The more I praised them, the more his face beamed with happiness. Believe me, happiness never looked so good on anyone’s face as it looked on his. He did most of the talking, and didn’t let me speak much. He asked me if I was free in the evening and could come to his house. After the period was over, there remained a perpetual shock on the faces of those boys and girls who had seen him talking.
His house was a modest one. Without introducing me to anyone, he dragged me to his room. He opened his cupboard and took out a veiled canvas and an easel. He quickly removed the cloth from the canvas. I was shell-shocked for some minutes. My father had tried to imbue artistic zeal in me by taking me to various art exhibitions; I had met a lot of artists, seen a lot of great works, and had even tried to learn painting; hence, I had enough knowledge of art and painting to judge which work was good and which bad. This one was great, though still half-finished. At 16, Ramesh was a genius.
“You know, there is a small lake near our school,” he said, “It is that lake I’m painting on the canvas.”
He continued after I didn’t speak anything:
“You must we wondering why I’m painting it here, in my room, and not on the scene itself.”
He looked at me. I was still looking at the painting, dazed.
“I go to the lake daily and look at it carefully. And then, I come home and paint it. I prefer painting from memory.
“This is my magnum opus. I have been working on it since long. Believe me, when it would be finished, it would be a masterpiece.”
“I agree,” I said, “it is amazing.”
“It has to be. I work on it nine hours a day.”
I looked at him, once more shocked.
“Yes, nine hours,” he said. “From 10 in the night to 7 in the morning. Without a break.”
“Is that why you are always sleeping the class?” I asked.
“Yes.”
We both laughed. When I returned home, I found myself wondering whether to call Ramesh a genius or a lunatic.

In the next few days, his passion for painting became clearer to me, and I also got my answer: he was both. I came to know that he wasn’t lonely: painting was for him his friend, his brother, his mate. Either he talked to me about painting, or he never talked; and when he talked about painting, his face would always be glowing with joy. Holding a brush and making colours dance on the canvas gave him the joy that the world’s most expensive and exquisite things could never have given. One day I asked him why he doesn’t show his paintings to someone at the Delhi Art Gallery. Ramesh thought about it, and then spent his whole pocket money and couriered two of his paintings, along with a letter, to Delhi Art Gallery. He got a reply within a week. The letter was filled with ravishing praises; one was, ‘. . . your vibrant use of colours reminds me of Gogh, and realism, of Waterhouse. They are masterpieces.’ Ramesh hadn’t mentioned his age in the letter. He was called at the gallery the next day. The comparison with Gogh made Ramesh mad with excitement. I also shed two tears.
Two days later, I asked him what had happened at the meeting. He said, “I didn’t go.”
“What! You didn’t go!” I cried, “Have you lost your mind! That man wrote that you will become famous all over the world in a few days!”
“That is the problem,” he replied. “Ranbir, you know that I’ve always been alone. I appreciate his praises, but I—I don’t want to become famous. I just want to be alone. I’ve always lived life that way. I can’t change it now. I’ve written a letter saying that I am donating the painting to the gallery, and don’t wish anybody to know about me.”
“Ramesh, I just don’t understand you—how can you—I mean this is insane—”
“I know it is weird, Ranbir. But I have always been like this. Nature has made he like this. I am happy with myself. I like to be alone. I am different from others. I’m happy the way I am.”
I was very angry with him.
“You know Ranbir,” said Ramesh, “to add meaning to our existence, we need to have something that we value more than out life. For me that thing is painting. I don’t care if I have no friends and live a lonely, baseless life. I am the happiest man on earth till the time I can paint. I am not sad having missed the chance to be famous, or even those bundles of rupees. I don’t want all that. I just want to paint. It is my only friend. It is all I need to be happy.”
Such lunatic geniuses are born once in generations. I knew I could never love anything in life, or even life itself, as much as he loved painting. He was, and will always remain, the most amazing person I’ve come across.

Ramesh had succeeded in hiding his passion for painting from his father, Mr Mohanlal, who kept on thinking that his poor grades were because of his low intelligence, not because he devoted less time to studies. Mr Mohanlal owned a small cloth shop, but most of his income came from dealing in shares. The recent Global Meltdown had, like everybody else’s, affected his investments. He had taken heavy loans and was now on the verge of bankruptcy. Out of tension, he started pacing about the drawing room late at nights. Then one day, he went inside Ramesh’s room. Ramesh told him everything. His father was furious, and threatened him to stop his madness and turn down to studies. Belonging to a conservative family, he felt that a man cannot earn his roti by painting. Mr Mohanlal didn’t realise what painting meant to Ramesh; it was as if he was telling him to stop breathing. Ramesh still painted. The slaps and canes had no effect on him. The share market fell further. Mr Mohanlal’s health fell along with it. I met Ramesh in the school one day and asked him what he planned to do now. He told me that he would prove to his father that a man can earn his roti by painting. When it gets completed, he would sell his canvas, The Lake, to the Delhi Art Gallery. From nine, he started working on it for eleven hours.
Ramesh failed in his exams. When he returned home one day, his mother told him that on hearing of his bankruptcy and of Ramesh’s failing in his exams, his father had fainted and had to be hospitalised. They rushed to the hospital, and came to know that Mr Mohanlal was partially paralysed for life. For the first time, he saw contempt in his mother’s eyes for him. He felt crushed under the weight of guilt. He swore never to paint again and tore all his sketches and paintings, and threw a bottle of colour over The Lake.

*

Ranbir fell silent. Ramesh came out of the tent carrying a large tray.
“Keep the tray and go, we’ll serve ourselves,” said Amit.
“Take a blanket if you’re sleeping,” said Ranbir.
They all ate in silence. Darkness had completely shrouded the woods. The moon and the stars looked like holes in the shroud. Amit kept his plate down and said, “Nice story. Thank God such things don’t happen in real life. I’m going to sleep.” Amit walked inside the large white tent.
Ranbir said, “I’m going for a walk. Want to come?”
“Sure,” said Anu.
As they walked through the tall alpines, the only sound that penetrated in the air was of the wet grass crushing under their feet.
After some time, Anu said, “Is that the end? What happened after that?”
Ranbir said in a sober voice, “Having failed in the exams, Ramesh was getting no job. His father’s friend took pity on his family and took him in as a servant. He would have killed himself long back, if it hadn’t been for his helpless parents.”
They passed by their tent. Ranbir picked up a spare blanket and walked to where Ramesh was sleeping, under the tree.
Ranbir covered Ramesh with the blanket and said, turning towards Anu, “By vowing to live without painting, he had vowed to live without his soul He became more secluded from the world than ever. Earlier, he would talk to me about painting, about the beauty of nature, about birds, trees, grass, lakes—but now, he didn’t. He never smiled again, never caressed a sparrow, never sat by the lake, and never spoke again. He had no complaint with God, or life, or with anybody. Only his lifeless body was being dragged along with time; his heart and brain had left his body, and were forever encaged in that moment when he had vowed never to paint again; they refused to accompany his body in being a part of that time where there were no colours and palettes. When I looked into his eyes, I felt as if—as if—a wire was pulling around his neck and he was being chocked to death. His silence pains me. Why doesn’t he speak to me about his loss, his suffering? Why does he keep it all inside, and suffer from the same suffering, every day, again and again? How can God be so merciless? Every night, I silently pray for death to come and free him from this suffering. Hell would have been a better fate.”
Anu looked at the thin stream of tears that was surging down Ranbir’s cheeks.
“Anu, you know what he did when he felt the urge to paint?” said Ranbir, his voice chocked with tears. “He took a blade and cut his thumb and index finger, so that he won’t be able to hold a brush or a pencil.”
Ranbir lifted Ramesh’s hand and showed it to Anu. The skin was swollen, and hard, and there were cut marks on his finger and thumb. Ranbir said, “Ten years have passed, but Ramesh still cuts his finger, every week. He punishes himself for the crime of being a genius.”