April, 2013

During the summer break of my second year graduation, I interned at a Psychiatry Centre in East Delhi, and this is where I encountered the man that intrigued me to the core. The first weekend of my work was about to start, with so many plans in my head to implement, I left the office at 7 in the evening. It took me around two hours to travel to the place where I was putting up. I was called back to the office because the chairman of the Psychiatry Centre had a task for me. Although I had not learnt much then, I was asked to take a case history of a new patient.

This man – unshaved, good looking but clumsy – entered the room, where I was sitting alone. I was freaking out, to be with the patient alone. Anyway I started with his name and about his family; he was 29 years old then and seemed disinterested in telling me about the usual demographic details about himself. He was brought to the clinic, by his sister because of the difficulties he was facing in his life. His face was filled with remorse, eyebrows down with guilt and his body language pleaded for comfort. So he simply jumped to what he had done to get over the guilt, hoping for reassurance.

“I am having an affair with my best friend’s wife” he said as it was so hard to keep it in, anymore. I was amazed to hear such a thing and tried to not react and calm him at first. I, in my defense, asked him “So what do you do?” He began to describe it from the start about how he studied commerce in his high school, then opted for Science stream from the open school, went ahead to do engineering and left it as well. He was never sure of what he should be doing. I remember at one point he got so passionate telling me about how he loves every profession that he gets in contact with that he started enquiring about how a person becomes a Psychologist or Psychiatrist. I brought him back to the point, so he told me he had finished his exams in Pilot, when he was 26 and when he had come to the clinic, he had already finished his certain number of hours required to get a pilot license.

Just when I was getting impressed at his capabilities, he said “I know I can do anything I like, but I do not really know if I can like anything for too long”. He was a very intelligent man, for that matter. Again he asked me about how is to be a psychologist and how interesting it would be to listen to so many stories of different people, and that he would want to become a psychologist now. This man was a person with brilliant brains, interested in everything but lacked sincerity and devotion to any of it, for that matter. He even asked me what did professionals in this field do, to not get affected by so much disturbance and negativity. It was, as if, he almost forgot about his guilt and remorse once he started interrogating me.

I politely ignored his questions, to bring him back to his life story. I asked him again, so what was it that made him do such a thing. He said, his best friend was not a good man, in his defense and that he did not keep his wife happy. She wanted to study more, but her husband would violently suppress her, every time she demanded her growth. The client was very sympathetic towards her initially, and would support her when she was right. His best friend even had an infant daughter, and he never cared for her either.

He started telling me how his sympathy turned into affection. His best friend and the wife got separated because their own personal reasons, but the client kept supporting the wife with her education and her daughter’s school admission. He was so unsure about his choices, which also caused him an unsettled career. He even ran away from his home twice without informing anyone.

When he finally decided to talk to the girl’s parents about her second marriage, he went to her house. He told me, he had visited the house a lot of times before so it was not a big deal. But this time he went drunk. He was stinking of alcohol, as he described to me, so the girl’s parents didn’t let him in. They asked him to come later because it was too late in the night. The patient got offended, and started abusing the girl’s father. He was almost depressed because he abused the father of a girl he loved, more than the fact that he cheated on his best friend too. The girl’s father had to call the patient’s family to take him away. Both the families got to know about the entire situation, and nobody is ready to support him.

“What should I do now?” He asked me. I was so stunned by the entire situation myself that I did not reply at first. He kept telling me how sorry he was for abusing the girl’s father and that he wanted to marry her and give her the life he deserves. He hardly realized that I was much younger to him, and on top of that – it was hardly an hour ago that he met me for the first time. I saw him behaving like a stubborn but guilty kid. I connected the intercom with my mentor but she was busy at that moment.

I called up the Chairman of the Centre, and he asked me to come to his office room. I went there, and nervously discussed the case study with him. That was the first time I was feeling so helpless to be kept on the spot. The patient was called in, too. While discussing the case, I had to leave in between because it was too late for me already. The entire way back I kept thinking about the case and what I could’ve told him and the reasons why did not. I was very disappointed.

When I went to the Office next week, I asked my mentor about the same case. She told me that the patient was given the next appointment. The patient never returned to the clinic, and till this day, I contemplate about what I could really have told him to do, when he had pleaded to me. I wonder what he had really done to get over the fear and the guilt. I could never follow up, for obvious reasons, because my internship lasted for only four weeks – and in that span of time he did not arrive.

I still wonder if he could really find the right thing for his career, and did he ever get over his guilt of ill-treating the people in his life?