A gripping psychological thriller that explores the struggles of loneliness and mental health in today’s society, Out of Madness by Rithwik Aryan draws from his personal experiences of having spent one-and-a-half years inside two of India’s most dangerous mental asylums to fully immerse himself in the psychological depths required to craft this compelling story.
1
FIVE YEARS LATER
I’ am inside The Clemency’s Mental Asylum. Tomorrow morning, if I make it out alive , it will be exactly fiver years since i was brought here – to the ward of the criminally insane , alongside the most notorious and most talented A- class director of pornography, Bahubali . I’ve been admitted here for an indefinite period of time.
Much unlike the excellent Mclean Psychiatric Hospital in Boston, Clemency’s isn’t advertised in fancy newspapers or talked about with fascination on celebrity talk shows. Very few people are aware of it’s existence – mostly scholars or family members of patients who had to be brought to Clemency’s because they posed an imminent threat to themselves or others. It might sound mythical altogether , but it’s just a sad place. The nights are starless and silent. The evenings are haunted by crying crows and resting vultures. Clemency’s is surrounded by a sprawling forest with trees of pine and juniper. Tall and dominating, these trees sometimes reach over 200 feet. There is a Dutch church down the gravel path, where a few madmen play badminton and volleyball in the evenings, and small library designated for the patients’ recreation.
Clemency’s is spread over an expanse of 220 acres. This excellent facility was built in 1857 by the British Crown to imprison the most revolutionary freedom fighters of our country who were fighting against the British Raj and who , quite frankly, began posing a real threat to the succession of the British Crown. All the British offered them in return was a diagnosis of madness and a lifelong exile to Clemency’s Mental Asylum. Though now it’s ancient history, Clemency’s is now used as a place of disappearance for people like myself or for those who have gained more international fame and notoriety than even I have.
Inside this regal madhouse, we are an unusual lot . There is Harrison Brown, a boy five years my junior who wears Velcro Oxford sandals and knee- length shorts. He has been brought here because he knifed his own mother to death on his birthday. There is the charming Ms Prerna – a fascinating and affable lady with a beautiful hairdo who is always anxious about being really good mother to her daughter and really charming wife to her husband . Her desire to be the most dutiful wife to her husband and the most loving mother to her five- year-old daughter is so strong that it has gotten her all neurotic only . She spends most of her time in her room – fully dressed , makeup intact, and hair combed with a fordable comb – and awaits eagerly for the weekend to come. That is when her husband and her daughter are due to visit. Only the husband and the daughter never visit her, for they don’t exist in the real world. They are but a figment of her mad imagination.
We also have with us a former banker of the Reserve Bank of India , a madman whose tale of insanity is reserved for some other time. But this is the one man that I envy, for he is solely responsible for putting Bahubali in Ward A ( a ward which is allocated for only the most severe cases). And Lastly, there is my master , Bahubali. A man of fine greatness who doesn’t stay in the same ward as me anymore, even though were were brought here together. His madness had become so disturbing that he had to be shifted very recently to that ward.
About The Author
Rithwik Aryan has the distinction of being one of the quickest dropouts of Harvard Extension School, Harvard University. He exited the hallowed institution within three months of starting his bachelor’s degree in psychology to pursue a career in writing. It took him five years to meticulously craft his debut novel, Out of Madness, during which one-and-a-half years he spent inside two of India’s most dangerous mental asylums— The Central Institute of Psychiatry and The Agra Mental Asylum— to bring to bear the hyper realistic elements of the setting in the narrative.
(Extracted with due permission from author, publisher)
