Harun, Are We Still Friends?

They say that the old psychiatric ward for special children, located around 40 mins by train from Kolkata, is haunted. Slashed barbed wire, overgrown moss, a stale damp odor kept all visitors – the curious and the skeptical, away from its vicinity.  The families who had their children in the ward were shunned from society and received pitiful glances on random gatherings and worship ceremonies. This was during my early schooling years, in the 2000s when bullying kids with diagnosed and undiagnosed mental illnesses was the norm and not an exception. Pagol, pagli and other animated variants of a mad person were in circulation and an integral part of unfiltered small-town gossips.

One of my friends, Harun, vanished in and out of school and play dates. We knew he lived two lives; one was among us and at the other was at the ward. The way I remember it, his behavior was at times odd and eccentric, but nothing particularly malicious or inherently disturbing stood out to me. It was only that one time I had heard from my classmates about Harun’s “crazy behavior” on being bullied by a senior boy during recess. Soon after that incident, things escalated fairly fast, and we were told that Harun was seriously ill and would not play with us anymore. Years rolled by and I neither saw nor heard from him again.

The topic of mental illness in rural India, being the taboo that it was and still is to this day, was constantly weaponized and used against us as a means to name and shame. I was no stranger to disquieting rumors, animatedly told tales of paranoia, madness, violence and other grim narratives of what happened to children who played outside for too long or disobeyed their parents. By the late 2000s, the ward stopped operating and the dense thicket of mango trees that hid the facility from outside view stopped producing fruits and died.

I got diagnosed with a condition in my late 20s and was fortunate enough to move out of the suburbs and receive good treatment. On the day my doctor handed me the results of my diagnosis, my mind drifted back to Harun, his lean stature, jet black hair and awkward smile. Thinking back to my childhood years, I couldn’t help but draw parallels between my condition and Harun’s symptoms. A few days later, I hopped onto a train and reached my suburban house to spend a few days of summer vacations. On inquiring about Harun and his recent whereabouts, I couldn’t get a straight answer from anyone who remembered him and his family. Curiosity got the better of me and one late afternoon, I went around in search for answers.

It already felt like a punch in the gut to know that his family had relocated, and no one knew where. Persevering through the heat of a sultry afternoon, I pushed aside the iron gate and went into the scruffy and unguarded psychiatric ward. The change in the atmosphere was instant; I was nauseous and wanted to leave. This, being my only chance, I ventured past cracked walls, steel pipes, broken chairs, empty medicine bottles, plastic gloves and other junk items that none had bothered to discard. I noticed some old photographs on the walls; colored photos of children around the ages of 5-12 either climbing a tree or playing cards or swimming in a nearby pond. Their expressionless faces were unnatural, but I didn’t want to read too much into them. Harun was missing from the photographs.

On rummaging some more, I noticed a pile of loose papers, crushed photographs and worn-out crayons stashed to the corner. In one of those blurry and torn photos, I identified him. More than a decade had passed but his averted gaze, slanted posture and ‘Pokémon’ t-shirt made him very discernable. On closer inspection, there was something not right about the drawing.

He was standing aloof and distant from a group of similarly aged children, his eyes closed, and face turned away. The other children were almost oblivious to his presence.

By now, I had turned my attention to another piece of paper. This one looked like a hand drawn sketch. It was at a birthday party inside a room that looked very much like the dining room of Harun’s own house. A group of unruly figures were squatting on the floor dipping their fingers in what looked like a gooey yellow paste. One child’s plate was empty.

Something felt wrong and I was getting very uncomfortable. I did not want to look at any more photographs or drawings. As I was about to put back the papers, something slipped and fell onto the floor. It was rectangular in shape, and someone had handwritten the words, “friends forever” on it. I turned it over and stared at four smiling faces: Harun, in his baggy t-shirt – Tota, with her straight black hair covering one eye – Subho, in his oversized Manchester United jersey and me, in my ugly braces.

I felt a tight knot in my stomach; my legs felt weaker, and I wanted to sit down somewhere. I fell on the dirty floor and shut my eyes to avoid seeing the enclosed walls close in on me. I had started hearing voices; repressed laughter of grown-ups assigning the role of a jester to Harun every single time our village organized a staged play; the annoyed voice of Harun’s mother berating him for burning chapati (a type of flat bread) by keeping it for too long in the tawa (flat pan); the shrill voice of Ms. Jaya, our despicable Bengali teacher, who saw nothing wrong in beating Harun for being a slow learner – and worst of all, my own conscience raging at me for doing so little.

I suspected that I was having an episode. I do not know how long it lasted but somehow, I had managed to leave the ward and run out into the unkept grounds. To this day, I get shivers thinking about Harun – the events of that afternoon – and the roll of some invisible die that shielded me from a very different fate.