Devrai

Have you come across this joke? Once the education inspector comes to a school, goes in a class and asks the students, "If five mangoes cost twenty-six rupees, how many steps does the school staircase have?" One ultra-smart student raises his hand and answers, "Twenty-nine, Sir". "That’s absolutely correct, but how could you get that, my boy?" Sir. "Simple, my mom has cooked Spinach for lunch today, Sir", Boy…
Ok, now lets jot down seriously the dissimilar events in the joke. Mangoes-Rupees-Steps-Spinach…. Do they make any sense? No, as long as its not a joke.
Let’s take another such link. A Garden-Boy sitting under an apple tree-An apple falls down-Gravity- Earth’s attraction-Rules that govern heavenly bodies-…
Oh, that’s our Newton.
A similar chain…Earlier one created a joke, this one- rules that govern the universe!
Suppose for a moment, had Newton not been able to express his thoughts clearly; then…
That means had he understood the linkage between a falling apple and law of gravity but could not have expressed the same in a clear coherent manner; then…
Obviously, people would have called him a ‘fool’.
Precisely this confusion of thoughts is one of the symptoms of a mental disorder called ‘Schizophrenia’.
Exact cause of this disorder is still unknown. It happens because of imbalance of certain chemicals in the human brain; but this is also a symptom than a reason. It can happen to anybody, at any age. Heredity, Depression, Lack of communication, Overly introvert nature are some of the contributing factors, yet none is conclusive.
We can roughly describe Schizophrenia as a mental state wherein a person comes up with seemingly inconsistent ideas, believing strongly from inside that they are consistent. It’s the problem about not having effective communication or translation of thoughts in a coherent, clear exposition. To put simply, it’s a ‘traffic jam’ of thoughts. The order collapses down!
This differs from the case wherein the thought expressed has a clear exposition but just doesn’t fit into the relative custom-time frame. In this case, the thought is regarded as a ‘mad’ or ‘insane’ one. Think of Galileo, Keplar who expressed their difference of opinion about earth to the Church. They were ridiculed, insulted initially but later promptly recognized and remembered for their brilliant contributions- this is because of clarity of exposition.
On the other hand, when there are problems in the exposition of the thought itself, the person behind it, rather than the thought, is unnecessarily proclaimed as ‘mad’ or ‘insane’.
This is on account of the inconsistency in ideas, which is the ‘raw material’ of both the outcomes as said earlier. Unfortunately there is no clue to predict in advance whether this inconsistency will breed a great scientific or artistic breakthrough or a joke!
Because the processing system in which this raw material is supposed to be processed-the human mind- is an unresolved mystery to date. When this processing system goes out of system, the result can be a mental disorder like ‘schizophrenia’.
A person having schizophrenia finds it difficult to distinguish between the real world i.e.day to day life that is indispensable in nature and a virtual, crafted world of unsaturated ideas created by his mind. Emotional and social aspects of his/her life suffer badly. There remains hardly any person with whom the sufferer can share his /her pain.
There aren’t any fixed patterns in which schizophrenia affects the personality of a person. Nobel laureate John Nash of A Beautiful Mind is one of them; so is Sheshashayee Desai of Devrai.