Sir Ganga Ram Hospital

“Is it just me or is the world getting crazier every day?”
“It’s always been this way.”

The men wearing white spoke in hushed, concerned voices so that their principals would not hear. They were walking down a corridor in Ganga Ram. The halls were not as expected, they were brightly lit, the walls were colored. The halls were not as expected, but this also made sense. They had scribbles on them, the patients were allowed, were given free rein to express their artistic desires. They were allowed to roam the halls. They were not allowed to do two things. They were not allowed to leave. They needed to heal. And this place, unconventional as it was, seemed to be able to provide the ability to. Besides, for some of them, like elderly Ahmed, their relatives did not want them back, would rather have their rich patriarchs locked inside a mental asylum, so that they could use and take advantage of all their wealth. For others, like Sardar sahib, they had family on the other side of the newly demarcated and created border, and given the current political tides, the respective families could not come and take them back home.

They walked on, the one who had asked the question was new, a volunteer, the other was a jaded veteran of this place. The latter had stopped believing in his power to heal a long time ago, or so he proclaimed, and yet, he stayed on. The former was going through the stages of most new orderlies at this place. His current state of mind was the second stage. He heaved a long, thick sigh. His cheery wide eyed optimism, and desire to change the world, to help make it a better place had been replaced by a weight on him, not dissimilar to the weight that Atlas held on his shoulders.

The place did not smell sterile, it was unconventional. It smelled of mithai, and of freshly fried samosas, nihari, the last of which always seemed to bring up the mood of all patients. As of late, even the people who had been born hindu, and were at this place had seemed to begun having it. But religion did not matter here anymore.

A camera swiveled as it followed them. Another kept stoically focused on the patient drawing on the walls, the signs and pictures photographed, and recorded in a file.

Religion mattered here a lot. It was just not any religion currently on earth. There was one that it was closest to. But some of its edicts would be considered blasphemy in that way. Some of these men had the potential to be seers. Others were truly mad. And in that madness, they could save the future. They could provide the key to survival. It was the mad that would inherit the earth. It was the mad that would save it. It was those that humanity considered mad that were actually the truth speakers, those that stood apart from and clawed at the fabric of lies that society had constructed to protect itself from truths it could not bear to see.