January 1977, Ratanpur, Bangladesh
Azad, a 13 year old, tormented by the horrors of the liberation war of ’71 and loss of both of his parents in the war, has just given the matriculation examination and is expecting to get his results by March. But there has been something crazy going on with him.
For the last few days he is experiencing something he hasn’t experienced before. He is feeling alienated; as if he doesn’t belong to this country; this society. He is trying to figure out what is going on but all his efforts are in vain.
All of a sudden, on a Sunday afternoon, as he was talking with his classmates; whom he could no longer identify as friends– an inner voice came and it said– Azad, you are a terrorist! And it kept repeating again and again and again. All Azads’ efforts to suppress the satanic voice went in vain and in his mind he experienced complete hell. The voice didn’t stop no matter what he did or felt. It kept getting darker and darker and darker. Azad, completely puzzled by and terrified of his own inner demons, felt as if he were responsible for all of this. The darker his thoughts got, the more alienated he felt. Slowly he came to believe that he was the only person in the world to have experienced this. He was convinced that he had gone bonkers. He felt completely alienated from his friends. Terror and paranoia seemed to paralyze him. People– all the people he knew and didn’t know seemed like demons to him.
Even in his dreams, all he could see was darkness, red, black and some unknown force haunting him, calling him, searching for him. At day time, he seemed lost, absorbed completely in his dark imagination. One night he screamed so loudly and bit his uncle so bitterly and terrifically that the next morning his uncle, in whose house he had been living since his parents died, called to the police and handed him over despite his aunt’s resistance. The next day the police admitted him to a mental asylum somewhere in Dhaka. The doctor there gave him a diagnosis of Schizophrenia, the supreme form of madness known to Man. Now there was a certification that Azad, the Good Boy, as his mother used to call him, has gone insane in this sane world of man.
All these events occurred too quickly for Azad to comprehend and at the end he was left tormented and alone; completely alone in the lunatic asylum.
The week that followed his admission was even more horrifying. He saw images all day and night–not of something unknown to him but too known, too familiar, too dearly. His history and all of Man’s history seemed to reveal in front of his eyes, in his daylight hallucination. Day and night seemed one to him. Life seemed like a dream. And all day, for some unknown reason he kept laughing and laughing and laughing and screaming like a joker. He could see his future, his past in his eyes like a reflection in clear water crystal clear.
Seeing the severity of his condition, the doctor was convinced that he would never see the light again. But Azad, in his mind, knew that he had become a monster now–A monstrous human, fearless, reckless and soulless. He knew life would never be the same once he could escape the asylum. It was never meant to.
A few days later, on a moonlit night, he escaped the asylum. Put out all his clothes. He walked naked in the streets of Dhaka for two days; all day–all night. People were staring at him knowing that he had gone mad. But in his mind Azad knew he was a real human being devoid of all labels.
Three days later, he got on a train as a civilized man on his way back home. He found a calendar in the train and it read 1984 April, Saturday.
Azad kept smiling like mad again and since then he had not stopped laughing.