Friday, April 07, 2017

Shyam Mastana

Shyam has a problem. He is schizophrenic. And he does not know it. In this mind, there are voices and interactions that have nothing to do with reality. They are a manifestation of his own self. Yet he wrongly believes that those voices exist for real. And communicates with them. In his imaginary world, they have given him a name: Mastana. Hence Shyam Mastana.
Source:frithmind.org

Every person has good and bad elements in them, Shyam too. On the outside, he is a quiet person but inside his mind, he is a Mastana, a romantic in love who heard many a curse from the people who mattered to him. The name Mastana was given to him by his love with whom he had no connection what so ever in real life for last many years. She was his school colleague who left the school and went to a different city. Unfortunately, even in his mind, she is in love with someone else, but ready to be with him for a few days only out of pity.
Shyam is socially withdrawn and speaks very little in real life. Inside his mind as well he keeps as quiet as possible. But the people with him want him to speak out of all the evil done to him over the years of which there is absolutely no record. The pressing matter of today was whether he was good enough to get his love even though personally he maintained that he had fallen out of it. None of the people inside which included his boss, his love and few others of the same social group would take his excuse of falling out. They wanted him to win her over whereas she ridiculed him in all the ways possible. Like the complications love develops in real life, it developed complications in his imaginary world as well. Shyam Mastana had to do something to win her over. Otherwise, the ridicule in his imaginary world would get him into trouble.
He wrote a poem for her. She showed momentary happiness but then recoiled to her previous demand of gadi, bangla and sona. Shyam was a middle-class boy and sadly not very ambitious. He clearly told her that money does not matter in love. It mattered for her, she made it very clear. Others in his imaginary world were with her.
To be in such a situation is not good for Shyam. He gives hours talking to these people and listening to what they have to say at expense of his work and leisure. Sometimes there are jokes as well which makes him laugh but mostly serious matters are discussed. In those discussions, he tries to show his erudite knowledge and others do appreciate him. But generally, it's his ass which is on fire.

Doing work is not easy. They are always with him. Sometimes they do not want him to work, other times they ask him questions about his work. Shyam, in this mild tone, requests them to give a break. It is only very few times that they give it to him. Shyam thinks that they can do their own work because they have adjusted well to this system and are good friends with each other. He is the odd one out. But he is trying his best to gel with them. They too, like him, have no idea how to get away from each other. Hence, for Shyam, all of them are connected through their minds even though the truth is that it is only Shyam’s mind which is playing tricks. Mastana, after all, he is!

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