It's true albeit not that obvious. People's brains just pop open. Some cousin develops a strong case of OCD in his teens. Some aunt has been a little off since her childhood. Some uncle can't get out of bed after retirement. Another third cousin has anger issues and can't hold a job, can't manage people, in effect can't make it from day to day. And of course, drug and alcohol issues are more rampant than they seem.
But of course, we hide. We hide that insanity races in our veins along with the blood that we inherited. Because we're ashamed. Because we're supposed to be fine. Why wouldn't we be? How can we be anything less than what's expected of us. I think this lack of acceptance pushes many of those sitting on the edge, into the deep gorge.
But this story is from back in the day. Many many years ago when I wasn't aware of any of this. I was little. Seven or eight years of age. My brother may have been four or five. An uncle in the extended family had gone crazy. It was made to sound like it had happened overnight. It hadn't. Things had been brewing for a really long time and then one day, everyone around just accepted that some kind of line had been crossed from being sane to being otherwise.
We were summoned. A trip was planned. The crazy uncle lived in Puri. With his wife and three daughters. He used to be a teacher. They lived in a rickety house with a huge courtyard with trees. We, my family, had been summoned by a rich older cousin of our father who kind of oversaw everyone's well being. The rich older cousin gave us a chauffeur driven car and put us up in a hotel room. We only had to go and check on the recently insane uncle and find out how things were.
Somehow that trip has stayed very fresh in my memories. Or it may be now that everything seems to be coming back to me. We drove to Puri in peak summer. And made friends with the driver. We reached in the afternoon and headed to the uncle's house.
A sense of hopelessness prevailed. The air was dry. Stories were traded quietly. He had become very difficult to contain, his wife mentioned. Everything was manageable until a few months ago when suddenly one day he stopped going to work and started screaming expletives at the neighbors. He had shattered all tea cups and hence we had been served tea in steel glasses. And he went away erratically and came back home with torn clothes. The daughters were older than us. They seemed to be hiding although as is expected we were supposed to become friends almost immediately. We didn't. I don't even remember what their names were.
But I clearly remember that even though I was very excited in our sea facing hotel room at the fag end of the beach, I was sad too. It was all trickling down into my head because I had heard the whispers. That night I came down with a fever without warning. It rarely happens that way, my mother said as she shut the tall windows and kept the sea breeze out.