The ‘Madman’ Of Digboi: A Small Town Story Of Mental Health Stigma

Just after my college, my parents decided to forego our home in the small oil town in the North East of India, Digboi, where I had been born and raised. It was a difficult decision, but tainted by the politics of the outsider, migration, and the language wars that had ensued in the region for many years now, it seemed a foregone conclusion.

Like anyone who had spent their formative years in a particular land, I worried about losing language, culture, my roots, but most of all, my home and its idiosyncratic memories. I began climbing trees, watching rivers like Brahmaputra and Dihing—by which I had made homes—flow by. I threw out my tongue at them, trying to convince the waters of these rivers that geopolitics and imaginary lines were foolish. That, in fact, both tongues were mine and would remain so.

But often land, language, sanity, and politics are dictated by our inability to survive together. However, contrary to my worry, the memories of the land I was born in, followed me around, became voluminous, and often overran the floodgates of memory where many stories framed me now, instead of the few I had grown up with.

Growing up in the early eighties in Assam, I was witness to the numerous community riots between the Assamese and the Bengalis, and later on, the armed politics of the terrorist group called ULFA (United Liberation Front of Assam). As dusk settled on the township, we would often move from house to house, huddled and scared in the dark, seeking shelter in similar community houses for fear of our houses being burnt down.

During such times, curfew would often be declared, and the roads remained empty for days altogether, with schools, colleges, and offices shutting down as a consequence. On some nights, we would hear fighting on the roads between different communities and the piercing shrill of ambulance sirens into the dark night.

Over the years, the state saw increased army movement, and most people were careful about venturing out. Amidst all this, there was, however, one person who would walk free on the roads without fear. His name was Sumanta Paagla, which literally translated to Sumanta, the mad. Like most small towns in those days that had their own madmen to make fun of, Sumanta was Digboi’s very own madman. A sort of town clown, if you please, that everyone had an opinion about and loved to laugh at or with.

Greek literature, in some of its texts, qualifies madness as a long-forgotten road. In Indian parlance, this road is often treated as an unfamiliar occurrence in people’s lives, and as a consequence of such unfamiliarity, often approached with suspicion by those who witness it, especially within their own social circles.

The entire town knew Sumanta Paagla well. He was a familiar figure who often stopped people to borrow a cigarette or ask for some loose change. It piqued my interest that my normally short-tempered father would always slow down his car on the way to the office, or stop while in the market to have a conversation with Sumanta Paagla.

Why did he do that, I had asked him once. Baba revealed that Sumanta and he used to be colleagues once upon a time in Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) where my father worked. How Sumanta went mad and consequently started roaming the streets as a vagabond, no one seemed to know clearly. It was clear to me though, that my father was fond of him, often giving him money for cigarettes or food.
There were days when after hopping off my school bus, I would observe Sumanta lying in the shade of a tree near our home. Some of the other schoolkids would try to irritate him at times, and he would run after them with a laugh as if it were a fun game.

In hindsight, mental health was hardly understood in those days. It was a grey area that almost no one wanted to broach or even acknowledge. From my repeated questioning of the elders, all I could glean was that people sometimes went mad, and such people were relegated to the fringes of society or township.

But I had noticed others, different people, especially those who were born into respected or wealthy homes, being treated differently. While Sumanta Paagla came across as a free bird, these people remained mostly confined to the shadows. They were outside the purview of drawing room conversations about health, or even dining table conversations about the divide between the rich and the poor. It was as if these people didn’t exist for anyone or in any bracket at all.

I recall a young boy, the son of a neighbour, who went to school with us at one point. All of a sudden, he seemed to disappear. Not only from the school but from the school bus, the playground and the company club where we often spent our evenings. But because they were our neighbours, I would sometimes catch glimpses of him while playing outside the house. He would be standing by the window, clinging to the iron rods, a strange stare in his eyes, watching the world pass by. Why had he been taken off school no one knew, but I was suspicious that he had perhaps been locked in a room, for whenever I tried to wave at him, a pair of hands would quickly pull him away from the window into the shadows where he had begun to live.

I had asked my mother a couple of times about why he never came out to play with us, but the answers I received were mostly evasive. As an adult now, I realise that the boy had perhaps been confined to his room, in order to avoid unnecessary questions from the ever-curious small-town neighbours.

Sometimes, I still think about the boy hanging on to the window sill. It was an action that I had copied when I flunked my exams and no one at home would talk to me. I realised then, that mental health isn’t only a problem, it is a social embarrassment, somewhat like a failing in life that we are all so scared of. Had his parents tried to get him treated, or was locking him up a way of brushing such an issue under the carpet, I guess I’ll never find out.

Sumanta Paagla, however, was a different case altogether. It was as if his madness had set him free. He did whatever he wished to. No rules bound him. I sometimes wondered whether people even envied him. It is in this regard that I recall a certain incident.

On most weekends those days, when the situation was somewhat peaceful, our family of four would bundle up into our small Fiat car and head out towards the picturesque neighbourhood town of Margherita. As a township, Margherita (a centre for a colliery) was situated on the banks of the Dihing River, a young tributary of the mighty Brahmaputra. It was the base for the North East operations of Coal India, too. A small shop in the township sold the most delicious Kalakand (a type of dry sweet), along with some excessively sweet tea. It used to be a favourite haunt for many like us, who would visit the township for sweets. Just before entering the town of Margherita, there was a railway crossing, which mostly had a few meter gauge goods trains plying to and fro through the colliery there.

It was a beautiful autumn evening. As we stood near the railway crossing waiting for the train to pass by, lazily counting the bogies, my father suddenly looked up and excitedly pointed out Sumanta Paagla, who appeared sitting in the open last bogie, near the guard’s compartment. His feet slung lazily just over the tracks, he sat there singing to himself, a small packet of channa in his hands, and a big smile plastered on his face. Sumanta was probably just taking a free ride back home. I looked at my father then, as he laughed quietly, saying: “There goes the most free man I've ever seen.”

The scene remained with me through these years. Is madness really a long-forgotten road? Or, is it the extra mile that a few enlightened souls can revel in? In this context, filmmaker Ritwik Ghatak comes to mind. All his life, Ghatak was called mad, and yet when we see his films today, we know for certain that he had his feet firmly planted in the future. He saw things at a time that no one could fathom then. And hence, for a world that couldn’t understand him, madness was a convenient name. Perhaps, madness really is a long-forgotten road, one that we’ve especially forgotten to understand or pay heed to.

A few years earlier, I heard from friends in Digboi that Sumanta Paagla had died. I had smiled at that memory; his sense of childlike happiness had always stayed on with me. I'm not sure whether Sumanta Paagla was a free man, or whether he was mad. What I do know is that freedom, and the ability to live life to its fullest, is certainly part attitude, part song.

(Views expressed are personal)