I am a big girl in STD. VIII but, never before did I have an occasion of seeing a lunatic asylum. It was really beyond my little head’s understanding how, men and women can lose their senses, and I did of course feel pity for them.

A lunatic is a mad man/ woman who have lost all sense of any proportion. Madness is also of different degrees. Some mad people are quiet and submissive while others become violent and dangerous. Now what makes a person become mad, for this also there are a variety of reasons, each case being different from all others.

Physically, we can say that, the brain, the organ that controls all actions, and gives us the capacity to think rightly, gets damaged somehow, and so, the patient loses mental balance. So much simply for the physical aspect of the malady of the brain – but besides this, what causes the so called damage to the brain is to be analyzed.

Again for this also, there can be a variety of reasons. At times, an incident, a shocking incident, a piece of bad news mesmerizes a human being into an appearance of a clear vacuum. This feeling of a vacuum may make an individual absolutely dumb and as if lost.

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Madness is of several kinds, some mad are just dumb, while others become violent and aggressive and even dangerous. It is, basically for the very bad and violent cases that, the lunatic asylums are meant for. This is because they cannot be handled at home without the expert hands of doctors who are trained to deal with such people.

This is called an asylum because here the patients get succor and relief from the home, office, and the social atmosphere, that have contributed in making him mad. Thus we can say that, the asylum is the place where people of unhealthy and unsound and disturbed brains go for treatment, just as patients suffering from a physical disease go to the hospital.

This year only, in the month of March, I got the chance of visiting a lunatic asylum. My friend’s elder brother was studying psychiatry and for that, he had to go very often to the asylum to study cases. One day, since my friend was going just to see it all, I also opted to go and have a look at this side of the world of the weak and unhealthy – the mentally ill.

At the outset, the asylum looks like any other hospital where patients are kept in single rooms, dormitories 01 general wards. This is done on the basis of their paying capacity and also on the type and depth of their illness, Thus, the first impression I got was that, it was no different to a normal hospital. However, a few minutes were just enough to show me the plight of the patients – and I saw an awful scene.

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A woman was running helter-skater in the open area in front of the women’s wing. She was dressed as a bride and was continuously shouting unheard of abuses. Behind this woman, four or five men were running to catch her but were unable to. She was continuously throwing stones at them so, they were unable to control her.

After some moments of commotion, I saw the hospital lady warden an old lady come close to her, and the patient automatically queened. She clung to the warden and cried her eyes out of their sockets. I was not able to understand or rather cut relate the episode as one incident. With a confused mind asked the hospital superintendent what it all meant. The story that followed put me in a quandary.

The story the Hospital Superintendent told me about this woman was frightening and, I thought that it was no wonder that she had become a nervous wreck and lost her mental balance. The story was that, this girl had been happily married for the last three years, and on the day of her third marriage anniversary she lost her husband in an accident.

This incident was enough to make her mad but, to add to it was her mother-in-law, and other members of her husband’s family. They just threw her out of the house saying that she had brought bad luck to the family. When she was thus turned out of her home, she obviously went to her mother’s house.

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Here also she had lived for just about two months and her mother died, and it was confirmed to her own family also that she was unlucky and they also turned her out. Now this was the last straw on the camel’s back and she broke down and lost mental balance.

This is why, for one she remains dressed as a bride, and the old warden has to come in front of her and her quietness down. The old warden reminds her of her mother who had given her refuge and so she gets solace in her arms, and calms down.

Hearing this pathetic story of just one patient I was completely put off and wanted to return home. However, my friend wanted to see some more of it as, he was studying it all, and so we continued to go ahead to see some more of it. Some patients were seen sitting quietly in a pensive mood without a care in the world.

They, we were told are the types who give no trouble at all, they do no work and just sit and brood days after days. For them, only courses of medication are followed here and they are here because there is no one to look after them. Some others were found shouting vigorously, some biting each other while some others were even bound in chains.

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Seeing this, an obvious question arose in my mind, and I asked the Superintendent as to why these young boys were tied with chains like dogs?