Amos Ammarkallam was a very
perplexed man. You may feel that with such a name he obviously would be
perplexed, but the cause of his perplexion was not his name, but his only
beloved son, Sunny. Amos and his dear wife had showered all their love on
Sunny, but somehow nothing seemed to suffice.
Sunny was a complex character and
one that both Amos and his beloved wife, Maggie could never ever comprehend.
Sunny had been a shy, quiet and obedient boy until the age of ten when he was
put into a big school with hundreds of other children.
The complex character that Sunny
was, he required constant attention and guidance from his teachers and elders, but
unfortunately he never received them from his elders nor his teachers. Both his
parents were dedicated to their jobs and hence could not devote as much
attention to Sunny as Sunny required of them. His school teachers too could not
provide the individual attention that Sunny required since they had to teach
classes with total strengths of sixty to seventy mischievous boys on the rolls
and it was just impossible for these teachers to provide specialized attention
for each of the student’s needs.
As a result only the strong
willed and independent minds which studied in the school could grow and rise up
in life while the soft, but creative students found their talent being
neglected and not being nurtured by the teachers. It is said that many a
creative genius had been destroyed for having been enrolled in the school and
quite a few of these children grew up
despising school and entering into a warped world during their
adolescence, thereby turning into perverts, freaks and addicts who are
considered misfits of this unfit society.
Sunny too was one such character
who due to a childhood of loneliness and lack of attention had been led astray.
In his search for attention, Sunny had gotten into evil company and learned
their evil ways. By the time he was fifteen, Sunny was hooked on tobacco, drugs
and alcohol; not to forget his forays in the dark.
Usually, Sunny used to obtain
money for his vagrant ways from his unsuspecting parents. Once his parents
realized that their innocent child had been bewitched by the forbidden fruits
of desire, they tightened up their purse strings, forcing Sunny to seek
alternate ways of funding his habits, including thievery within his own house.
Things came to such a pass that
nothing valuable in any form was safe in his house and even the waste paper
which his father meticulously collected would vanish to end up with the khabadi
wallah or the wastepaper man and provide enough resources for Sunny to smoke a
joint or pop a few psychotropic pills.
It is the nature of such substances
which Sunny abused, to enthrall their users and then gradually wreck the mind
of such subjects. As a result, Sunny soon started behaving weirdly at home. He
would vanish for long periods of time; sometimes even days together and return
late at night after everyone had gone to sleep. The reason why Sunny never
stayed at home was that he could not enjoy his habits and was scared that his
parents would find his behavior under the influence, rather weird and
distressing.
It was this behavior of his son which
perplexed Amos and coming from a generation which was not used to all these
kinds of substance abuse, he really did not know what to do and how to go about
helping his son to get back on track. The crowning or should we say defining moment
of Sunny’s substance abuse came about when Sunny returned home at two o clock
in the morning after having spent two days and two nights on the streets
literally painting the town red.
Having entered the house at such
an odd hour, Sunny did not wish to disturb his parents and reveal his
inebriated condition. He therefore quietly went to the dining room where he
found the previous evening’s supper laid out on the dining table for his
consumption. Sunny quietly helped himself to a bit of rice and curry which he
gobbled down hurriedly since he hadn’t eaten for two days when his Mom woke up
on hearing the sound in the dining room and came to witness a shocking sight.
In his inebriated condition,
Sunny had helped himself to rice and curry without making the effort to help
himself to a plate. He had put the rice on the table with curry on top and was
helping himself to it, right off the table top. Sunny was unaware of the
anguish of his mother or the very fact that he was eating food direct off the
table and not from a plate.
His mother woke up Amos and he
rushed to the dining room to witness this horrid scene while Sunny continued to
eat his meal oblivious of the fact that he was eating without a plate. After
somehow having managed to put Sunny to sleep, his poor parents conferred until
dawn to decide what to do with Sunny. They finally decided to seek external
help to help Sunny and therefore decided to take him to a psychiatrist known to
them.
When Sunny woke up that morning,
his parents requested him to be prepared to go with them to an Uncle’s house as
they put it, in the evening. Sunny couldn’t care less. He was only bothered
about his next fix and only pestered Amos to part with hundred rupees which
Amos reluctantly did under the condition that Sunny come with them to the said
Uncle’s house that evening.
Sunny agreed to it for he would
have gladly agreed to do anything to get those hundred rupees. However, once he
obtained the hundred rupees, he sped away to the local peddler for his much
needed fix; just like a bee attracted to the nectar of a flower.
Once the nectar had been
ingested, Sunny completely forgot himself and his promise to his parents to
accompany them to this so called Uncle’s house. When he returned home the next
morning after a night out on the town, he found his father very furious while
his mother did not even talk to him.
Sunny was ashamed of him-self
while his father shouted at him and forced him to accompany him immediately to
the Uncle’s house. Sunny had no other alternative, but to go along with his Dad
and realized that the Uncle was a psychiatrist Doc only upon arriving at the
clinic.
The psychiatrist tried to coax
Sunny to communicate with him and promised Sunny that he would let him go after
Sunny had answered a few questions. However, this was not the deal and the
psychiatrist ensured that Sunny was immediately put into a hospice for the
mentally challenged.
It was Sunny’s shame and his
desire to please his mother that made Sunny accept being locked up in a
facility where the inmates were different from the rest of the world. Once
inside he could not even dream of leaving the place without the knowledge of
the authorities who ran the place.
He was then kept sedated for a
few days until the physical urge and craving for the psychotropic substances
diminished and he became more his natural self. The psychiatrist who had
brought Sunny to this facility was very pleased with the progress that Sunny
made and soon Sunny became a role model for all the inmates of the facility.
Amos and his wife were relieved
that their son was doing much better. In fact life without their son at home
seemed to be bliss for them since they did not have the pressure of having to
be constantly on guard with a son whose behavior they could not predict.
After about forty days of being
incarcerated in this facility, the Doctor called Sunny’s parents and asked them
to take Sunny back home since he was no more addicted to his vices and could
now be let into the real world as a free man who hopefully had learned from his
past mistakes.
However, Sunny’s parents were
hesitant to take Sunny back home and requested the Doc to keep Sunny locked up
for another three months. The Doc was surprised and tried to explain to Amos
and his wife that there was nothing wrong with Sunny now and that he could not
therefore justify retaining Sunny in the facility anymore. Moreover, the bed
occupied by Sunny was required to treat much more critical cases and therefore
he could do nothing else, but release Sunny.
On hearing this, Amos was furious
and shouted at the doctor for not listening to his request and trying to
release his son without his having agreed to it. The Doctor then looked
pitifully at Amos and said, “Dear Mr. Amos, I am sorry to say that it is you
and your wife who are mentally challenged and who are the prime cause of a
normal child’s addiction. Frankly speaking, it is you who require psychiatric
help, not Sunny.”
With these words, the doctor left
them and signed the papers to release Sunny from the facility.
