‘Let’s go outside, everyone must be waiting for dinner,’ said Madhav, feeling a little more in control. Meera wasn’t sure if he was pretending to be ignorant; she had been privy to his unusual behaviour for a while now.

As they walked into the dining hall, an aunt whom he had hardly ever spoken to before, said, ‘This is an amazing accomplishment, Madhav. This is what you’ve always wanted, right?’

‘I never wanted this,’ replied Madhav, curtly.

‘What? What do you mean?’ asked the maddeningly curious aunt.

‘You heard me,’ he said. He then laughed suddenly and placed his hand on his aunt’s bare back. She squirmed and stepped back in discomfort.

The party ended soon after dinner. Madhav’s parents bid the guests goodbye with boxes of chocolates. The numerous fake smiles and pretentious warm hugs left a grave silence in their wake.

‘What were you doing, Madhav? Look at your outfit, look at your behaviour!’ shouted Madhav’s sister, the minute the last guest left.

‘What’s the matter with you guys? Did I ask you to celebrate? Did I ask you to call these fucking curious relatives?’ he yelled back.

‘Mind your language, Madhav!’ said his dad.

‘Why aren’t you happy, beta? What has happened to you?’ His mother caressed his head lovingly.

‘I never wanted to become the person I am now.’ Madhav’s eyes narrowed dangerously as he spoke. ‘It was always him, it is him even now. He wanted all of this and I am telling you to stay away!’ He screamed as he ran up the stairs, leaving his family dumbfounded.

Madhav sat on an aluminium bench outside the doctor’s office, relentlessly tapping his feet, trying to dry his sweaty palms. He was at Doctor Batra’s clinic. Batra was a child psychiatrist, but Madhav’s parents, oblivious to the difference between child and adult psychiatrists, insisted on taking their son to him. They were inside with the doctor, while Madhav awaited his turn. His sister, too, had come along, though she was in the corridor, talking to her boyfriend on the phone.

Anxiety overwhelmed Madhav during each of these visits. He constantly feared that one of these quacks would somehow manage to unearth his secret.

His thoughts wandered as he looked around at the other patients. When he was younger, he had believed the lie his parents had fed him about these visits being general consultation sessions for the whole family. But that façade had been dropped a while ago.

Madhav looked around the small clinic. The furniture was old and bruised. There were multiple posters on the walls asking patients to be aware of their mental health. ‘Are you depressed?’ probed one poster depicting a man with his head buried in his arms. There were several books and magazines in a corner next to a water tank that housed the most catatonic fish Madhav had ever seen.

The boy at the reception desk was slender and looked anaemic. Madhav stared at his back until he suddenly turned around. He quickly shifted his gaze, pretending to peruse a magazine titled Peace of Mind. As he flipped through the magazine, an article called ‘Love Your Soul’ caught his attention. Madhav felt a connection with every sentence in the article that delineated the importance of a symbiotic and nurturing relationship between one’s soul and one’s physical body.