On the contrary: In defence of madness

The Oscar winning biopic, “A Beautiful Mind”, starring Russell Crowe, deals with the tragic breakdown of the brilliant Princeton economist, John Nash. “Publish or perish” is the advice given to exceptional students but Nash wisely holds off until he has his “Eureka” moment during a challenge with his classmates on how to approach a group of women at a bar. His roommate quotes Adam Smith, "every man for himself", but Nash argues that a cooperative approach would lead to better chances of success based on his revolutionary new concept of governing dynamics. His thesis is published to critical acclaim and he lands a plum post at MIT.

Shortly thereafter he is called in to assist the Pentagon with decryption where he displays an uncanny ability to crack codes mentally. His fellow cryptographers at the CIA are dumbstruck and Nash manages to impress the pants off everybody before heading back to his humdrum life as a university professor. Obviously academia is banal in comparison so he is thrilled when he is assigned a new project by the Department of Defense. Nash is tasked with looking for patterns in newspaper articles to thwart a sinister Russian plot. Sleepless nights spent tracking his indecent obsession lead to paranoid delusions about being followed to his secret mailbox, known in trade parlance as a dead drop.

At the time there was considerable debate whether Russell Crowe should have won the Oscar  — since he was a better madman than he was a gladiator — but it was an excellent movie. “A Beautiful Mind” is not just a sensitive portrayal of an intelligent man’s slide into the abyss of mental illness; it is a graphic illustration of human frailty without the firepower of Jack Nicholson in “Cuckoo’s Nest” or the explosive dialogue.

The trouble starts when the whole hush-hush, cloak-and-dagger business triggers delusions in Nash that were until then fairly harmless, such as long chats with an imaginary roommate. The film has a deft, sure touch especially in the love scenes which capture genuine, heartfelt emotion without a trace of mawkishness or false sentiment. The actors transcend their roles to the point where one is deluded into believing this is real life especially in one touching vignette where Nash’s wife confesses to a friend why she sticks with him through it all.  

My old friend,Warren, (not Beatty) worked at the Beth Israel Hospital NY where his boss was inordinately fond of the Yiddish proverb, “A dollar may get you on the subway, but garlic will get you a seat.” Warren’s patented technique eschewed garlic but involved the feigning of mental illness, which not only got him a seat but ensured his physical safety during the commute. After all, which mugger would want to sit next to a nutcase? Apparently it worked like a dream, especially when he was approached by hostile, dreadlock-sporting muggers on the subway. As anyone who has been mugged will testify, all that adrenaline coursing through one’s blood from the fight or flight instinct is bad enough; the dilemma of manning up or tamely handing over one’s wallet is far worse.

At the first sign of danger on the A train, Warren would start twitching violently, while conducting a heated discussion with an imaginary fellow passenger. The intensity was customized to the threat level with Warren’s accusations running the gamut from wife beating to incest. While the other passengers would lower their gaze to avoid eye contact, hostiles would scan the compartment, register his presence and give him a wide berth. This worked fine until one day the law of averages caught up with Warren when his boss boarded the same coach and watched in amazement as his star intern played his loony tune. Suffice it to say Warren’s quarterly review did not go well and he was lucky not to face departmental charges ‘for trivializing mental illness.’

But what of Maya Kodnani, the former Gujarat Minister for Women and Child Development, who was sentenced to 28 years for her role in the Naroda Patiya massacre. Her apologists and her star witness used platitudes such as “momentary madness” when “systematically planned carnage” would have been more accurate to describe the ghastly events that took place under her beady eye. Clearly the wheels of justice grind slowly since Mayabehn is currently out on bail on health grounds. It is this sort of travesty of justice that drives many sane people mad, especially if they happen to be members of the victims’ families.