Madness And His Pal Megalomania

Madness And His Pal Megalomania

A German manic depressive commits suicide by ramming his commercial airliner and its contingent of passengers into an Alpine ravine. A charismatic, well-spoken Indian leader, of the newest, ‘alternative’ political experiment in the capital city state of Delhi, dispenses with the niceties. He bares tooth and fang in a Stalinist move, barely a month into office after a sweeping victory, and uses his new found power to crush dissent.

These are both instances perhaps of a mental health gone awry, an affliction that affects 25% of the world population today. Most of the afflicted draw a veil over their tenuous hold on sanity, and carry on as if nothing is the matter. This kind of plausible madness can indeed seem quite normal, masked by sophisticated medication, well enough to even pass lie detector polygraphs.

The suicidal cum murderous young co-pilot killed everyone because he couldn’t take it anymore, but why?  The mysterious plunging of the Air Malaysia jet not long ago into the South China Sea, also had an allegedly deranged pilot. That yet another Air Malaysia jet was shot down by Russian backed Ukranian rebels just underlines how fraught  air travel, otherwise the safest mode, has become.

There also seems to be a spate of pilot errors almost in direct proportion to the increase in the number of airlines: to wit the recent Air Asia crashes, the Air France, Air Canada and so on. Are these pilots being subliminally indoctrinated in a diabolical new way by the international terrorist organisations? Or are they falling apart, quite by themselves, and just taking hundreds with them?  

Did this German young man do it because he wanted to impress his estranged girlfriend posthumously? In any event, he fooled the clearly inadequate or sloppy screening process, his psychiatrist, and his senior pilot, to carry out his final act.

But the fact is he could pass unchecked through the system in a manner not unlike what made 9/11 or 26/11 possible, except perhaps, that any jihadi ideology was apparently missing ?

But one recurring phenomenon common to deliberate and declared terrorist attacks, and such inexplicable self-destruction with hundreds of unrelated innocents, is the cold-blooded willingness to incur the collateral damage, however horrendous.  Does terrorism of this kind then, need an independent label? These self-destructive crazies seem to have become much more vindictive. Do their medications have side- effects worse than their main lines?

Still, this 27 year old pilot had nightmares, deep depressions, sexual identity issues, and physical health problems too. But chillingly, nobody in the know, rang a warning bell in time. The former girlfriend of the young German realized something was wrong in the five months she was sleeping with him, but merely moved on. Now she tells us he would wake up screaming: ‘We are all going down’.

It was a mass murdering replay of the South African blade runner Pistorius, with a penchant for fire-arms and given to violent mood swings. He murdered his girlfriend over his own delusions, in his own house, apparently without quite meaning to. There too, the girlfriend knew he was mentally disturbed but did nothing to get away from him.

Closer home, a newly minted politician, young, smart, IIT educated, spawned out of a self-righteous mould, turns full circle on his zealous past. He was a former tax inspector, an RTI activist, an agitational, anti-corruption, scrupulously democratic NGO  type, and a Magsaysay Award winner to boot.

Once, not too long ago, he also shone bright with honesty. Now, he says one thing and does another. He has changed with dizzying speed, and uses every Machiavellian trick in the book in his lust for power.

What are this man’s private thoughts now? What made him decide to ruthlessly expel two of his long-standing comrades, because they dared to question him? He didn’t stop there, but with tears in his eyes and emotional speechifying in full spate, he threw out their key supporters too.

To legitimize his actions, he conducted a Party vote, blatantly rigged in his favour, hastily, without debate. But wasn’t this the same man who grew famous for seamlessly lecturing everyone on honesty, probity, transparency, corruption, and a new system of participative governance? Didn’t he use a hectoring tone bristling with contempt for every other politician/businessman  who in his book did less?

And, he made sure he did all his grandstanding in front of the TV cameras.  The man truly loves being in the news, and it was mutual. It is the media that created him into a nationally recognizable face. It is the same media that is now busy recording the unravelling of his dream run.

It is reporting on the stings turned inwards, the thuggery, intimidation, and subversion of the democratic processes. But the collateral damage here is being done to the lakhs of voters he has apparently duped. This is not over yet, but if the stack of promises he made fall flat, it will be tantamount to a democratically conducted confidence trick on all those who flocked to his purportedly egalitarian cause.  

What happened to the man who wanted to dismantle VIP culture, dispense with his security cover, and be accessible to all? Through the travails of the internal party strife he must also be worried about how to deliver with a budget already in deficit, and few tools available to his Government to raise revenues .

It is a good thing for the country that this experiment was conducted in the city state of Delhi under the watchful and powerful eye of the Centre. It is a blessing that such a man does not control the Delhi Police or the land that belongs to the State also!

But is he sorry?  Are such delusional people capable of contrition? If the voting public installed him, it is they who need to be sorry. And to some extent it is the ruling BJP at the Centre that did not consider the Delhi election a priority, that allowed this to happen.

Still, we need to absorb and understand that madness and megalomania do not go with a sense of ownership. They are deviant phenomena with caveat emptor written in almost illegible small-print on them. 

But any amount of the buyer bewaring cannot really protect us against the next lunatic that comes down the pike to exploit a  chink in our armour, or play upon our credulity. That is the nature of the beast, when, like in the dark ages, living itself has grown risky once more. In those ignorant times, people banded together for their safety, but today there may be no real safety left in that bond.  

For: The Pioneer

(1,105 words)

March 31^st, 2015

Gautam Mukherjee