Light in a house of madness

It was on November 11, 1997, that Veronika decided to take her own life. To her, the world was not worth living for. She had four packets of sleeping pills and she lay down after taking them, waiting for the pills to take effect. Veronika had education, had a job, had a few boyfriends and had a place to live in the convent and yet all these had no meaning for her. Depression had set in deep and was leading her on toward suicide. She took up a magazine and was baffled to know that a writer had begun his writing with the question, "Where is Slovenia?" Here she was dying in Slovenia and this writer had not found this land on the map? Turning off the heater, she waited for death and lay down after marking Slovenia on the map.
Veronika woke up. She was in a strange place. There were people around her. There were tubes attached to her nose, her throat. Ah, she remembered! She was supposed to have died. Oh, someone must have come to her room while she waited for death, and brought her to this place and saved her. The place was Villete in Slovenia. It was a mental hospital. Why did people consider her mad just because she had tried to take her life? The first person to approach her in a friendly way was Zedka, a patient at the place. Zedka suffered from depression and was under treatment. She asked Veronika if she knew the meaning of "crazy" and then told her that people came to Villete when they became crazy. A nurse came to inquire if Veronika wanted to know how she felt physically after the suicide attempt. Veronika said,
"I already know. It has nothing to do with what you can see happening to my body; it's what's happening in my soul!"
The doctors told Veronika that as an effect of the sleeping pills her heart was damaged and that she might live for a week or so. Veronika was desperate, she wanted to get hold of some more pills so that she could end her life immediately. How does a person wait for death to take place within the next few days? It was something to know that death was going to strike you at any moment but it was unbearable to know that it was coming slowly, within the next few days. Veronika was under the treatment of Dr. Igor. He treated her as another of his patients suffering from deep depression despite Veronika's constant argument that she was a normal being. No matter how many times Veronika repeated that she wanted to be free, to see the town square, wanted to go to her work, the doctor told her that all these were nothing new to him. All the patients here thought they didn't belong to a mental hospital. For Veronika, there was no way out. She was told that if she showed too much restraint or violence they would have to give her 'electric shock therapy.'
Veronika got to know other patients. There was Eduard, the ambassador's son, a schizophrenic patient. He had to be given electric shocks from time to time. Veronika could play the piano very well. One day when she was playing the hospital piano Eduard came and stood quietly for a long time. From then on Eduard would lead Veronika to the piano and silently, with pleading in his eyes, would ask her to play. He never said a word but Veronika had a feeling that this young man could see right through her soul, as if that was why again and again he wanted her to play.
Mari, a patient of panic attacks, became Veronika's friend. Mari informed Veronika of other patients and their problems. Dr. Igor had informed the others of Veronika's deteriorating health, told them that she would soon die. The other inmates kept their distance from her. However, Zedka and Eduard were taken by the condemned woman. Eduard's quiet attachment to Veronika was drawing her to fighting for life. But that was the worst thing to happen to a person without salvation. Veronika's presence had affected many people in the mental hospital. They had seen death come to the sick and the aged. But they wondered why such a promising young woman had to die. Some were not bothered and had long since given up thinking about life or death. But Veronika's approaching death made some think very hard and Mari was one of them. Mari wondered what would happen to someone like Veronika if she could be given another chance to live. These thoughts made Mari find her way back again; she wanted to live and find the meaning of life with her new outlook. And Mari was soon saying goodbye to the hospital.
Veronika, counting her days in this world, found a strange comfort in having Eduard around. Although they were called "lunatics" she knew Eduard could understand her. And she had just begun to understand many secrets of life that she did not know when she was living in the normal outside world. She told Eduard, "You're the only man on the face of the earth with whom I could fall in love, Eduard, for the simple reason that, when I die you will not miss me. I don't know what schizophrenics feel, but I am sure they never miss anyone."
While Veronika waited for death to strike she underwent different emotional upheavals. She felt strong hatred, for something as physical as walls, pianos or nurses. She no longer felt like behaving in the appropriate way. She wanted to do things that were not appropriate. And so one day she slapped an old man just to see how he reacted. She went to Dr. Igor asking him to let her out for she was starved for the outside world. She heard the same reply that all lunatics wanted to go out. Meanwhile, Zedka was released to go home. Zedka had been a lawyer before her depression set in. But she could not practise law anymore for people would not trust her. She just wanted her family life back. Eduard continued to come to Veronika. Two lost souls seem to flounder together looking for shelter. Eduard confided to Veronika that he wanted paint a picture of paradise. Strangely, Veronika too was thinking of paradise and she told him so. They seem to find union in a world that was far beyond the people who inhabited the outside world.
Life in Villete continued to run with the doctors, nurses and the patients. Veronika and Eduard continued to seek a way out of their confinement. And to the astonishment of the doctors, one morning both Veronika and Eduard vanished. To everyone the question was: Could these two patients, one schizophrenic and another thinking of committing suicide every minute, have enough strength of the soul to find life worth living for? Did they find a bonding that was larger than life itself, larger than their madness? And so life went on at Vilette, and Veronika's time in it seemed like another tremor that the wind sends to the trees.
The plot tells the story through counted characters. The characters seemed to be real life people who go through life's upheavals. Coelho's writing style is elegant and hypnotic. He builds up the story to the climax making the reader feel very much part of the saga. Veronika Decides to Die is a book that throws light on people who do not fit into the normal patterns of society. The tales of people living in the mental hospital lifts the heart of the reader for these very people who cry and laugh and yet whose thought process deviates from what we consider to be "normal people."
The reader also sees the blessing of a normal life, the bliss of having the sunny sky or the rain. It is like coming refreshed out of the world of those who are stormed by anguish and despair and at the same time wishing out of human compassion that all people suffering from madness be healed.

Tulip Chowdhury writes fiction and is a critic