After rushing through a dusty lane in a crowded Munirka market in South Delhi about 40 or so young men and women, all aspiring to become IAS or IPS officers, had settled in a rectangular box called a classroom, and waited for a man, who could spoon-feed them to join the world of babudom.
The box was reached after climbing up stairs with reddened wall. The Babus too work in holes in huge buildings, which can be accessed through stairs with walls showing marks of freshly splashed paan. The budding babus had also to breath in heavily high dose of ammonia, which welcomed all from open toilets on the way to the box.
A stout and fulsome bodied man walked in and without wasting any moment faced the whiteboard and wrote MUKUL PATHAK and underneath PSYCHOLOGY. The man had arrived; and there was collective sigh of relief.
The men and women knew that this was the man who had the key to their journey forward in red-beacon ambassador cars. After declaring his name and the subject, he faced the herd and showed all his teeth in a smile, which would last forever in memories of the herd. With wide lips and well polished teeth, the man could easily have been an ambassador for toothpaste advertisements.
With smiles shared and few introductions done, Pathak hammered out a number of definitions of Psychology, with utmost stress on the subject being a scientific study of human behaviour. This appealed half of the box, which belonged to the class of engineers, who had the nose to think of being intelligent and class apart. Also followed jargon like Psychology is a subject of scientific study of cognitive skills.
Definitions satisfied most, that the man was capable to give them a leg up.
However, there were some who wanted to test the man and so shot off questions to their abilities. Pathak had seen enough of them. So, he latched on to the offered opportunity and demolished the collective pride of black sheep. Pride bruised, the doubting souls surrendered fully.
Some of these black sheep had left Pathak's class mid-way and some found to their dismay, that civil services prelims was quite a tough nut to crack.
With bundles of notes from which he would read out slowly so that all could write down (wonder why did he not give the copies to avoid this exercise) Pathak would mention studies of Gallaghar, Gestalt and so many to lay bare the world of psychology.
The studies would mostly be done on rats from which inferences would be drawn for humans. Some experiments would also involve humans. But overall rats were the examples for human beings in understanding themselves.
After Pathak dealt with nuts and bolts of Psychology, many beliefs were shattered. Psychology turned out to be most valuable subject which should have been taught far earlier for far more benefit.
Making fun of the black sheep in the herd would be the usual approach of Pathak to command unconditional submission of the box. People, in fact, relish full belly laugh at other's expenses. Black sheep were in regular supply to him.
A back-bencher eyeing outside for a glimpse of full moon or girls coming late on a valentine day or black sheep lending ears to their neighbours or some planting hard eyes at girls and their bra straps seen on a sweating summer afternoon made Pathak to split the box in riotous laughter. The man knew the mind of the herd, and, hence, was there as the herd master.
"A mere thought of him brings out image of his cheerful and mischievous face," an assistant income tax commissioner (a bright sheep in the herd with M. Phil in Economics) reminisced. He was a victim when Pathak called him an educated economist bitten by monkey, after he had asked something, which was considered funny.
A humorous cynical easily enjoys attention of many. "Indians can never be a world champion like Australians," he would say, to drive home the point that lack of mental toughness plagues Indians. (Dhoni's men, however, have shown that Indians too have mental toughness to become world champion.) This was also psychological, because of emotional deficiency, which was blamed on for faulty upbringing, he would say.
A shocker would come, with Pathak quoting Sigmund Freud's studies, that Indians are basically impotent (probably emotionally). This would naturally hurt manly herd in the box. Knowing well the mind of the herd, he would further quote Freud, that "women are incomplete entity as they lack penis". This breeds identity crisis in women, he would say. The explanation for this being that the baby girls envy love of mother, which she finds going to father and, hence, she thinks that if she had had a penis she too would have got the matching love and attention of her mother. It would further be informed, that Freud has answer to girls taking their mothers as their role model.
The herd would counter attack Pathak, as if it was he who had come up with such findings. Pathak would, however, calm the nerves by informing that Anna Freud, daughter of S Freud, had refuted his claims. She had reasoned that case studies of sick people can not be generalised.
After Aamir Khan informed Indians on Satyamev Jayate show that we are killing baby girls even before they are born, Freud should be taken more seriously by doubting souls. Pathak would deal with Psychoanalysis part of the subject in most hurried manner, for personal shyness or to avoid wasting time in discussing penis, vagina and anus.
For some days sheep in the box made efforts not to put ball-pen in their mouths, after it was explained that the behaviour was actually an obsession because of oral fixation (inadequate breast feeding).
List of psychological disorders was very exhaustive. Their awareness was also damaging. It turned out that most of the herd were having some of the symptoms of the disorders; obsessive compulsive disorder or neurosis or paranoia or panic disorder or even schizophrenia. After Pathak explained that most of the disorders had their roots in faulty upbringing, parents would naturally be in the firing line at the outside cigarette corner shops. An engineer would be heard telling another sheep, that his parents were indulging in pleasure when he was conceived.
Pleasure could also be painful. Pathak would say so by disclosing that sexual intercourse is an act of pleasure but painful. The herd would not contest the claims, as most of them had walked into the box "virgin", to prove that they were horses with blinkers on to win the race for red-beacon installed ambassador car.
Indians are laid-back, because their locus of control is outside (God or any extraneous factor). So, if we lost something we would say it was not due to our fault. So, we are not the people who would like to take initiative or would like to be held responsible, he would explain.
The box was also a place where cupid struck dry soul. One did so, after sitting behind a girl every day to keep his eyes fixed on her to set his soul sailing into the body of his neighbour.
Love which begins with lust hardly has longevity. Once love dies at the altars of worldly parents, victims have to find explanations to continue their journey beyond. There was one in the herd, who used Pathak's lessons to find such an explanation.
"One does not love a person who is emotionally deficient and not independent enough. I resolved my crisis by telling myself, that I have to come out of dependence on others," said the cupid stricken sheep in the herd.
Aspiring to become an IAS and searching a soul mate make for a deadly cocktail, which, sadly, take both aims astray.
Sad part was, Pathak would say, India being a nation of a billion people there were hardly one psychologist for a lakh population, while a healthy nation should have one for every thousand. He would inform that a career in Psychology is most lucrative in the US.
Insanity is on the rise alarmingly in India too, which is true for the nation following in the footsteps of the US. In immediate future Barrack Obama should propose to his good friend Dr Manmohan Singh an FDI flow for psychiatrists as well.
Pathak would not mind confessing to some, that people, including girls, had been sharing personal problems with him, that he felt like hanging himself upside down from a ceiling fan!
A number of sheep in the box are now serving the great Indian bureaucracy.
(AUTHOR'S NOTE: This piece was written in 2007, six year after being part of the box. A number of readers e-mail to know about Mukul Pathak and his notes, about which the author has nothing to share. It was not written to advertise Mukul Pathak. It should be taken only as a creative piece of writing only. Those who are interested in study of Psychology may refer to books of Morgan King and Baron on the subject, while NCERT books are also valuable )
