A beautiful mind is a wonderful reading. I read the book after seeing the movie and there is no doubt that the movie is a wonderful remake of the books content. It is an amazing story of a genius, as has been commented in so many of its reviews. The genius in Prof Nash remains exceptional and at the same time seen a common form among many other men and women of the same order esp among mathematicians. My attention however was drawn to another aspect of the story line. It is the story of the understanding and changing attitude towards the illness which we today s easily recognize as schizophrenia. This is an amazing illness both due to its intellectual association and its shadowy presence throughout human civilization and its evolution. It will not be wrong to say that society has cultivated this kind of mind related illness and started preserving them among us, and not for reasons of mere succor but also due to the unparallel contributions they have made. Is this then a cultural strength or the outcome of liberal views?

Men and women lived during the ages of darkness, had children, cultivated lands had their meals and died at a certain age. We still do the same with yet immense light beyond the darkness, we have lit. We still have the same adversities and the same distance, the same lack of essentials in spite of the amazing scientific progress we have made in the century gone by. And yet we all agree that we are in the right direction of progress. Where then do we place Nash and Ramanujan? This is the investment that we do in our society waiting for spurts of progress. Don’t we  also risk the possibility of increasing such personalities traits in the community? A rather objectionable thought!  I thence come to my greater enduring point. The role of science in the understanding of this and similar illness. Today we have been able to understand the psychopathology of this illness with fair certainty and yet more will be known in years to come. We are able to intervene early in organized societies and thereby allow their strengths to be recruited. During my last 15 years into clinical practice I have seen a remarkable change in the approach to such patients and their betterment. I have experienced depression and anxiety beyond limits myself. I have experienced the benefits of insight development. I have come in close correspondence with existentialism and a lingering tag of , if not schizophrenia, something close to it.

And some day in my dream

I see myself  surrounded in me

Cluttered by resounding staplers

I protest in the wake of freedom

We exist and they fail to agree

Who but our  own reflections

Simmering beneath  a running stream

Pratyush