An Excerpt from The Eye of Childhood (Zorba Books, 2023) — by Dr. Arjun Raina

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[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he word psychosis is used to describe a condition that affects the mind, where there has been some loss of contact with reality. This means a person is not thinking clearly and may believe things are true that are not. When someone becomes unwell in this way it is called a psychotic episode.

The extract below from another of the young man’s favorite stories ‘Alice in Wonderland’ by Lewis Carroll describes quite well the loss of identity one can experience when mentally unwell.

‘Who are you?’ said the caterpillar.

This was not an encouraging opening for a conversation.

Alice replied rather shyly, ‘I …I hardly know sir, just at present – at least I know who I was when I got up this morning but I think I must have changed several times since then.’

‘What do you mean by that?’ said the caterpillar sternly.

‘Explain yourself!’

‘I can’t explain myself, I am afraid, sir,’ said Alice, ‘because I’m not myself, you see.’

This little extract from Alice in Wonderland is of course a very gentle description of psychosis.

Psychosis directly affects thinking but can also affect mood and behavior. Everyone's experience is different. In a psychotic episode everyday thoughts become confused and disorganized. A person may have difficulty concentrating, following a conversation or remembering things. It is common for people experiencing a psychotic episode to believe certain things are true which are not true beliefs within their religion and culture. They are so convinced of these beliefs that logical argument cannot make them change their mind. Someone experiencing a psychotic episode may hear, see, smell or taste something that is not actually there. These are hallucinations.

How someone feels may change for no apparent reason. They may feel strange or cut off from the world. Mood swings are common, so they may feel unusually excited or depressed. People with psychosis behave differently from the way they used to. They may be extremely active or not do much at all. They may laugh at unusual times or become angry or upset with no apparent cause. Often changes in behavior can be explained by the symptoms they have. For example, a person believing they are in danger may call the police. People may stop eating because they are concerned that the food is poisoned or have trouble sleeping because they are scared of something.

Dear Reader

At this point of declaring our hero’s psychosis it is necessary for me the writer of this story to take a pause, a breather. In the history of one’s personal journey of madness this is a momentous event. The public acknowledgement of one’s own psychotic condition is a very difficult business. When I first heard a psychiatrist declare my illness, my condition as psychotic I felt a terrible branding. The word psychotic is traditionally associated with the worst crimes and excesses of the human condition and therefore is a terrifying illness to own. Of course what follows may sometimes be dangerous and brutal. However, as I have shared earlier that is not the case with my story. There is nothing criminal in my story except perhaps the watchman’s attempt to break my skull!!!!

At its simplest, a psychotic event is a loss of self, of identity, of personality, of being. Of self-control. It is for this that I step in again to take the story back, and for a brief while return to tell the story as my own story.

This act of self declared ownership is necessary to assure you dear reader that I am in control of both myself and the story I am trying to tell.

This story of my own breakdown. Even as it enters one of its darkest episodes.

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[dropcap]I[/dropcap]t was early morning when I found myself standing outside the butcher’s shop. It had been a long and crazy night. I had witnessed a murder. Seen a man get stabbed, seen the knife slice into the man’s stomach as easily it would a pumpkin. Seen the thick velvety blood pour out of the stomach and surround the man as he slumped lifeless to the floor. I had seen death close up, from just a handshake away. Despite the music, the dancing girls, the disco lights and despite the alcohol I had drunk, that terror of death, that darksome fear of being in the presence of the dead had entered my soul. It has to be remembered that the death of a loved one is what in the first instance had driven me to a breakdown, a breakdown that had driven me out on the street in a crazed state of mind.

And now I was facing a string of naked goats staring back at me making me anxious and fearful. I was caught in a spiraling vortex of deep anxiety and fear. The neural circuitry involved in fear and anxiety, the most primitive subcortical fight or flight circuitry, shared with our reptilian ancestors, works to make the human brain experience anxiety about everything from an unexpected tap on the shoulder on a dark night to a goat’s naked carcass hung on an iron hook in a butcher’s shop.

Early in the morning the butcher’s shop was being stacked up with fresh carcasses. Skinned naked goats with bushy tails still intact were being taken out of a cart and hung on a row of hooks above the butchering platform with the round wooden cutting block and iron chopper. The shop at this early hour, as compared to the rest of the day, was relatively bloodless as all the blood had been wiped clean the night before. It was still a fearful sight to witness first thing in the morning.

In the brain it is the Amygdala that plays a central role in the expression and regulation of anxiety and fear. Anxiety and fear are the conscious emotional aspects of the body’s on going appraisal of what is dangerous and life threatening. The response to stress results in a multitude of biological and psychological changes designed to prepare the body for a fight or flight situation.

When a human brain is faced with a dangerous situation it has a two-way response mechanism. A fast system and a slow system.

The fast system, which is reflexive and acts immediately, sends information directly from the sense organs (eyes, ears, skin, nose, and tongue) through the Thalamus to the Amygdala. The Amygdala evaluates the sensory input and immediately translates it into bodily responses i.e. fight or flight reactions via its connections with the autonomic nervous systems. The slow system sends sensory information from the Thalamus on to the Hippocampal and Cortical circuits for further evaluation. This system is slower because it contains more synaptic connections and involves conscious processing.

In my crazed state I faced a string of dead goats hanging in the butcher’s shop. Their freshly skinned bodies seemed to be throbbing with blood and life. Their eyes seemed to stare back and follow me as I paced back and forth in front of the butcher’s shop.

There was a tree right next to the butcher’s shop. Its trunk too seemed to be naked and throbbing with life. It too seemed to be hanging from the sky like the goats that were hanging from iron hooks in the shop.

For a moment I felt an amazing communion. Between my own body, the tree and the goat’s carcasses. It all seemed the same. Of life. Of breath. Of flesh and blood and trunks and limbs and branches and arms and roots and legs and feet. Something dark stirred deep within me. A thought so clear and passionate possessed me that I was gripped and inescapably enthralled by it. The truth had been revealed to me. It was all ONE. Tree, goat, man. All was life. No separation. No difference. One deep and dark communion.

It would have been fine if these thoughts had stayed thus far and gone no further. If I had at this point of deep realization walked away from the butcher’s shop. But then, there were these eyes staring back at me. Looking terribly human. Pleading. Crying. Asking, talking, communicating with me. Something deep and dark gripped my heart and convinced me that these goats had been murdered. That the tree was not a tree but in fact a human being. That these goats hanging in the butcher’s shop were not goats but human beings. And that human beings were being butchered. Were being hung from hooks in the butcher’s shop. That murder was being committed here. And that I needed to do something about it. That these human souls were crying out for help. That human beings had been killed and that it was my duty to tell the world that human flesh was being sold here.

And I began to do just that. I began to run up and down on the street in front of the butcher’s shop screaming, yelling my heart out. Yelling, letting the world know that human flesh was being sold here, that what was happening was murder. That these goats hanging from the hooks in the butcher’s shop were human beings. That I was a human being. That the tree was a human being.

It was a terrible state of anxiety that was now translating into this crazy behavior. I was dangerously going over the edge. Was losing clarity, sanity, and beginning to lose it all. I was pacing right in the middle of the street. I was raving, ranting, gesturing wildly, flinging my hands about, flinging my body about, flinging my soul about, and flinging my all about. This could have ended up being very dangerous for me, as this was a dangerous and brutal city merciless to both the sane and the insane.

I was lucky to escape a dangerously difficult situation on a couple of accounts.

1. It was very early in the morning and no one was around.
2. It seemed my slow system had kicked in for even as I was getting possessed by these crazy thoughts the opposite was also happening. A voice inside my head was telling me, rationalizing, trying desperately to argue, make sense. That these goats were not human beings. That they were goats and eating goats was a normal, rational human act. And that this shop was a normal shop. Like any other shop in the market. That there was nothing strange happening here. That the tree whose trunk did look like a human body was really only a tree. And that though the tree breathed out oxygen as my own body breathed it in I was a human being while the tree was not. That my brain was getting confused. That I was losing my sanity. That I needed to stay sane. This counter voice, countered the insane voice and the battle between the two forces, the rational and the irrational resulted in a strange, frenzied, frenetic gestural pattern. I would slap my forehead, then snap my fingers, and then do a little skipping step. It became a little dance this with its own crazy body rhythm and its own little song . . . .

Don’t go mad (as I slapped my forehead), snap out of it (as I snapped my fingers), it’s just a fucking game (as I danced and skipped away).

All along the street and away from the butcher’s shop. Away desperately away from the crazy possessed state I had entered into, was in, was struggling to get out of, and was in fact sinking deeper into.

The slapping became harder, the snapping more violent and the skipping more frenzied And the song, more broken and crazed. And, with that, the story of my breakdown was now truly on its way.

However, dear reader, recognizing the intensity of the experience I am inflicting on you, for a while, I will give you a break from this relentless pursuit of a mental breakdown, and move you away from the visceral to the more reflective, leading you to other voices and perspectives that may help you see the deeper subjective condition a little more clearly. I promise I will return to the objective reality of the breakdown but for a while please do listen in to a calmer, gentler and more rational narration.

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Original book cover source: ZorbaBooks

Genre: Fiction & RomanceISBN: 9789395217293Languages: EnglishPages: 222Cover: PaperbackE-Book: Available[et_pb_button button_url="https://www.zorbabooks.com/store/love-romance/the-eye-of-childhood/" url_new_window="on" button_text="Visit Book Page" _builder_version="4.27.5" _module_preset="default" custom_button="on" button_text_size="18px" button_text_color="#000000" button_bg_color="#FFFFFF" button_border_width="1px" global_colors_info="{}" button_border_color__hover_enabled="on|hover" button_border_color__hover="#000000" button_bg_color__hover_enabled="on|hover" button_bg_color__hover="#f2f2f2" button_bg_enable_color__hover="on" theme_builder_area="post_content"][/et_pb_button] [et_pb_heading title="About the Book" _builder_version="4.27.5" _module_preset="default" module_alignment="left" locked="off" global_colors_info="{}" theme_builder_area="post_content"][/et_pb_heading]

In 1990, as a young man in his twenties, the author returned to India from training as an actor in England. He then spent a year in Mumbai, trying to find work in the film industry. During this period, he experienced a nervous breakdown. Over the years, he introspected on the objective experience of the mental breakdown and its subjective inner story.

From this deep reflection emerged the fictional story of the madness of Monty the Mirror Neuron. The eye of childhood works with fiction to come to the facts of mental illness. It attempts to arrive at an understanding of the broken mind through psychotherapy, neuroscience and good old-fashioned storytelling. If you can tell a story, your story, you’re ok.

Source: ZorbaBooks

I found Arjun’s structure and story-telling exuding an almost child-like candour, movement and stillness both….sometimes forcing me to run with him, sometimes recall fairy tales and poems like the Three Blind Mice, never apologetic and always deeply fascinating, even the way he adopts almost a linear third person approach to talk about his most private cut and darkness. The words he uses creating a lovely, almost theatrical interplay of shadow and light, of faces and facets… of love and loss told in a manner that was both reckless and resilient. So much so that I will never forget some portions, in a way only a good book lingers, somewhere.

To say the least it is a wonderfully written story. Reads like a poem and feels like a dream. Time gone and time revisited everything is in union with the essence of the life and story .



Like some one said, we are asleep all the time, it is only once in a while we slip out of the dream and realise our sense of wakefulness. That moment doesn’t last long, but a work of art preserves it forever. Your book has managed to do that , a beauty!



— Kartik Sood

Your book was a devastatingly honest look inside and a look at history, yours, and some of mine as well. You wove your story intricately and exquisitely leaving me disturbed and deeply thoughtful. You forced self- examination and a deep desire for me to write of my own experiences. No wonder it took you two decades to complete the project. Most of all, thank you sincerely for sharing your story, you changed me profoundly.




— Ajit S Dugal

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Arjun Raina a versatile personality that has been, at times, an actor, teacher, playwright and author, excelling in all fields which interested him. The reason he is recognised in circles abroad. His famous plays have been commissioned and performed in all major theatre cities worldwide, including New York, Berlin, Venice and more. Some of those plays are compiled in the book - Nine Contemporary Plays.

He is sought after for his writing and performing skills and is now invited to the New York Literary Festival in November'2023. Arjun Raina's book Nine Contemporary Plays starts with the first play that links New York and a call centre in Mumbai and is set in the aftermath of the 9/11 bombing. His first book, published by Zorba books The Eye of Childhood, which is reviewed by Arundhati Roy, is a memoir of the painful time when he suffered a mental breakdown as a young aspiring actor in Bollywood.

In his teaching stint at NSD, he taught the art of acting to now-famous actors such as Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Ashutosh Rana, Yashpal Sharma, Rajpal Yadav, and Adil Hussain. In his acting stint, which started in school, in one play, he played the lead, in which Shahrukh Khan also played a role. In his first film too, "Annie Gives It Those Ones" Arjun Raina played the lead and Shahrukh Khan was a part of this film. Arjun Raina, describes his book publishing experience in glowing terms and the reason he decided to publish his second book with Zorba Books.

Source (Fair use): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EufDCsLebY