CHENNAI: One hot afternoon on December 27, 2021, Atchayam Trust, an NGO in Erode, received information that a young man was regulating traffic on an empty road at the city’s Solar Junction. His lavish gestures and dishevelled appearance hinted that all wasn’t well with him.
As volunteers from the NGO helped him to a vehicle to take him to the Emergency Care and Recovery Centre (ECRC) in Perundurai, they might not have thought that, over 200 kilometres away, two wizened souls were in a frantic search for their beloved son. They wouldn’t have believed that his bony hands once hammered gold into the exquisite shapes, and those shrivelled shoulders once hauled the weight of a family.
Such was his condition that nurses at ECRC struggled to obtain any sort of coherent information out of him. Only after they served him some sweet pongal, probably the first proper meal he had had in days, did he start trusting them.Little by little, 29-year-old Gopal warmed up to the ECRC staff. When, finally, they contacted his parents — Jaishankar and Kamatchi of Villupuram, the elderly couple’s happiness knew no bounds.
Growing up in a lower-middle-class family in Villupuram, Gopal had it tough from childhood. Dropping out of Class 10, he went to Cuddalore to apprentice under a goldsmith, cultivating his craftsmanship over several years. When his father fell ill with cancer in 2018, however, Gopal returned to Villupuram and opened a small jewellery workshop in his village. He earned just enough to support his little family. Then came the pandemic.
“During Covid-19, there was no business and debt started mounting. I shut my workshop and went to Bengaluru in search of a job in November 2020,” said Gopal, who is now well and reunited with his parents.
It was during this period that Gopal started acting differently, oscillating between emotional extremes. Following one such episode, he was brought back to Villupuram. In December 2020, he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and underwent treatment for months. But, just when everyone thought he was recovering, Gopal disappeared from home one day in December 2021. His family soon found out that he had stopped taking his medicines.
“I am not sure how I reached Erode; I remember being beaten up by police at two places,” says Gopal. “We didn’t even know if he was alive and were overwhelmed when we got a call from ECRC,” said Mohanapriya, Gopal’s sister..
“Multiple factors cause bipolar disorder,” said Dr Anthakumar, district psychiatrist at government Erode headquarters hospital. “These can be genetic, biological, or environmental. The symptoms include extreme emotions, aggressive behaviour, irrelevant talk. The treatment includes mood-stabilising medicines and therapy,” he added. “Gopal can lead a normal life as long as he takes the medicines properly,” said Vignesh, a nurse at the ECRC.