The Madhouse: Pagalkhana

The novel The Madhouse is an allegorical novel that chronicles the jarring transformations occurring in the psyche of the Indian society by the onslaught of liberalisation in the 1990s. It is in this reign of the free-market economy and excessive consumption that the nameless characters of The Madhouse find themselves.

In fact, in a way, there are only two characters in this novel. There is ‘The Bazaar’, representing the free - market forces, and then there is ‘The Citizen’, whose reincarnations within the various vignettes of the novel are trapped in the vicious cycle of distress and fears which manifest themselves in myriad situations. But, fundamentally, it is only one character. Somewhere, his dreams have been stolen, somewhere else, his memories have been abducted. In another situation, he has forgotten who he is and in yet another one, he is looking for a lock to safeguard himself from the prying eyes of the Bazaar— but the Bazaar is looking for him.

In this game of cat and mouse between the Citizen and the Bazaar, Dr Chaturvedi manages to capture the subtle as well as profound changes related to people’s psyche, belief systems, notions of honour and selfrespect, politics and the dynamics within society that have occurred post-liberalisation.