Freud: I don’t understand, why do people move to St. Xavier's hostel?
Nami-baba: Professor, you would have known had you not studied just one patient and that too your wife.
Freud: Pity my wife never stayed out in hostels.
Nami’baba: Not that you can do much about it now. Anyways I think I can answer why people move to St. X hostel. I think its desperation out of not having enough information about other hostels.
Freud: Desperation…who would know more about desperation than me.
Nami-baba: Yes after all you had to settle for your wife for a patient in the end.
Freud: It wasn’t out of desperation.
Nami-baba: Yeah-yeah.
Freud: Are you mocking me? By the theories of psycho analysis, I would think that a man as great as me would deserve more respect.
Nami-baba: Hey don’t expect me to respect you simply because you are dead.
Freud: That’s not the reason why I deserve respect.
Nami-baba: That’s what you think. Your subconscious couldn’t disagree with you more.
Freud: What?
Nami-baba: Forget it. Let’s come back to your question. You asked me why do people go to St. X to stay, yes?
Freud: Yes.
Nami-baba: Professor, I think what’s important is not why people go to St. X, what’s important is that why people go there and stay.
Freud: Unhun?
Nami-baba: Have you ever wondered why people start to find themselves at home in badly kept jails and madhouses after they have been there a while?
Freud: Yes-yes, how could I not wonder? It’s inescapable.
Nami-baba: Exactly. The same principle applies here. Let me explain it to you in terms of depression syndrome. When a person first comes to St. X it is purely based on the academic reputation of the institution and some desperation for accommodation. After meeting the warden and checking out the hostel he catches that faint whiff of depression in the air. It is then that the little seed of self-destruction which is planted in each of us sees its first ray of nourishing sunlight. And this seed, coupled with the budget constraint and lack of information about other places to stay, constantly pushes him into accepting the accommodation or to put it in better words, ‘accepting his fate.’ Slowly depression becomes a part of life, one without which the dweller feels incomplete.
Freud: I have framed some twisted theories in my life but that one beats everything. It’s so twisted that I can’t even tell whether it’s reliable. I am proud of you Nami-baba. After all we have to keep the flame of psychoanalysis burning and that can only be achieved by coming up with increasingly confounding theories about human thinking.
Nami-baba: Yeah-yeah whatever professor. I couldn’t care less about what a dead man has to say but since it’s you, I can always lend an ear.
Freud: Thank you, thank you a thousand times.
Nami-baba: Ok-ok I think I should make a move now or if they see me moving my lips for so long near a grave, they will put me in St. X or something. Oh I forgot to give you the Playboy that you asked for. Here take it.
Freud: Just slip it in the hole.
Nami-baba: There you go.
Freud: Thanks and bye.
Nami-baba: Good-bye old boy. Keep the tossing and turning under control in there. It’s a graveyard you are at, and one would think that the place is almost holy.
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