Bipolar Days in sodden Delhi

It's been a bipolar week, so to speak. At one end messages of stubborness and starvation, at the other, some better news. It's still raining. The consular official is still stuck on the road to Kashmir because of a landfall during the last days of his holiday. Ironic really, considering that only a few weeks ago Sam, Rickey and Zach were driving along the very same road. At that time only the bridge was out, delaying them for about five hours. This time the side of a mountain has landed on the only road west and so far it's taken five days while Her Majesty's representative has wasted his hours among the trucks and four-wheel drives and their angry and irate travellers, truckers and vacationers. No one knows when he'll get back. The thought of this having happened while Zach, Sam and Rickey were on their way is just too awful to consider.

So another member of HM's High Commission visited the hospital, umbrella at the ready, trousers lifted high above his shoes, his suit jacket splattered with the tumbling rain. He met up with Ragesh and Zach and noted Zach's 'jolly, jovial mood.' Yes, indeedy. Zach was 'jolly and jovial' while he was able to get what he wanted. When he didn't, said HM's rep. he retorted to 'violence.' The reason that poor Ragesh is needed so desperately is that Ragesh keeps Zach calm. I remember a large hole created in a wall in a well-known London hospital. The flat that we had bought so that Zach had somewhere to live other than the streets here was pretty well destroyed before we threw him out two years ago. I doubt that he's violent towards people. It's inanimate objects that he tends to lash out at. Doors, tv controls, walls, guitars.

Yet for the first time since Zach has been diagnosed Bipolar we received a written report from his consultant in Delhi. Isn't it disgraceful that even though he's been sectioned here what, nine times, that we've never had this before? Dr. J. in Delhi was thorough. He wrote about the medication prescribed and it's effects; he wrote about Zach's behaviour and also what they are doing about his drug problems and how they are tackling them. At the moment there's no time scale involved. Another local patient would 'recover' somewhat and then go home and go back to the hospital as an out-patient. Because Zach has no home or family there, he will have to stay in hospital until he, too, 'recovers', if at all he does. The irony is that he travelled to India in order to be cleaned up. Maybe, in this convoluted fashion, he may well end up being 'clean'. How bipolar is that?