So, the first three months in the madhouse were perfect. He enjoyed all the mad people, he loved the place. But in his madness he drank something that had been brought to clean the toilets – he drank the whole bottle. He suffered from diarrhea and vomiting for days. But, because of the diarrhea and vomiting, within fifteen days he became sane. All the heat went out of him; he became completely calm and quiet.

And then he became afraid, surrounded by all the mad people – somebody was pulling his hair, somebody was trying to put a finger into his ear, somebody was sitting on his shoulders. It had all been good up to that point, but then he tried hard to convince the superintendent that he was no longer mad.”

The superintendent said, “Don’t bother me, every madman says that. That is no argument! You will have to remain here until you fulfill your sentence of six months.”

He said, “In three months these mad people and you will kill me! It was good before – immensely good – I was enjoying it. Why did you bring that bottle here?”

But he had to suffer, law is law. When he came out I asked him, “Uncle, how have things been?”

He was very friendly to everybody, and except for his family everybody enjoyed him. The family was suffering, because he was stealing things and distributing them to the beggars, borrowing money from anywhere and the family had to pay it back, purchasing anything that he wanted. He was a great shopper, all kinds of junk, it did not matter what it was. Just if it was cheap, he would purchase it.

So the family was in difficulty. I remember Narendra was so small, but the small children used to watch him and shout to their mother, “He is trying to take something away, he is trying to open the locker.” Everybody was on watch.

He said to me, “Everything was so good for three months. I enjoyed it, I had found my people. But when I became sane, I found that they were not my people.”

I hope that the Shankaracharya of Puri, in a madhouse, will find friends with similar ideas. He will enjoy it. It is not going to be a suffering or a punishment, it will be a promotion. And to leave him out in this insane condition is harmful to society. For the sake of society he should be forced into a psychiatric clinic.

I never thought that after ten days he would start lying. Now he says that he never made any such statement, and that thousands of newspapers all over India have been misrepresenting him. If one paper had done it, one could believe it, but these thousands of papers cannot be in a conspiracy. And they are all owned by high-caste Hindus – they were ashamed that he was making such statements.