Psyched!

Why am I thrilled? Because I picked up a whole bunch of books to read.. Yeay! An obscure corner of the mall had this bookstore which had this Bag-it-offer.. you just pick up a normal sized grocery bag, and put all the books you want into it, and its all for just 5 bucks! How cool is that??!!! So, racing against mall-closing-time, I zipped through shelves of books, and guess I picked up somewhere around 25 books? And now, I can slowly read all of them, when I'm indulging myself during that 15 day holiday that I'm counting down to...

I picked up a whole bunch of varied fiction stuff, right from the Jackie Collins variety to Robin Cooks and a lot of unknowns. In between all these plots lies this one type of novel which I still love and hate. Its the psycho stuff... all the brutal serial killers, the raving maniacs with minds that snapped from a childhood tragedy, the cold blooded ruthless ones who kill just for the heck of it, the criminal masterminds who plot intricate cat-and -mouse games just to thwart the Yard.

I haven't yet decided if I love them or hate them. For instance there was this Dean Koontz "Intensity" that I read, about this guy who kills to appease his fine 'senses' and is a cop in real life. What a twisted character he was... These are the kind of novels you loathe, go 'eeeewwwww' over, but still continue reading because you want to see what happens in the end! Some of these psycho plots are so elaborate, some are killers on a whim, some consider themselves Gods of justice, some carve up pregnant women, some go about getting rid of gay people, some fashion whole scenarios like in the movie 'Saw', some just have mindless sprees, and what not? I absolutely HATE them.. but every now and then, when the mood gets to me, I go all dark and morbid and sit down curled with one of these kind of novels.

Do people write such novels mirroring the actual criminals out there in society? Do they write them as an escapist fantasy that they'd like to embark on, but cannot owing to the societal scenario? Do criminals get their ideas from all these pages of gore and guts? What drives the writer/the reader to write/read such a story? Why do I, at times, want to read a purely psychotic story? Is it to convince myself that there are people who are more psycho than I am? Am I psycho? Is it just to see how cracked the human facade can be? Is it to just become numb and not think about anything for a while after you read that? I cannot fathom it, but I repulse these novels.. And yet, once in a while, I pick up one of their kinds!

And whatever you study into the mystery that is the human mind, there aren't going to be answers out there. Psychiatrists exist, I'm not saying they are baloney.. But in the end, no one can predict/figure out in entirety what drives such sociopaths. They are in a way fanatics. But that is a whole other state of existence. I'd say that in a way, all humans are fanatics about something or the other, it is just the degree of obsession that is the thin line between the normal folks and the others. But who are we to claim ourselves as normal? I'm obsessive about having a clean space, where-as someone at a higher degree of this obsession might, for all you know, go around slashing people who bother him in that aspect! I might tolerate all beliefs and faiths, but someone who is not open to it might as well become a 'terrorist' in their own right. And what of the people the society brands as 'terrorists'? What made them that way? Was it just their upbringing, or was there a humane side to them too? What of all the different angles which define a person?

What is it that drives people to become that way? Again, it is all in the mind. As gullible as it can get, the psyche can be completely unrelenting and unyielding. That makes us who we are. For some, the control drives you either to the extremes or to a balance which might be your key to sanity. But you cannot question the sanity of anyone at the extreme ends of the spectrum either! What gives you the ability to decide who is sane and who is not? After all, an insane persons first claim is that he/she is indeed sane.

This is where the future of humanity pretty much lies: in the balance of control over the self and over others. In the mind...