The Eye of Childhood

In 1990, as a young man in his twenties, the author returned to India from training as an actor in England. He then spent a year in Mumbai, trying to find work in the film industry. During this period, he experienced a nervous breakdown. Over the years, he introspected on the objective experience of the mental breakdown and its subjective inner story.

From this deep reflection emerged the fictional story of the madness of Monty the Mirror Neuron. The eye of childhood works with fiction to come to the facts of mental illness. It attempts to arrive at an understanding of the broken mind through psychotherapy, neuroscience and good old-fashioned storytelling. If you can tell a story, your story, you’re ok.

I found Arjun’s structure and story-telling exuding an almost child-like candour, movement and stillness both….sometimes forcing me to run with him, sometimes recall fairy tales and poems like the Three Blind Mice, never apologetic and always deeply fascinating, even the way he adopts almost a linear third person approach to talk about his most private cut and darkness. The words he uses creating a lovely, almost theatrical interplay of shadow and light, of faces and facets… of love and loss told in a manner that was both reckless and resilient. So much so that I will never forget some portions, in a way only a good book lingers, somewhere.

Sreemoyee Piu Kundu Writer

To say the least it is a wonderfully written story. Reads like a poem and feels like a dream. Time gone and time revisited everything is in union with the essence of the life and story .

Like some one said, we are asleep all the time, it is only once in a while we slip out of the dream and realise our sense of wakefulness. That moment doesn’t last long, but a work of art preserves it forever.Your book has managed to do that , a beauty!

 Kartik Sood Fine Artist

Your book was a devastatingly honest look inside and a look at history, yours, and some of mine as well. You wove your story intricately and exquisitely leaving me disturbed and deeply thoughtful. You forced self- examination and a deep desire for me to write of my own experiences. No wonder it took you two decades to complete the project. Most of all, thank you sincerely for sharing your story, you changed me profoundly.

Ajit S Dugal  Friend

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