The Cotard Delusion is a very rare form of schizophrenia. It is also called the Corpse Syndrome. A person with this condition would feel as if he were a living corpse, that he was rotting inside, that he was actually dead and hence eternal. It is a strange philosophical state, but also an extreme case of depression, and the only reason the corpse d

She remembers the advertisement for a sunflower cooking oil – ‘A Gentleman’s Cholesterol Is In The Hands Of His Wife’. But then Ousep Chacko is not a man who can be killed by oil. He does not eat much. He smokes a lot, though, which may have thickened his blood, or thinned his arteries, she always forgets which of the two happens. A man’s heart can

There are only two impressive facts he knows. For some reason they have stuck in his head – the full form of KGB, which is Komitet Gosudarstvennoi Bezopasnosti, and Pele’s real name, which is Edson Arantes do Nascimento.

the inevitability of happiness, the persistence of happiness. Happiness as an inescapable fate, not a pursuit.

the Corpse Syndrome had an opposite condition. Are there people in this world who feel very alive, who feel every moment of their days as if life inside them is the greatest force in the universe. People who are hopelessly happy. I told him that for some strange reason neuropsychiatry does not deal with such conditions – it deals with conditions th

Do you know something, Thoma, even today, in some African tribes, lullabies and funeral songs are the same.’

‘Because to fool a person, it appears, you have to first fool yourself. That is at the heart of all human influences.

That is the quality of drunkards, they have a lot of friends. Because what men find most endearing in other men are their tragic flaws. That is why alcoholics never run out of friends.

‘Don’t hate me, son. There are people in this world who set out to make an omelette but end up with scrambled eggs. I am just one of them.’