Recovery’s slow: Abducted doctor

Until three years ago, there was almost nothing about his life that Dr Ajay Mishra* was not proud of. As a psychiatrist, he never turned a patient away. He boasted to friends about never needing a telephone diary because he could memorise phone numbers after hearing them just once.

“My sense of self came crashing down when, in 2008, my kidnappers pressed the phone against my ear and asked me to call my wife. I just sat there, unable to remember a single digit. I was beaten up for two days because I couldn’t remember my contact details,” said Dr Mishra, 43.

Dr Mishra was kidnapped while he was on his way from his residence in Gorakhpur to Tevaria district where he saw patients for a subsidised fee once a week.

His kidnappers took him to an unknown destination that was at least 200km away from Gorakhpur, and confined him to a room for 11 days. While his wife negotiated with the kidnappers to agree for a ransom lesser than the Rs2 crore they demanded, Dr Mishra was beaten up and humiliated.

“On the surface, we can all guess how terrifying the process of abduction can be, but you cannot imagine how insidious its long-term effects are. I wasn’t the same person — I walked around as a trace of my older self, with newer fears and restrictions,” Dr Mishra explained.

For the first six days after he was released, Dr Mishra locked himself up brooding over events that could have taken place but didn’t -- his murder, his daughters’ future without a father, and so on. “I’ve spent my life telling people how to cope with trauma, but I was so unsure when I had to take control. I tried to look at it clinically, and did succeed with time, but it has left its scars,” he said.

Out of nowhere, there was a list of things Dr Mishra found he was incapable of doing. Walking around in his neighbourhood beyond 10pm agitated him. Saturdays made him restless because he was abducted on one. Dr Mishra also started making excuses to have his assistant accompany him on his way back home from work — something he had never done for 25 years. “Before the abduction, I made elaborate plans to travel internationally, but later, I started slipping away even from social gatherings shortly after we’d reach the venue.”

It took time, and a lot of patience, for Dr Mishra to accept that the process would take time. “I let myself be human. A year later, when the date of my abduction approached, I shut myself up at home and told my patients I was out of town. It was better than putting on a brave face but feeling paralysed inside.” Dr Mishra refused to take antidepressants in spite of experiencing typical symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder. “I think I wanted to test myself.”

    *Name changed to protect identity