The Bipolar: A Novel

By Prudhviraju Gadapa

Krishna, an immigrant from India and an engineer by profession, is diagnosed with bipolar disorder in his late twenties after a failed relationship with Courtney, an American woman who has beautiful blue eyes.

Twenty years later, when Krishna is in his forties and the father of two children, strange gunmen begin following him in fast-moving cars, with the intent to kill. In trying to investigate his stalkers and why they want to kill him, Krishna realizes that his preference for women with blue eyes has made him a target of a white supremacist group. He also finds out that Neelloc, a waitress and engineering student he had a relationship with, one that ended disastrously, also seems to be associated with the supremacist group.

Will Krishna’s bipolar disorder make his situation worse, or will it help him this time? Will it just save his life so that he can be there for his children, or will it do more by helping him reunite with Neelloc, the woman he still cares about?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Dec 6, 2018
• ISBN: 9781984570543

Prudhviraju Gadapa

Prudhviraju "Raj" Gadapa came to the US from India in his early twenties. He started writing in his late twenties, inspired by the true events and symptoms of his mental disorders. He has a Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering from Oklahoma State University and has been working in the engineering field for over 15 years. He is currently married and resides in Houston with his daughter and son.

Book preview

Chapter 1

The Subconscious Zone

Everything had culminated in that point in time: his belief that he came to life for a higher purpose, his belief that he was ordained to change the future course of mankind, his bipolar disorder and its manic episodes, the panic attacks that started it all, his belief that there is no absolute right and wrong, his curiosity to experience how it feels to take somebody’s life, his passion for driving fast, and his belief that if we leave the hell of our minds, we have no limits.

He saw the barrel of semiautomatic assault rifle sneaking out from the lowering right window of the 2014 Dodge Ram. He was on Interstate 10 eastbound driving to work at the Chevron corporate office in downtown Houston on February 24, 2015. He was late, as he was on most days, hence there was traffic but nothing like the morning rush hour traffic. The highway had three lanes. Krishna was in middle lane, and the Dodge was in the left lane. The gunman was in the passenger seat of the Dodge, and Krish was in easy shooting range, as close as six to seven feet. It could actually be a guaranteed shot, Krishna thought.

Krishna always knew that if we stop controlling our mind and just leave it alone, it had no limits. He had been practicing this for a while. He almost turned off his conscious mind and let his subconscious or reflexes take over. He just became an observer instead of a doer. It was almost like autopilot mode, since the subconscious was supposed to take over the game. Krishna called it subcon zone. Krishna knew this phenomenon happened in all people involuntarily during emergency situations, but he started practicing in getting into this zone whenever he wanted to.

He saw himself lowering both his front power windows. For a second he wondered why he was more concerned about the windows breaking than his own life. As he was about to duck down, he heard the first shot and a bullet pass through the open windows in front of his face, missing him by inches. He thought, I’m so smooth, saving both myself and the windows of my lovely car at the same time. He immediately realized that he only saved the car; it was sheer luck or God that saved him.

That was first bullet ever shot at Krishna. He just could not believe it was happening. He knew it was coming, but it was a total different feeling when he was actually in it. Over the past few weeks, he’d actually known he was being followed (or hunted down). Krishna felt like he was being stalked. He had, at that time, an intuitive feeling that he could be zeroed in on any minute.

He took a quick look at all three mirrors and immediately bent sideways to the right, ducking down. There was a friendly Corvette, fast approaching in the right lane, an eighteen-wheeler about four car lengths behind him, and in the left lane, of course, was the Dodge Ram with a clearance of several car lengths behind it. In a split second, his mind registered all coordinates and even their speeds. He knew his mind had made its plan. The plan itself was very simple and straight—nothing out of the ordinary. The key was maintaining calm. Through calm came focus and execution. His subconscious knew this. He heard more shots. He had no clue where the bullets were landing, but he wondered if they were making holes in the sides of his car or flying perfectly through the opened windows. He felt very sad. He’d had his car a little over three years, and he loved it. He had been taking care of it so well. He immediately paused and was glad that at least his car was mechanically untouched.

He tapped the brakes, let the Dodge pass, and immediately got behind it by changing lanes to left. He knew they could still shoot at him from the rear sliding windows of the Dodge, so he stayed ducked down and applied the brakes a little harder, allowing the eighteen-wheeler to pass him, clearing the middle lane and allowing him to access the right lane, where the speeding Corvette had made way to almost a quarter mile of free road ahead of him. He got up to see that he was correctly placed in the right lane. He first pushed the button to get into the sports mode. He then hit the accelerator as hard as he could. His white 2011 Corvette roared, firing all eight cylinders of the 6.2-liter engine, blasting off with six hundred-horse power. He watched the speedometer move from 70 mph to 120 mph in less than three seconds. He found himself a half mile ahead of the Ram.

***

He heard a gunshot just when he got out of his car and had started walking toward the elevators. At almost at the same moment, he felt a sharp pain in his neck. He put his hand to his neck and felt blood. However, the wound was superficial.

He was on the top floor of his office parking lot, which was eight stories. He was quite sure he was being shot at from the adjacent twenty-story building, but it could have come from any of the floors. He was in the open on the top floor and knew a second shot was on its way.

He had two options: one was continue to run to the stairs, go down to the street level, and run into his office building; the other was to run back to his car. He couldn’t take the elevators, because that would involve some wait time.

Running back to his car would keep him in the open for quite some time, making him an easy target, but going down the stairs would take him out of the sight of the snipers, wherever they were. He ran to the stairs, but before he reached them, he heard two more gunshots. Fortunately both missed him. As he started going down the stairs, he heard a couple of men coming up the stairs.

He knew they could also be among the gunmen. Again he started to just observe himself. He could see himself pressing the button on the electronic key of his new Corvette to open the top, and he then saw himself pressing the button to start the engine remotely. He then turned back, went up the stairs, and ran toward the car. He watched the high-tech hard top of his Corvette opening slowly. The top was almost fully open as he jumped. He thought for a second that he’d jumped too soon, but to his surprise, he felt some kind of force pushing him farther—about four extra feet. He almost felt that he’d briefly defied the laws of physics. He landed in the driver’s seat, sliding into perfect posture, with his right foot on the accelerator.

He took off.

He still was exposed to the snipers. So he immediately pushed the button to close the top. By then, two gunmen on foot reached the top floor and started shooting with handguns, which seemed to have silencers. Krishna also heard some more shots, which sounded different. He guessed they must be from the snipers again. Before his top could fully close, one bullet grazed the top of the passenger seat and hit the dashboard. Krishna’s subconscious mind figured the point the bullet was fired from and registered it.

Something extremely miraculous happened next. Krishna watched his right hand reach for his Beretta in the glove box. His hand then swung around and shot along the line of fire his mind had registered without actually turning around to look at the target.

He then heard one more shot, bang. He shot back, bang, with his hand still swung back. This time his subconscious shot back tracking the sound of the shot.

Krishna, then watched through the rear view mirror. Both the gunmen were shot right in the arm they were shooting with.

He was glad he’d moved the Beretta 9mm from the trunk to the glove box after the first encounter.

***

Krishna somehow managed get on I-45 North without anybody following him. Once again, he went full throttle to reach 120 mph and stayed at that speed for about ten seconds. The city traffic wouldn’t let him keep that up any longer. He lowered his speed to about 80 mph, drove for about five more miles, and changed highways from I-45 North to I-610 West and then to I-10 West driving toward San Antonio. He was then fully convinced that he had lost the gunmen completely. He started quietly cruising at the speed limit of 70 mph.

Just when he thought he could have some breathing room to reflect again on what had been happening that day, he noticed two fast-moving Dodge Challengers on the frontage road. He wasn’t quite sure, but from his distance, it almost seemed the people in the cars were staring at him. It was possible they could also be part of the team that attacked him with the Dodge Ram and again at his work parking lot. Instead of speeding away, he waited to see what would unfold just to be sure. As he guessed, both cars were merging into the highway just about five hundred feet behind him. Krishna still didn’t increase his speed and was monitoring both Challengers in the rearview mirror. He then noticed a yellow Corvette Stingray convertible a quarter mile behind that seemed to have suddenly increased its speed and moved to his lane. The Challengers also increased their speeds. Before he could attempt a full-throttle escape, a Chevy Camaro abruptly blocked his lane directly in front of him.

Krishna now found himself surrounded—the Challengers to the right and left, the Camaro in the front, and the Corvette Convertible in the back. This was going to be intense. He took a deep breath, then quietly suggested to himself, Yes, there is a good chance you may die right here, right now. Just accept it, and just let your subconscious do its best.

Krishna was no stranger to the thought of death. Most of his adult life, he was at least mildly suicidal, but his childhood was almost perfect. It could just have been symptoms of his bipolar disorder. Or, quite simply, he may have just felt his life sucked most of the time. But after his children, Amit and Aarthi, were born, he had a newfound reason to live. And meeting Neelloc added one more reason. He first thought about his children. Sangeeta was a good mother, and she was also mature and strong after putting up with Krishna and his freakish behavior. Aarthi was in high school. It wouldn’t be that devastating. She would get busy with high school experiences and adventures, so she might get over him quick. That wouldn’t be the case with Amit, but Aarthi was emotionally strong and loved his brother intensely. She would help him till the emotional storm passed. He then thought about Neelloc. He’d told Neelloc he would always be there for her. He knew one day she would definitely call him and find out he was dead. She would never know the whole truth.

The freeway had now opened up to five lanes. Krishna again looked at all three mirrors and had to quickly look around both sides, including his blind spots. There was no need to register the coordinates of the four vehicles that surrounded him, since they were all within about two car lengths or less. Just when he was about to duck down, he heard a shot. The shot came from the front this time. It made a hole in the windshield and cracked the glass all around it. He couldn’t see anything ahead of him unless he peaked through the hole. He was barely able to see the barrel of a rifle from the moonroof of the Camaro. He was almost sure it was a sniper rifle.

As he grabbed his Beretta from the glove box to make a vane attempt of shooting through the hole, he heard two more shots. He didn’t roll down his windows in time, but he ducked down just in time. The windows shattered on both sides. The bullet that shot the right window also hit the gun he was holding high. His pistol flew out of the vehicle through the left window.

More shots were rapidly fired. This time they sounded like they were fired from some kind of automatic assault rifle, like an AK-47 of AR-15. Shattered pieces of glass were flying all over. He had to completely close his eyes and keep his head down. Terrified, alone, and confused, Krishna thought, Why am I being so mercilessly targeted? What did I do to deserve—?"

His thoughts were interrupted by another wave of rapidly fired shots. He finally realized that he may actually die this time.

He opened his eyes one last time to turn on the cruise control. He then closed his eyes, waiting to die.

Chapter 2

I can now focus on making my wife happy.

Two Years Earlier

Krishna typed, Courtney Jones in Google and clicked the Search button. Jones was her maiden name, so he knew it could have changed. The search almost gave two pages of results in Facebook, LinkedIn, and other people-search portals. He remembered, about two years ago, the search results were not that many.

Krishna noticed that in the last couple of years, since the advent of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other social media sites, even common people were showing up in simple name searches. Sometimes even their photos were showing up.

He had been searching once in a while for almost twelve years. When he first started searching, Yahoo was just gaining popularity, Google was not even being traded publicly, and there was no Facebook or Twitter. He didn’t search in the first four years after he broke up, because he was very sensitive about it and really wanted to get over her. At the least, he wanted to get over the obsessive part of his feelings for her. He then thought his obsession was gone, that he no longer felt bad that he was not with her nor that he was not in touch with her. Actually, he was kind of glad he was not in touch with her anymore; being obsessively in love with somebody was no fun to him either. He figured he was searching simply because he wanted to know what she was doing and where she was. However, all along, he knew it would be nice to see her at least once before he died.

Most of his life he’d been an atheist. He thought life was just a cosmic accident and was completely gone when the body died. Life started with nothing and ended with nothing, he believed. This caused him to constantly question life itself. He wasn’t sure if there is any meaning to this life or not—if there was something called absolute right and wrong, but he sure would love to see her once before he died. He thought that if he ever wrote a book, he would put that exact statement in it.

He was not obsessive about her, nor was he compulsive about searching for her (not to the point that it would be considered a medical condition), but the ease with which one could do searches these days because of Internet made it almost impossible to resist the temptation. He was not fully comfortable doing the searches and thought there was something weird about it. But with life so long and boring, why not? He knew she may not like it, but how would she ever know. Even if he knew where she was, he wasn’t going to visit her. That would be very risky. What if she was still afraid of him? That could be the last nail in his coffin. That was his excuse.

Here he was now, with two pages of search results with one click of a button. Among all the results, her name on Facebook made him very anxious. He could just see her photo in the next few seconds if he really wanted to. He hardly remembered her face, but he knew he would easily recognize her even though she would be almost twenty years older. He clicked the link and saw a profile picture immediately. It was not her. He regrouped some hope and clicked LinkedIn. No luck.

He immediately realized that he could actually click the Images button and get images of all people with the same name. He clicked and got hundreds of images. He looked through the images, breathing heavily. Some were obviously not her, and some looked a little similar, but he wasn’t sure. Some looked very much like her, but then the name didn’t match.

It looked like she was taking extra measures to keep herself confidential. Most women do that, no big deal. He hoped she was not still afraid of him and trying to hide from him.

He got a little disappointed, but he was enjoying the process. So he went back to the web search results and went through them again. He clicked the people search websites, but all of them either asked for payment or asked to register for a membership. He didn’t feel like paying, not because of the money, but because he thought even it might make him look desperate, even to himself. Like he would be invading her privacy a little too much. It could border on stalking or even fit the textbook definition of cyberstalking. Just when he was about to give up, something caught his eye: George Smith/Courtney Jones—Marriage Records—Macava.com. He missed a heartbeat and clicked the link:

SKAGIT COUNTY, WASHINGTON, MARRIAGE RECORD INDEX, 1980–2010

Bride First Name: Courtney

Bride Last Name: Jones

Groom First Name: George

Groom Last Name: Smith

License Number: XXXX

Marriage Date: 5/10/97

Courtney was from Washington. They were married on 5/10/1997. They were married less than a year after he broke up with her. He didn’t know what it meant to him. He didn’t know whether to feel sad that she got over him so quickly or happy that he at last found her.

It was easy from there on. He searched for her husband’s name, George Smith, and her new name, Courtney Smith. He didn’t get any photos or information on Courtney, but he found almost everything about him. He got their current address. They were living in Pearland, Texas. However, there was some extremely interesting information about her husband. He went to the same college Courtney did and was so active with church activities that he uploaded many videos of them on YouTube. Krishna then remembered that the boyfriend before him was also from her college, Texas Christian University, and he also remembered her saying she broke up with him because he wanted to get married right away and always talked about church. Krishna then was 100 percent sure she got back with her previous boyfriend and actually married him. Krishna suddenly felt very happy, and he didn’t know why. He had to think about it for a while. Her marrying her previous boyfriend soon after their break up could mean many things. Maybe after dating Krishna, she married him on the rebound. Maybe after dating Krishna, she got afraid and thought she’d gotten all the thrill she needed and decided to settle into something safe and secure. The worst of all could be that while dating Krishna she got so burnt that she thought anybody was better than him. Anyway, Krishna thought he will never know and, so, need not obsess over it. He also thought even Courtney herself may never know either.

***

Krishna went by her house. He drove his white 2011 Corvette ZR1 that day, thinking being rich could be less suspicious. He knew the chance of actually seeing her was quite thin, but knowing there was any chance was thrilling. He decided to do it only two or, at the most, three times. Anything more could be very suspicious, and he himself wouldn’t be comfortable.

The first time she was not there, but he could spot her house. It had huge front and back yards with no fences. He had a mild temptation to just knock at the door, and then he thought he should do that when he was in some deep trouble or depression with nothing to lose. He could actually use that as a diversion.

The second time he got lucky. A middle-aged woman and a girl of around ten got out of a Ford Suburban. Since the front yard was huge, he couldn’t really see her facial features, but nothing he saw convinced him she was not Courtney. She appeared tall, which she was, and was a little bigger than she’d been, but she could easily have gained some weight in seventeen years. She had long dirty-blonde hair instead of bright blonde hair. That was very much possible, in these days of makeovers. He also remembered reading somewhere that blondness of hair lessens with age.

As he passed by, Krishna saw her daughter running toward a mailbox near the road. She was close enough that he could see her well.

She looks very much like her mother. She also had the same smile that Courtney had, a perfect blend of curiosity to explore life and respect and understanding for all.

He felt there was something very phenomenal and spiritual about, seeing a girl for the first time, who looked like the woman whom he loved. Yes, the awesomeness was being preserved. Now I