Pagol (Crazy): A Beautiful Madness

We all know someone who’s a little different.

Maybe it’s your childhood friend who still believes in fairy tales. Or your cousin who talks to plants. Or maybe — just maybe — it’s you.

In Bengali, we have a word for these people: pagol. Crazy.

But is that really what they are? Or have we misunderstood something beautiful all along?

This is a story about Ritwik — a boy who was called pagol all his life. Not because he lost his mind, but because he wore his heart on his sleeve and saw the world through wonder-filled eyes.

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The Boy Who Didn’t Fit In

From the time he was small, Ritwik never quite fit the mold. While other kids memorized math tables, he asked questions like, “Do clouds ever get tired?” or “What does the moon dream of?”

At school, he would get lost staring out the window. At home, he would paint galaxies with his fingers on old newspapers.

Neighbors would shake their heads. “He’s such a pagol boy,” they’d say.

But his mother knew better. She’d quietly put aside his drawings, hum his made-up songs, and pray, “Let the world be kind to my little dreamer.”

Because the truth is, we don’t always know how to love the ones who are different — the ones who feel too much.

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First Love, First Madness

At sixteen, Ritwik fell in love. Not a crush, not a fling — but the kind of love that makes the world blur and time slow down.

Her name was Srija. She wasn’t extraordinary to most people. But to Ritwik, she was the sun that made everything else glow.

He did all the ridiculous things love makes you do — wrote poems on the back of bills, whispered her name to the wind, even sang under her window one rainy evening with a voice as off-key as his heart.

She looked down from her balcony, shocked, amused, and said, “You’re mad.”

And he smiled, soaked and shivering, and replied, “I know.”

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Trying to Fit a Heart into a Box

As Ritwik grew older, the world didn’t get any softer.

“Stop dreaming,” they told him. “Be practical. Get a job. Buy insurance.”

And he tried. He wore tucked-in shirts, learned how to write emails with “Kind regards,” and smiled at jokes he didn’t find funny.

But every evening, something inside him ached.

He’d come home, loosen his tie, and sit on the rooftop — staring at the sky, like he used to as a boy. He missed the stars, the silence, the freedom.

He missed… himself.

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The Art That Saved Him

One day, he picked up a brush again. Just for a few minutes. Just to feel something.

And he couldn’t stop.

The colors exploded onto the canvas like bottled-up emotions finally free. His paintings were wild, messy, soulful — like him.

People started noticing. At first, they didn’t understand the art, but they felt something. A warmth. A sadness. A truth.

“He’s kind of… crazy,” one gallery owner said. “But his work speaks.”

And that was enough.

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When She Came Back

Years later, out of nowhere, Srija walked into his little studio.

She looked different. Life had touched her in its usual ways — wrinkles near the eyes, a tired kind of grace. But her eyes lit up when she saw the painting on the wall.

It was her. Not exactly her face — but her essence. Her laughter. Her storm.

“You never stopped painting me, did you?” she asked, softly.

Ritwik shook his head. “You were my first madness. The best kind.”

They didn’t fall back in love. Life isn’t a movie. But they sat together for hours, talking like old friends, like two souls who had once shared something too big to name.

Before leaving, she turned at the door, smiled, and said, “You’re still pagol, Ritwik.”

He nodded. “And I hope I always will be.”

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The Gift of Being “Pagol”

In a world obsessed with success, speed, and schedules, being “crazy” is a rebellion.

It means choosing passion over paycheck. Kindness over coolness. Love over logic.

Being pagol means crying during movies, hugging trees, dancing alone in the rain. It means sending long messages at 2 a.m., writing letters you never send, and believing in magic even when life tries to kill it.

It means you feel. You care. You’re alive.

And maybe the world needs more of that.

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What Ritwik Taught Me

I met Ritwik once. Not in person, but through his story. And it changed something in me.

Because I’ve always been a little pagol, too.

I overthink. I overworry. I overwonder. I get attached too easily and let go too slowly. And for the longest time, I thought it was a flaw.

But maybe — just maybe — it’s a kind of strength.

So, if you’ve ever been told you’re “too emotional,” “too intense,” or just “too much,” remember this:

You are not too much. The world has simply forgotten how to feel enough.

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A Message for the Pagols

To every pagol heart out there:

Don’t shrink yourself to fit into quiet rooms. Don’t hide your spark to keep others comfortable. Don’t stop loving just because it hurts sometimes.

Keep dreaming.

Keep feeling.

Keep being beautifully, unapologetically you.

Because madness — the kind that comes from love, from hope, from being alive — is not a curse.

It’s a gift.

And if that makes us pagol, then let’s be proud of it.