Sushant Singh Rajput took his life… committed suicide at the young age of just 34 years!!

Somehow, this news has rattled not just me but a whole lot of people. Why? I did not know him personally nor did I follow his film career as a fan. He did some remarkable cinemas like Kai Po Che, MSD, Kedarnath, Chhichhore etc which shall remained etched in ones memory for years… but the question remains why did he take the extreme step?

As my son pointed out, the “suicidal thought” is something that’s embedded in the persons mind for a long time but is subdued by the happenings in one’s life. I agree with him, in fact I would like to point out that a large section of the society around us have a dormant suicidal thought deeply embedded in their subconscious and in most of them it remains dormant all through their life.

I remember of a death by suicide in my distant family… the person was highly educated (Gold Medalist), well established in profession (professor at a renowned university) and had a beautiful family. I have met him once or twice as a child and my memory is that of a benevolent uncle who would give me a Cadbury Chocolate bar every time we met. However, my mother and elder siblings believed otherwise; according to them he was self-centered, selfish person who ill treated his wife and child and made her leave home with their child never to return again.

Why I brought it up? Well, I wanted to bring about a different dimension to the narrative of suicide.

Many years later, that child and I became very good friend, we used to communicate every week through snail mail (the only option in those days) and would meet once or twice a year. In one such communique, she informed me of her father’s demise by an act of suicide. She wrote and I am quoting from memory, “I don’t know whether I should grieve on his death or feel freedom from a suffocating relationship. Frankly, I do not know him much or rather he did not let me know him all these years. All I know is that he loved oneself immensely which to the outside world seemed self-centered, selfish and therefore, his taking this extreme step reveals that he was in some kind of deep pain which he could not withstand anymore.”

I think I wrote back some consoling thoughts which I did not believe myself. But her words that “how could a person who loved himself so much take his own life”, remained etched in my subconscious and surfaced now when I read the news of SSR.

Most people consider suicide to be act cowardice, I don’t. It takes guts to jump off the 20^th floor, put the noose around one’s own neck and then kick the chair, gulp down a bottle of high-dose sedative or slash the vein of your wrist. Yes, it takes lot of unbearable pain, both mental and physical that induces the person to take the final step. Why guts? Because, the person is fully aware that there will be no turning back once the clock is set in motion.  The desire to live for something… to love someone gets erased momentarily but completely… it is like one has entered a tunnel where it is only way forward to an endless abyss. So what triggers this? Many things actually in succession or simultaneously… be it a financial or emotional loss… it could be certain physical ailment that has reached incurable stage.

The counter argument often is that one should talk to family, friends or doctor to get out of the misery. But what to do when one has lost all the zest for life? Think of the terminally ill patient counting days while experiencing excruciating pain every moment that refuses to subside even with the strongest medication. Think about the person in vegetative state where the mind is alert but rest of the body including the tongue is inert or the comatose patient occupying the (hospital) bed for years together. There is no coming out these miseries even if you have tons of wealth to garner the best medical team. Will it not be logical or rational to let the person go with honor? It does sound politically correct to say that the family will take care… arrange for best medical facilities… and hope the person gets well, when it is evident that it is not going to happen, the vegetative figure will never get up and stand on its feet.

The mental illness or the depression is something that doesn’t happen overnight but seeps into the brain cavities over a period of time. What triggers it is a point of debate…

Let’s take a hypothetical case of a person who had been in a administrative job all his/her life…the person having worked in middle management level was never a decision maker but a good follower and implementer of the instructions… suddenly with the lockdown across the country forcing the employees to work out of home, makes his/her job redundant… with still few years before retirement… with no other skill set to explore newer alternatives… becomes kind of unrelevant to his/ her own universe. The person is physically there amongst people but has nothing to contribute productively. His/her existence is taken for granted and doesn’t have any impact on the people around except probably as an irritant. He/she quietly waits in silence to become completely irrelevant from this stage of unrelevant before fading away completely.

There’s a section of such people who disappear in milling crowd in anonymity, some take the spiritual route to find relevance of their existence. Though the thought of going to Dikshunnopur is highly romantic as has been painted by the Bengali author late Shri Sunil Gangopadhyay or Neel-Lohit (pseudonym) but I find it to be uncourageous because one remains as useless as before… still unproductive, a parasite living off the society… only the environment changes.

I strongly feel that if such a situation arise in one’s life, it is better to go with your dignity intact. There is no shame in accepting the final defeat and cross over the rainbow bridge to a world of classless society… (I am guessing!!)

NB: Won’t be apologetic to those who may find this “defeatist and/or morbid”… I have the freedom of thoughts…