An ilander friend was talking about suicide recently. What prompts someone to talk or think so? How much hardship is enough? Which twist of destiny is unfortunate? Or irreparable? Till what extent one may fight back? And when does one give up? Take a look at this family.
Raj, Mona & Bonny are siblings. Children of an honest, sincere and brilliant service personnel and an efficient and well educated homemaker.
Raj was especially brilliant and so his dad wanted him to join the Indian Administrative Services. Raj had a different dream though ' of Mercedes and posh bunglows. Eventually he migrated to the US and settled there. His marriage ceremony to an American Indian girl was a low key affair. He underwent a violent marriage for about a year that eventually broke, followed by long spells of depression, longer solitude to develop a strong affinity towards spirituality before he met his soulmate in India. He and his soulmate took the pains of living separately for two years post marriage due to unavoidable reasons, one staying in US and other in the 'tough & harsh on ladies' Delhi environment. They are a spiritually happy couple now with a bonny baby. Touch wood. He works in a company owned by Warren Buffet and has renounced most of the worldly comforts apart from the bare minimum. He also wishes to come back to serve his ageing parents and asks if the small cars in India come with an AC so that he may settle for one !
Bonny turned out to be a gold medallist. Mummy dear wished her to join Raj in the US do some higher studies and settle there. Search for an US bound groom was on. But she chose to join her own chosen man and start life. Her marriage ceremony was again another low key affair with only the groom's brother's support. Life was not only tough but harsh initially. The couple went through several ups and downs in their initial years of couplehood to eventually establish themselves as accountable individuals in this big bad world with their never say die approach. Touch wood again. Does Bonny ever repent not going to US for higher studies? Unlikely. Rather she talks of going for a month-long tour of Europe someday soon with money earned in India!
Mona was married off in a grand way with a great ceremony. The greatest ceremony that has taken place in the family so far. She was also the first one to be married off among the siblings. A year later she was blessed with a bonny child doubling up the happiness in the family. Unlike her siblings, she did not complete her post graduation amidst these life changing events. Neither her husband inspired her to. Two years later things began to change. Mona started staying back with her parents for months once she came to visit them and her husband never urged for the return of his wife or child. Raj used to go drop his sister and nephew home. The marriage turned sour and gradually violent too. They started living separately in two different cities. The child stayed with Mona. They were financed by her husband though, which was not enough and her parents lended a helping had every now and then without asking. Everyone wanted her to be independent now and repented her not completing her post graduation. She gradually turned violent out of depression and her child lacked the desired parental attention and care. Mona blamed her parents too accusing they did not educate her enough like her siblings and did not allow them help her. At the age of 6 her child had to be adopted by her parents to give him a better and safer life. Mona cut all ties with her parents. Every effort of all uncles, aunts, Raj & Bonny to revive her back to life went futile. Four years later, her husband stopped the remaining traces of support to her and she was almost dragged to the roads. She went missing for one full day when her parents, uncles and aunts looked for her all around the city, ultimately to find her sitting in a devastated state at the doorsteps of her parental home. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief to see her there. It was almost midnight, her mother had almost lost hope while they were returning home. But that was probably the dawn of a new life for Mona after the traumatic eight years.
Its been four years since. Mona is struggling back to life with incessant support of her aging parents and her own son, 14, who is maturing fast experiencing major twists and turns of life. An effort to become self sufficient is still on though.
I think Mona is the bravest and strongest child among the three siblings, given the way she is fighting back to life having gone through the greatest trauma and bouts of depression. May be the sole purpose of her life is to look after her aging parents in their hour of need and she is being prepared just for that.
And what about that aging parent couple who's seen one broken marriage, a depressed son, another devastating marriage and a traumatic daughter, a 6 yr old grand child on the verge of going astray, never ending visits to the court to fight for the rights of their daughter yet not missing a single daily religious ritual back home. How much hardship is enough hardship? Raj, Mona & Bonny are very close to my heart.
Thinking of suicide is plain cowardice. One life is 100 yrs long. If you are 70, you still have 30 more years to start living a great life! Life after sunset, too, is wonderful.
wonderfully told… there’’s so much pain n suffering in this world.. some time back i read some blog in which the writer was insisting that woman should not work n only concentrate on rasing kids… i wish she reads this side of story as well.. so many woman want to work these days .. one of the reasons is this only.. excellent post .. hats off to u for putting it so beautifully
Every event/incident is life is looked with an attiude. We always need to learn from the experiences and slowly and slowly accept that as a challenge
I agree, suicide should never be an option. From you story, I feel its the parents who have suffered the most. Watching bad things happen to your children is the worst thing that a parent can go through. But they stay strong, they never ever take the option of running away or turning their backs on their kids.
There are two issues raised here hat of relationships and suicide. First I will tackle the issues of suicide. Suicide is actually a running away from a situation, an inability to cope with the circumstances I am an incurable optimist. Does that mean I don’t feel low, I do but I bounce back. Why? Because one sign of low feeling or conduct on my part my family my friends close in on me and pull me out even on net sometimes when I feel home sick my net buddies close ranks around me and perk me up the other reason is that I have learnt to value life for all its goodness, value my near and dear ones and above all feel for fellow humans I attach a great deal of importance to happiness as opposed to pleasures on the dynamics between two individuals. I feel I have been blessed in life to have people around me who care and that’s what’s most important ion life. All theories about mental toughness and robustness go out of the window when one faces despair and adverse situations. —->
it is an act of running away,an escapism sometimes . at other times it is self pity which prods u to take that step, u think about urself , how u have been done into by the life . but then their are cult sucides where ur mind is twisted by some logic and strange philosophy to take ur own life and finally there is a pathological mind which always think about sucide without any cause - i had a friend ,classmate in medicine, whom we saved five times till he finally succeeded to end his life . these are the difficult cases beyond any reasonings.
—-> When relationship goes sour a lot of blame game and name calling goes on. We need to have tons of blessings from GOD to have a healthy relationship that’s harmonious and self sustaining…..Gman
—-> People tend to shut themselves off from the people who love those who care for them. In such a situation people who are close have to step in even to the point of being rebuffed but persist and draw the person out of the self created isolation. That why when I sensed sadness in some I reached out knowing fully well that I may be rebuffed but at least I tried. That’s the key reach out. Now the second issue of relationships. For any relationship to grow, mature and stabilize there are few essentials. The first and foremost is copious quantity of love respect and admiration for each other. Then is a spirit of tolerance and accommodation, this has to both ways and voluntary, not one way and forced. The other essential thing that should go out of the window is EGO but not self respect, for without a healthy self respect one cannot have a lasting relationship.
All I was trying to say was let’’s not judge, it only gives us a sense of superiority we don”t have any right to feel.……All due credit to the characters in your story. I”m glad that they have finally found peace. :)))
I don”t have anything else to add other than that my initial comment was just a cautionary one. That we mustn”t judge actions on the basis of rules or how it appears to us, even if we have walked in their shoes. I have a relative who is manic depressive and who lives on a daily cocktail of medicines. It is believed that she witnessed some act of carnage during the Delhi riots against Sikhs in the ”80s and that tipped her balance a bit. It is quite possible that you or me might have witnessed the same incident and reacted otherwise. How a personality is formed and how one reacts to life’’s vagaries is dependant on a lot of factors. It could be our genes, it could be nurture. Siblings who grow up in the same environment develop quite different mental and emotional landscapes. One might be an indomitable fighter while the other could be meekly submissive. —contd —
that is the way some people look at life , they get happiness and self satisfaction by helping others forgetting their own pain . may be it all depends on how u manage to maneouver ur mind and spirits in the hour of crisis. thinking about sucide is a very common phenomenon but actually going and doing it is something different …..it is indeed a matter of momentarily weakness as we have seen that most of the patients when once saved from thier sucide attempts [not all] never ever again try to do the act again in thier life .
a thought provoking post for me !! i have seen five of my batchmates committing sucides when they had not even started life in its full meaning just because of unbearable stress and pressures of medical line [ for them], i wish they could have seen the larger pic of life and not ended their lives so meekly though i don”t mean disrespect to any one of them and then i have seen some of my patients who could have so easily ended thier life but they chose to fight instead like one of my old unmarried female fighting breast cancer since 5 years now all alone with so much injustice done to her [she was demoted from the post of professor after her news of cancer .....ugh ] ,she has had to suffer untold misery, twice heart attacks , all wealth used up in fighting the disease still she is fighting valliantly and even in this hour of crisis also she has donated lacs of rupees [ anchestral wealth].
Life is a gift of God. We have to utilise it in the best possible way…ranjit
Agree with LL. IC needs to go to a doc and make sure there is no chemical imbalance in the brain. Other than that sometimes we write random things in our blogs, we are not all that serious. So maybe he wrote about suicide and we are jumping all over him.
–> when these set of people would put it their effort in their own best possible way in the real world. And Ice Candy, the act of suicide is cowardice. But a coward will not commit suicide
I am sure of that. A coward will not develop the mental frame or guts required to contemplate suicide.. to kill self. You are a normal human being.
Nandita: Thanks. Your comment has come in as a breather. Lissa, I cannot agree more with you on the analysis of the mental state/condition of a person contemplating suicide. Very true, a normal person with the right perspective in thinking can never kill self. I was not focussing nor analysing the person contemplating it anyway, as I had said on my reply to Ice Candy. As Freedom Unbound has beautifully summed up.. after listening to all sides, I was focussing on the ”act” only with a view to say that ‘’suicide is cowardice” hence ”its not the solution”. Going back to the story, we don”t know if Mona contemplated suicide at any point of time, but everyone in the family is compassionate to her anyway. When her now 14 yr old son was 11-12, he used to say to his god in his prayers to make his mamma ok soon! Thanks everybody. Your involvement only shows how concerned all of you became to the sufferings of this family and willing to do something fo such victims. It would so nice naa.. –>
oh D, did not know u had posted next, 2 things - 1. Suppose a person thinks of himself as coward and is suicidal, is he justified now? I asked the same thing before, don”t go the forward way which is suicide -> cowardice….think of the reverse way, coward -> suicide…is it justified?…2. “But totally giving in before a strong fight is cowardice.” -> this is my case, I will be giving in only after a fight, does that make the act cowardice?
LL’s approach is very pragmatic and is applicable to habitual criminals too. But while a criminal is a danger to the society and hence needs to be kept at bay, a potential suicide case is not. At least not directly. That’s why in some countries they call prisons as Correctional Centres. I agree that suicide victims need to be handled with more care and compassion. The law is, perhaps, there to act as a deterrent. But then the battle is eventually the individual’s own. That is why it is so important to train our young ones to be mentally and physically strong so that they can face life and its stresses with courage. Rest all education is secondary.
A good write up, JACOG, and congrats for positive attitude. Your attitude is heartening. Yet, JJ is also true! I feel it would be better if we distinguish between the individual and the ‘act’ per se. You talk of the act, I believe, not the individual, when you talk of suicide as an act of cowardice. JJ is right when she demands a more compassionate outlook towards the individual. As they say, ‘There is evil in man, man is not evil’. So I see no dichotomy there. The impulse to commit suicide is a moment of weakness. So too is an act of murder, an act of rape and so on. All these are acts of cowardice wherein ppl succumb to their weaknesses. Looking from a larger perspective, perhaps, all of us display cowardice when we succumb to desires of the mind and body, be it for vanity, money, fame, sex or power. Its easy to succumb but requires guts to keep away from it all. But then as Vidushi says, life would be so boring if there was nothing to keep us alive and kicking..:)
Gr8 Post!!Unforgettable really..
Shall always take inspiration frm this story…Life after sunset too is wonderful…
Recent events given due coverage in the media remind us how fragile our emotional being can be….but we must remember tht despite life’’s blows,its life again tht gives us new hope and dreams…tomorrow is always a new day..
Thnx for this story of courage and grit.
Because it is a mental condition, one must not attribute ”normal” thoughts and feelings to a suicidal person. He/she is not thinking along normal lines. So the cowardice also does not really apply. Or for that matter the selfishness. Those are the perspectives of a healthy mind. The suicidal needs help. He/she is not even capable of crying out for it. An attempted and failed suicide is an emergency and the victim needs to be watched like you would watch the sugar levels of a diabetic. The law that deems suicide as a cognizable offense does a double injustice - but that is the law unless they have repealed it. I am not sure whether there is an insanity plea option attached to the trials of suicidals. But they sure need help and treatment. It is certainly not a one off - the tendency or predilection to suicide shows that a recurrance is possible and must be guarded against.
Suicide is a mental condition and needs to be treated by a psyciatrist. All of us have the potential for suicide just as all of us have the potential to lose our minds, have alzheimers, become depressed or have a nervous breakdown. So compassion is a given as we have compassion for the ones who are physically sick. However compassion alone will not ”cure” the depressive suicidal just as the word ”coward” will not drive them to it. They often need medication and medical care. ”Suicide” is not indulged in randomly by people who are stressed. It takes a certain kind of personality. It is not an impulsive accident committed by someone who just feels terribly down one day. A lot of depression is very under the surface and latent and undetected. When we say taking your life is cowardly, we mean that facing up to life is courageous. Often there is misplaced admiration (esp amongst the young) and often there is misplaced pity (which is not compassion) so response to the issue is muddied.
hey… what u did was make efforts to fight.. reading blogs.. looking for inspiration.. dont confuse that with just breathing… being alive and kicking is not just breathing.. in a rush.. shall write more later
Vidushi, I wish to revert on your “.. I wonder, if surviving is enough…not be alive, kicking and living… just mere existence …would feel unbearable…” Nobody keeps kicking 365 days a year. Or in all of the 60/70/80/90/100 yrs of ones life. Those who do are worth worshipping. Ups and downs in life are a fact, a natural reality. Are all the seasons of the year equally pleasant? Do we stop living on the stormy days or even when a tsunami comes! We may stop laughing for a while, but we don’t stop living right? I personally was too low for couple of weeks recently. Those days I just survived, you know. Shouldn’t I have? I took inspiration from a number of soul stirring articles and inspirational blogs too. And from Raj, Mona and their parents’ lives too. My hardship seemed just like a bubble in front of what they went through. Each one taught me just to have patience. And that no tragedy is big enough if it does not matter much to you after five years. And that says it all.
–> should ‘I’ too be hostile to myself? Don’t ‘I’ love myself? If I don’t, how do I expect others would? And if I do, shouldn’t I fight with the hostile ones for the sake of my love for me? If I feel I am all alone, and the whole world is hostile, I actually have nothing to lose further. So why not give the last best fight against the hostile world?? Why will I end my life because someone else is hostile to me???? If I give a fight back either I will win some compassion from some corner or that would generate more hostility towards me. And if I decide to end my life, the same people would all of a sudden turn compassionate. What kind of compassion is this!! To be hostile when a life is there and show compassion when it is gone!! And why why why at all I should end my life for them? What is it if not cowardice if I do not have the willingness to give my best fight for my own sake? Now one may say that a person has to be extremely selfish to think this way. I would say whats —>
I felt I have said something very wrong after reading the comments of Ice Candy, Jolly Jacob and Vidushi. I pondered over it and here is what I have come out with. Yes suicide is cowardice. When does a person is driven to suicide? Mostly when the victim feels deprived of love, care, compassion and understanding and in some cases when they feel they are the cause for depriving someone else of love, care, compassion and/or other needs. I feel all reasons/circumstances of the victims can be broadly categorized into either of these two reasons. Lets keep the latter category aside, where a person blames oneself of causing pain/difficulty to others or feels worthless at the being incapable to alleviate pain of loved ones and ends own life. Taking the former cause where one feels deprived of love, compassion, support.. which means the victim feels alone in this world and struggles alone for survival. The whole world appears hostile to them. Now, if the world is hostile to me, —->
—> wrong in being selfish if I anyway feel nobody loves or cares for me? As if by committing suicide I am not being acutely selfish? I am thinking of relieving myself only of the current hardships. What about the hardships that my friends and family are going to face after I am gone? The pain, awkwardness, shame, blame that they are going to be conferred upon? If one attempts suicide, mind it – just ‘attempts’ or threatens, to draw attention of others, as a cry of help, as Jolly Jacob mentions, it may be considered fine. But totally giving in before a strong fight is cowardice.
Ice Candy: First let me clarify to everyone out here that your post simply prodded me to write this post. I wrote it in less than an hours time after reading your post, shortest time taken till date. These stories or rather the sagas were with me for quite some time, you only prodded me to put it in black & white. But, for God’s sake dear bro, please do not misunderstand me. It was in no way targeted at you. You only prodded me. That’s it. Your situation and the situations discussed here are as far apart as the north pole is from the south pole. There can be no comparison. And somewhere I felt you did not mean it so seriously when you mentioned the word. You can’t be serious with that cause you’ve already started with a plan ahead. Best wishes to you in all your endeavour. And my sincere apologies if I have hurt you in any way. I shall also express my views why I believe the statement ‘Suicide is cowardice’. I shall come back to it.
Life is different for everyone that lives it… there’’s a despair that is bottomless that can assail any one of us and take steps that are harsh, irrational and fundamentally against human nature… The world is a tough place and unfortunately only the strongest survive.. sometimes I wonder, if surviving is enough.. Personally I find it hard not be alive, kicking and living… just mere existence from the day to day would feel unbearable and I believe I could change that to more .. but that belief may not be reflected in everyone. Still thought- provoking
After that sermonising comment
I forgot to mention that you write very well. Will be back for more :)))
I read this somewhere ”When you judge somebody’’s actions, you close the door to compassion”. Calling a tendency to suicide as an act of cowardice does just that. Suicides are mostly cries for help. Two people will respond differently to the same set of circumstances. In the face of insurmountable tragedy, one might gather hitherto unknown inner resources and carry on bravely getting maybe bruised and bloodied in the process. But the other, based on his past experience and mental and emotional makeup might give up completely and want to end it all. At this point the least we can do as onlookers is to extend a helping hand. That compassion could be the only straw left to clutch for a sinking person. I have seen absolutely normal people come totally undone by a simple imbalance in their brain chemistry and gone on to take their lives. Calling them cowards will only push them closer to the brink over which they are already so precariously thethering.
a great post, i must say…the word itself provokes such deep emotions, i have seen that in the last couple of days….my reason for writing that is entirely different…the way you have described it, actually makes me depressed :)…lets forget what I wrote for a while…i want to strengthen your stand here as a 3rd party non-involved person…”Thinking of suicide is plain cowardice.” — what if the person who is thinking of it, also thinks of him/herself as coward, will that be justified?
Nice post…….you r right….comment suicide is a work of coward person… we get life only once………so enjoy.
Very good post. Most of the time when we give up we did not realise how close we were. its important to have faith in oneself
Very thought provoking post. I did not like that last part where you became judgemental about mona and her siblings … but each to his own view. That life is not always smooth sailing - all of us know - but life is a vicious circle of happiness and sorrow. Each of us undergo pain to acheive those moments of happiness. Good post.
Good post JACOG. Most people live with very high expectations and fear of those not being fulfilled. parents,teachers, social circles, extended family, films, nieghbours reinforce these expectations. These become patterns on which lives are led. We comment on people’’s lives as if we know how they should be lived. We assume that the good things that happen to us are because we either deserve it, or because we have engineered them or it is no big deal as it happens to all sooner or later. When bad things happen to us we despair, we panic, we get depressed because we belive we dont deserve, we have done nothg to bring it on, no one else is as unhappy. Do you see how the whole thing is always relative to others? Only the people who go against this grain can get out of this vicious cycle. To say good or bad is ok, to lower expectations to levels that are comfortable, not to be in competition and crave attention, to make bold decisions… takes unlearning & relearning.
Your article kept me thinking for a while. Suicide is an action out of burst… and may be no one wants to do this cowardice act.. unless a dire situation presses him alone. Life is precious and all challenges should be faced head on to become even stronger.
Sort of gives a perspective…and BTW 100 years is a bit less…soon the life expectencies will go up to 150-200 years.