‘Morality’ of a Suicide: Reflections After My Cousin Took Her Life

What is the real value of human life?

(Photo: iStock)

“But in the end one needs more courage to live than to kill himself”– Albert Camus.

What is the real value of human life? Our consciousness convinces us that we think therefore we exist, but existence is only preliminary to being.

We are required to add meaning to this gratuitous passage of time, pretend we are skilfully steering our boats and not just helplessly marching towards death.

Only last month, I stood beside the burning pyre of a deceased cousin who had decided to end her life. For the next week, the prayer rooms at our home were stranded since, owing to the give-take contracts that religions often are, loss generally leads to disillusionment with God.

Cursed silence fell upon anyone who walked by her wardrobe or dusted her bookshelves and the sound of conscience breaking, bleeding through the wounds of guilt and negligence could be heard, when we sat under the very ceiling fan she had hung herself from, in the living room.

But living hearts do not stagnate, they are meant to beat with desire and progress. In a month or so, the void that my cousin had left was filled and replaced by exhaustion that comes from overwhelming work-hours, or evening TV soaps. It is weird how these forgetful families never see a suicide approaching and stare with disbelief when it finally arrives, as if it was an unprecedented event.

But what broke my heart was not witnessing the surprisingly quick recovery of our beloved after our death. Rather, the fact that within a few days of my cousin’s departure, people dared to paint her suicide as a symbol of irresponsibility. “Ladke ka chakkar tha” (there must have been a boy), they gasped in shock when the dissection of her personal life revealed her indulgence in a love affair. “Maa Baap ke bare me to sochna tha” (she should have thought about her parents). She should have given a thought to what would happen to her parents after her irreversible and impulsive mistake.

I believe neighbours are the most myopic and insensitive species, next to relatives.

Who Decides What Reason Justifies a Suicide?

First, suicides are never impulsive. They are not the result of a moment of anger or sorrow but rather, a prolonged state of despair and unhappiness. A psychiatric state which needs proper attention and observation rather than kind advice.

Second, the reason of suicides are never a single event. Not a breakup, but possibly the lack of any source of love at all through many years. Not a failed exam as much as the thoughts of its repercussions.

Third, who is to decide which reason is ethical enough for giving your life away? Why is a premarital love affair a trivial stigmatised cause to die for, but an abusive marriage a better and easily accepted one? Confucianism endorses that life given away only for others as a sacrifice is justified, but why is an individual often reduced to his relation to others and why does his emotional obligation to a family or immediate company hold a higher pedestal than his own expectations from them or anything else solely personal?

We have turned into chess pieces but never consider the possibility of a checkmate situation in someone’s life. Man has failed to unchain himself from the dungeons of the society, from the stigma that resides inside his own heart. He is an object to himself. Ironically killing his ownself, for freedom from his ownself, and later laughing hysterically at this act.

Manu Joseph once wrote a wonderful article, where he showed how farmer suicides were much less frequent than suicides amongst the middle class of India but when painted with political colours, they became more fathomable and urgent for the newsreaders.

Apparently, every man has to be politicised to be avenged for an “organised suicide’’, but never understood, never empathised with, never sent help for. I wonder if there is a good enough reason to commit suicide, or a reason bad enough. Ditto, for living.

But what is saddening is that, even the question of life and death can easily be reduced to its nearest stereotype. Prejudice is the adhesive which makes societies coherent by inhibiting differences. Till it is propagated, accepted and internalised, the value of human life will remain confined to an identity, a number – and never be more than that.

(Bijaya Biswal is a 22-year-old student of Medicine and Surgery. She takes a keen interest in art movies, theatre and books on history and philosophy.)