DEATH BY CHOICE

It was definitely an eerie sensation when I opened the papers a few days back to read about the suicide of a 32yr.old housewife.She had taken her own life because she couldn't face her own conscience after watching an episode of 'Sach Ka Saaamna',the TV reality show I had written about last week in my blog,coincidentally just 2 days before this reported suicide.She had taken the stupid yet drastic step after writing in her suicide note that "she had failed as a mother,as a housewife and as a daughter",pretty much in the same line as I had written myself about being(not failing though,though an episode of the same show had stirred up my own conscience to a significant extent),"a father,a husband and a human being".No doubt this TV show is really making people face themselves.I hope the above-mentioned mishap doesn't stop the TV show from being aired,it already being dubbed Controversial and throwing up a stormy debate.
It is not my intention today to keep on writing about the TV show or the social storm it keeps on throwing up.

It is always good when man,intentionally or unintentionally,faces his conscience from time to time.Simply speaking,it is a healthy way 'rinsing one's soul' of possible guilt feelings and start living life from tomorrow on a healthier note.But this woman had not done so.Without showing any sort of sympathy or trying to empathise with her psychology,I shall bluntly brand her unfortunate death as Stupid,Senseless and Selfish.I write Selfish because the woman was a mother of 2 children.Giving birth to a child and then living it in the lurch in the mercy of the frenzied world is definitely not an act of charity.

I was in 2 minds whether to write publicly about a suicide,as the subject is morbid and apparently a dissection does not seem to serve any purpose other than exposing the eager reader to dark emotions,completely unwanted.But I decided to write finally,as the topic is somewhat related to my own life and I want to draw attention to the mindless fallacy of such an act,whatever the excuse might be.

I strongly believe Nobody has got the moral right to take his/her own life.A premature,selfish death is definitely not the reason man is gifted a life to live by nature(or God).I,personally,do maintain a drastically opposite opinion in the subject of euthanasia - another controversy which man hasn't quite come around,decades after mercy-killing took the fancy of the philosopher,the physician and the common man,and a million sentences having been written about it over the years. It is difficult to come to a moral consensus about euthanastic death 'by choice',and one of the reasons we have not been able to come to a consensus on euthanasia is that we have tended to reflect upon the process of euthanasia as a subject with moral and objective homogeneity which certainly is not the case. The question of mercy-killing arises case-wise and every case is different from the other just as every soul is different from one another.It is not at all fair to relate one case to another on grounds of meaningless suffering where there is no practical possibility of preserving a life the way it is meant to be lived.

 A few days back,an Australian gentleman in his late 40s died months after he won his case challenging the reason behind continuation of total parenteral nutrition where he,in his full senses,was totally quadriplegic,unable to perform a single physiological function apart from staying alive,and conscious enough to observe and feel the frustration of not being able to 'Live' the way he wanted to(or rephrasing it - the way he was supposed to live when he was born a healthy child).He would have gone insane-a point the deciding judiciary took special note of.(An insane quadriplegic is worse off than a conscious,level-minded quadriplegic in any given situation). He was not brain-dead - a situation where the topic of euthanasia arises with well-publicised vigour. Every case deserves to be treated by individual merit and I doubt if we shall ever be able to come to a universally moral consensus as long as we keep on looking at euthanasia with subjective uniformity.Yet we Have to,as once man has become conscious of the concept of mercy-killing,he shall continue to dabble with it at random which underlines a dangerous state of affairs and which must be curbed by Law-the only way at the moment to control proceedings on such a sensitive issue. No doubt,it shall be a near-impossible,harrowing task for lawmakers to come out with a 'Perfect' law.

Death by choice(either one's own or by connected responsible people)does not comprise of euthanasia alone. In India,the concept of Sati has survived for thousands of years,allegedly mentioned in the Holy Scriptures(Ancient spiritual literature in my opinion)though I have not come across any such topic in the Vedas,the Vedantas(or the Upanishads)and the Gita.(I do not know of any other existing literature which can be qualitatively mentioned in the same breath). In medieval Rajasthan,queen Padmini became a 'Sati' with a hundred royal maids when she faced the threat of being captured by Alauddin Khiljee who had defeated her husband in the battles of Chittore.Indians continue to glorify the associated historical narrative for reasons that are beyond rational comprehension,apart from a clear intention to dominate women and keep them socially chained under the guise of 'holy' acts. Though the respected queen took a conscious decision to
take her own life(with a cruel non-sensical decision to force a hundred more women to do the same,taking undue advantage of royal authority),her act cannot be justified in any way,even taking the socio-cultural and religious profiles of medieval India into account.

On the other hand,it left behind a shameful legacy which man would exploit to murder a million freshly-widowed women by forcibly burning them at the funeral pyres of their dead husbands for the next 450 years under the pretext of 'Divine Will and Order' until it was legally stopped in the 19th.century in Bengal by Ram Mohan Roy with the help of the British colonial government which had just taken up the reins of ruling India from the British East India Company.(Shamefully it exists still,not to forget the infamous case of Roop Kanwar of Rajasthan in the mid 1980s.) Sati is not death by choice.It is brutal murder-the same brutal fervour with which Queen Padmini had got a hundred women murdered during her own suicide.

The act of suicide has been 'glorified' all over the world,for thousands of years.This is one of the reasons that the concept of this senseless act continues to romanticise the human mind morbidly to the day,strongly embedded in the subconscious mind and people of all shapes and sizes continue to take their own lives. The people who had romanticised the idea of suicide were clearly not aware of the long-lasting repercussion it would have on the human society and on the human mind. Even William Shakespeare cannot be absolved of this 'artistic sin'. Nor can be Don Maclean who composed the immensely popular song 'Vincent'(on Vincent Van Gogh) where he romanticises(and glorifies) Van Gogh's suicide through the lines – "And when no hope was left inside on that starry,starry night,You took your life as lovers often do;But I could have told you Vincent-This world was never meant for one as beautiful as you." - a seemingly
'beautiful' justification all right! While the song excels artistically and continues to be one of my favourites,I cannot but rue the irresponsible absence of vision of Don Maclean.Everytime one will listen to the song,man shall continue to romanticise the idea of suicide in the darkest depths of his mind until one day someone shall take his/her own life.The idea is quite unacceptable.

Sensitive beyond measure to any sort of suffering,I know first-hand the numbing effect of tragedy by choice on a family,a family which just broke to pieces once.And as long as people like this 32year old woman will continue to take their own lives,I shall continue to unemotionally antipathise with them.Most importantly,I do not think that the 2 children will ever forgive their mother for the senseless,selfish act of pseudo-lunacy.The woman doesn't deserve any respect. Neither does my own mother. At least I won't be able to forgive her lifelong,for reasons best known to me,since she took her own life.