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Life my way, or else…..

By: Santosh :+: Under: Culture, Entertainment, Opinion
On: ⋅ April 20, 2007 ⋅  Email this post ⋅  Print this post ⋅ Post a comment
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The trend of committing suicides by individuals in Indian society is deeply disturbing. What got my attention was the reports of a Bollywood wannabe actress/dancer attempting suicide outside the venue of Aishwarya Rai and Abhishek Bachchan’s wedding. In case you haven’t heard they tied the knot just a couple of hours ago at the time of writing this.

In a bizarre incident, a struggling actress of Bollywood, attempted suicide outside Bachchans’ residence Prateeksha last night alleging that Abhishek Bachchan had ditched her in love. She blamed Aishwarya Rai for snatching “her man” away.

Judging from further information in the same link, it appears she was married and divorced and has a 10 year old kid. Whether her claims of she had an affair and a secret wedding with Abhishek are true is unimportant, compared to the mind boggling fact as a parent if she had succeeded in her attempt, her child would be without a mother. She was arrested for attempting suicide but to me it seems like she needs professional mental care.

Committing/attempting/talking of committing suicide seems to be so well ingrained in Indian society, it is almost a way of life.
-Starting from early in life, we hear reports of a student committing/attempting suicide because of academic reasons, most likely failing in an exam.
-Later in life in college, when two lovers come across opposition from their parents/family members, suicide rares its ugly head again.
-A jilted lover considers the suicide route, as evident from the above article.
-Parents consider/commit suicide when their children rebel against them in terms of matrimony or other major life decisions.

These are just some general situations. There are more serious situations, like the Vidarbha farmer suicides, but the reasons and issues for these run deeper than my simple mind can analyze and probably deserve a separate dedicated forum.

I’m by no way judging any of these folks in the above general situations, but to me it seems like more and more people are choosing the easy way out of life instead of facing it. Some of this is peer pressure (students), some of it is parental pressure (lovers), some is societal pressure (parents) and a mixture of two or more(jilted lover).

Suicide has always been glorified by our movies and television shows. When you are constantly bombarded by images of popular stars, young and old, doing the “honorable” thing and taking the easy way out, at some stage the lines between right and wrong are blurred. As a culture, it is more acceptable for us to be seen leaving life as a corpse than be seen leaving a shrink’s office. Maybe the answer is more public education on mental health issues instead of treating it as taboo. Whatever, the answers, life is too precious to be thrown away over an exam or failed relationships.

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