Suicide is a paradox. An act where the victim and perpetrator are one and the same, where an organism hardwired for self-preservation chooses to self-destruct. An act which evokes paradoxical feelings of empathy and alienation. Empathy, because deep down we are all capable of self-harm, and alienation, because it defies our most fundamental evolutionary instinct, to survive.
The solitary nature of the act, in a species designed for social behaviour, makes it still more disturbing. We search obsessively for rationalisation. In the absence of closure in the form of an explanatory suicide note, we look for triggers: a former lover, a sadistic employer, a band of cyber-bullies, or a demanding family; financial ruin, public humiliation, ill-health or an altruistic motive. Sometimes, our survivor's guilt and anger at the pointless waste of a life is misdirected and we lapse into scapegoating.
The tragic death of actor Sushant Singh Rajput has opened the floodgates to recriminations. Bollywood's power elite has been castigated on social media for allegedly ill-treating the young actor and sabotaging his career. The outsider versus the establishment narrative has caught the imagination of the Twitterati, prompting certain members of the Bollywood aristocracy to hit back.
Assigning blame is a desperate effort to make sense of a senseless act, but is itself illogical. Every profession has its bullies and exclusive clubs that make outsiders feel unwelcome. Why should the entertainment industry be any different?
Many young outsiders like Rajkumar Rao, Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Ayushmann Khurrana and so on, have made their mark in Bollywood in recent years. Granted, they may not command the big budgets and massive fees that the more well-entrenched stars enjoy, but have achieved tremendous success nonetheless. Perhaps they were fortunate and did not provoke the ire of the brat-pack, or perhaps they didn't care two hoots if they did.
Which brings us to the question of being “strong enough” to withstand the slings and arrows of an unkind world. The suicide victim is characterised as “weak”. The premium on strength is ritualised in various ways. In certain communities, running the gauntlet of physical or verbal abuse is a rite of passage. Witness the hazing that newcomers in college go through, before they are accepted as members of the student body. Sadistic ragging has claimed more lives than we care to acknowledge and to describe the victims as weak is to add insult to injury.
Depression does not discriminate between the so-called weak and strong. It knows no boundaries of age, class, gender or education. It could be induced by psychological or physiological (as appears to have been the case with Sushant Singh) factors and aggravated by stress, which in turn may be caused by any number of things: professional setbacks, social isolation, etc. It is hard to determine how a melancholic train of thought is set in motion and where it leads.
Few of us can claim never to have experienced depression, however fleetingly. Who can forget the violent emotional storms of adolescence? Many of us, in the throes of a broken relationship, will have had dark thoughts and vague ideas of ending it all. A minority may have escaped the plunge into despair altogether, but most others will have confronted the dark side and survived, congratulating themselves on their strength of mind. The truth is that they are more lucky than strong.
Depression is a condition with potentially serious outcomes, like diabetes or heart disease. Precautionary measures and/or medication are just as necessary. To treat it as a form of self-indulgence or weakness is like a heart patient shutting out the necessity of exercise and a controlled diet. Sadly, the cultural emphasis on mental strength may prevent the victim from reaching out for help when they needs it most.
Family, friends, spiritual advisors and mental wellness professionals can play a critical role in keeping depressed individuals from falling off the precipice. Everybody needs someone to reach out to at any time, for any reason. The “3 am friend” is a necessary feature of the modern urban family, a tribal unit not necessarily related by blood. But no matter how strong the support structures are, they may not always succeed. It is all too easy to confuse self-pity with depression and tell our friends to “get a grip” or “snap out of it”, thereby aggravating the problem.
Every 40 seconds, someone, somewhere in the world, commits suicide. More lives are lost to suicide every year than a whole decade of war and terrorism. Our response to news of suicide is visceral, particularly when the victim is an apparently healthy and successful youngster. It seems irrational, inexplicable, illogical. We are wired to look for meaning, because without it, there is only chaos. So we try to solve the unsolvable. But some questions don't have answers and all we can do is to try and ensure it doesn't happen to someone we know.
The writer is a senior journalist with 35 years of experience in working with major newspapers and magazines. She is now an independent writer and author.
