Suicide - worst crime!

Bill Maher once said: Suicide is a man’s way of telling God, “You can’t fire me - I quit”

Everyone in life, some or the other time think of committing suicide in their life. Blame it on the circumstances, low self-esteem or whatever but committing suicide is the worst spiritual crime that one can do to oneself. One with a body can shout, scream, cry or do whatever to vent out those negative feelings. But, killing oneself won’t be solving any problems if one really thinks so. It will just aggravate these problems because without your body you even lose the opportunity to express yourself and let your emotions out.

Suicide is an extreme form of depression which comes up when we keep on asking “What about me?” That’s why people who work for a social cause never get such kind of tendencies inside them. Feeling suicidal just indicates the low energy level, low self esteem and lack of wisdom.

Restricting it to India, out of every three cases of suicide reported every fifteen minutes, one is committed by youth in the age group 15-29. This is quite baffling, as one when hears about India, the first thing that comes in their mind is that it is a spiritual country. How can spiritual people commit suicide? But the point they are missing out is that India is rapidly developing with which stress level is also increasing proportionately.

It is widely believed that illiteracy is one of the key reasons for the higher suicide cases, but in case of India it is so not true. Talking about the trends, Kerala, the country’s first fully literate state has recorded the highest number of suicide cases. Therefore illiteracy as one of the causes can be ruled out. Lack of job opportunities is the main factor at work there.

The Government has to be more effective in implementing its flagship programmes like the NREGA (national rural employment guarantee act) which will help in creating more of employment opportunities. In the Northern region of the country, students are often found to have committed suicide because their performance in the competitive exams was not upto the mark. Family conflicts and unfulfilled romantic ideals are the other reasons. Here the role of parents and peers becomes very vital, as they are the ones who can either be a support for the child or end up aggravating the child’s situation further. The communication gap between the parents and the children has to be narrowed down in order to tackle this problem. In the Vidharbha region of Maharashtra there was a large number of farmer suicides because of the failure of crops, huge debt burdens, growing cost of cultivation and shrinking yield. So we see that the causes for suicidal tendencies vary from region to region highlighting the need to address the respective concerns.

Talking about Euthanasia, one should remember that the hue and cry about legaliazing it is not the right solution. The terminally ill should be helped to an easeful death, if they ask for it. But there is too great a danger that if those who are not terminally ill are allowed an easy way out, greedy relations will put pressure on the elderly to choose to die. Such people should, be therefore denied the right - however unkind that may seem. The terminally ill however, should be offered the help they seek. To deny it to them is to add cruelty to misfortune.

A scene from Munnabhai M.B.B.S, a Bollywood flick starring Sanjay Dutt seems to be very apt while addressing this issue. Munna shouts at a young guy in the Hospital who attempted suicide 3rd time over failed love, that ” For a girl you met 90 days back, you are going to kill yourself…Can’t you live for your Mother who has loved you for 19 years?” It couldn't have been truer, how can one be so selfish? How can one not think about their loved ones, their parents, and their family before committing such a heinous crime? Khurshed Batliwala rightly said- Death is the ultimate adventure, but like all good things you have to wait for it otherwise it becomes a tragedy and a calamity. Now I leave you to ponder…