In the past ten days I have heard of two suicides and both completely avoidable as many suicides are. I understand completely why someone would want to take their own lives and according to Newton Kondaveti most of us have committed suicide in one lifetime or the other. I don’t attach any stigma or pass any judgement because to live or not to live is an individual’s decision and no one can really decide it for them. I understand why we might need the law against suicide but at some point in time when the human society evolves, this law will either be scrapped or definitely modified.
One of the suicides that I heard of is a little girl just about to give her board exams and something happened at school and some disagreements happened elsewhere and she decided to end her young life. It just hurts so much more when a young child decides he or she doesn’t want to live :(. We as adults have made this world so terrible that this young girl didn’t want to live and in her death we lost a million opportunities. She might have brought new thought, new innovations in her chosen field and maybe changed the course of the world, if only we, the ones who came before her had created a better world for her.
I had written a blog a few weeks back called “http://90rollsroyces.com/2015/02/19/the-battle-inside/“. There is so much pressure to be a certain way that we forget to be “our” way and each of “our” unique way of living has a place in this world. Parents, adults, grandparents and those of us that try and create the world for the next generation just have to ensure that each child feels emboldened to live the life they choose and not live the life we choose for them. Our morals and our beliefs and our values are at best suggestions to the next generation, and not mandated as we would like them to be. A Christian can have a Muslim child who can marry a Sikh boy and their child can choose to be Hindu and marry a Jew, divorce and marry an atheist and its nobody’s business to interfere. In the same way, a rich woman’s daughter might want to be a singer on the street and marry an unknown beggar and live the poor life or vice versa. The ultimate freedom is the freedom to choose and live the way one wants to.
If only someone could have told the little girl, in time, that whatever she did was ok or whatever marks she got were fine or the way she wanted to live was ok … maybe she would have chosen to go on rather than end it all.
The second suicide or purported suicide disturbed me even more – IAS officer D. K. Ravi. I wish it isn’t suicide simply because, a role model giving up makes it difficult for the common man to continue… if the smallest circumstance turns contrary to expectation one tends to give up. The stories floating around D. K.Ravi also speak of a honey trap – and the oxymoron seems to hound all purported high profile suicides. A man in public service or a celebrity is lured using a woman (honey) and videotaped which then is used as blackmail. If the man involved is morally upright as many of them are, it bothers them so much that they take the extreme step.. many times without even confirming the veracity of the tape.
I have a different take on this – I call this a oxymoron because “honey” is sweet and someone sweet is not expected to trap :(:(:(. Women who get used for these kind of activities many times are victims themselves and some times are even the “queen pin” of the racket. I don’t know what they call the trap, when men are used to lure celebrity, well known women into giving away secrets or blackmail. Both ways you lose an accomplished, well meaning individual just because “we” consider sex outside of a marriage immoral. If only D. K. Ravi was living in a society that valued the person he was and didn’t care who he slept with, we probably would have had a morally upright, hugely talented officer still alive and contributing. Ofcourse in D.K. Ravi’s case it still has to be established whether it is a suicide at all. Am just commenting on the news as it comes in.
Morality has many hues and we can’t use our broad brush to paint the society’s morals. Morality for me is simply rules that keep me from harming another individual in the society physically, mentally and emotionally. Its not the act, but the intention and the impact that determines morality.
RIP little girl and D. K. Ravi. May the truth prevail and may we all enjoy the “honey” called life and not be “trapped” !!