Death has hovered around us in recent months. Corona Virus pandemic allows us only incremental life; not a free-flowing one. We are not allowed to forget we are mere mortals. Everyone is a little less confident these days.
We are now grimmer after Sushant Singh Rajput has taken his life. Apparently, he closed his room and hung himself. He talked to few in his last 2-3 days. Nobody knows what took him beyond the brink. He didn’t suffer from finances, fame, glamour or an affair gone rancid. He also wasn’t born in riches and had come up the hard way. He worked very hard on his fitness. He could talk on Jean-Paul Sartre and Stephen Hawking. He was an accomplished student. He also wanted so much more from his life. Possibly the next superstar. There was every reason for him to be proud about his growth in a little life of 34 years. Yet he threw it all away. His suicide is now the stuff of gossip. We all can speculate and a few could introspect but the tragedy has already overtaken us.
There is this unrelated case of Gaurav Bansal (see image) who was everything Sushant Singh Rajput wasn’t. Bansal didn’t have money, fame, glamour nothing. He was one faceless amongst us in a lower middle-class Delhi locality. He too took his life. But with a difference. He goaded others to hang him and didn’t do it himself. Rajput was overtaken by his own stress. Gaurav’s was a cool, calm move as he worked out his plan to perfection. He sought out men to murder him, weighed pros and cons on methods, the venue of crime, before having himself killed. At least in his case we know the motive of his suicide-by-other name: He wanted his impoverished family of a wife and two young sons to have the Rs 1 crore they could get on his term insurance policy.
Why did Gaurav have himself killed rather than commit suicide? Apparently, most term insurances on suicide commence after the policy has been in existence for 12 months. We could thus deduce that his policy was still in hibernation on the matter of suicide. We could also reasonably conclude that he took this policy with a view to snuff out his life down a few months.
So now that his appointed killers have been held, and the nuances of the manufactured crime are in public domain, would his family get the money for which a concerned husband and a loving father laid down his life? Would insurance companies, who are out there to make profit, suddenly acquire that human eye and won’t let his death go to waste? And if they don’t, won’t it be a tragedy we won’t know that the life Gaurav lost amounted to nothing.
Then there is this case in the Capital where a father threw down his months-old baby from the second floor because the daughter was bawling. She was brought into this world by her parents but had no say on her life. She wasn’t intelligent enough to fathom that her father was heavily drunk. Her mother possibly couldn’t imagine that the husband has gone to balcony not to calm down the baby but to splatter the road below with the entrails and blood of the innocent.
All these incidents have happened in quick succession in last 72 hours. They all defy the societal norms with which we all grow up in our lives. Yet it isn’t the first time. There would be a repeat in future. Yes, we are not responsible. We can’t be held by police or deemed guilty by the courts. But, is there something we all could do?
For instance, we should keep track on Gaurav Bansal’s family and the insurance company to see it’s not deprived of its bread-earner’s sacrifice. We should ensure that the insurance company has been human and not helpless in its technical shield. Our newspapers and swaggering journalists, who criticize all but themselves, for once could appear grown up.
At a local level, we could ask a few of our elders to offer themselves for counselling to distressed residents in neighbourhood. We should also be more observant to people we meet in our days. Those peons, maids, gardeners, car-cleaners, the vendor outside our colonies, who largely exist and not live if viewed from the window of our charmed existence.
Suicides, worldwide, average 80 lakhs annually. India shares 17 per cent of lives such lost. A lot of these dark moments are avoidable. If “will” fails, loving family and caring friends come handy. At an impersonal level, you and I could be the life-savers in our own little way. All our riches against such acts would weigh lighter on the scale of humanity.
In passing, there is a need to inform that an insurance company could refuse to honour a term-insurance policy if one has a criminal record, death is due to influence of alcohol, addiction to smoking, hazardous activities or during childbirth. Value your life, and that of others, and then rightfully claim you qualify to be a part of the society.
