Friends, we all keep hearing about people committing suicide for some reason or the other. My friend, Deepti, committed suicide because she could not pass an examination. In the newspaper, very recently, I read about a girl who committed suicide after being raped. A neighbor committed the act because he was deceived in love. Usha Rani, a housewife committed it because she could not bear the social isolation on being widowed. Rohan committed it because he did not get a proper job. Anil committed …..I guess I’ve got to stop there, as my list of people who committed suicide and their reasons for doing so will never end.

How many times don’t we come across such information and discard it as another act of cowardice? True, suicide may be a way of escaping hardships and done by a person who does not have the guts to face the world, survive through all the difficulties and emerge a winner. But I would like to remind you friends, that NOBODY IN THIS WORLD REALLY WANTS TO DIE. Human beings, like all the other living beings of this world, love themselves and their existence more than anything else. When a small injury can hurt a lot, how can someone embrace death without having the courage to suffer the experience? It takes immense courage, to end your own life.

Before calling someone a coward for ending his life, we need to consider all the reasons that might drive a person to be so very cruel to his own self. In India, maybe in some other countries also, many girls who are raped end their lives. Do you know why? -Because they are socially ostracized and insulted to death. A student who fails in an examination is made fun of his friends, teachers and relatives till he hangs himself to death. We, as the society do everything to demean a person and then we expect him/her to have superhuman courage to overcome all the insult and survive in this world. We forget that many of us are just ordinary human beings with all the imperfections that are so very characteristic of a human being and there is nothing wrong with that. We expect a person who is already plagued with problems to exhibit extraordinary courage and survive in this world to take more brickbats.

Why can’t we be kinder to people who do not succeed in life? Why do we make their lives hell-like by insulting them and then expect them to live? If society would not have induced a feeling of shame with failure in life, there would have been far less suicides in this world. How many of us go up to a person who seems to be a looser in life and encourage him to come up instead? Instead we make fun of him and show our superiority. A person, on the verge of committing suicide, needs emotional support from the society. How many of us are ready to give that? Unfortunately, this remains the job of a handful of psychological counselors. And sadly, only a few can get timely psychological help. Others just go out of this world before any help comes their way, thinking that they are worthless.

Without considering all this and many other factors, we call someone a coward. It is easy for us to label someone so-till we suffer the same kind of an ordeal!

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