Dare to live!

Written on 8/10/2008 11:38:00 pm by Swift!

"Suiciiiiiiiiiiiiiiiide"!
For those of you who have seen the movie Sholay, you can't forget the scene in which a drunken Dharmendra climbs to a height and shouts (I will commit) suicide! It's a very funny scene wherein he threatens the public that he will commit suicide. And it is all fake. He isn't drunk and is trying to act so. So why am I telling all this? My today's story is about my suicide attempt!

Back then I was a small kid. I am not sure whether I was in LKG or UKG. Those school days were a torture for me. I hated going to school (there is no official records on how many thrashes I have got from my father for refusing to go to school each day. Each day I will say, "I won't". He will say, "You will". After some drama, I will start getting my usual quota. I will refuse to walk. I will be dragged. And I will continue taking the beatings even on the way, due to my "undying spirit" for "that what I believe in". Eventually I reach school. The next day: the same events take place in the same order).

Yes, those days were actually hateable. I was in a foreign land, my class was an unknown world, all I knew was that there were countless benches behind me, all occupying hostile children. I didnot know the language (Hindi) and the classes were scaring. I was afraid of all the teachers and their classes. I still remember my first caning in my school life, for having scored 2.5 in Hindi. Those red digits are still vivid to me. She didnot know that I didnot know anything in Hindi and that I didnot belong to their place. I wanted to say, എന്‍റെ ടീച്ചറെ എനിക്ക് ഈ ഭാഷ അറിഞ്ഞുകൂടാ...കിലുക്കത്തില്‍ ഹിന്ദിക്കാരന്‍റെ കൈയില്‍നിന്നു ഇടി കിട്ടുമ്പോള്‍ ജഗതി പറയില്ലേ..ഏതാണ്ടു ആ അവസ്ഥയായിരുന്നു എനിക്ക്. My academic life was full of such terrifying events. And all these were despite my being the second rank holder in the class. School!! was hell for me.

So, it was some vacation. A long one, but not the annual vacation. In their system, the summer vacation comes in between an academic year, so that you have homeworks to be completed when you return. I don't remember the exact events, there was some "Herculean task" to be completed, which was left uncompleted due to my "hardworking nature". I knew that the holidays were coming to an end. I shuddered when I thought of returning to school. I asked my mother when the school will reopen. She said "Thursday". Slowly the week went by. When it was finally Wednesday, the homework was still incomplete. And you know, those homeworks were dozens of pages and in many subjects. There was no way that you can complete it in one day. As the hours passed, I became more and more worried. Finally it was evening. I felt that it was the "End of World" for me the next day. There was no point in going to School the next day, since I had no hope of returning alive. I decided to act. Like all those great Dictators who considered it a shame to die at the hands of their enemies, I too felt that it was a disgrace. Moreover I didnot have the strength to undergo the torture. So I decided to end my life. Rather than wait until the next day for someone else to take my life. So death was imminent. Yes, my hour had come. So, I decided that no hope was left and death was the only way to evade the danger.

So I found out a method to die. I took a pen and "inked" my tongue. As soon as this ink reaches my stomach I will die, thought I. After having taken my doze of "poison", I went to bed and lied there, anticipating death. I was very sad, though, because I was going to die.

Some time later I found out that I did not die. I was shocked and troubled. Not dying now means that an even painful life awaits me the next day. I was not the one to withdraw due to a failed suicide attempt. This time, there will be no errors! With such a resolve, I now took a really fatal poison; you know what? I ate a full page of paper and to make sure that I surely died, I also "inked" my tongue, this time with double the quantity of ink!

Not to mention that I am still alive to narrate this story. It was a historic suicide attempt. I was a little kid but somehow after this event I decided that I will never try anything of this sort in my life, no matter what happens. I still don't know how the idea of suicide was so strong in the mind of a small child. Maybe that is something that the media and society injects into children. In those days there were no Cable TVs, there was only one channel-DD. If my case was so, what will be that of today's children, who are exposed to unimaginably inappropriate contents. Wonder how their personality gets distorted, and how strongly their immature minds absorb the contents meant to satisfy the adults who sit with mouths wide open before unrealistic stories.

Don't you know want to know the climax? A depressed Roshan, a complete failure, who failed not only in his homework, but also in his suicide attempt, went to his mother (after the failed suicide attempts). On seeing him his mother asked why he was so sad. He replied that he hadn't completed his homework. "So complete it, why are you sad? Don't you have one week?", asked his mother. "One week? how? my school reopens tomorrow, right?", he asked confused. "No, it is next Thursday", replied his mother.

Do you know how happy I felt then?

Now it all seems stupid, thinking on how easily I had decided to die, the reason I had for it, and still, the strategy I adopted for it! But what I feel now is that everyone who attempts suicide is as foolish as I was, no matter how grown-up he is. Anyone attempting a suicide has a valid reason to do it, but it is only years later, when he has lived much more and gone through a lot of experiences, that he realises that his cause was so childish(yes, as childish as mine, no matter what the cause is). No problem in this world is a sufficient reason for us to end our lives, because our lives are greater than the problems themselves. It might be only later that we understand that our perspective was narrow and that what we saw was only one bit of the whole picture. And that there was a way out of the problem that was troubling us, it is only that we couldn't see it then.

That little beacon of hope, which we were looking for, may be just across the river; if only we swim to the other shore! But most often, we give up, thinking that it is all over, and let us sink in the river.

Only few are fortunate to realise this truth, those foolish ones like me who didn't know the right way to die. For the intelligent ones, they either die without realising it, or escape but with irreparable damages to their bodies, and live a horrible life, now without even the strength to commit suicide, but realising that the earlier life was much better, if only they hadn't tried to end it.

That funny event of my childhood days taught me a great lesson. When you think that everything is over, just wait for some more time; an entirely different life may be awaiting you.

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