One glance at Monday’s newspapers and I knew I was not going to read it. The reason? the front page itself had big stories on Sushant Singh Rajput’s suicide. And it was something that was still gnawing at my heart every time I thought of it or someone mentioned it. After three days it still is.

Death is the ultimate truth of life

While the news of his suicide was breaking on television, we were watching the movie We are Family. A movie about love and hope in the face of death. In the first few minutes of watching the movie I had debated whether the kids should watch it or not but then I felt that death is something that they must face. Shoving discussions around death under the carpet does not make any sense. And kids should be sensitised about it. Because as they grow up they will have to face death of near and dear ones; there is no shying away from that. Also, they must know how to empathize with a friend or classmate who is undergoing the trauma.

Suicide is unnatural

But yes, I never knew that within a couple of hours I will have to think whether I must expose my kids to the news of Sushant Singh Rajput suicide. Suicide is after all unnatural death and something that is difficult to come to terms with even for adults.

If I talk about myself, I cannot fathom why someone who read so much, exhibited such deep emotions and came across as a calm and quiet person had to take this drastic step. But I guess the keywords here are “exhibited” and “came across as”. We can only know the external facade of a person, the facade that they want to show us. What goes on inside the heart and mind is something completely private. And unless they themselves choose to bare their innermost feelings and thoughts, we cannot know.
But suicide is a painful and unnatural thing; it is a given that the person who commits suicide is having anguishing and unnatural feelings. Feelings that they cannot cope with or feel that they will not be able to cope with.

Each act of suicide points the finger at us, the society

As a society we are completely responsible if someone feels scared to share their innermost feelings even with their friends and family. Without sounding insensitive, it is more a failure of those surrounding them rather than the persons who commit this drastic act themselves.

Someone said to me, ” it all depends upon the culture and society where that person is brought up. You would hardly find people from […..] (I don’t want to name that region) committing suicide because they are so money minded. They don’t care about anything else.” Well, hearing this the first thing I did was Google up the state wise suicide rate in India. The last data that is available is from 2015 and it showed that Bihar was at the bottom with 0.5% suicides per lakh of population. The place Sushant Singh belonged to.

So yes, a person’s thought process is undoubtedly defined by the atmosphere they have been brought up in. But the atmosphere they live in, after moving away of their homes, is crucial in how that thought process plays out.

Every person is unique. Be sensitive.

Once a psychiatrist told me that two different people would react to the same situation differently. Because their thought processes and way of looking at things are different. Since I learnt this, I try not to impose my own thinking on others. Rather, I try to understand how they are thinking.

Besides making me empathetic it also helps me remain calm myself. If you pause a moment to reflect, you will realize that most of your own stress is caused when you think the other person or persons are not validating your thought or approach.

And finally, be kind to yourself.

The desire to be hailed correct is so strong in us that we get flustered the moment we get a contra-indication. It happens with me all the time and I know that I am not alone. Whenever anything I say or do or speak is contradicted by anyone I have the strongest emotion rise within me. A feeling of anger, a feeling of inadequacy and eventually a feeling of helplessness.

And then I tell myself I am not supposed to react like that. I must hear the other person out before performing an opinion about them or about myself. I need to be kind to myself. If am not kind to myself how can I expect others to be so?

We are not just us. We are a sum total of the situation that we are in, the people we are surrounded by, and finally what we are as a person. Since I can never exist in isolation, I must be kind with myself and not berate myself for being wrong.