Suicide - An end to everything

25th June, 2016. It was a Saturday morning. I was at home and was planning weekend with my friends of whatsapp. While typing the message in F.R.I.E.N.D.S group, I got a call from one of the fellow commuters. My workplace is 80 kms away from my native city. So I commute to that place via train. As I commute daily via train, a group is formed of eight people who commute via same train. We share seats, eat snacks together & share our experiences to pass the time. "Hello Paresh, Vermaji ne suicide kar diya."  I heard those words when I picked up that call. My mind was in the plan of movie so it took some time to take in those words. "Kya?" I was shaken a bit and was not able to believe what Darshan bhai said. "Vermaji ne suicide kiya hai." He repeated that again. I was still not ready to believe it. "Kaun? Ishwar Verma?" I asked him again with Vermaji's first name to confirm that Darshan bhai is talking about the person who commute with us.

"Haan. Kal raat woh walk karne riverfront gaye and there he jumped in the river." Darshan bhai told me the whole story. I asked time and place of cremation and hung up the call. After the call, Vermaji's pictures were flashing in front of my eyes as my mind had become a dvd player and it was playing a movie of his memories, his talks, his walking style, his sitting style etc. Vermaji was a distrcit registrar in state government and I have had met him a day before only in the train. He was commuting with us since last couple of years. He didn't allow anyone to get the feeling of what he was going through. He was normal. There wasn't even a single sign on his face of worry, frustration, disappointment, suffering or guilt. Thus I was thinking what led him to take that step? Why he decided to quit and gave away his life?

Next morning, I read the news in the newspaper after coming back home from Vermaji's cremation. In that article there was a picture of his suicide note.

Politicians has put me in trouble.

They have forcefully taken my signatures in one of the corruption cases.

They want to put all the blame on me.

A police officer is torturing me mentally since last one and a half month.

They have taken away a father from my children and a husband from my innocent wife.

I was shocked to read that note because in train while commuting, he used to talk about his retirement in January, 2017 and promotion he is going to get. Vermaji was pretty satisfied and happy with his job that's why that note shocked me. He seemed to be a non corrupted officer and tag of corruption was not acceptable to him. So the tag of corruption and mental torture forced him to take that step.

I am sharing this story because I just finished reading a book called The Story of A Suicide. Vermaji's story established a connection between me and that novel. The Story of A Suicide is a novel written by Sriram Ayer keeping today's youngsters or youth in mind. It revolves around four characters Hari, Charu, Sam and Mani. Sam is a rich tech geek who had just completed his pursuing his studies, Charu is beautiful, charming and blunt girl with very strong views, Hari is very conservative and introvert type of a guy who has just completed his graduation and Mani is a scholar who is trying to get used to english language. All these characters get together in one of the reputed colleges of Chennai for further studies. They get into a web of love, passion, revenge and deceit and it ends with a suicide. It is a very gripping story. I am not an avid reader. I hardly complete any novel. I leave them in between and forget about it but this story was really interesting. It had the capacity to hold me till the end. If the novel is interesting and has the capacity to hold me till the end then I complete it in one day. And I completed The Story of A Suicide in just one day.

I hear or read about suicides almost every day. Suicides specially of the people who are in their twenties or thirties and I can relate to them as I am in the same age group. We are expressive, passionate, independent, fearless and fame hungry. And to achieve that fame, we part our ways from our family and the people who love us. We are living in the world which is not easy. It makes unreasonable demands. Therefore, we all are struggling in the fields like education, relationships, jobs etc. We all are fighting our fights in this big bad world. So rather than fighting with each other, we should be a support to each other. Everyone feels lonely at some stage of life. So rather than making life more difficult, we should stand by each other. We might not share our struggles with everyone but we should surely share a joke and make people laugh. According to me, we can deal with this kind of life only by spreading happiness in each other's lives. So be a reason for someone's smile and make this life bearable and liveable.

Image source: http://www.storyofasuicide.com/index.html

Being In Nature

Nature is getting vanished slowly and naturally. Green cover on earth is getting destroyed every single day. Thus we are seeing drastic changes in climate. We are facing global warming. Nature is being destroyed naturally these days. Today people have become so mean because of materialism that they don't care about anything but their needs. And needs are endless in this world. We have destroyed forests to create a jungle of concrete. Every other day in my area I see a board of new builder starting a new project by cutting the trees. Due to that ozone layer is getting thinner and thinner and proportion of carbon di oxide is increasing.

We are killing the animals for their skins, meat etc. We are injecting them to grow faster. It is affecting the life cycle of lot of other animals. For example, we don't hear the chirps of sparrows anymore. We don't find them anymore. I remember, I used to get up hearing chirps of sparrows during my school days. Factories are polluting air, contributing to the maximum level in increasing carbon di oxide. Today people dance madly on roads in loud music. They think they are enjoying but they are only contributing to noise pollution. We have stopped getting proper rain of water since last couple of years because whole year we produce the rain of sand and concrete.

I love being in nature. It sounds like being in love and according to me it is the same thing only. Being in love is your world is surrounded by the person or people who love you the most. In that world, there is nothing but the happiness. Similarly being in nature is like your world is surrounded by the greenery and fresh air. In that world too, there is nothing but the happiness. We appreciate man made marvels but we have stopped appreciating nature's marvels. Actually we are destroying nature's marvels. In monsoon, I often witness peacock calling for rain and in few minutes of that, rain starts. How incredible and amazing this connection is between nature and peacocks.

There would be more such connections between the living creatures and mother nature. I want to discover those connections. I always dream of spending my life in nature. I want to be in God's own country (Kerala). I want to go to the heaven on the earth (Kashmir). I want to drive on the roads of Ladakh. I want to see dancing clouds in Leh but I crave for these things in metro cities. As nature is being destroyed in metro cities, I am afraid that soon it will be destroyed from all over the world. People are not realising that by destroying nature, they are destroying their own existence slowly. And without nature, materialism will have no value. I hope people start realising that and start preserving the nature. So that we can start living in nature again.

I am blogging about my dreams and passions for the Club Mahindra #DreamTrails activity at BlogAdda. You can get a Club Mahindra Membership to own your holidays!