He committed suicide today

at 7 am

A colleague committed suicide today. 7 am. He woke up early, took a bath, did his pujo, and then hung himself from a fan. His wife discovered him when she didn't see him in the pujo ghar.

I'd met him the day before, getting into office, and asked him how he was doing. He was cheerful. I asked him to drop by for a cup of coffee. Another colleague did two meetings with him. Another one said good bye to him at 7 in the evening. Just another ordinary day.

Last year his wife had come to me with their son and talked of how there was something which had snapped inside him. He wanted to resign. There was immense pressure, and he had an unsympathetic and cruel boss, who went unrelentingly after him. It was often ugly. And the pressure was getting to him. And he was doing frightened office-talk even in his sleep.

I and my HR colleague got him aligned with a good psychiatrist. And in a few months, he was as near normal as possible.

Till today.

Do we all have breaking points? However strong we might think we are. That point where our heart breaks and our mind splits. And a strange duality emerges, of moving ordinarily in an ordinary life, but carrying a soul in turmoil.

Didn't he have anybody he could talk to - with full vulnerability, unfettered by judgement? What was that last thought, before he took that decisive step? Didn't he think of the wreckage he would leave behind?

Is suicide then, intrinsically, a sad amalgam of despair and selfishness?

But more than anything, I'm angry at bosses who let go without constraint on hapless subordinates, without the sensitivity of the overwhelming effect their position has on those whose livelihoods depends on them.

I only wish I had stopped for that coffee when I'd met him. Maybe he would have opened up. Maybe things would have been different.

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Let me sit beside you, quietly.

I will not ask you to explain.

I can see you coiled inside,

and I will untangle you softly.

.

I will draw the curtains in myself,

so no light disturbs your grief

and I will sit beside you,

in the hush of your sorrow.

.

No answers. No haste.

Only stillness.

And breath, shared.

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