Death Does Part:

August 09/2011: A vow taken during marriages says that the couple shall stick together till death does them apart. This thought does not apply to many in India. Nothing about marriages, it is simply a matter of death. In the mid 1980s, the then Chief Minister of Tamilnadu and popular cine star, MG Ramachandran (MGR) fell terribly ill. He was rushed to the US of A for treatment and since that took a long time, he and his party the AIADMK fought an election and won a consecutive term of office. All this was achieved in absentia of the ailing leader. No small feat, this. However, the interesting part is that while undergoing treatment, rumor mongers killed MGR a couple of times. These falsified words-of-mouth prompted many an enthusiastic MGR admirer to commit suicide. Similarly, when another iconic cine star turned politician and the then Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh N T Rama Rao (NTR) died, many of his fans thought it fit to end their puny little lives in distress at the loss. When VP Singh adorned the mantle of Prime Minister of this country, he announced a new reservation policy for government jobs only for the Other Backward Classes (OBCs) under the banner of the Mandal Commission Report. This again infuriated some students who not only burnt cars and buses and pelted stones aimlessly on the streets but also reportedly doused themselves with kerosene and lit up the national scenario with their blazing torch like bodies. In more recent times, again, when the then Congress Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh YS Rajasekhar Reddy (YSR) became a victim of a helicopter crash, some of his ardent supporters committed suicide. In reality, those lunatics actually killed themselves. Unbelievable but true!

Coming to think of it, most of these self immolation heroes seem to hail from the southern part of this country. Assume this had not been so, except the Mandal protesters who were from the north, the scene would have been pretty gory by now. What with Ms Sonia Gandhi undergoing surgery for some unknown disease, many Congressmen (and women too, probably) would have been queuing up to hang themselves in front of 10 Janpath, New Delhi. Alas! The northerners are not that gutsy. Remember the time when Jaya Bachchan forced this same Ms Gandhi to resign from Lok Sabha for holding on to two different government posts, both salaried. By the time Sonia returned home after quitting her membership of Parliament, a huge crowd had gathered in front of her home. Those wailing and flailing had amongst them a buffoon who whipped out a pistol and loudly said he will shoot himself. He did not pull the trigger and do what he threatened he would. That upset the media people (especially the tv crews) present at the spot to no end. That Congressman, most likely, had a water pistol that shot real water. No one bothered to check. Had it been that Sonia, instead of being an Italian was a Tamilian, that trigger would have been pulled and it would have been genuinely lead, not water, that would have come out of the barrel.

This must be reminding many readers about an old Hindi movie titled “Sholay’. A jilted lover, one of the leading men (Dharmendra), climbs a water tank and in an inebriated state yells out at the increasing crowd down below that he was about to jump from the height and commit suicide because his woman was not acknowledging his existence. A gaping bystander turns to the man standing next to him, the other leading actor (Amitabh), and asks what this ‘suicide’ is. In reply he hears that when white people die, they term it suicide. Seen in this lighter vein, it could easily be said that in a horribly populated country as India, many suicides would help the population come down. On the other hand, it is no small thing when a farmer commits suicide. So also, when a couple of students commit a similar crime claiming it is because of their frustration since Telangana was not being formed, all must sit up and wonder at their stupidity. Their lives must be so very meaningless that it is no more a joke. A new state implies a few more politicians create a parallel cabinet with a new Assembly; some more inept bureaucrats manage to become Chief Secretary and departmental secretaries with a new Director General of Police. Then add to this a new High Court and a few more judges dying to strike murky deals and delaying the process of law. Yet, at the bottom of the ladder, the educated unemployed youth remain where they were—UNEMPLOYED. The toilers and farmers continue in their state of deprivation and injustice. The common man gets no better opportunities. Life remains as it always was…