“There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy. All the rest ~ whether or not the world has three dimensions, whether the mind has nine or twelve categories ~ comes afterwards.”

So begins Albert Camus’ The Myth of Sisyphus, where he deliberates on the questions of life and suicide. The last chapter, and the namesake of the title, begins, “The Gods had condemned Sisyphus to ceaselessly rolling a rock to the top of a mountain, whence the stone would fall back of its own weight. They had thought with some reason that there is no more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labour.” Is life a futile hopeless labour? Are we all Sisyphuses trudging along the path of life, reluctantly, and unsure of whether we should at all make the effort?

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Recently there has been some remarkably ghastly news that sent shudders across society. A car accident in the early morning, involving two brothers and a young boy (son of one of them) led the police to a mansion that housed three murdered persons (the wives of the two brothers and the daughter of one of them). Preliminary investigations revealed that they were a business family who lived lavishly, but at some point, returns must have dwindled, because in the recent past, they had accumulated debts of crores of rupees.

So the brothers decided to take the lives of their wives and kids and then end their own. In another shocker, a father killed his own daughter (who was ill) before ending his own life. Even if situations are not that dramatic, we often hear of such incidents. A couple of months back there was the following news: there was a woman who was working in a bank, her husband was working in an IT firm, they had an ele – ven year old daughter, and the wo man had both her parents alive. She went to the office but did not come back home.

So the family reported to the police and next day the police found that she had gone alone to a guest house/ hotel and checked in. When she did not order dinner or breakfast, the hotel staff contacted the police. She was found dead in the room, having consumed two bottles of insecticide. Why do people, apparently having everything that a person could ask for, decide to end their lives?

Jibanananda Das, one of the greatest Bengali poets, describes a suicide in his famous poem “Aat bochhor aager ek din” (one day, eight years ago). He describes the circumstances under which a man com mits suicide, though, apparently, he had no obvious reason to do so. He was married and had a family, his wife and child were beside him (bodhu shuyechhilo paashe, shishutio chhilo; prem chhilo, aasha chhilo), there was love, there was hope, and yet he just felt like dying.

In fact, had the earnest desire to die (moribaar holo taar shaadh). So apparently a man with a fulfilled life by all standards, decides to die, wants to die. The poet talks of tiredness ~ that’s not related to any of the tangible measures of well-being ~ not love or family or children, not financial wellbeing, not fame, but rather a “jeopardised surprise” (biponno bismoy) that plays along in our blood and tires us, a feeling of exhaustion that overpowers our senses jeopardising our very urge to live.

Death frees us of that tiredness. The poet then describes how that man, who is eager to kill himself, is so very different from every other living creature that tries, till the very last moment, to survive. A toad living in abysmal conditions still begs for another dawn that comes with warm love, even a mosquito within the confines of the mosquito net loves the force of life. Every living being’s natural instinct is to try to live.

Life is what defines it ~ and it clings on to it with everything it has. Yet man, willingly goes to embrace the end. But why are human lives so different? We don’t want to live like every other living creature? There are spaces in us that can’t get filled? There’s another poem titled “Bodh” (Sense/feeling) by Jibanananda that echoes similar feelings. ‘That there’s this sense working in us, an emptiness, a void, a blankness, a vacuum during prayers, nothing to seek, everything seems so futile, purposeless.

This is not a want of love or peace, a sense that gets born, that doesn’t let me be, that grows and makes everything else seem irrelevant.’ The poem then says how we become lonely, ever so lonely, even being amongst everyone. And the person feeling left out and isolated starts contemplating on questions such as ‘Am I not like them who’ve come to propagate the human race? My heart? My mind?’ Jibanananda was unquestionably a astute and perceptive poet who was unerringly able to think through the thoughts of a person before he commits suicide. This seems to be exactly what drew the banker woman to her irreversible decision.

Apparently she had a fulfilling domestic life ~ something that people spend their entire lives trying to ensure. She even had her parents. Yet all of it meant nothing. She just did not want to live ~ not for husband and daughter and parents – not even for herself. She had a job, so it wasn’t a financial hardship. What else could she have wanted? What else can any woman possibly want? What did she want to escape from that im – pelled her to escape from life?

(The writer is Associate Professor, Economic Research Unit, Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata )