A young actress, out of work and out of love, hangs herself. She's not the first. Just the most famous.
A young actress, out of work and out of love, hangs herself. She’s not the first. Just the most famous.
So many, unreported. So many, waiting in line.
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Young and just far too restless.
Seems like suicide has become Plan A, for stress, for sorrow, for struggle, for sudden success leading to stuttering careers, for SSC results, for SMSes of unrequited love. For anything that just doesn’t quite go as planned.
Illustration/Amit Bandre
First, high on life, then hanging high from a ceiling fan.
Why suddenly? Why now?
Cruel city? Crazy generation?
Take the first -- Bombay has become barbaric, no question.
She is relentless, she is ruthless, she is a roller coaster with no end. She is unforgiving. She has no time for the weak. No patience with the uncertain.
She is the fifth gear with no slowing down mechanism.
She will not allow telegrams in the age of Twitter.
She is the Joker, with no Dark Knight to lighten the mood.
If you’re wounded, she will not cure, just claw.
No half measures, no second chances, the glass can never be half-empty You don’t just try, you get the trophy.
She is Goliath with no space for David.
To this new manic metropolis, add today’s youth.
If I may go out on a limb -- the combination is lethal.
Sorry, guys and gals, I’m not being superior, I don’t mean to talk down or compare generations.
But today’s Brat Pack are just not prepared for the toil, the tenacity, the sheer 10,000 hours required to hone a skill. They just don’t feel they can afford the time.
It’s overdrive to overnight success, with no rear-view mirror. And then, the overdose.
It’s a relentless adrenaline rush with no preparation for the possibility of failure.
“Dude, I want it now” and “Bro, I wanna retire by 40.”
There was a time when suicide was the exception. The last resort of the very sad. Depression was a deadly virus that gradually caused self-destruction.
But it took many years to get to that stage of complete despair.
No one killed themselves at 25. Except a few burnt-out rock stars.
I have no advice, I have no solution, and the young may just completely disagree and send me hate mail.
But living life in the fast lane is one thing. Ending it there is quite another.
(Okay, before I go here’s my last superhero reference -- If you still want to be Iron man, get some armour to protect your insides.)
Rahul da Cunha is an adman, theatre director/playwright, photographer and traveller. Reach him at rahuldacunha62@gmail.com
The views expressed in this column are the individual’s and don’t represent those of the paper.
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