The trademark ‘eye rolls’ were absent, as Nats paced up and down my flat, stream of consciousness half-sentences flowed.
Illustration/Uday Mohite
Suicide is painless
It brings on many changes
And I can take or leave it
If I please
Theme song from M*A*SH
Nats, my Gen Z neighbour was not her natural self—her demeanour was different, beneath the usual bubbling Mt Vesuvius, was a visible layer of grief.
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The trademark ‘eye rolls’ were absent, as Nats paced up and down my flat, stream of consciousness half-sentences flowed.
“Why did you do it? Godu why? Selfish ya,” she fumed “You were 19… you didn’t talk to me… not to anyone.,. WTF dude.”
“Slow down Nats kiddo, what’s happened?” I asked Natasha, concerned.
“Godavari, my chaddi buddy from Class V, hung herself. She and I came from Hoshiarpur to Mumbai together, me to get away from my family, she to seek a career in films… me in SoBo, she in the suburbs,” Nats voice trailed off.
“Natasha! I’m so sorry for your loss.”
“Bruh… my heart breaks, because I’m asking why now. She’d dealt with so much… the casting couch, cooped up with no work through COVID, crap city life, and just when things were getting ‘awes’ for her... she decides to ‘leave’.”
“She didn’t seek therapy?”
“Couldn’t afford a shrink ya, Rahul uncle.”
I tried to be philosophical.
“Look Jean-Luc Godard… called it a night,” I began.
“Dude… you’re comparing Godard with Godavari, He was 91… she was 19! Huge difference!”
“Natasha… Godavari at 19… and Godard at 91, it makes no difference. When you feel your time is up, it’s up!”
“With due respect to the man, and he was a master, whichever story you ‘believe’, whether he was ‘exhausted’, or was crippled by ‘multiple disabling pathologies’, he’s lived a full life… my friend was a teenager.”
“Suicide doesn’t have an age limit… it’s your call to take when you want to pack it in.”
“Rubbish, you’re talking like a pontificating uncle… hanging yourself in a cramped Sakinaka flat is not the same as ‘assisted suicide’ in a posh Swiss clinic.”
I felt for Nats and the fear and frustration, she was feeling.
“Was she depressed and sad?” I persisted.
“No way I’m buying that… you know bruh... she and I were making silly morbid jokes… ‘What do you call the act of young people commiting suicide? Answer: ‘Youthanasia’…and we’d crack up!”
“Look, dying is a part of the process of living.”
“How can you be so philosophical? You’re talking like suicide is the most normal thing.”
I paused.
“Why you pausing dude?”
“I have a theory Nats, if you feel your time here on earth is done, if you’ve achieved all that you want to… or you just feel you don’t wanna go on… or the fight goes out of you… or you’re just irretrievably depressed… you have a right to end it!”
“Nonsense,” Nads argued.
“Loneliness isn’t about not having people around you. It’s a feeling of ‘solo’, emptiness.”
“Nats, we all have a dark side… it’s just that we choose to be in the light, most of the time… but the darkness is never far away, beckoning you… and your Godavari, entered a very dark place. ”
“I beg to differ.”
“And that is your right, dear Nats.”
“Look I get as depressed as the next guy. I mean come on we’re Gen Z right? Everything is messed up, everything makes us mad, we’re mental, man. But it passes, you can’t give up the fight so easily. If you step off a balcony, you tie a noose… that’s cowardice!”
“Nats… Godard once said, every movie has a beginning middle and end, just not necessarily in that order.”
“Is that some metaphor?”
“No, my dear Nats. I’m saying, Godard who tore up the rule book without bothering to read it… he did so in his life too… the belief that we must battle till the end, come what may, is a misnomer, whether it’s a maze of tubes or a haze of terror… you get to take that call.”
“Let’s agree to disagree, Rahul uncle. I’m gonna bounce.”
“On last thing, I wanna say, to both Godavari, and Jean-Luc Godard. Rest well, you made your choices... even if it was against God’s will.”
“Cool words, bruh, but it doesn’t bring either of them back to life!” she concluded.
Rahul daCunha is an adman, theatre director/playwright, photographer and traveller. Reach him at rahul.dacunha@mid-day.com
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