Suicides are not new. But Rohith Vemula's was different. His suicide letter makes it uniquely poignant. See for yourself:
Good morning,
I
would not be around when you read this letter. Don’t get angry on me. I know
some of you truly cared for me, loved me and treated me very well. I have no
complaints on anyone. It was always with myself I had problems. I feel a
growing gap between my soul and my body. And I have become a monster. I always
wanted to be a writer. A writer of science, like Carl Sagan. At last, this is
the only letter I am getting to write.
I always wanted to be
a writer. A writer of science, like Carl Sagan.
I loved Science, Stars,
Nature, but then I loved people without knowing that people have long since
divorced from nature. Our feelings are second handed. Our love is constructed.
Our beliefs colored. Our originality valid through artificial art. It has
become truly difficult to love without getting hurt.
The
value of a man was reduced to his immediate identity and nearest possibility.
To a vote. To a number. To a thing. Never was a man treated as a mind. As a
glorious thing made up of star dust. In very field, in studies, in streets, in
politics, and in dying and living.
I
am writing this kind of letter for the first time. My first time of a final
letter. Forgive me if I fail to make sense.
My birth is my fatal
accident. I can never recover from my childhood loneliness. The unappreciated
child from my past.
May
be I was wrong, all the while, in understanding world. In understanding love,
pain, life, death. There was no urgency. But I always was rushing. Desperate to
start a life. All the while, some people, for them, life itself is curse. My
birth is my fatal accident. I can never recover from my childhood loneliness.
The unappreciated child from my past.
I
am not hurt at this moment. I am not sad. I am just empty. Unconcerned about
myself. That’s pathetic. And that’s why I am doing this.
objects in mirror are (never) closer than they appear. (From
Rohit’s Facebook Wall)
People
may dub me as a coward. And selfish, or stupid once I am gone. I am not
bothered about what I am called. I don’t believe in after-death stories,
ghosts, or spirits. If there is anything at all I believe, I believe that I can
travel to the stars. And know about the other worlds.
If
you, who is reading this letter can do anything for me, I have to get 7 months
of my fellowship, one lakh and seventy five thousand rupees. Please see to it
that my family is paid that. I have to give some 40 thousand to Ramji. He never
asked them back. But please pay that to him from that.
Let
my funeral be silent and smooth. Behave like I just appeared and gone. Do not
shed tears for me. Know that I am happy dead than being alive.
“From
shadows to the stars.”
Uma
anna, sorry for using your room for this thing.
To
ASA family, sorry for disappointing all of you. You loved me very much. I wish
all the very best for the future.
For
one last time,
Jai
Bheem
I forgot to write the
formalities. No one is responsible for my this act of killing myself.No one has instigated me, whether by their acts or by their words to this act.
This is my decision and I am the only one responsible for this.
Do not trouble my friends and enemies on this after I am gone.
The regular vultures among news channel analysts, ever watchful for salacious cadavers, swooped on Vemula and his letter, clawed and beaked into them and strewed around the blood-oozing shreds and bits gleefully, after, of course, not forgetting to bereave the loss of a promising young dalit. Unalloyed hypocrisy! They asked: Where does Vemula mention even once that he was committing suicide because he was a dalit! They would deliberately miss the wood! They also asked: Where does Vemula blame anyone for his decision? They would deliberately miss that also, the finesses of a suicide letter. We are all hypocrites - those who practice it, those who miss it, and those who accept it. That means all of us! To distort the nobility in a suicide note that seeks forbearance from friends and exonerates the culpability of "enemies", one should be monstrously mean! That is what some of us have attempted to do. Resignation of a V C or the resignation of a minister might assuage the primitive passion for vengeance. Those functionaries are only the mindless agents of a rotten system. Reform is what is needed. Where shall we start it? I don't know the answer. .
