Corona Daily 420: Your Own Worst Enemy

Sushant Singh Rajput, 34, a Bollywood star and a talented actor, hanged himself in his bedroom this morning. Earlier this week, his former manager, Disha Salian, 28, had allegedly taken her own life by jumping from the fourteenth floor of her Mumbai building. The two suicides are not related to each other, but both were probably related to the pandemic.

Even without the pandemic, suicides are surprisingly high, more than double that of homicide at the global level. Every 40 seconds someone in the world kills himself/herself. Sapiens fame Yuval Noah Harari made a witty comment: “Statistically you are your own worst enemy. Of all the people in the world, you are most likely to be killed by yourself.”  

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Since March, a variety of suicides have been reported. Thomas Schafer, 54, the German state finance minister, threw himself in front of a train. He was worried that as a minister he wouldn’t be able to fulfill his obligations to the German people. A Japanese chef set himself on fire. He was scheduled to carry the Olympic torch. That was cancelled, and his restaurant shut as well. Dr Lorna Breen, 49, an emergency room doctor in New York City couldn’t bear witnessing the agonies in the covid-19 ward. Emily Owen, 19, a British girl felt the world was closing in. She was terrified of the spread of coronavirus. Daniela Trezzi, 34, an Italian nurse, was overly stressed about infecting others when she tested positive. The list is endless…

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There is a subtle difference between the suicide of Sushant Singh Rajput and the list above. Sushant was reportedly depressed for over six months. People suffering from mental illnesses may have suicidal thoughts. But converting these thoughts into a completed act is a long journey. Sylvia Plath in the Bell Jar portrays that process. Despite successive attempts, the protagonist of that book is alive at its end. However, the author herself committed suicide when she was barely 30 years old. If you haven’t read the Bell Jar, I recommend you don’t read it.

Super-busy people like Sushant can continue living with suicidal thoughts at the back of their mind. To denote excessive busy-ness, an idiom in Marathi says: “I have no time to consume poison”. Sounds illogical, but the idiom has an element of truth. When the body and mind are busy, a depressed and anxious person can take a break from suicidal thoughts and actions. His depression may not go away, but the mind has less time to work out an action plan.

The Mumbai lockdown of the last 2 ½ months gave Sushant’s mind too much time. He had enough success, fame and money not to worry about the financial consequence of the pandemic. But the social distancing, isolation and inactivity perhaps deepened the fears and anxieties stored in his troubled mind.

In normal times, he would now be travelling, lip-syncing songs, dancing around trees, laughing and crying into the camera, attending his film launches and signing autographs. All that was replaced by focus on an unnamed anxiety, depression and suicidal thoughts. Sushant is a collateral victim of the coronavirus.

Ravi