Till Thursday N Mahalakshmi did not know about World Health Organisation’s ‘40 seconds campaign’ to raise awareness about how every individual can help to prevent suicides. She attended the function of M S Chellamuthu Trust & Research Foundation, an NGO of 25 years working towards redefining lives of people with mental illness and learnt how people with suicidal thoughts needed to be constantly spoken to and reassured that they have an entire life ahead and beyond their problems.
“My son worked in Chennai. I never had the chance to hold his hands or talk to him daily,” she says, recalling the day two years ago, when her son decided to end his life by jumping into the well in their village Mathur. He was 24.
“There was a wedding in the family. He came home in the morning and I made him two egg dosas. He spoke normally complaining about the salary in his new job he had joined two months ago. Dressed in white shirt and brown pant, he took selfies and sent the photos to my sister’s daughter,” she remembers of the last time she saw him. Late afternoon, the news came when relatives could not trace him for few hours and his bike was found parked next to the well. In the evening divers fished out his body.
Mahalakshmi could not accept her son’s death and went into depression and has been under medication since then. She says psychiatrist, Dr. C Ramasubramanian, the founder of Chellamuthu Trust is like her brother who has given her a purpose to live on. “He heard me out. But as a mother I did not see it coming for my son,” she laments.
Mahalakshmi now spends her day at the Aakash Special School run by the Chellamuthu Trust. She cooks and serves food to the special children who stay there and also takes care of their several small needs. “After so many years, I have learnt to live with dignity,” she says, because her life after marriage was scarred by struggles.
Married off at the age of 16, few years later she found her husband to be an alcoholic. “Everything about me irked him. I was 12 years younger to him, much more good looking, did all household chores efficiently and took care of all members in our joint family set up. “But he always treated me as a suspect and never allowed me to take any decisions as I was only a high school graduate,” she says, and adds, “his insecurities made him accuse me of extra-marital affair and trying to separate our son from him.”
Mahalakshmi says she silently bore the brunt and boldly took on every onslaught of his to protect the family’s reputation and her son but she regrets that she failed to see the impact it had on her child. “Shaktivel would feel very embarrassed whenever his father went to pick him up from school. He developed a dislike for his father and I was losing him without quite realising,” says Mahalakshmi. The more she tried to keep him away from domestic issues, the more withdrawn he became even though he was good in academics and got an engineering seat. “I was too much caught up in tackling the daily bickerings at home that the need to understand my son or sharing our problems did not occur,” she says.
Often caregivers fail to notice behavioural changes, says S Bhuvaneswari, trainer at Aakaash School. For Mahalakshmi, most days of her marital life were bad. “In fact, they were so worse that when her son stopped mingling or broke into bouts of anger then that moment of bad appeared good to her and she overlooked the importance of a conversation.”
The World Federation for Mental Health says there is an overwhelming number of people suffering from a sense of despair and every 40 seconds some one in some part of the world loses life to suicide. The mother’s heart in Mahalakshmi still aches for her son. But now as she cares and works for others, she says, she has begun to realise how heartwarming and impactful it is to keep the communication channels open.
“Yes, even 40 seconds can give the faint confidence to live on,” she says and pledges to carry forward this year’s campaign.
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