Considering how the contemplation of suicide forms the theme of the world’s most famous soliloquy — Hamlet’s “to be or not to be” in Shakespeare’s play on the prince of Denmark — it is obvious that the idea of taking one’s own life in a moment of despair is a part of the human condition. Destitution is one of the most common reasons why people end their lives, as the numerous cases of farmers’ suicides show. But, another less common and yet an ever-prevalent underlying cause lurks beneath the world of glamour inhabited by film stars.
In Satyajit Ray’s Nayak, the hero, Uttam Kumar, who plays a celebrated matinee idol in the film — as he was in real life in West Bengal — is shown looking out from the door of an express train at the railway lines flashing past in the moonlight with the evident thought of ending a life which is superficially glitzy but intensely lonely. The young actress, Jiah Khan, who committed suicide in her Mumbai flat, may have been driven by a similar sense of despair over a full life in the material sense but still achingly empty. A distressing love affair was probably an additional cause. Also, the fact that she was not as successful as she might have wished in an intensely competitive environment.
But, the fact remains that the glittering world of showbiz which the average person finds so enchanting hides the enervating emotions which sap the will to live, such as professional failure and jealousy and personal anguish. It isn’t only the young who are vulnerable. As the deaths of the legendary Guru Dutt and the well-known Parveen Babi have shown, the successful ones can also be so overwhelmed by sorrow as to end their lives. Arguably, of all the professions marked by wealth and razzmatazz, including politics and business, it is those in the tinsel world of films who seem to be most vulnerable emotionally.
