As if she had foreseen her leave-taking from this earth, through the month of August 2023, Sneha kept nagging me to stay close to her. She refused to eat pleading with me to feed her. She asked me to plait her hair like a schoolgirl. During the nights, she slept hugging me tightly. She woke up at odd hours to watch the video of superstar Rajinikanth's speech as she was working on a project that was to take a critical look at Rajinikanth and his politics.
Sneha Belcin. A nice, pretty, intelligent, and unique child. She meant more than this world to me. Sneha was special to me as my daughter, but she was equally so for the individual she grew up to be.
Books were her life. She loved reading. She hunted down the books of Dr Ambedkar and read them. She wrote a lot. As much as possible, she recorded her thoughts on video. She had come to have a large circle of friends and gained the adoration of people from different age groups. She has done some short films. She loved films and traveling. My darling daughter left a legacy as a journalist too.
She was only 16 when she began to jot down her thoughts. Every New Year's Day, I used to gift a diary to Sneha, her younger sister Shwetha, and their father. Sneha filled those diaries with her writings. She wrote little about herself. She had a far-reaching vision of social issues. As an individual, she stood up to challenge the evils of society. She expressed her thoughts on social concerns in poems that were beautiful and wise at once. And I ended up as one of her many admirers.
I lost Sneha's younger sister Shwetha, who at the end used to be frightened even by the sound of the shutting of windows, on April 2, 2016, at the age of 14. During those distressing times, whenever I broke down, Sneha stood right next to me, holding my hands and wiping away my tears. She was my sole strength. She took me to beaches where we let the tides wash our feet. Thus, Sneha helped me overcome the loss of her sister to a great extent.
When I look back, there was a time when Shwetha and Sneha used to huddle close to me as they fell asleep on my right and left sides during the night. Today, I am overpowered when I realize that Sneha is no longer with me to help me overcome this loneliness and loss. My heart wishes to believe that she is still working in Chennai and she will come back to me soon.
Sneha, till the end, wrestled to set herself free from the medical condition called depression. She even sought medical help to get rid of depression.
When she was alive, I didn't realize that depression is an illness. I thought it was merely an expression widely used by the young people of this generation. Her passing away has made me realise that depression is a killer. Depression is not an issue of a particular individual alone.
The freedom to fly that she yearned for couldn't find wings within the framework of our society. Her death cannot be dismissed as one brought on by personal problems. The narrow-mindedness, indifference, selfishness, politics and patriarchy that plague society and contribute to such deaths should not be ignored.
Sneha's death is harsh. Unfair. Actually, some people are helping me to get over the loss. But there are relatives who on the pretext of consoling only end up exposing their true faces. Their interest is solely voyeuristic. Sneha has answered their queries through a diary entry of hers on Rohith Vemula. In that, she says, "I hardly care about what they will say about me after my death. I don't believe in an afterlife or in spirits. If I believe in anything, it's that I will travel among the stars after my death."
Sneha might have disappeared like a lightning strike or a shooting star, but I am heartened by the fact that many young people admire her perspectives and her social outlook. While I suffer the agony of her separation, I am also celebrating her triumphs. She fought for the causes she believed in and stood out among people who remain indifferent to everything that happens around them.
Maybe not willing to live on this earth of mortals she has left to live among angels. I rue the loss of the light of her intelligence that lit up my path and that of many others.
Dear daughter, I bid adieu. When we meet amid the stars you so loved, we can discuss what happened after you left over a cup of black tea.
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(Translated from Tamil by Gladwin Emmanuel.)