Life is beautiful !!!

 The Hindu, dated 19th May, 2011, Thursday, speaks ‘Techie strangles daughter, hangs himself’. In a tragic incident, a 31-year-old software engineer, Santosh Sarade, who recently resigned from Infosys, murdered his two-year-old daughter and committed suicide yesterday. He was living with his parents and wife and daughter in an apartment at Koodlu on Hosur road. It describes the unfortunate ending of the journey, of a 31 years old software engineer, the last milestone being the suicide and cold blooded murder of his 2 years old daughter.

After slipping deeper into depression following the loss of his job, Sarade contacted his company on Tuesday pleading to be reinstated, but his request was denied. During the night, his wife woke up and realized that her husband and daughter Riya were missing. She realized something was wrong when she found the door in the next room locked from the inside.

After losing the job, he was so fed up and frustrated that he not only committed suicide but also killed his 2 years old daughter. The police found a liquor bottle in the room and preliminary investigations revealed that the deceased was very fond of his wife and daughter and was worried about their future.

Now questions arises that why he went so far that he killed his daughter? What is happening to IT professionals. This is not first case of suicide by an IT professional.

Indeed fed up we are, but the bigger question is of what and why? We all typically feel ‘sorry’ about it, but may I ask a moment of yours and request you to ponder along as to what brings the strong, capable and civilized man to summarize life in a suicide note.

    Losing a job to me is too petty to be a reason for such a drastic step. There is for sure something more fundamental, more strong and much more effective that can drive oneself to the door step of death. 

    Every morning when I board the cab to the office I feel as though I have joined a group of ‘zombies’. Zombies we are because we all are awake and alive, but not enlightened. Each of the highly educated elite class, plugs-in the ear-phones of the branded i-pods and with it gulp a dosage to being ‘brain dead’. With those plugged in, it seems ones ability to think, react and generate is perished.  One turns around the pages of the ‘most-circulated’ newspaper and reads along about politics, murders, rapes, thefts and page 3 parties. And then without even a hint of a gesture or expression keeps the paper aside as though all that was obvious and quite natural a happening. This is what I call ‘Brain Dead’.

Have we become merely a data acquisition system? Were we educated just to read the paper and not react? Are we alive at all? We all speak about and at times crib about it but what do we do to change it? Is this the price we all have paid to be a part of what we call ‘The 21st Century’? Is this what you call and aspire to be a ‘First World Country’? If it is than I would rather choose to remain ‘Primitive’.

             If this is the face of our perception of the modern life of IT professionals, then it is the most sorrowful incident in the history of mankind. Let us hold-on for a moment and think as to where we started from, where we aimed at reaching and where we have arrived. The pre-historic man discovered fire and we took it forward to burn houses, make bombs that the terrorist blast and we made the nuclear power, for which the developed countries endlessly debate. He used wheels for his carts, and we use them for vehicles and airplanes, which in turn pollute and destruct environment.

He chose caves so that they could be together and protected and we build grand houses and end up quarreling and killing each other for property. He started cultivating to meet his hunger and we have taken it forward only to be induced to a hunger that is never satisfied. We spend trillions or probably more in search of alien life, when we are still incapable of solving problems of life that we are all so very aware of. We have ourselves given birth to facilities that have become our worst fears. Is this what we really want? Is this what we intended to do? I want each one of you reading this, to find an answer for yourself-within yourself.

To me it seems that we have indeed come a long way, but probably the wrong way. I believe that it is the fundamental thoughts, you sow, nurture and cultivate, that you yield. It is your choice to harvest a scientist or a terrorist out of your thoughts. What we are and what we will be, will be more the outcome of our thoughts, than being the outcome of any science or technology. And hence the stimuli to our thoughts must not be lost. There is no scarcity of the ‘Food for Thought’ around us and only if we think, we can dare to act as well as react.

We all, as a human race, are heading and speeding in leaps and bounds, towards ‘something’, but are we well- aware and well-prepared as to what that ‘something’ is? Surely this generation has a lot of questions but equally strong is the fact that there is a dearth of appropriate answers.

I urge you to steal some moments from your busy schedule and ‘think’, ‘act’ and ‘react’ and together strive for the horizons because I think “Life is Beautiful” and at least should not end with a suicide note.

Contain notes written by Deepal.