Published Feb 05, 2026 | 4:04 PM ⚊ Updated Feb 06, 2026 | 10:13 AM
Representative image of suicide. (Creative Commons)
Synopsis: Recently, a mother and her two children died by suicide near Hyderabad. This brings out the question: Why do people take the extreme step? Undoubtedly, problems do play a role. But in many cases, it is the lack of confidence that problems can be solved that pushes people toward suicide. Alongside material problems, mental problems are increasing amid the complexity of modern life.
Reading a news report in a Hyderabad edition newspaper this week left me deeply shaken. Even after four or five days, that image continues to haunt my mind, bringing tears to my eyes. It is a very ordinary scene captured on CCTV: A mother walking casually along a railway platform, holding the hands of her two little children, one on each side.
The image is completely natural, utterly commonplace, evocative of the bond between a mother and her children. However, if we know what happened to the people in that image just a few hours later — or rather, what they themselves went on to do — it reveals how lonely, how inhuman, how terrifying our society has become.
Within two hours of that ordinary CCTV image, the mother and her two children walked for two or three kilometres along the railway tracks in Cherlappally, on the outskirts of Hyderabad in Telangana, in the intervening night of 30 and 31 January and stood in front of an oncoming goods train, embracing one another with the same love.
The mother hugged both her children tightly to her chest, took her own life, and took the lives of her children as well. All three deliberately ended their lives. Or perhaps the two children accepted their mother’s intention.
There can hardly be anyone who reads this tragic news without tears in their eyes. We may not have known these people personally; we may have known them only through a newspaper report. But they were human beings. The death of any human being is tragic. An unnatural death is even more tragic.
The mother, Vijaya Reddy, was herself working as a software engineer. Her daughter Chethana was studying in the second year of intermediate, and her son Vishal was in the first year. The father was working in Dubai. Preliminary information suggests that there were no financial problems severe enough to drive them to die by suicide.
Since both the mother and the children were in stable jobs and educational institutions, it must also be assumed that there were no serious physical or mental health issues that could explain such an extreme step.
A young woman who came from a rural background, studied engineering, and was working as a team head at a software company might even have felt a sense of satisfaction at having achieved what many aspire to in life. And if the children were studying intermediate in residential colleges, they would soon have gone on to study medicine or engineering.
It is reported that she wrote on a car parking slip: “No one is responsible for my death. Life feels burdensome. I do not want to live a life I do not like. I cannot leave my children behind, so I am taking them with me.”
From the mother’s point of view, in a world that appeared unbearable to her, she may have felt it logical to take her children with her, wondering what would happen to their lives after she was gone. It is said that the children had immense love for their mother.
Even so, the question remains: Why and how did they agree to take their own lives, no matter how much the mother might have persuaded them? If she went to their hostels in the evening, brought them back in the car, reached Cherlapalli railway station shortly before midnight, and fell under a train around 1 am, that means there was at least six hours of preparation for the suicide.
During that preparation, how did the children accept the mother’s proposal? What conversations took place? When the train was rushing toward them, did not even a flicker of the desire to live arise in at least one of the three?
Suicide is not, in all cases, mere cowardice. It takes more courage to erase oneself by one’s own hands than to continue living. Suicides committed in a moment of impulse may not require such courage; they may be acts of escape. But deliberately, after prolonged thought, systematically arranging everything and then committing suicide involves a certain logic and courage.
Here is an argument that non-existence is preferable to this unbearable life. There is either an awareness that nothing remains after death, or a belief that one’s death can achieve something, settle a score, or make a statement.
Mao, while analysing the suicide of a young bride, wrote several articles at the age of 26, arguing that it was less a personal psychological failure and more a protest against social conditions and the institution of marriage.
It may be a protest that achieves no result, that yields nothing even for those who undertake it. But if we are willing to understand and learn, it can become a protest that teaches society a lesson.
In fact, any unnatural death is a sign of social ill-health. Instead of viewing suicides and unnatural deaths purely in individual terms — branding the dead with labels such as escapism, weakness, or lack of self-confidence and then pouring out sympathy — we must undertake a deep inquiry into why these unnatural deaths and suicides are happening in the first place.
How much is due to the individual’s mental vulnerability? How much is due to pressure, neglect, indifference, or cruelty from those around them? And how much is due to the overall condition of society itself? Unless such a thorough examination takes place, suicides will continue to occur again and again. We will be left saying “alas, alas” one day, only to repeat the same “alas, alas” the next.
For any human being, the thought of ending one’s own life is an extremely serious matter. Why would anyone want to give up something as precious as life? Even the very old display a strong will to live. Why, then, are people in their youth and middle age increasingly contemplating suicide?
Whenever a suicide occurs, there is a routine investigative approach: Were there financial problems, family problems, estrangement from loved ones, or serious health issues? In a way, this is a blinkered perspective. Do problems alone justify taking one’s life? Are there no solutions to those problems? Are solutions not possible if one tries? Is it not society’s responsibility to help resolve them?
Why must we assume that suicidal thoughts are merely the result of certain problems? Undoubtedly, problems do play a role. But in many cases, it is the lack of confidence that problems can be solved that pushes people toward suicide.
Alongside material problems of life — and perhaps even more than those — mental problems are increasing amid the complexity of modern life. People are becoming more and more lonely. Even though they are surrounded by many others, even though they appear to be living happily and pleasantly, there is an unseen despair that pushes them day by day into deeper abysses.
Such individuals may seem to have no financial, health, or life problems at all. But who can peep into their minds? Who is watching? Do they have the opportunity to open up and talk freely with many people — or even with a single person? Are they in a position to fully share their desires, fears, hopes, disappointments, successes, and failures with someone, and thereby relieve the pressure on their minds?
Does life grant them the time and space to do so? And do any of us have the time to listen to another person’s anguish? There may be technical arrangements, such as professional counselling centres and mental health specialists. But is there a human touch? Do we have the time to wipe a tear from a neighbour’s cheek?
Even without knowing all the details, if we look at the present case alone, Vijaya Reddy had a mother, a husband, children, colleagues, relatives, and friends. Did even one person recognise that she was burdened with suicidal thoughts, that life felt unbearable to her, that she was living a life she did not want?
Did she share this with even one person? Did anyone give her the opportunity to share it? The suicidal thought may have been entirely hers; the children may not have had such thoughts at all. But could children studying intermediate not have dissuaded their mother from this decision?
All these questions lead to one single answer: Our society has reached a state where we know nothing about the person next to us and care about nothing concerning them. This is truly a problem that demands deep reflection. This is not the problem of one person’s death; it is the problem of the death of our collective human and social life. It is the problem of the death of society.
Some may wonder how the death of one person can be the death of society. In fact, to put it the other way around, it is the death of society that is manifesting itself as the death of individuals.
A social condition has emerged that has severed the inseparable bond between society and the individual, setting them in competition, making society alien to the individual and each individual alien to every other individual.
From the definition of the human being as a social animal, we have been transformed into ever more isolated, narrow, cramped, self-centred beings — people who do not care about their neighbours, who even resent caring about them. Once, being an ajataśatru — one without enemies — was considered an ideal.
Today, a new definition has emerged: The human being as a creature for whom the entire world is an enemy, who sees the whole world as hostile and crawls upward alone like a reptile. For such a summit-climbing human being, there is neither companionship nor shelter from another human being.
In a society that has broken the indivisible relationship between society and the individual, fostering competition and mutual alienation, such loneliness — and therefore such unnatural deaths — are inevitable.
Death due to the natural course of life will no longer prevail. Instead, unnatural deaths due to illness, murder, suicide, and accidents will increase.
European philosophers proposed that after the Industrial Revolution, human beings became alienated from nature and from God. Marx expanded this proposition further and theorised that in the modern industrial age of capitalism, human beings are subjected to alienation at four levels.
The first level is alienation from the product of one’s labour—the product created by colouring it with one’s own flesh and blood, one’s entire personality. The second level is alienation from the very process of production, due to the division of labour that prevents workers from knowing what their labour is producing.
The third level, also resulting from this division of labour, is alienation from fellow workers — workers who do not know who their co-workers are, where they work, or for what purpose they labour.
The fourth level, arising from these three forms of alienation, is alienation from one’s own human nature itself — the human being ceases to be human.
This is the alienation that we are literally witnessing before our eyes in today’s society. A person who feels that life is burdensome and that they are living a life they do not like is a direct outcome of this alienation.
(If you need support or know someone who has suicidal thoughts, please reach out to your nearest mental health specialist or contact the helpline numbers of suicide prevention organisations that can offer emotional support to individuals and families. Tele-MANAS: 14416; Life Suicide Prevention: 7893078930; Roshni: 9166202000, 9127848584.)
(Views are personal. Edited by Muhammed Fazil.)
