No, no: sallekhana is not suicide

Digital Drifter

There are some books that I'm afraid to read, this is one of them going by the reviews.

http://www.hindu.com/lr/2009/11/01/s...0150140400.htm

An office colleague's grandmother went this way, quietly going into the night by refusing food for 3 days. They were Jains.


A long time ago, when I was in the London Museum looking at the India section, I came across the frieze that showed the different stages of Buddha's enlightenment. One of his experiments was fasting to get enlightenment. The stone frieze showed his emaciated face, the hollowed out cheeks, the prominent spider thread of veins across his face.

I stared and stared and then started crying.

fcuking mental, I was, crying over stone.

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capt_mahajan

That book is on my list this weekend. (There is another thread on it, maybe a merge is in order)

As for crying, didn't somebody say that tears water your soul?

If they didn't, they should have.

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Nick-H

Three days seems a very short time in which to starve to death, I'm afraid that it would normally take a great deal longer, unless a person refuses all fluid as well.

Tangentially... about suicide in India, which, by the way, seems to be all too common: why are really nasty methods of dying so 'popular'?

Setting fire to oneself, for instance. Ouch. And that's ouch extended, sometimes for days. Number one on the list: hanging. he brain can go for two or three minutes, at least, without oxygen. As hanging, except in the hands of an expert executioner, is going to mean strangulation, not a quick breaking of the neck, that is going to be a pretty dreadful few minutes.

I can only think that people have absolutely no idea whatsoever what is going to happen to them until they are in the middle of it --- and its too late.

On a happier note, let us contemplate the invention, by a politician, of the fast-until-death that began after breakfast, and ended, mercifully still alive, somehow --- just before lunch!

Digital Drifter

The thing is, I wanted to ask a Taliban suicide bomber. But everytime he says

"Watch this carefully..." *KABOOM*

After the ringing in my ears go down, I still have a few doubts. And the bloody bloke is never there to explain it a second time.

*stolen from the Cap's profile.

Nick-H

Unhelpful, those people... just not helpful at all.

Still, he was probably in a hurry to get to those virgins.

capt_mahajan

Don't forget pesticide, although, in the case of farmers, it is popular because it is cheap and easily available.

ronsaik

don't forget three of manu's recommended penances for violating the guru's marriage bed: suicide by sleeping on a heated iron bed, by embracing a red hot cylinder, and/or by cutting off one's meat and two veg, holding them in one's cupped hands, and walking straight ahead in a south westerly direction till dead.

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labrol

I am reading 'Nine lives' at the moment. The Nun's tale is the first story. The parts other than sallekhana are more gory. Like the denial of allopathic medication when a nun got tuberculosis. A very painful and prolonged death ensued. Allopathic medicines pass through animal tests and cruelty, so the Jain nun would rather inflict cruelty on herself.
Then the part that had my hairs on edge is to do about pulling out hairs from the scalp from the roots to get bald unlike the Buddhists who shave their heads.Incredible and true for last 2,600 years. This is their way to detach from bodily pain and be concerned only about the inner self.

Even if you can not stand this, do read the book for the red fairy story from Sufi Sidh(Pakistan) and for the Theyyam dancer(Kannur) story, the singer of epics, the monk's tale.
For the emotionally inclined, 'The daughters of Yellamma' about the devadasis will also be a tough call.

I am yet to read the last three stories, so wait.......!

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