Blog | Not Today: Grief On The Other End Of India's Suicide Crisis Lines

Not too many can claim that how well they do their job is the immediate difference between whether someone lives or dies. Doctors, yes. Firefighters, yes. Lifeguards, yes. Twenty-four-year-old Aliah Rupawalla was none of these. And yet, an evening, she found herself being the only witness as one 50-something Ashwin tottered on the edge of the terrace of one of the thousands of high-rises that make up Mumbai and its abiding loneliness. All she was armed with to stop him from taking the plunge was a phone, a tiny desk in a cramped room populated by at least four other people, a crude instruction manual, and a few days of training sessions in a narrow little corridor. It isn't much, but that's all one usually gets when they're working at one of India's numerous cash-strapped suicide prevention centres. That, and the burden of dealing with a grave responsibility all by themselves. This is what Aditya Kripalani, an independent filmmaker, set out to spotlight in his award-winning film Not Today. 

Every Call Matters, But Few Get Through

As many as 14% of the suicide deaths that the world sees happen in India. In 2021, India's suicide rate was 12 per one lakh population. Despite such staggering numbers, the Centre's allocation of Rs 1,199 crore towards mental health makes up just 1% of the total health budget for India. How much of that goes to India's suicide prevention helplines will remain anybody's guess in the absence of consolidated data. Ultimately though, this poverty of resources, manpower and political will ends up taking insidious forms in a suicide prevention centre room.

In 2022, FactChecker, an India-based fact-check initiative, decided to find out how equipped the state-funded 24x7 helpline KIRAN was. The group of researchers called KIRAN over 40 times across five days. They got through to an actual person only thrice, and after an average waiting time of over a minute and a half. The eight other non-governmental hotlines they tried did work, but those, too, threw up challenges. "We are not psychologists, but rehabilitation officers. We are assigned by the government to work as helpline officers as additional duty alongside our regular work. We find it most challenging to attend calls during the night and early morning hours," a volunteer told researchers. Another explained how he would take calls even while driving and travelling. Perhaps because the failure to receive even one could mean tragedy. Perhaps it is why Aliah, seized by her own trauma of the past, goes out of her way to comfort Ashwin, defying her supervisor "Mamata madam's" instructions not to share any personal information. Perhaps it is also why Mamata madam advises Aliah to block prank calls instantly. "What if one caller's joke stops a genuine caller from reaching us?" Every call matters when it's death you are racing against. 

Guilt, Frustration, Burnout

A lot has been and is still being written about India's suicide epidemic. But we haven't even begun to scratch the surface of what those at the forefront of this fight have to contend with: nagging guilt, a sense of powerlessness, frustration, emotional fatigue, burnout. "And I recently had a conversation with a girl, a woman in her early 20s, who lost her whole family. It stayed with me and it was also the first time I was actually crying during the chat," recalled a Dutch volunteer who was part of a 2021 study published in the International Journal of Qualitative Studies on Health and Well-Being. Another reflected, "Sunday night, I had a lady on the phone, who was really depressed. Yes, you can come up with anything, but I just know that it won't help. I find that so difficult."

'Too Much Emotion Can Kill'

At the other end of this spectrum is absolute depersonalisation, where every call becomes routine and every caller a subject, to be dealt with strictly by the book. Somewhere at the beginning of Kripalani's film, Aliah is told by Mamata madam, "You have great scope, but too much emotion will not only kill the caller but also you." Ironically, it's Aliah's emotional solicitude that pulls Ashwin back from the brink. One wonders then, how much is too much in the world of suicide prevention? What to do when mere sympathy leads one to something more personal? At what point does one caller become less or more important than others? Could we avoid making this choice if we simply were more equipped to listen to each caller? To provide support before a grief-stricken person is pushed to the edge and finds herself dialling a suicide prevention helpline?

It's these uneasy complexities that Not Today so piercingly questions. Barely any work in cinema or modern literature has attempted to explore the world of suicide prevention so delicately; most wouldn't dare, it doesn't make for a 'masala' script, after all. But Kripalani has, and it is why his film deserves all the praise. 

(The author is Assistant Editor, Op-Eds, NDTV)

Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author