THE POWER OF THE WRITING
Suicides over failure are not uncommon among our youth and the news dies down after a few minor ripples. Yet in the death of Rohith Vemula, https://g.co/kgs/4Am3MF, the youth have come out to protest in mass across the country, the magnitude of which not seen since the Nirbhaya case. While debates about the caste and intolerance are raving across the media, it is the last words of a dying man that has stirred the human conscience of the country.

Very rarely has the silent written word found more eloquence over the cacophony of our politicians than Rohith’s suicide note. It is hard to recall when was the last time that the words of a non-entity stirred a nation out of its stupor. History records words of great men, their speeches, their last words, some to be recalled for generations and centuries after they are gone. But there is something different Rohith’s letter. It is generally believed that people commit suicide at an acute point of depression but that does not seem to be the case here. But Rohith’sletter speaks of a man who is in complete control of his faculties.


While intellectuals will talk about Rohith Vemula’s last words long after the voices have fallen silent, I am compelled to go back in time to read about the last moments of a man who laid down his life for another in Charles Dickens' classic ‘A Tale of Two Cities’ and try to find what was it that inspired one to walk into death so calmly.


Charles Dickens narrates Sydney Carton last few steps up to the guillotine:
The murmuring of many voices, the upturning of many faces, the pressing on of many footsteps in the outskirts of the crowd, so that it swells forward in a mass, like one great heave of water, all flashes away. Twenty-Three.

They said of him, about the city that night, that it was the peacefullest man’s face ever beheld there. Many added that he looked sublime and prophetic.
One of the most remarkable sufferers by the same axe—a woman-had asked at the foot of the same scaffold, not long before, to be allowed to write down the thoughts that were inspiring her. If he had given any utterance to his, and they were prophetic, they would have been these:

Rohith Vemula’s letter speaks his thoughts in solitude:
Good morning,
I would not be around when you read this letter. Don’t get angry on me. I know some of you truly cared for me, loved me and treated me very well. I have no complaints on anyone. It was always with myself I had problems. I feel a growing gap between my soul and my body. And I have become a monster. I always wanted to be a writer. A writer of science, like Carl Sagan. At last, this is the only letter I am getting to write.
I always wanted to be a writer. A writer of science, like Carl Sagan.
I loved Science, Stars, Nature, but then I loved people without knowing that people have long since divorced from nature. Our feelings are second handed. Our love is constructed. Our beliefs colored. Our originality valid through artificial art. It has become truly difficult to love without getting hurt.
The value of a man was reduced to his immediate identity and nearest possibility. To a vote. To a number. To a thing. Never was a man treated as a mind. As a glorious thing made up of star dust. In every field, in studies, in streets, in politics, and in dying and living.

Dickens continues:
“I see Barsad, and Cly, Defarge, The Vengeance, the Juryman, the Judge, long ranks of the new oppressors who have risen on the destruction of the old, perishing by this retributive instrument, before it shall cease out of its present use. I see a beautiful city and a brilliant people rising from this abyss, and, in their struggles to be truly free, in their triumphs and defeats, through long years to come, I see the evil of this time and of the previous time of which this is the natural birth, gradually making expiation for itself and wearing out.

Rohith continues:
I am writing this kind of letter for the first time. My first time of a final letter. Forgive me if I fail to make sense.
My birth is my fatal accident. I can never recover from my childhood loneliness. The unappreciated child from my past.
May be I was wrong, all the while, in understanding world. In understanding love, pain, life, death. There was no urgency. But I always was rushing. Desperate to start a life. All the while, some people, for them, life itself is curse. My birth is my fatal accident. I can never recover from my childhood loneliness. The unappreciated child from my past.

Dickens continues:
“I see the lives for which I lay down my life, peaceful, useful, prosperous and happy, in that England which I shall see no more. I see Her with a child upon her bosom, who bears my name. I see her father, aged and bent, but otherwise restored, and faithful to all men in his healing office, and at peace. I see the good old man, so long their friend, in ten years’ time enriching them with all he has, and passing tranquilly to his reward.

Rohith continues:
I am not hurt at this moment. I am not sad. I am just empty. Unconcerned about myself. That’s pathetic. And that’s why I am doing this.
People may dub me as a coward. And selfish, or stupid once I am gone. I am not bothered about what I am called. I don’t believe in after-death stories, ghosts, or spirits. If there is anything at all I believe, I believe that I can travel to the stars. And know about the other worlds.

Dickens continues:
“I see that I hold a sanctuary in their hearts, and in the hearts of their descendants, generations hence. I see her, an old woman, weeping for me on the anniversary of this day. I see her and her husband, their course done, lying side by side in their last earthly bed, and I know that each was not more honoured and held sacred in the other’s soul, than I was in the souls of both.

Rohith continues:
If you, who is reading this letter can do anything for me, I have to get 7 months of my fellowship, one lakh and seventy five thousand rupees. Please see to it that my family is paid that. I have to give some 40 thousand to Ramji. He never asked them back. But please pay that to him from that.
Let my funeral be silent and smooth. Behave like I just appeared and gone. Do not shed tears for me. Know that I am happy dead than being alive.
“From shadows to the stars.”
Uma anna, sorry for using your room for this thing.
To ASA family, sorry for disappointing all of you. You loved me very much. I wish all the very best for the future.

Dickens writes
“I see that child who lay upon her bosom and who bore my name, a man winning his way up in that path of life which once was mine. I see him winning it so well, that my name is made illustrious there by the light of his. I see the blots I threw upon it, faded away. I see him, fore-most of just judges and honoured men, bringing a boy of my name, with a forehead that I know and golden hair, to this place— then fair to look upon, with not a trace of this day’s disfigurement —and I hear him tell the child my story, with a tender and a faltering voice.

Rohith writes
For one last time,
Jai Bheem

Dickens concludes
“It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.”

Rohith concludes with a p.s.
I forgot to write the formalities. No one is responsible for my this act of killing myself.
No one has instigated me, whether by their acts or by their words to this act.
This is my decision and I am the only one responsible for this.
Do not trouble my friends and enemies on this after I am gone.



Both men might have had different reasons to die but both appear to express a stark similarity of the times they describe. Now he might not have been a match to Dickens in his expression but by putting his clarity of thoughts on paper Rohith transcends to the same height as Sydney Carton, peacefullest, sublime and prophetic. While those involved with the case try to find reason around his expression, in death he becomes all, narrator, the people, the jury, the judge, the condemned, executor and the executed.
Whatever one may conclude, the question that comes to thought is that here are two narratives so much alike, one fictional the other real life, written centuries apart, across continents and cultures, then why are human beings permanently in conflict with each other?

Pali Reen