World Suicide Day - 2

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http://www.toonpool.com/user/997/files/insurance_suicide_benefits_death_442235.jpg

The burden of my last post on suicide was that it is  unnatural ;)

And it remains a mystery why it is so.


Here is John Masefield's poem on the mass suicide of lemmings (not very popular among homo sapiens, except in mass harakiri):

Lemmings

Once in a hundred years the Lemmings come

Westward, in search of food, over the snow;

Westward until the salt sea drowns them dumb;

Westward, till all are drowned, those Lemmings go.

Once, it is thought, there was a westward land

Now drowned where there was food for those starved things,

And memory of the place has burnt its brand

In the little brains of all the Lemming Kings.

Perhaps, long since, there was a land beyond

Westward from death, some city, some calm place

Where one could taste God's quiet and be fond

With the little beauty of a human face;

But now the land is drowned. Yet we still press

Westward, in search, to death, to nothingness.

But of course it is all poetic exaggeration and exaltation.

Here is the authoritative wiki on lemmings debunking their myth:

When large numbers of lemmings migrate, some of them will inevitably drown while crossing rivers and lakes, like this one in Norway.

Lemmings have become the subject of a widely popular misconception that they commit mass suicide when they migrate. It is not a mass suicide, but the result of their migratory behavior. Driven by strong biological urges, some species of lemmings may migrate in large groups when population density becomes too great. Lemmings can swim and may choose to cross a body of water in search of a new habitat. In such cases, many may drown if the body of water is so wide as to stretch their physical capability to the limit. This fact, combined with the unexplained fluctuations in the population of Norwegian lemmings, gave rise to the misconception.^[9]

This new word for spontaneous combustion came into my ken like a new comet, in my old age. 

The preachers and instigators of this form of holy suicide (taking a few unwilling souls along with them to heaven) promise many goodies in the aftermath...like unlimited wine and women...much like the unlimited jam and butter we had in our Faculty Hostel at IIT KGP before Jam Babu swooped down on us devouring all and sundry and more:

http://gpsastry.blogspot.in/2014/09/jam-babu-repeat-telecast.html

But of course they themselves don't often practice what they preach (like I do). When the chips are down and the swords dangle on their dumb heads, they hide in bunkers and concrete shelters till they are caught unawares and given a sea-burial...I don't know where they go to after that...maybe more women and wine and salt.

Now the latest buzz word in UP is:

"Love Combustion"

...after due consummation unlike in Romeo & Juliet...



...Posted by Ishani

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