Jiah Khan: You should have lived for those who love you

I wish Jiah was powerful enough to fight against her failures and misfortunes. Life's beautiful and worth fighting for

“To be or not to be?”

Gazing in the mirror, Bollywood starlet Jiah Khan (25) must have contemplated this before committing suicide by hanging herself at her posh residence in Juhu, Mumbai, on Monday night. Alas, the answer she got from her inner being was negative.

Jiah was not to be; the young, promising actress gave up and ended her life.

There must have been something serious that was troubling Jiah leading her to take this extreme step. After making a dream debut opposite Amitabh Bachchan in Ram Gopal Varma's 2007 film Nishabd, the actress showed a lot of promise. Her work in Amir Khan’s Ghajini and Akshay Kumar’s Housefull was appreciated by critics. But for the last three years, she was out of work and her recent audition in Hyderabad also did not go well.

Her troubled relationship with an upcoming actor added insult to the injury, but nobody expected her to call it quits and many expressed shock at her tragic death.





These were indeed tough times in Jiah’s life, infact, Ram Gopal Varma tweeted as much, saying:



Perhaps in this young age, her impetuous disposition made matters worse; most young boys and girls are impulsive by nature. What she needed the most in these testing moments was the support and love of her family, friends, and loved ones. Someone should have been there to hold her hands and explain to her that everything’s not black and white in life -- that we all at some stage in the course of our life experience great misfortunes and that nobody’s immune to sufferings.

True, we all have problems in our lives. I say, ‘Problem, thy name is life.’ A man has to endure rejections and insults in the course of his life in this world, the injustices done to him by tyrannical rulers, the contemptuous treatment meted out to him by the haughty people of this world. He has to bear the pain of unreciprocated love and suffer the unpleasant consequences of the delays in the legal procedures of the courts. He must bear the insulting behaviour of highly placed officials of the state and to undergo discrimination and nepotism in his work place. He has to wait patiently for a long time for recognition and has to endure the indignities offered to him by those who have no worth at all.

Why should anybody go through all such hardships and wrongs when he can settle his account with life by killing himself with mere a dagger?

I, for one, believe people willingly go through the ordeals of life because life is precious and beautiful, despite all the burdens it puts upon us. We must live for our loved ones, for our life and death makes a huge difference to them.

As I write this blog, a very close friend of mine is fighting for her life against brain tumour. I want her to somehow win this battle, for her existence makes a huge difference to me.

When she was first diagnosed with brain tumour, she in a melancholy vein said to me,

“I’m thankful to God that he’s now offered me a wonderful opportunity to put an end to my life which is full of sufferings.”

I reproached her for uttering such depressive words and asked what will become of me if she were not there. What will happen to her family and loved ones? I beseeched her to fight it out and not give up because life is worth fighting for. I hope and pray that she wins this most important battle of her life.

Jiah, too, must have found it tough to undergo the mental torture caused by the blows and buffetings administered to her by an arbitrary fate. But, rather than committing suicide and giving up, she should have fought against the overwhelming force of life’s misfortunes and thus tried to put an end to them.

She should have lived, if not for herself, for her family and loved ones.

Read more by Sapan here.