APRIL 6

Losing One’s Home

On the 28th of March, 1995, a Mrs. Indu Vahi committed suicide by jumping from the 8th floor of Asia House, a building situated on Kasturba Gandhi Marg, quite close to Connaught Place, in New Delhi. As the chief newsreader in the Hindi Department of All India Radio, she had been allotted a two-room residential flat on the first floor of Asia House, which is a government building. When she retired last year at the age of sixty, she was required to give up this flat where she had lived for the last twenty years. The last date for vacating was the 31st of March.

Mrs. Vahi, widowed in 1989, became very depressed after retirement, even although she had the company of her daughter Sonia and her son-in-law, Ashok Kumar. According to The Hindustan Times of 29 March, 1995, she had acquired a house in Radio Colony of the Trans-Yamuna area before her retirement, but somehow she had felt very dejected at having to move there. This was possibly because of the paucity of civic amenities there as compared with her government allotted home, which was very centrally situated and near the elegant shopping centre of Connaught Place. This feeling so obsessed her that she climbed up to the top floor of the Asia House and leaped to her death.

When I read this news item, I felt that it was indeed a tragic incident. Then I said to myself, “there was someone who could not bear the thought of shifting from a comfortable flat to a humble dwelling. But what of one’s condition if one were to be totally deprived of shelter?”

Even if people do not commit suicide, they still have to die. After death, the realization will come to them that all their possessions have suddenly been snatched away. On that day, all houseowners will become homeless. On that day, it will be only those upon whom Allah looks with favour, only those to whom He will grant an abode in Paradise, who will ever again be householders. (1.SS/9.95)