Euthanasia

Aimy Majumdar — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 11:59:20 +0000

Euthanasia
Pain is a sensation that hurts and leads to final and inevitable slow suffocation. It may further results in discomfort, distress or agony. It may be steady or throbbing, stabbing aching or pinching at the same time hard to define or describe. Pain is so individual that it cannot be checked out by anyone else. It is so excruciating that some time this crazy struggle is inexplicable and the person who actually encounters it would like to breathe his last rather than baring it.
“Promise me you’ll put me down if I ever get in that state”. How many times have you heard that said? A thousand times, probably. Anyone who has ever seen a terminally ill person fighting with glazed concentration for each terrifyingly shallow breadth understands the impulse to extract such a pledge. If your demise can’t be blessedly sudden, then at least let it be dignified and free of the cruelest torture. I have never met anyone who does not empathize with such a fundamentally humanitarian instinct. And yet we still tie ourselves in to torturous, philosophical, moral and legal knots about euthanasia. Such an example can be set in the following illustration. It is legal to commit suicide in Britain, but illegal to assist someone in that process (and punishable by up to 14 years in jail) even though it is likely that a dying person will only want such assistance when they have lost the ability to function unaided. I am not concerned here with the muddier arguments which surround hastening the end of those who are unable to take such a decision for themselves, people who suffer from irreversible dementia or brain damage or withholding medical intervention from desperately ill premature babies. I am talking about individuals of sound mind but failing body, who are facing the unspeakable prospect of being smothered, drowned and paralysed from within.
People such as “Mrs. Z”, a terminally ill woman who wanted to fly to Zurich to commit suicide in a clinic that specializes in euthanasia, but was prevented by lawyers acting for her local authority, who needed to know if they had a civic duty to try to stop her husband aiding her and thus committing an offence under the 1961 Suicide Act. Surely it is barbaric that those who wish to ensure that they can exert some control over their final day and escape death’s worst humiliations are forced to fly to Switzerland and risk seeing loved one face prosecution. It cannot be rocket science to arrange legislation that allows a lawyer to draft papers that have to be witnessed by the next to the next-of-kin, a senior police officer and the patient’s GP or consultant. Such documents would be logical extension of so called “living wills”. And I suspect that very few people would actually make use of such legal provision. But they would draw tremendous comfort from knowing that the option was there and being that they themselves would be the person to decide when the struggle of drawing breadth has become intolerable. People would know that they truly had the option to die in the all-too-often mendacious words of the obituaries peacefully at home. When such a physical ailment travelled round your body, lodged in your lungs, heart and presses with insistent growth on your wind pipe is anything but peaceful.

IMPRESSIONS OF FIRST CITY

Groove into the spectacle of First City. Uncut, undisputable, unparallel, enriched with affordable words, over brimming with a plethora of events, matters, articles, interviews, real life instances, previews, glimpse of night life. So is the picture of Delhi’s city magazine. Sometimes diving deep in to the chaotic life of the city this piece of entertainment takes us to a world of fantasies and sometimes showcases the insipid side of life. Thus, changing its subject according to the changing mood of the matter. On the whole this masterpiece leaves an impression on whatever it does. There is a constant trade of novelty. In this process it uncovers, discovers and is ultimately successful in not only arresting the eyes of the reader but also makes sure that it gratifies the soul. The understatement is that from leisure to adventure, history to heritage it covers all. Its funda is to be socially conscious and intellectually provocative. Though aware of the prying eyes of the critic whom it considers as the one who knows the price of everything but the value of nothing, it stands out bold and victorious and never shudders from speaking the truth, incessantly making efforts to open the eyes of the common man to the pulsating reality of today’s scenario. No issue of First City is complete without the cutting footages of films, music, art, theater and not to forget the exotic locations it takes us to. Nothing gets pulse beating faster than being face to face with the animals in the wild, breadth taking than viewing the world’s most unreachable flora and fauna.

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In this process of literary flight the creative crew of First City never sleeps. Always agile, has a nose for news, the personalities that it interviews personifies the very persona of this cut above the rest piece of prowess. For example, if you read the March issue you will come across an amalgam of movies, books, nightlife and some masaaledar cuisines. Name it and the genie will show you all. It gives space to every thing from the most happening people like Mr. India World 2008, Pravesh Rana, actor, producer Vinay Pathak’s great mad magnificently insane company to the ITDC legacy that has been a home to the world’s most powerful people. Needless to say it gives a bureau of what is happening and what is going to happen. In a nut shell First City exhibits many shades of colours through its writings and breathes life in the metro city by its artistic valor.

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Euthanasia