Extreme escape attempts: investigating suicide in contemporary Hindi fiction

Suicide is globally a serious public health issue and India has to face suicide death rates among the highest in the world. In recent decades, the representation of voluntary deaths (Hindi ātmahatyā) has become a quite common ingredient of Hindi fiction. Yatish in Ṭ-ṭā profesar, Anisa in Dāstān-e-lāptā, Sapam in Pīlī chatrī vālī laṛkī, and Jharna in Ek naukrānī kī ḍāyrī are, to name a few examples, some of the characters who decide to escape from their lives. Who are these people, and what are the roles of suicidal episodes in the narratives? Why are the latter so frequent? The paper attempts to answer these questions by linking some recent works of fiction in Hindi to media reporting and data provided by the National Crime Records Bureau.