Jiah Khan’s Suicide: What Did Rabia Teach Her Daughter?

By Niloufer Khan / Mumbai

Jiah Khan’s mother has been on a crusade ever since her daughter committed suicide. Rabia Amin’s given a blizzard of interviews expressing her grief and blaming first Bollywood and now her boyfriend for Jiah’s death.

Jiah’s rambling letter is more tragic because it contains little that is surprising. Her dangerously muddled notions about life, love and career are unexceptional except for the unhappy destiny they led her towards. The suicide note reveals a young woman who was desperate for love and approval, seeking it in all the wrong places with all the wrong men and for all the wrong reasons. It can be easily read as a primer of what not to teach your little girl.
“Some sections of the media and some film industry people are speculating that my daughter Jiah committed suicide because of depression related to her career. However the truth is that it happened only because of the trauma and the abuse she suffered at the hands of Suraj Pancholi and his father Aditya Pancholi,” wrote Amin on a social media site where she posted a scanned copy of Jiah’s suicide note.

“You may not have known this but you affected me deeply to a point where I lost myself in loving you,” writes Jiah, describing a relationship where she was ready to sacrifice all — her body, career and self-respect — to win and keep Pancholi’s affections. Romance is perhaps the most dangerous delusion, especially for young girls who are raised on a steady diet of fairytales, Bollywood movies and romance novels that valourise the all-consuming love affair, teach girls to hold out for Mr Right, wait for their “one true love.”

But in real life, Prince Charming often turns out to be the villain, or at least a uncommitted cad. And greater a young girl’s need for grand passion, the more likely she is to attract a parade of Mr Wrongs who exploit that yearning. Women who live to love as opposed to love to live are doomed to unhappiness. “You tore my soul. I have no reason to breathe anymore. All I wanted was love. I did everything for you,” wrote Jiah mistaking an abusive relationship for the meaning of life.

“Aur bhi gham hain zamane mein mohabbat ke siwa/ Raahaten aur bhi hain vasl ki raahat ke siva,” declared Faiz Ahmed Faiz. A pity no one told Jiah. Certainly not her mother who offers up heartbreak as vindication of her daughter’s mental state: “Reports that my daughter was depressed because of work is all rubbish. She was fine, she was sincere, pure and not manipulative at all. She could not stand lies.” But here’s the question Rabia never asks herself: Why did her daughter throw away her life merely because, in Rabia’s words, “she fell for the wrong guy”? What did Rabia teach her — or fail to do so — that she would do so?

We all fall for the wrong guy/girl at some point in our life — some more wrong than others — but most of us find a way to fall right out. But not Jiah whose letter spells out “the pain of heartbreak when the person you love wants to abuse you or threatens to hit you or cheats on you telling other girls they are beautiful or throws you out of their house when you have no where to go and you’ve come to them out of love or when they lie to your face or they make you chase after them in their car.” Dating Suraj Pancholi was an exercise in humiliation, but Jiah mistook her pain as the seal of authenticity: masochism as an affirmation of the strength of her love.

One sign of mental health is the instinct for emotional self-preservation, an ability to just say no to relationships that are damaging. And yet, call it the Sati/Savitri complex or television serial effect, the fact is that women are socialised to mistake unhappiness as a measure of emotional investment. Sadder still, the same parents who urgently school their children to keep their bodies safe never teach them the importance of protect their hearts. “You never appreciated my love, Kicked me in the face. I have no confidence or self esteem left, whatever talent whatever ambition you took it all away,” writes Jiah, proving emotional damage can be every bit as fatal as the physical kind. And one can lead to another. Long before Pancholi came along, Jiah was already a victim of  ”the rape, the abuse, the torture I have seen previously.”

If these are indeed Jiah’s last words, they indict not just Pancholi but also Rabia who seems to have failed to teach her child to love herself. Parenting is hardly an exact science. There is no guarantee of outcome even when we love them dearly and do our best. Damage, however, is almost certain when we fail to teach our kids certain basic values, the most important being to value themselves. It’s a life-saving lesson for a girl who will inevitably encounter a patriarchical world that will attempt to reduce her to a body part and/or a social role. And more so for a young woman set loose in the barracuda-infested world of the film industry.

Jiah ends her letter on a haunting note: “I leave this place with nothing but broken dreams and empty promises. All I want now is to go to sleep and never wake up again. I am nothing. I had everything. I felt so alone even while with you. You made me feel alone and vulnerable. I am so much more than this.” Perhaps Rabia Amin should have spent more time convincing her daughter that she deserved to be “so much more than this” — a body hanging from a ceiling fan.