ABSTRACT
Suicide rates are socially constructed – for a start, by the way it’s defined. Most commonly, suicide is as an act of self-harm intended to result in death. The rate is also a product of collective responses at three stages: prior to the act, of responses to any warning signals given; at the time of it, of the speed and decisiveness with which others react before death has resulted; and – posthumously – of the way it gets classified as ‘suicide’. One reason why suicides by drowning appear so relatively rare is probably because such deaths are so hard to distinguish from accidents. In Kundara Tola, two recently married young women – one Telugu, the other Odia – burned themselves to death within an hour of each other. Though they lived not far apart, they had never actually spoken.
