In today’s battered, brutal, world, there are enough people who would like to just leave the party. But society won’t let you die in peace, even if you can’t live in peace

Some are condemned to a creeping death through dementia, slow cancer, or some debilitating progressive disorder that will rob them of dignity and self-respect but not let them go. Illustration by C Y Gopinath using AI

My father, an air-conditioning engineer, worried about the details of his demise, like a cat with a cockroach, for a decade before he died. He once wrote cryptically to a friend in Hyderabad: “What should be the temperature of a vehicle in which a person could travel from one world into another?”

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We all have a ticket for that journey. Some depart sooner than others, while some go quickly, dispatched by a car with a drunk driver or a truck out of nowhere. They are fortunate. However, our hearts belong to those condemned to a creeping death through dementia, slow cancer, or some debilitating progressive disorder that will rob them of dignity and self-respect but not let them go.

The most plaintive cry for help I have read came from a beloved friend whose body was riddled with cancers, decay and breakdowns, such pain that he desperately blasted himself with loud music all day to distract himself. He was convinced that death would be the supreme agony. His end-of-life........

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