Trigger warning: the following article has references to suicide. Please avoid reading if you feel distressed by the subject.
Dinesh Sharma’s bedroom cupboard holds a few memories of his daughter: some toys, a book in which she repeatedly wrote ‘Om Sai Ram’, a pen that had been next to her bed the night she died, and a hairpin. “It was the hairpin she was wearing that night,” says Dinesh, thinking back to August 5, 2012, when his daughter, Geetika Sharma, took her life in their north-west Delhi housing society apartment. She was 23.
“She is alive; she is with me,” says the father, now 65, who spends most of his time at home, and needs at least one family member with him. He and his son fear for their lives and try not to go out too often, though Dinesh does step out to visit the gift packaging unit he consults with, more to take his mind off the despair.
