Before getting off the car at 10 that Tuesday morning, Papiya clasped her husband’s hand to say she was feeling low. Pijush Karmakar asked her if she was carrying her medicines and told her to take them once she got to office since there was no water in the car.

The 43-year-old mother of two girls reached her place of work at the National Atlas and Thematic Mapping Organisation in Salt Lake, and at lunch break went up on the roof of the seven-storeyed building, took off her sandals and jumped to her death.

It’s that simple because we don’t know what happened in the few hours between the time she got off the car and the break for lunch.

If her life flashed by in that time, it’s hard to fathom why it should tip Papiya over the edge.

The morning had begun like any other day. She got up at 5.30 and, as Pijush left for his morning walk, prepared her eight-year-old elder daughter for school. He returned and walked their daughter to the school bus. It was by then time to wake up the younger one. As he read the paper, Papiya roused her.

“She’s fussier and takes longer to get ready so it would take an hour. Her bus comes at 7.45 and she (Papiya) was busy getting her ready till then,” recounts Pijush, who is director of finance in a Sector V company.

Papiya didn’t have the time to have breakfast with her husband and ate as he got dressed. They left together for work, as they did every day.

Pijush and Papiya married — it was arranged — in 1993 and had their first child in 2000, the second arriving after about three years, as the God of modern life ordained. They were a happy, successful and two-car family, which had a busy life and looked forward expectantly to weekends as many of us do.

As her husband pursued what looked like a thriving career in management, Papiya worked as a senior geographical assistant at the organisation that operates under the department of science and technology, making the national atlas and various other maps. A bright student who got a first in her MSc in geography, Papiya was good at her work, her colleagues said, though the central government job might not have taken her career very far.

Some might say it was the job that would suit a working mother well — not too demanding but not mind-numbing either. Not too paying and yet not minimum wage either. Unlike her husband who said he’d get home from work not before 10 every evening — and that it was an improvement on the past when he would return to find his family asleep — Papiya would reach their Jadavpur home by 7.

And yet.

Last September she overdosed on sleeping pills in a first warning. “We kept her under watch after that and took her to a psychiatrist,” said Pijush, recalling that signs of trouble appeared about a year ago.

“It was as if she was increasingly withdrawing into a shell. And our efforts to bring her out of it were becoming fruitless. She was depressed and was under medication and though that helped somewhat, she would feel very low from time to time.”

Like everyone she’d have days when she’d laugh and talk and others when she’d be listless and clam up, saying “bhalo laagchhena (don’t feel well)”.

If there was a sense of inadequacy, the workplace was possibly not the root, said her colleagues. “It’s a government office. How much of stress can there be? She would come in by 10 (and that’s early) and leave by 6. In fact if the women leave by 5.30-5.45 we don’t say anything,” said a senior official.

A colleague, who too is a mother, felt: “She was torn between work and home. ‘Aajke thik kore tiffin dite parini (I couldn’t prepare the children’s tiffin properly),’ she’d say and worry. Little things, we would always tell her such things happen. That she was worrying about her family needlessly. But she'd feel guilty over it all.”

If she was assailed by a sense of failing as a mother, the sociologist Bula Bhadra saw her as part of a trend where women achievers had emerged as the “neo-gender”.

“On one side they can say I’m educated, I’m employed and I’m not deprived. But on the other hand the primary responsibility of managing the household lies on her since no one will blame the husband if the household is not managed well. Suicide is rising in this group,” Bhadra said.

The sheer physical demands are crushing enough to contemplate if not the end of life, then at least questions as to when there will be some time to breathe. If the day began at 5.30, it didn’t end for Papiya with the return home at 7 when the hour struck for school projects, homework, drawing classes, tuition.

Which working mother doesn’t have to cope with this pressure?

Bhadra said: “Women with jobs go through the two hands of a clock syndrome. They do double a day’s work and it is common to feel pressured by it. What generally helps in this case is the family and society. The husband, parents, in-laws, friends, colleagues, relatives generally step in.”

Papiya had this social support system in abundance, it would seem. The Karmakars were not a nuclear family, they lived in the same house with Pijush’s parents and there is nothing to suggest strained relationships. She was close enough to tell her mother-in-law that day that she wasn’t feeling too well and was advised not to go to work.

Her parents and her brother and his wife also lived within 2km from their home and Papiya would frequently visit them on the way to the children’s tuition.

“We loved each other a lot,” said her husband, adding that communication between had never appeared to be a problem.

“We went to Santiniketan for a weekend in January and to Shankarpur for another in February. She loved travelling. I'd make time so that we could travel together. But lately she was losing interest even in the things she loved."

He traced the beginning of her mental disturbance to the time when their elder daughter had some problems in school. "She'd have phases of restlessness or impatience or become very detached. So all of us (my parents and I) tried talking to her and ultimately took her to a counsellor."

She confided in the counsellor that she had difficulty reconciling work, home and the children's studies. The counsellor helped her prepare a daily routine to manage her time better but she discontinued her sessions soon after.

Papiya didn't stop going to the psychiatrist, though they chose a new one. "She'd ask the doctor, 'Will I get better?' The doctor assured us saying that it was like any other disease and things would improve with time," Pijush said.

Women are said to have a higher rate of suicide attempts and a lower rate of success, perhaps because they talk more. "If you talk about your feelings more, the likelihood that you will actually commit suicide is reduced. Talking helps," agreed psychologist Mohormala Chatterjee.

One of her colleagues, who knew her as a petite, pretty woman always tastefully turned out in handloom saris or a salwar-kameez with little or no make-up, recounted: "I wasn't present for about a week, and a week before that she wasn't in. So we hadn't talked for quite a while. If we were there perhaps…."

If, perhaps, another colleague, who'd sit next to her on the chartered bus, had not been on leave for some time before that Tuesday morning.

If Papiya had hung on until the lunch break, perhaps that day would've turned out different. At 1.45 a young colleague she'd usually have lunch with called her to find out if she was coming to the canteen.

The girl recalled: "She (pointing to the other lunch companion) wasn't there that day. So I was expecting to have lunch with her (Papiya) and when she didn't answer I figured she had work. Soon after that…."

The phone had gone on ringing that afternoon, drowning out the memory of the song Papiya had sung on a Rabindra Jayanti: Aha ki ananda akashe batashe (what joy in the sky and air - a song from Satyajit Ray's Goopi Gyne Bagha Byne). A poet can be remembered even without saying the words he wrote himself, she'd said.

Words - exchange of spoken words - might have saved her. Or so the experts say.

Malini Banerjee