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A Priceless Life ended for lack of Two Cents!
I have no photograph of Sania. I don't even know if one exists, certainly not on the web that I can find. So I'm showing you a photo of Sharuna and Kranthi, from not dissimilar backgrounds of rural villages. Proudly displaying their State exam certficates, they are examples of what can be achieved when we get it right. Beautiful girls headed, we hope, for a life of success and happiness.
But what of Sania?
I chose the name Sania for this endeavour simply to remind me, and hopefully you also once you have read her story, of the vital importance of working to combat poverty related suicide everywhere, and particularly in the developing world.
Sania was a 12 year old girl who took her own life in September 2005. Who knows if there were other reasons, but the reported reason was that she needed 1 Rupee (that's 2 US cents) for a school meal of rice, and her mother did not have it to give.
According to a BBC report which in turn seems to have had the story from the Indian Telegraph newspaper, Sania and her widowed mother lived under a tarpaulin sheet in a village north of Calcutta. Sania never got to eat at school but survived on whatever food her mother could obtain from the houses in which she worked as a maid.
Sania, having seen her school mates eating their 2 cent rice cakes, asked her mother if she could have 1 Rupee so that she might do the same.
Her mother later told the Indian Telegraph newspaper, "I did not give her the money because I did not have it. I snapped at her when she insisted on it."
When her mother came home from work that day, she found Sania hanged from the ceiling by a sari.
These are the simple facts as reported by the BBC here http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/south_asia/4277980.stm
Poverty is the worst form of violence against humanity, as Gandhi said. Sania's story is heart wrenching and most of us reading her story will feel pain, even outrage... BUT only for a moment... before turning away, back to our own concerns, and doing absolutely nothing. I ask you to hold on to that pain, that outrage, and channel it into action....even if it's not much more than two cents worth of action. On this site I offer ways in which you can do so.
Let's do what we can to to offer some support that may save lives...offer a little from our plenty...time or money or skills...to save someone from the final despairing act. No matter what you give, I promise you will feel that you have gained much more.
May Sania rest in peace. Remember her, and please, please do not turn away this time.
For more information about the work of Shantidhara Social Service Society, please visit our general website www.shantidhara.org or contact us at shantidhara@yahoo.com | 
