People take their lives all the time for different reasons in different ways. The suicide bombers volunteer to be blown into pieces so that they kill others by the blast of their bombs. In 1933, a 19-year-old Japanese student named Kiyoko Matsumoto committed suicide by jumping into the 1000-foot crater of a volcano on the island of Oshima, Japan, which started a bizarre fashion followed by three hundred children. Bobby Sands, the IRA activist, starved for 66 days and died from hunger strike. Horace Wells, who pioneered the use of anesthesia, anaesthetised himself with chloroform and slashed open his thigh with a razor in 1848.

Suicide is sudden death with a difference. All deaths are accidental, even when someone dies in the deathbed. Doctors can only give a timeframe of death, three months to six months, even in most predictable cases, but the exact hour of dying is not known until death. Thus while every other kind of death happens by chance, suicide happens by choice. It is the only time the actor gets to decide when the curtain will drop during the show.

Suicide is a lot like leaving a theatre in the middle of a movie or cutting off a conversation when one is bored. If man is mortal, suicide predates it like a reservation clerk who breaks the serial for a small payoff and brings forward the doctor's appointment for a patient who arrives late. Suicide is premature death; it's early cashing in of life because the present value of future streams of staying alive isn't worth one's time.

At times suicide is the last resort, the end of the rope for men and women who have no other recourse. Hitler committed suicide when his defeat was certain, and Goebbel killed his children and wife before taking his own life to follow his Führer. For them life was over because they had lost the war, because their struggle to conquer and subjugate for the primacy of the Aryan race, which rendered meaning to their very existence, was no longer relevant. Harikiri and sepukku are suicidal methods, which have held death and dignity in a delicate balance for respectable men in the Japanese society.

Thus when suicide is the honourable exit for the mighty, it's also the escape for the meek. Parents, who fail to provide for their children, kill their children and then take their own lives. Dishonoured women often commit suicide in shame and anger for the plunder of their jewels in the hands of insensitive men. A rickshaw driver killed himself in northern part of Bangladesh because he couldn't find justice for his daughter who was raped. During the Buddhist crisis in South Vietnam in the spring of 1963, a monk immolated himself in downtown Saigon in protest against the government's favouritism of Catholicism.

But the biggest question is how people arrive at their decision to commit suicide, meek and mighty alike. Is it an emotional imbalance, a sentimental overcharge or some kind of a psychological malfunction? Do people lose their minds before they arrive at a decision to withdraw themselves from this world? How do they convince themselves to throw away life, while others are ready to kill for it?

Suicide is often made dramatic as if to signify the life it's about to erase. In 1970, a newscaster named Chris Hubbock shot herself during broadcast right after she finished rattling off, "And now, in keeping with Channel 40's policy of always bringing you the latest in blood and guts, in living colour, you're about to see another first -- an attempted suicide." Some people prefer to die with a bang, while others do it with a whimper.

Somehow the decision to take one's life is rooted in a conflict. All suicides are misfits, people who fail to cope with their environment, therefore suffering from misgivings, doubts, fears, betrayals, and diffidence that put them in a void. Somehow everyone lives two lives, one inside and another outside, one that faces him and one that faces the world. When these two worlds drift apart, the person falls through the crack.

Statistics show that 75 per cent of those who fall through the crack are men. But then most likely group to attempt suicide are young women between 15 and 19 years. About 25 per cent of the population personally know someone who has committed suicide. Most common causes of suicide are single marital status, unemployment, social deprivation, history of physical or sexual abuse, social isolation and alcohol or drug problems. Women have a special reason to attempt suicide, which is if they suffer from eating disorder. The most frequently used method in suicide attempts is self-poisoning, about 85.4 per cent according to a survey.

German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche extolled suicide as a great source of comfort, because it enabled the calm passage across many a bad night. Suicide gives those who need it, an option to cop out if life is no longer relevant, interesting or useful.

A film director named James Whale took his own life in 1957 and gave his reason for it in a suicide note, " The future is just old age and illness and pain.... I must have peace and this is the only way." To some people, suicide is the end of life for a new beginning, it's like surrendering the old licence for renewal, eschewing the old to embrace the new.

In a sense, suicides are volunteers in a fixed game. People must die anyway in the end, and suicide only hastens the inevitable. But then suicide is also cowardice laced in courage. Why would anybody dare taking his own life unless he is desperate to escape from this world? Suicide is often like burning the house to kill the termites.

Yet people live as they die, and some of them take their own lives when living becomes unbearable. But that isn't true all the time. Michael Hutchence, a member of the Australian rock group INXS, hanged himself to death in a suspected case of autoerotic asphyxiation. Autoerotic asphyxiation arose out of the observation that men executed by hanging often got an erection and sometimes ejaculated. It's described in detail in Sade's Justine and is mentioned in Beckett's Waiting for Godot. Why it works is unclear. The simplest explanation is that lack of oxygen causes lightheadedness, reducing inhibitions and enhancing the sexual experience.

At times, therefore, suicide is unintended death although its performer is aware of the risk in it. The same thing is true for explorers, adventurers, conquerors, rulers, and heroes who have died to bring forth a good cause. They knew they could die before they embarked on their risks. That makes every noble cause a suicidal act. Although every suicide may not be a noble act, the realisation that one isn't capable of it also pushes one over the edge.

Mohammad Badrul Ahsan is a banker.