Film director Shonali Bose, who made movies like The Sky is Pink, Margarita With a Straw among others, recently penned an ode to a deceased friend that has been pulling at people’s heartstrings. Her friend Chika Kapadia, who was diagnosed with cancer and had no hope for a cure, spent his “Deathday” surrounded by friends and then gracefully embraced the end of his life with the help of DIGNITAS organisation in Zurich. He invited Bose not just to say goodbye, but also to shoot a documentary of his last few days.
DIGNITAS is a Swiss non-profit organisation operating on the principle “To live with dignity- To die with dignity”. It advocates, educates and supports care and choice during life as well as with regard to when a person chooses to end their life. Spearheading the worldwide implementation of “the last human right”, DIGNITAS offers assisted dying procedure. In operation since 1998, the organisation also aids in palliative care, suicide attempt prevention and advance health care planning, as per its website.
“I shot him for 2 weeks – filled with warmth and fun , drinking beer and chilling with friends and family who came from around the world. No anger, no tears. Utterly stoic, composed, calm, accepting and insanely courageous,” Bose wrote of Kapadia.
Kapadia waded to the end of his life peacefully and stoically, ate the Glucose D biscuits brought by Bose from Bombay, and recited Robert Frost’s poem, ending with “and miles to go before I sleep”. He fell to sleep two minutes later and his friends sat there for 30 minutes till he flatlined. He passed away on August 23.
In June this year, a tetraplegic man in Italy died by medically assisted suicide after winning approval from an ethics committee in the first case of its kind in Italy, reported AFP.
Federico Carboni, 44, from Senigallia in the Marche region, “died… after self-administering the lethal drug through a special machine”, the Luca Coscioni Association that helped with his case announced.
Helping someone end their own life is technically illegal in Italy, punishable with between five and 12 years in prison.
But the Constitutional Court ruled in 2019 that it was not always a crime to help someone who was in “intolerable” suffering, but who is capable of making their own decision, the AFP report added.
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