A woman jumped to her death from the floor above mine yesterday, her office floor. I was in a meeting and somebody got a message and told everyone that one should avoid going through the front of the building for some time till they removed the body – it was the evening hour and everyone was on the verge of leaving. The meeting resumed tho’ some clucked and gasped – but they were few.
I took a smoke in the corridors at the stairwell – it must have been only a few minutes since the suicide as a lot of people were still rushing down – the lifts had been closed. As I finished the cigarette, some people started climbing up, including the police. A few women climbed up weeping and one colleague quashed the cigarette and left. I and the other colleague continued smoking – tho’ we moved a little back from the stairwell. The colleague told me he had seen the body being moved in a bag from the window – it was lying face down.
I left after some time.
Today, the morning paper told me she was 35, in HR and had a ten year old daughter. There was a grainy black and white picture of two constables standing around a space splattered with blood – the spot is directly in front of the place where we smoke downstairs. I wondered what it would have looked like if I had been standing there looking at that very spot?
The front was still closed when I entered the building in the morning but it opened in the afternoon. Since our appraisals were just announced, some jokes were passed.
The incident didn’t register an iota of any emotion in me – not even a senseless numbness – but I have been aware of it most of the time.
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