Trigger warning: the following article contains references to suicide; please avoid reading if you are disturbed by the subject.
Tears brim in Edire Laxmi’s bloodshot eyes as she stands outside the gate of the house where her son took his last breath. “I cannot open the door and see inside. It is too traumatic,” murmurs the frail 39-year-old from Pochamma Basti, Maheswaram, about an hour’s drive from Hyderabad. Unable to return home, she now stays at her mother’s house in a maze of narrow lanes lined with small dwellings in the prosperous village.
Inside a cluttered room filled with rice sacks, utensils and a faded calendar, Laxmi squats beside her mother, staring blankly at her phone. Memories flood in — of her quiet, brooding…
