By IANS,
New Delhi: He was young, bright and inspired by the philosophy of absurdism of Albert Camus. Hindu College student Shashi Shekhar, who committed suicide Friday, had recently contributed an essay on the famed author in the college journal.
Shekhar, 21, was a gold medallist and was pursuing his masters in Hindi literature. He identified Camus as “an honest man with all his pain and tragedy” (“apni sampurna peeda aur trasadi ke sath, ve ek imandar admi the”, he wrote in the journal).
“He was an author, he understood the pain of creation and also understood that for creation, man has to repeatedly protest against the established system (“Sahityakar the, srijan ki pida samajhte the aur yah bhi samajhte the ki isi srijan ke liye aadami ko baar baar sthapit vyavastha ke khilaf vidroh karna padta hai),” Shekhar wrote in his essay on Camus.
The piece written in Hindi in a measured and flawless handwriting, quotes Camus “we can only create at the verge of destruction.”
Camus, a French author and philosopher of 20th century (1913-1960), contributed largely to the philosophy of “absurdism”, which refers to the conflict between the human tendency to seek inherent value and meaning in life and the human inability to find any.
The contradiction that is in the base of “absurdism” perhaps reflected in his suicide note, which carried a description of a dream of love shattered before it could reach a conclusion, and a couplet: “It’s the story of my life; can we do nothing for the dead? And for a long time, the answer has been nothing”.
“because Camus spoke before time, no one understood him, not even his closest friends…” he writes in his essay in the journal.
His college mates say that Shekhar would keep away from any arguments, and had few friends.