Nagpur Today: In what could be termed as sheer barbarianism, a man thrust a knife into his wrist and was begging for alms at the Old Mansar Octroi where a lot of roadside eateries are there and a lot of people going to Mansar or other parts of Madhya Pradesh stop for refreshments. This man named as Kavi Madhukar Sutar, aged 60 years calls himself as a Bahuroopi.
Various forms of self-denial or voluntary suffering (commonly referred to as Ascetism) are practiced in various ways by members of many religions, like Buddhism, Catholicism, and Hinduism. Various indigenous peoples and primitivists also incorporate voluntary pain, suffering, and self-denial as part of their spiritual traditions as vehicles to the divine and/or rites of passage or healing. It has been speculated that extreme practices of mortification of the flesh may be used to obtain altered states of consciousness to achieve spiritual experiences or visions.
This somewhat secular group uses rites of passage from many traditions to seek their aims, including Hindu, Buddhist, shamanic, methods of seeking altered states of consciousness. For most people, even imagining cutting oneself deliberately until the blood flows, or pouring boiling water over one’s own arm causes a shivery kind of feeling. Consequently, most of us find it rather disturbing to witness self injury in other people, and the same is often true of health and social care staff unless they have become familiar with injures and with repeated self injury.
As we shall see, familiarity with injures, injuries and injure care can lead to a blunting of this reaction in health professionals, but a staff member who is not familiar with injures may still be empathetically provoked into thinking what it would be like if it was his or her own skin that was being cut or burnt.
Though this man Kavi Madhukar Sutar was bleeding, he appeared as if he did not feel any pain. He was walking very calmly asking for alms and people who was aghast to see such a gory sight were quick to give a five, ten or twenty rupee note. Nagpur Today staff offered tea and snacks. He chose to drink only tea and posed for photographs too.
