MANAMA, 7 October 2006 — A 26-year-old Indian man was about to enter the books as the island’s own “Romeo” after he jumped off a bridge and into the sea early yesterday morning, before he changed his mind and became another statistic in this year’s attempted suicides.
It needed the cold seawater to jerk the inebriated and lovelorn Romeo back to his senses. But by then he was in the clutches of the long arm of law.
The man, who works in a leading bank, surprised passers by and bystanders when he walked to the middle of the Sheikh Isa Bridge that links Manama to Muharraq around 3:30 a.m. and jumped into the sea.
He swam toward the deep end as shocked bystanders alerted the rescue crews that dispatched five police units, two coast guard boats, and ambulance to the scene. The man, who was intoxicated at the time, apparently was brought back to his senses by the plunge and attempted to swim back to shore, but struggled thanks to a dislocated shoulder caused by his impact with the water.
Policemen who rushed to the scene were able to pull him from the water and turned him over to paramedics who rushed him to the hospital. The depressed Romeo said he decided to end his life after a Filipino woman he loved turned down his repeated attempts to befriend her.
However, unlike Shakespeare’s Romeo the man realized, assisted by the sobriety-inducing high dive into cold water, that life was worth living, especially since his Juliet, unlike the one in Shakespeare’s piece, too would be enjoying her own life. The man was hospitalized and according to sources his condition was stable.
