By Dr. K. Javeed Nayaeem, MD

Just a few days ago, we all read in our newspapers a very disturbing report about a young boy, who was preparing to crack the NEET examination, to enter medical college, and who walked away from the grind, unable to bear the pressure anymore.

Yes, the nineteen-year-old boy, whose ambitious parents had perhaps set high goals for him and who had got him enrolled into a coaching centre at Kota in Rajasthan, decided to just walk away from every one he knew, including his parents and every one of his life’s goals and simply lose himself, into the distant horizon.

After the examination, he had assured his family that it had gone well and he had answered 160 questions. However, the next day, he sent a message to his brother on WhatsApp, saying that he did not wish to study any further and was going away and that he would return home after five years.

“I am leaving home. I do not want to study further. I have at least Rs. 8,000, and I am leaving home for 5 years. I am selling off my phone and destroying the SIM card. Tell mother not to worry. I will not take any wrong step. I have everyone’s numbers. If needed, I will call you anytime but I will definitely call you once a year,” the boy’s message said.

The desperate feeling of helplessness and the pointlessness of just pursuing ambition blindly, while losing out on the other joys that life has to offer us, comes across so poignantly and painfully from this boy’s message.

And, if we come to think of it, there certainly will be thousands of similar young boys and girls, across all our homes, who would be harbouring sentiments exactly like his and whose pain we may not be aware of or sadly still, even unwilling to acknowledge and address.

There is a great need for much introspection and analysis here. Irrespective of how lofty our own dreams are for our children and how impressed we are with the achievements and accomplishments of the children of our friends or relatives, we as parents of our own children should come to terms with reality.

We should understand that not all children are capable of replicating the abilities of their classmates, because they come with vastly differing aptitudes and capabilities.

The most reassuring thing that becomes obvious here, if only we are willing to look for it, is that while some children can excel in academics, even the not so studious ones have in them some very amazing talents and admirable qualities.

And these qualities can be as commendable as unusual honesty, helpfulness, humility and a sensitivity to the feelings of others. And, these too are all qualities that are just as worthy of being recognised and valued like academic excellence, which alone unfortunately has become the yardstick by which we measure success today.

And, because we do this, we have come to a stage where we blindly put our children through some very gruelling rigours of cracking entrance examinations, that we believe are the only portals to a good life. This is where the fault lies.

As most of us have come to know by now, Kota has become the ‘entrance portal town’ for coaching aspiring candidates for almost every kind of entrance examination.

But in the process, it has transformed itself from being famous to notorious, simply because of the high incidence of suicides that we have been seeing there among the thousands of students who go there, or are sent there, to chase their dreams.

We are told that the situation there has become so alarming that most facilities that house students there, have completely done away with ceiling fans, despite the hot weather of that region, just to prevent students from hanging themselves in sheer desperation and depression!

I wonder how much more disgusting and distressing the situation should become before we realise that life is not only about chasing goals and getting helplessly lost in the process!

Healing the Highway!

The rather surprising news that more than twelve thousand drivers have been penalised for over speeding, in just fifteen days, after speed cameras were installed on Mysuru-Bengaluru Highway, only goes to show that no amount of pleading or appealing to the good sense of citizens helps in instilling a sense of civic responsibility into them.

Till this was done, all the horrendous accidents that happened, all the precious lives that were lost and all the anguish we saw all along, on what was meant to be a road to safety, ease and comfort, could not cure us of our craze for speed and our disregard for our own safety and the safety of others.

There’s no denying that we seem to be nation of recalcitrant and unrepentant people, who can follow rules only under the eye of the law and only under the threat of heavy penalties.

We understand no other language and therefore the law enforcement authorities would do well to continue their surveillance as a constant feature, in the days to come.

Who knows, in the very long time that it takes for us to learn to obey the law, the entire cost of building our highway to happiness, may be completely recovered by way of fines, thus paving the ground to making it a completely toll-free road. That would indeed be some real happiness!

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