For those who are new here…this is in continuation to the first part on Kota life
>> True life of an IIT Aspirant in Kota | Part 1: Living Alone and Distractions
Kota or any coaching hub for IIT JEE or NEET is notorious for ruining the lives of students in India. The claims aren’t entirely baseless but we can’t brush off this topic by blaming the city or coaching culture. Every discussion on mental health and suicide of a Kota student is limited to the topics like competition, coaching and exam pressure, but there’s a lot that goes on in their life be it overbearing parents, peer pressure, breakups, the constant thought of family’s financial condition, inability of our system to provide enough university seats and jobs or just inherent tendency of some kids to fall in laps of depression. Bad score in exam is just a trigger, not the underlying cause.
In 2016, my last year in high school, ~17 student suicides were reported. Of those 17 deaths, 2 were my batchmates. Just my luck! (Bad luck)
Now everyone knows that a standard Kota batch stuffs ~150 students in a classroom and keeps on periodically shuffling them into different batches as per ranks as if to avoid them from making any real friends. Students often don’t even get acquainted with all of their classmates. Like I said – my luck! that I knew those 2 kids tried to kill themselves.
One was a girl who always sat on the right corner seat of the front row and never missed discussing any of the Sunday mock papers with me. She had the prettiest smile, kinda like Deepika Padukone (not exaggerating). She was so hard-working, never forgot a single physics formula or a chemistry exception. Another one was a guy who used to sit two rows behind me in class (different batch) and strangely, always had the same silly doubts as me during lectures. Unlike me, he was always brave enough to ask those questions in front of all that crowd without any fear of judgment.
I don’t know what they were going through, they never told and I never asked ‘cause, like most of the acquaintances in Kota, we were not close enough to discuss personal life or anything away from our subjects in syllabus. For months after their suicide, I was troubled with a recurring question of whether I deserved to live if people my own age who were far more talented, ambitious, and intelligent than me were committing suicide. These 2 classmates who died had far more chances at clearing the entrance exam than me but they thought otherwise and I was still breathing shamelessly. Not only that, they were my classmates and I failed to notice them. I failed. I wish I had done something but how, I didn’t even care enough to see any change in their behavior. I don’t even know if there was any change in their behavior. Never before had I felt so inadequate on so many levels I can’t even begin to list them. Little did I know that this was not just a phase of self-doubt, this was going to be my life from then. No, I don’t blame myself for their death but this question of whether I deserve to live keeps boomeranging back in my mind every now and then.
But did I tell my parents about all this? NO, of course not. I didn’t even think of telling them. My 4-5 mins phone calls with parents remained limited to topics of lunch-dinner and my marks in regular tests. Nothing else interested them.
COMING BACK TO THE PRESENT YEAR
Good news:: A LOT of efforts are being put by each and every authority to stop suicides.
Bad news:: Suicide rates are still increasing every year. So far year 2023 is topping the charts with more than 20 suicides.
So much has been said and done over last decade –
- Rise in awareness. Parents, media, and teachers are more proactive nowadays. As I say this, I realise that not much has changed, many parents are still the same. But good changes always happen at a slow pace.
- Most of the coaching institutes have doctors’ and psychologists’ facility for students who wanna reach out. So I’ve heard from my juniors. But there’s still a gap. Coaching Institutes still refrain from talking about suicides in open forums, they mostly try to dismiss any news related to it.
- Our education system has improved considerably over time to unburden the students of the pressure. The decision to not add 12th boards’ marks in final JEE merit list, and taking JEE exam twice to only count the best of the two marks in final results are welcome steps. I wish I had this system during my years. Then the recent introduction of CUET gives easy backup for even science students, no more giving multiple different exams for universities like before. So yeah…it’s kinda better than before. But then competition has also increased at equal rate so where does that leave us?
Where are we going wrong?
If doctors, teachers, media, friends, government…everyone’s working their part; where the hell are we going wrong? If I may say something that’ll offend a lot a lot of people, I’ll put blame on parenting. But that will be projecting my case on rest of the aspirants. That’s completely illogical. Parents can’t always be at fault.
I wish I knew the answer to where we’re going wrong but I don’t. I’m just an aspirant. It’s certain that somewhere between all these talks on mental health awareness and program implementation by authorities, the true voice of teenage aspirants is getting lost, what they feel, their dreams, what they need- everything that holds their life together.
The question remains: Should we still go to Kota for JEE/NEET prep? >> READ NEXT