Notes of Suicides

In 2006, 5,857 students — or 16 a day — committed suicide across India due to exam stress. And these are just the official figures. According to the unofficial figures around 30 young people commit suicide everyday due to various reasons.

Suicide notes left by youngsters reveal an interesting trend. Most students are conned by the society, their teachers, parents and peers into believing life has no meaning if answer sheets handed to them during examinations along with question paper sheets cannot be filled with appropriately correct answers as determined by a bunch of jokers who work for institutions that purportedly attempt to teach students everything they should know about life, except the meaning of life.

Anita Naresh, a 16 year old from Kanpur who swallowed dye last week wrote in her suicide note "I failed to remember all the properties of chemical element C2H6. To make matters worse, during my geometry papers, I confused my sines with cosines. My life appears meaningless and colorless now. What right do I have to love, to laugh, to have fun, to dance, to travel, to marry and have kids and to discover exciting new possibilities, when I lack even the ability to remember the properties of ethane?"

Another student from Chandigarh who hanged himself from a ceiling fan wrote in his suicide note "I failed you, mom and dad. I failed to find the solution to two geometric equations before the bell rang. I wish I had five more minutes, but unfortunately I lost precious seven minutes of my alloted time trying to solve a previous tricky equation. I failed god too. I was sent by god on this beautiful planet to correctly solve difficult and tricky geometric equations within the alloted time during exams. I'm a waste and I deserve to die and go to hell."

Parents of both the kids failed to read the sarcasm in the suicide notes and blamed the teachers for not preparing the students adequately. "My daughter was good in studies, but often used to complain that she had a tough time remembering properties of chemical elements. If only her chemistry teacher, Mrs. Raveena Pandey had paid attention to her problems and gave her extra coaching, we wouldn't have lost our daughter" wailed Mrs Bharati Naresh, mother of Anita Naresh

But its not just exam related problems that are forcing youngsters to embrace death so early in their lives. Peer pressure, inferiority complexes and relationship troubles also contribute to making life not worth livable for youngsters.

Suvarna Deshpande, 16, a first year commerce student from Wilson College, Mumbai ended her life swallowing rat poison, unable to bear the humiliation of being compared to a soap opera bahu. Her suicide note states. "In my group of girlfriends, all of us excepting me were given nicknames by boys of my class. Sheetal, my best friend was called Bipasha; Sangeeta was nicknamed Aishwarya, Deepa was compared to Katreena Kaif and Nandini was called Priyanka Chopra. But the guys avoided giving me any nick. I couldn't bear it any longer and finally got hold of one of them and insisted on being given a nick. He tried to escape but when he realized I wouldn't let him go, he relented and to my shock gave me the nick of Parvati, the gullible and stupid bahu from the serial 'Kahani har ghar ki'. I'm unable to bear this extreme humiliation and find death a better prospect then going back to my college knowing that everyone there thinks of me as a stupid 'behanji'"

Rajat Gupta, 17, lone child of his parents went into maniac depression when his new girlfriend of one and a half months refused to take his calls or reply to his text messages after a small tiff which he believed would lead to a break-up. Soon after he jumped from a high-rise leaving behind a suicide note "My life is over. My heart has broken into a thousand pieces. Everyone says that there are plenty of fish in the sea, but right now I can only see each and every fish entering my life and breaking my heart further into a million pieces. There's no hope left for me and I must die."

Sonu Trivedi, a 13 year old residing in Happy Valley, Noida found it difficult to continue living after being snubbed by his friends for not having XBox at home. In his suicide note, he wrote "My friends never liked coming to my house since we don't have Xbox at home. Yesterday, I borrowed DVD of the action movie 'X-Men' from bhaiyyu and persuaded my friends to visit my house to watch it. But as were watching the movie, our gang leader, Ashutosh got bored with the movie and said he wanted to do something else. Everyone got upset since there was nothing else to do at my house and left. I feel completely humiliated. I don't have a XBox and my friends don't like me. Whats then the purpose of my life?"

According to Rishikesh Banerjee who lost his son, when he committed suicide after failing to get admission to the college of his choice, youngsters should be educated that there is more to life than just passing examinations. After his son's suicide, he set up a website 10001-reasons-to-live.com and also authored a book by the same name. But he says in dismay "I can save thousands of life if students visit my site or read my book. But until now I have managed to sell only few hundred copies of my book. Unfortunately, the society gets to these poor young people, before my book reaches them"

Banerjee was hoping that schools and universities all over the country would introduce his book as part of the curriculum, but except for a couple of orders by college libraries, he has found no takers for his book. "I get depressed by the apathy and lack of interest in solving the problems of youngsters by school and college administrators. Sometimes I feel like committing suicide myself for failing to make much of a difference despite all the hard work I've done in writing a book and setting up my website. But then I pick my book, randomly read a page and find a reason to continue living." he said with a sigh.