The diary 1 - The Student

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I write this in the still of the night as tears flow down my face

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I write this in the still of the night as tears flow down my face. Today something happened that shook the innermost core of my being. It must be admitted that it was a culmination of months of stress and loneliness. But something like this would happen to me is too much to fathom.

I was on my journey back from college in the train. It was the peak afternoon time with the sun in full power and the local train was empty. Like many such afternoons I was sitting in the train all by myself with me and my thoughts making up my world. No friends for company, nothing to do but just sit and see the world pass by, as the train took me home. But today something was different. There was hopelessness creeping up in me. I was feeling dizzy and gloomy.

For more than a year I have been studying engineering like millions of students. But I have never enjoyed it. I do not understand it and have no interest in it. I want to become a lawyer and fight for humanitarian causes. But how do I do it? How do I explain it at home? What about the lakhs of money my parents have already spent on me? How will I ever repay it? How do I back out from this mess that I am in? I have been alone for a long time now with no friends and hardly anyone with whom I talk. What is it that I live for? Will I ever be happy in the future? These thoughts were continually harassing me. Creating a havoc in my consciousness. I had nobody to talk to. I could not talk to my parents and see their disappointed faces.

These thoughts had been bugging me for some months. But today a few questions arose that shook me. Why do I live? Why do I continue to slog and slog into a deep tunnel when there is no light here? Is it not better to die? To escape this daily torture? This loneliness? As I continued to think along these lines , the thought of death suddenly seemed like a perfect decision. Suicide will give the necessary release. It will be freedom from this life of drudgery. Death seemed the only hope.

Having made up my mind I went to the door. The Mumbai local train was moving at a speed that it rarely picks up. Even the motorman wanted me dead I felt. Jump! Jump! Let it all end! Finish your life! It will be peace. My brain was buzzing and blasting itself with these thoughts. I was on the edge of the Mumbai local door. I knew that a jump would bust my head and kill me instantly. I was crying and crying. My heart was beating crazy. Just as I was about to take the leap some voice came up and shouted Wait! I looked around. There was not a single soul in sight. It was my heart calling out to me. Some deep part within me recalling me from the hopelessness. I pulled back and went and sat back on the seat. Deeply traumatized by what was happening I just sat and cried the whole journey back home.

Suicide? Me? Had I lost it? What was I about to do? Frankly, I do not know what gripped me. But I can assure you that if the voice had not come then I would have been long dead by now. I have been sitting by myself and crying in my room since. Am I still suicidal? I don't think so. What is it that I want to do with my future? I frankly do not care right now. I just wanna live. Peacefully. I know one thing. I shall get out of this mess that I am in. Do something. Anything. And be content.

How did I get here? I think it is because the society has made a set path which I have to follow. The set path to success. Material success. Happiness is a carry on which may or may not be present. Does personal freedom and choice not count? Are the dreams of parent's primary and children's secondary? And what dreams when life itself is so unpredictable? I would have been dead today. What use would have so much thinking done to me? After sometime everything would have become normal in this world. Then what is it that I live for? I must live for myself. No one else. Fight whatever life throws at me and see where it goes. I do not know the future. But I do know that today I am born again. Today shall be a secret that only this diary shall know. No other soul. To life!

(This is an attempt by me to say what many students go through. Student suicide is highly rampant in our society and is a dark reality. This boy himself would have been a casualty. When will this pressure be removed from our kids? Kids should be encouraged to follow different ideas and fulfill their dreams. Not find new ways of ending their lives. A country with stressed children is a sorry country indeed. Tell your kid to follow his dream. Because in the end , nothing really matters except having lived our lives our own unique way. Cheers to LIFE!)

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