Carol Andrade Column: Seasonal suicide greetings

Carol Andrade Column: Seasonal suicide greetings

FPJ BureauUpdated: Wednesday, May 29, 2019, 03:15 AM IST
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I was reading UCAN India’s newsfeed a couple of days ago, and was told that apparently, this is not just winter and Happy New Year, but also ‘suicide season’, when students (including aspiring) all over the country wake up and (my interpolation) realize three things. That their parents are exploitative unto death, that they are never going to reach goals set for them by others, so they might as well die pretending to try, and that life’s a bitch and then you die.

If the statistics provided by various government bodies and NGOs are right, throughout the year, hour upon hour, one student will take sleeping pills or hang themselves, jump off bridges and buildings, step in front of speeding trains, slash their wrists and generally embrace the great unknown beyond because the life they know is so bloody awful. That’s 10,000 young lives each year out of a total of around 135,000 suicides for the country, 17 percent of the world’s suicides. Globally, according to WHO, the figure is around 800,000. However, 20 times this number actually attempt suicide.

There are many factors that contribute – the breakup of traditional family structures, massive pressures to succeed in the work place, peer influence, a frightening focus on consumerism as an index for success.

China may have its tiger moms, educated and dedicated to firmly steering their kids to similar or greater levels of success. But if we are to be honest, the single biggest factor contributing to the increasing number of student suicides in this country is the rise in India of hyena moms and jackal dads, that horrifying breed that lays the burden of their own frustrations and lack of success upon their children.

As a middle class society, we pride ourselves on “closely knit” families and community groups, extended family groups that “jointly’ push their kids onwards and preferably upwards, providing the infrastructure for single-minded obsessive focus on studying towards advancement.

We smugly point ourselves out as a society that continuously “sacrifices” for its children and takes the “long view” of these “sacrifices”. And we conveniently leave out the fact that we also demand success ruthlessly, that progress is measured in exams that are topped and if you cannot give your parents that, then just top yourselves.

I am so tired of reading about yet another wave of suicides in Kota, coaching capital of the world, where thousands of youngsters live away from parents, conscious of family savings draining away as they work towards joint entrance exams, CAT, MAT, IAS, their souls shriveling at the thought of consequences of failure. At 17 years old, when they should be happy and enjoying life, full of curiosity about what it holds for them.

Sure, most of us cannot afford to let them go along the undoubtedly hedonistic pathways they would choose for themselves without a doubt, if they had the chance! But then, so would we. So,  what does it cost to actually look at your children, not see future doctors, lawyers, corporate stars, and try and imagine a life without them. And then convey this picture to these young people with all its attendant horror and desolation.

Our children need to be told it’s okay to fail or change one’s mind. But to do that, parents need to look in the mirror and see the truth about themselves – that they are the biggest contributing factor to the potential suicides of their kids if they don’t let the pressure up. Is this going to happen anytime soon? I’m not holding my breath. It’s hard to give up one’s image of oneself as a caring, nurturing parent, doing everything for the sake of the child, when the truth is so much uglier.

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