Sky is the limit!

How true! This is what as parents we instill in our kids right from their tender age, to work hard, try to excel and then they are sure to reach up there. The poor things slog, struggle, swim through the torturous, hard hitting salty, and prickly waves of the coaching centres in their teens to become great engineers and doctors. They try their best to traverse and wade through the agonising and turbulent tour for a few of their life's precious years, become mentally and physically exhausted to reach the set goals. They memorise, learn, study and languish in closed cellular jail type cubicles for years in the coaching factories that promise them exceptionally great future. Day and night, they bear the debilitating experience in their late teens that come up with so many hormonal issues, peer and family pressure, to become an IITian or get a top rank at NEET – basically to fulfill their parents’ dreams.

Researchers say, only two to three per cent of lakhs of the students who experience this painful travail get into premier institutes. What about the rest? Some manage in their jobs, if lucky. Some sensitive kids who are not able to satisfy their parents or the society's demands end up reaching the high skies by putting a full stop to their lives, taking a big leap from terrace of the coaching centres, their temples of hope.

It’s shocking and nerve-wrenching to read the news article recently, that 22 students committed suicide in Kota factory until now this year alone. Like them, hundreds of students are committing suicides across the country. Why are we making them feel so frustrated? We are all murderers to a great extent indirectly.

For God’s sake, engineering and medical are not the only fields that can give livelihood to our kids. Let us as parents and society as a whole, give them an option to explore, select and be what they want and once they decide. It’s our moral responsibility to support them to make their careers bright. There is a struggle everywhere, fittest is going to survive, but the fittest can't survive alone, he needs people to support him/her to be where he is. Man is a social animal. This competition is in all fields, in all domains and there is no denial about this, but if the student chooses his line of interest, follows his passion, he is sure to be happy in his life. It might take a while for him/ her to start earning.

Let us inculcate in them to be patient, not to compare their earnings with "others", make them understand that disparities do exist, but it's the satisfaction of work that gives joy... which everyone eventually longs for. There are innumerable professions like, for example, marketing, real estate, law, CA, commerce, administration, finance, travel and tourism, hotel management, catering teaching, data sciences, video making, business, textile, AI, fashion industry, agriculture, environment sciences, chemical, horticulture, genetics, nutrition, art, psychology, cinema to name a few.

We must guide our kids to use the wonderful chance to shape up and sculpt their careers they love and allow them to bloom by themselves. Let's not nip their petals and forcibly make them bloom, by that act they are bound to meet the unnatural end soon. That causes more disappointment and life-long misery to his near and dear ones.

Stress-related issues are causing irreversible psychological, physiological trauma and damage one’s life even after entering workforce. Let me say life after college is not a bed of roses... The odd working hours, deadlines, anxiety, irregular food habits, the pub culture in cosmopolitan cities accompanied by smoking, drinking, easy money, wrong companions, failed love affairs, callous attitudes in many youngsters, the lack of family bonds, being away from family affections, lack of social responsibilities…(not generalising though) are causing heart attacks, brain strokes, depression, suicidal tendencies, paralysis, dementia, skin, renal sort of serious ailments in youngsters which was unheard of before. Many are landing up in rehabilitation centres and mental asylums causing great concern. Where are we heading to? We must contemplate.

Let us all, together, the parents, teachers, lawmakers, financers, management at the coaching centres and HRDs at workplaces, help our students and youngsters flourish. Let’s support them wholeheartedly to transform them into mentally balanced, physically strong individuals.

They are the backbone of our nation for the future generations to come. Sky should be the limit for happiness and not the limit to end of one’s life.