Suicidal Engineering

People say, “When Engineers play, the world sees a revolutionary way”. I concur. Most of you would agree. But how do these Engineers play. A burning question, do they even play?

Like every day as we assemble in the Mausi (read: tea-shop), even today we did. But unlike other days when our center of discussion were ranging in a very narrow bandwidth of Start-ups to internships. Today we had a sad story in store. A dear friend of ours had left us forever. Although none of us had seen him earlier, neither of us could trace who he was. But he was someone within our family our very own NIT family. For the administration, he did commit suicide. And the best here I can do, I mourn for the departed soul. May his soul rest in peace!

Does the story end here? It has been 29 months since I came into engineering and this was the 6^th condolence meeting I was in. I was sobbing while in the condolence. How these suicides and deaths have become the run-of-the-mill for the engineering institutes. After all where is the flaw? The administration obviously can’t evade, it is to be blamed. But is it only the administration which is to be blamed? Aren’t we also responsible to an extent? People jump from the fifth floor just because they failed in love. Can you imagine more stupid reason for a suicide? Agreed, I’m not the right person to comment on love and valentine. But suicide isn’t sublime.

And strikingly, more reputed the institute, more suicide cases buzz. Students are stressed with the curriculum unreasonably. And the ones who attempt suicide are a subset of the union of the two mutually exclusive sets.

Set 1:

Students who aren’t endowed with extra ordinary intelligence. (I personally believe, talent can never be nurtured, it is always god-gifted) This type of students are either in Engineering because, the government treats them as their son-in-law and reserves seats for them or because they couldn’t think of any other career option after class XII and iteratively tried for Engineering exam and made it somehow after ‘n’ number of attempts.

Set 2:

Students who are endowed with intelligence but they don’t have faith in their intelligence. Rather they prefer working hard which brings them among the elite in terms of GPA. Even if you burn the midnight oil in Engineering, you can’t be satisfied being second to any XYZ. And if it becomes repetitive the bad consequences start popping. Had they kept faith on their intelligence and would have done smart work instead of working hard, they would have never been in the elite group but would have done fairly well and been above average.

There is another set of students, the Set 3:

These students are in engineering not because they are super talented but because they are lucky to have affluent fathers. Any engineering college can be their dream alma mater they just need to throw in some cash. This set of students unlike the previous two, doesn’t bother about GPA and so is rarely stressed. But a fair part of this set goes insane, when it comes to love and valentine. And a few cases of suicide do come out of this flock, but the reasons are different, for their father’s would have thought, Engineering was not their cup of tea. These students would have done miracles in the domains they loved.

Fortunately, IITs and NITs are devoid of such set 3 students. Had they been not, maybe I would have attended few more condolence meetings.

WAKE UP PARENTS !

Don’t be so obsessed with Engineering. Stop saying to your children, “ Beta Engineering Entrance me to baith hi jana”. There is no dearth of lucrative career options. Just put yourselves in your children’s shoes and see the world. The world would look better and brighter.

image courtesy: greenbd.info