At a time when premiere institute IIT has been rocked by a recent spate of suicides, a student at Ahmedabad’s CEPT University’s death by suicide on Wednesday, points at deeper problems plaguing the competitive Indian set up.
According to Gujarat University police, Shiv Mistry, 23, a final semester Architecture student and native of Vadodara, jumped from the terrace of a six-storied apartment building in Panchvati where he lived as a paying guest. Confirming the same, inspector V.J. Jadeja briefed that Mistry jumped from the terrace of Dhruvin Apartments around 6.24 am on Wednesday.
He has left behind a suicide note which clearly states that he “was not interested in pursuing the course and that he felt unloved and neglected by his family.”
The deceased’s note points at parental aspirations being thrust on children from an early age. Addressing his parents, Shiv penned: “I always thought life is not about money or materialistic things but about what you do. My inability to do what I want in life and suffering because having to do what I do not want to do (sic).”
In the two-page note, Shiv stated that he felt he was a failure in the eyes of his family. The shell-shocked family is yet to reconcile to the loss though Shiv’s father, Mahendra Mistry (56) a furniture businessman, has ruled out any foul play. “In his statement, he maintained that Shiv was under severe stress owing to the academic pressures,” reported Gujarat University police officials.
Shiv’s note further details that he decided to end his life, “because of a constant feeling of being a failure in your eyes, because of anger and frustration built up over the years of working at the workshop (his father’s furniture workshop) that I didn’t want to but had to just to be able to study, also because of the feeling of being unwanted and unloved and getting to know that I was an unplanned child.”
Almost writing his heart out in the note, Shiv further shared that he did not want to become an architect but wanted to “make various creative things, from products to furniture using every technique.”
Significantly, at the recent IIT Council meet at IIT Bhubaneswar on April 18, the body adopted a resolution to provide a round-the-clock professional help, either by collaborating with counsellors of nearby hospitals or having one on the campus.
The move has been hailed by academics and tagged as “need of the hour.”
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