It was an unusual scene at busy Amira Kadal in Srinagar when a teenager girl jumped in to the river Jhelum to end her life. For hours people leaned across the bridge’s railing to see volunteers, who had jumped after her, scan the gushing river unsuccessfully for any sign of her. It took hours to fish her body out of the swelled river. Within one week of this suicide another girl, again a teenager from Srinagar, jumped into the river in full view of the shoppers and commuters, to end her life. The second incident shocked onlookers completely as they failed to understand why youngest are so careless with their lives. In last one year around 50 such suicides were reported in local press from across the valley. And the majority of these victims were in their teens.
In the second case, the girl from Srinagar’s body was fished out of the river after 14 days of search. The desperate search for the girl’s body made news on a daily basis in local press.
The number of deaths has reached an alarming high in last one decade among teenagers. There have been many instances where these teenagers have taken their lives just because of peer pressure, lack of confidence, differences with parents or over poor performance in studies. The cut throat completion that this generation is put through is talking its tool. From the very beginning they are being put under pressure by their parents to compete with their friends or relatives. And when they fail to fulfil their parent’s dreams they feel dejected and in a fit of frustration take extreme steps by ending their lives. With lack of counselling available for these kids in schools or at home, they end up acting according to their own understanding which is often destructive and immature. In most of the developed countries there are counselling centres for such teenagers who feel chocked in their small world by mounting pressure they are put through. But in this part of the world one has to manage pain, anger, frustration etc on his own as there is no other way to deal with them. In good old days it was elders duty to groom youngsters and make them ready to face the hardships of the world with a smile, but with generation gap widening, such things are a rare sight. This generation loves to bury their heads in their flashy gadgets rather than sit with a wise man to understand the mysteries of the world. And when they are faced with a tough situation they fail to handle and end up throwing their precious lives away. It is a collective loss for a society. We must learn to bridge the gap so that Jhelum is not sorrowed again!
