Kota in Rajasthan is famous for its coaching centres and now infamous for student suicides. NEET and JEE aspirants don’t have friends here and prefer to stay alone in hostel rooms. It seems Kota grooms children for loneliness. Those who are troubled are sent back home as soon as they are spotted.
As I sit in the student cell department of a police station in Kota, the phone rings. On the other side of the phone is a girl who has come to Kota to prepare for the NEET exam and become a doctor. Now, she is talking about killing herself.
“I want to meet this girl,” I tell the police officer. With a bit of concern and foreboding on his face, he says: “It doesn’t take a lot of time for cases like these to worsen. She lives on the 6th floor. In six seconds, it could all be over.”
