Just Another Tragedy

It was a sunny morning, a lull in the rains, as the young boy, all of nineteen, but not yet a man, went to college to sit for his exam . The mother with a blessing for her darling boy, the father with an encouraging tip ,sent him along, and the boy went off with a smile. He saw his life stretched before him, his dreams he was confident of achieving and his fears he was sure to conquer, when he got his engineering degree.

Reaching the hall, what with last minute revisions, and the anxiety of what questions awaited him , he overlooked the presence of that godforsaken, ever present mobile in his pocket . Not wanting to draw negative attention, he chose not to inform anyone, but removed it from his pocket and left it lying beside him, on aeroplane mode . And he started his exam, impervious to that incriminating phone, lying dead beside him .

Not long after, with four minutes to spare, before the end of the three hour paper, there arrived the invigilators, who spotted the deadly phone. Needless to add, all hell broke loose. The poor boy who started the day, with dreams of the successful completion of his degree and a bright future, was marched off, shamed mercilessly and left with the words of mentors and teachers ringing in his head, that he had signed his death sentence.

Before his mother could reach, to extricate him from the clutches of the censuring faculty, he was left alone in a room, to ponder over his misdemeanour. As the door shut, the boy saw the doors shutting before him, one by one. His dreams of an honourable graduation, of a successful career, and his future, all come crashing down . The sorrow of bringing pain to his parents, seeing their name besmirched, and imagining their eyes filled with disappointment, were all overwhelming.

He saw no escape but to end the misery. Walking away from the room where he was left unsupervised, reaching a secluded block, climbing eight floors, he threw himself off, to end his life. A beloved son, lying there splattered on the asphalt, is what a heart broken mother witnessed on arrival. She would not be returning with her beautiful , cheerful son, but with his shattered, broken, lifeless remains.

Who do we blame for life’s terrible tragedies, is it fate,, or is it the cruel relentless system in this case ? A system that offers no second chances but is quick to judge and pass its sentence ? A system that weighs heavy, on poor students crumbling under its pressure ? Or do we blame that hapless boy, for his momentary negligence, do we fault him for his belief in a system that promised to afford him an useful degree , a successful career, a place in society, to achieve his dreams ?