An AI techie recently recollected the difficulties he faced while preparing for JEE and then failing to get into IIT a decade ago. The trauma, that he continues to feel intensely,
An AI techie's recollection of the difficulties he faced while preparing for JEE and then his family's reaction to him failing to get into IIT has moved social media users. X user Ankit (@kingofknowwhere) said that although it has been a decade since the incident, he still has to heal from the intense trauma he experienced because of it -- his family stopped talking to him.
"Ten years and JEE still haunts me," Ankit wrote. "What people don't understand is, middle-class kids like me really don't have many options. Like when I couldn't get into an IIT for my UG, my entire family didn't talk to me for 3 years. Except for Maa. Not their mistake. They sacrificed everything for me. Expectations are imminent."
Ankit wrote the post in response to another X user who made fun of young professionals talking about JEE on social media.
He further elaborated and painted a grim picture of the coaching culture prevalent in cities beyond the mainstream focus on Kota. Ankit mentioned Bokaro, Jamshedpur, and Ranchi incurring "2-3 suicides a week," attributing this to a desperation to escape poverty, particularly in Bihar and Jharkhand. He shared a chilling anecdote of a friend who had to leave his dying father to prepare for medical exams. "This is the usual chain of events," he said.
One of the "scarier parts" of his childhood, Ankit recalled, was witnessing a coaching faculty member attempting to convince a student who had "almost made it" to take another drop year with a discount. The student was "crying that his family had no more money for anything as they had already paid Rs 75,000 to Sir for two years." Ankit questioned, "How is this man or any man going to forget this?"
He starkly contrasted the JEE experience for the privileged versus the less fortunate. For the rich, it's "a test." But for others, it means leaving home at 16, living in "literal bunker[s] unfit for stay for anything that breathes," waiting outside second-hand bookshops, enduring poor food, disconnecting from family and friends, and living "like a hermit with lots of expectations."
The toll of this system has led to a disturbing desensitisation, Ankit confessed. "I am mostly desensitised to seeing this play out every year at home. I am okay with the news of kids dying because of these exams and that's a weird thing to experience." He described how his neighbours run PGs for IIT students, treating "kids like cattle" while living in bigger houses themselves. His own school, which admitted 500 students annually for JEE coaching, offered no commerce or arts options, and now even puts "sheds outside the school for incoming students."
For Ankit and those who grew up around him, the IIT exams are an indelible memory. "Everyone remembers everything and mulls and ruminates over it all the time. A man can win it or lose it but a man can never forget it," he concluded.
Read more: 'Why are they dying only in Kota': SC grills Rajasthan over surge in student suicides
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