Fate being a cruel tease, it came to light Saturday that Vadithya Nehru, the IIT-Kanpur student who took his own life Thursday upon being rusticated by his institute, would have been reinstated if only he had asked to be.
The dean of student affairs at IIT-Kanpur, A K Ghose, told Express on the telephone that Nehru had been one of 24 students who were struck from the rolls for failing to show a satisfactory performance in their first year. All of them volunteered for counselling and sought readmission. And they were readmitted with corrective recommendatons. All except Nehru.
Ghose said, “We give a chance to terminated students to apply again to resume their courses. All the terminated students came back with their parents and applied for readmission. We gave them counselling and recommended yoga classes to them. They are all back in class, except Nehru. I don’t know what happened to him. His brother came to campus and took him away.
” The shocking suicide of the 20-year-old student moved the people of his tanda in Nalgonda district to take a pledge never to take their own lives. In death if not in life, the boy did finally fulfill his father’s wish that he be of service to Narlaga tanda.
Hundreds of villagers, many from Nehru’s tanda and many dozens from hamlets all around, gathered in Narlaga for the funeral of the 20-year-old boy who so tragically carried the burden of their aspirations. They vowed to provide assistance to Nehru’s parents, Ramana and Panni.
“We thought we must take this pledge to send a message to youngsters in our tanda. Several of them dream of pursuing higher education. We want them to know that it’s not alright to take one’s own life,’’ said V Venkat Ram, a tanda resident and headmaster of the local school. Numb with grief, the boy’s father Vadithya Ramana and Panni watched impassively as their neighbours took the pledge.
Still only on the edge of coherence, Ramana -- fan of Jawaharlal Nehru, and dreamer of his son’s dreams - said he is determined to go to the IIT-Kanpur campus to know what that led his boy to think there was no hope.
Venkat Ram said they would like to know what kind of counseling IIT-Kanpur had for bright students who fell behind, such as Nehru. “We want to know if he could have been saved,” he said.
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