‘Sorry Papa…’: Heartbreaking Teen Notes Spur Experts to Call For Compassion and Vigilance

Two heartbreaking suicides within a week—a 16-year-old boy in Delhi on November 18 and a 9-year-old girl in Jaipur on November 15—have once again exposed the lethal impact of teacher-led bullying and unrelenting academic pressure on schoolchildren. In Delhi, the Class 10 student left a gut-wrenching note apologising to his father and directly blaming his teachers’ harsh behaviour: “School ki teachers ab hai hi aise, kya bolu.” In Jaipur, a widely circulated video showed the girl jumping from the fourth floor of her school building; her family alleged sustained verbal harassment by teachers. Both incidents triggered protests outside the respective schools and reignited national alarm over the rising number of student suicides linked to institutional insensitivity.

Mental health professionals describe these tragedies as symptoms of a deeper crisis. Dr Roma Kumar, senior consultant psychologist at Sir Ganga Ram Hospital, Delhi, points out that the teacher-student ratio in most schools makes meaningful intervention nearly impossible: “One counsellor cannot handle 900 students; bullying and its emotional fallout often go unnoticed until it is too late.” Dr Rahul Chandhok, head of psychiatry at Artemis Lite, New Friends Colony, stresses that adolescent depression does not announce itself with obvious physical symptoms. “Parents and teachers must learn to read subtle behavioural changes instead of dismissing them as teenage mood swings,” he says.

Warning signs, according to Dr R. P. Beniwal, professor of psychiatry at Dr Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital, include sudden irritability, loss of interest in favourite activities, skipping meals, excessive sleep or insomnia, and reluctance to attend school. “When a child stops talking openly about their day or becomes unusually quiet about classroom experiences, it is a red flag,” Dr Beniwal explains. He adds that children facing harassment often internalise blame, believing they are “not good enough”, which deepens feelings of worthlessness.

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Educationist and Padma Shri awardee Dr Shayama Chona attributes part of the problem to a generational mismatch. “Today’s children are far more sensitive, while many teachers have become aggressively result-orientated,” she observes. “In the race for percentages and rankings, the emotional safety of the child is forgotten.” She recalls that earlier generations could absorb criticism more stoically, but the current cohort, raised in a hyper-competitive and social-media-driven environment, experiences rejection and public shaming far more intensely.

Experts unanimously urge immediate systemic changes: mandatory mental health modules in teacher training programmes, enforceable anti-bullying policies, functional grievance cells in every school, and smaller counsellor-to-student ratios. “Parents must pause and truly listen without judgement when a child hints at distress,” says Dr Chandhok. Until schools and homes create spaces where children feel safe rather than judged, professionals warn, more young lives will be lost to preventable despair.

The suicides in Delhi and Jaipur are not isolated tragedies; they are urgent wake-up calls for a society that still equates silence with discipline and academic success with a child’s entire worth. As Aamir Khan’s character in Taare Zameen Par reminded audiences nearly two decades ago, every child has unique strengths and dreams. Tragically, two teenagers this November felt those dreams were crushed beyond repair by the very institutions meant to nurture them.

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