Every year, innumerable students move to Kota to prepare for competitive engineering and medical examinations. Considering how incredibly competitive these examinations can get, they spend hours on end attending back-to-back classes and studying on their own the rest of the time. With little to no time for hobbies, family time, and rejuvenation, several kids suffer from declining mental health. And I think we all know about the increasing number of student suicides that have been happening in Kota.
To keep an eye on their kids, shower them with support and make their lives easier, many parents and grandparents have moved to Kota to live with them. One of them was Meenakshi Gupta, the mother of 17-year-old Ishaan Gupta from Gurugram, who is the topper of JEE Main 2024 Session 1 exams with a 100 percentile.
Meenakshi Gupta left her corporate job to be with her son, and support and motivate him when needed. She allowed him to watch television, engage in other recreational activities, relax as much as he needed to, and give him the space to communicate his needs and talk about his issues daily.
“It was scary when I used to hear the unfortunate news of students’ suicides in Kota. It was shattering because these were teenagers of my son’s age who lost their lives in this process. I also had doubts about whether my son was happy or not, but I trusted him and our relationship. We discussed every issue daily. I gave him enough time to relax when he wanted, and never stopped him from recreational activities such as watching Harry Potter or Masterchef Australia,” she told Indian Express.
After April 2022, Ishaan fell ill several times and his mother was there to take care of him. It was then that she realised that she had made the right decision.
“We shifted here in April 2022 and he fell ill several times after that. I was there for him in those moments and that assured me that I took the right step by shifting here,” she said.
Ishaan further revealed that in his free time, he used to surf YouTube (the only app that he used), engaged in singing which helped him with his mental health, played badminton for his physical health and played chess to help with the cognitive thinking that helped him with JEE.
It is because of parents like Meenakshi Gupta that kids are able to accomplish their goals!