The newspaper headline stared at me like an unblinking eye: “Boy with 99.99% ends life on day of departure to medical college.” A teenager from Chandrapur, Maharashtra, bright as a shooting star, ended his own story before it had even begun. His suicide note said it all: “I don’t want to be a doctor.”

And what did the news agency add in its wise afterthought? “Children should talk to their parents.” Really? My dear sirs, he probably did! Maybe again and again. Maybe in the language of silence, with lowered eyes and heavy sighs. Maybe in trembling words whispered in the night. The tragedy is not that he didn’t talk. The tragedy is that nobody listened.

It’s not children who need to talk more. It’s parents who need to listen better.

I’m reminded of a scene from my own home, years ago. My younger one, then buried in science textbooks, walked into my room one night. She stood there with the kind of courage it takes to face an executioner and said, “Daddy, I don’t want to do science anymore. I want to change my stream.”

“But then,” I blurted, “how will you become a vet?”

And she, with piercing clarity, said, “I don’t want to become a vet. You want me to become one.”

I was dumbstruck. True, I had never directly insisted, but hadn’t I told a hundred little stories of how one day she’d treat dogs while I, her assistant, would haul the reluctant creatures onto the table? I thought I was being encouraging. She thought I was chaining her to my dream.

She changed her stream. Lost a year, yes. But today she’s a mental health therapist, who completed her studies in Seattle, —helping others fight the very despair that crushed that poor boy in Chandrapur.

Parents often carry dreams like family heirlooms. Doctor, engineer, IAS officer, businessman. We polish them, wrap them in good intentions, and slip them into our children’s pockets.

But children are not vaults for our unfulfilled aspirations. They are seedbeds for their own unique callings.

What would have happened if someone in that boy’s family had paused, leaned closer, and asked not “What marks did you get?” but “What makes your heart beat faster?” Maybe his answer would have been music, art, sports, or something unheard of yet. Maybe his 99.99% was not a ticket to a medical college but a sign of brilliance waiting in another field.

The saddest part is not his death. It’s the silence of his unheard dream.

If you are a parent reading this, do one concrete thing today: ask your child, in private, what three things make them lose track of time. Write the answers down. Then resist the urge to correct or redirect; simply keep that list safe. You may not always agree with the choices, but you will have begun the conversation that, in the end, could keep a child alive and working at what they were truly born to do..!

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