NEW DELHI, January 24: ``I want to commit suicide,'' pleaded the voice at the other end of the phone. ``I am going to die now.I don't want to listen to anyone or anything.'' The caller turned out to be a BSc first year student, she had called up a Sarthak helpline volunteer. And it took four hours of convincing before she began to confide in the volunteer.``I have not prepared for my mathematics paper. My cousin got more marks during the tests. My parents will never accept me if I don't do well. They won't be able to talk to relatives and friends,'' she said. Meenakshi (name changed to protect identity) did not want to take her exams.With examinations scheduled in March, voluntary organisations and helplines in the Capital are receiving more and more calls from young people worried about the coming tests.School and college students are increasingly making panicky calls to helplines. Sanjeevani, a helpline for distressed people, is receiving more than 50 calls from anxiety-ridden students every day. The number of calls increase between January and March. Says Raj Dagur, head of crisis intervention clinic at Sanjeevani: ``Students suffering from examination stress have already started dropping in. They are very nervous. The students are so panicky they refuse to listen. Often, they are worried that their cousins or friends will get more marks than them.''January to March and also May and June are considered crisis months for students. ``This is venting time for them. Students who face relationship problems suffer more as their examination stress combines with their already existing problems. Anxiety reaches a peak as the student cannot communicate with anyone,'' says A.A. Zukof from Sarthak.Sarthak will as start a 24-hour hotline for such children from February. It received as many as 8,000 calls during the crisis period last year. Out of them, 764 callers turned out to be suicidal. In 1997, Sarthak had received 3,500 calls during the crisis period out of which 500 callers turned out to be suicidal. There is a very thin line between a state of panic and a later attempt at suicide. On January 5, a class VIII student from Kulachi Hansraj Public School tried to take her own life by jumping down from the top floor of the school building. She had reportedly not fared well in her science tests.In January last year, a 14-year-old schoolboy, Saurav Jain, committed suicide by hanging himself from the ceiling fan because he had ``not done well in his English paper''. Every year, an increasing number of students commit suicide. The Delhi Police have collected statistics for the year 1996, and in that year a record 72 students killed themselves in the Capital. The reasons were failure in examinations, pressure of studies, unrequited love affairs and depression due to illness. According to police sources, the number of suicides by students have remained the same in the past two years. There is a spurt just before and after the examinations.''
