The winter does not last forever: A message for the youth

Young people today can feel the weight of failure more heavily than ever. Recent suicides linked to NEET and other examination pressures have once again exposed the terrible despair that a setback can produce. A failed examination, a missed opportunity, or public embarrassment can seem unbearable. Social media magnifies every comparison, while families, often unknowingly, add to the pressure. Yet despair is not permanent, and failure is not the sum of your worth.I learned this slowly, painfully. Years passed in confusion before I understood what failure truly meant.In my youth, I was a field hockey player first and a student only in name. Under pressure, I chose biochemistry on a sports quota. Science was never my strength. Equations bewildered me; mathematics unsettled me. I had scraped through earlier exams without real mastery. University exposed how unprepared I was. I could not continue — not out of defiance, but because I simply was not ready.Yet even then, I wrote. I sent articles to newspapers. Some were published. Seeing my name in print gave me quiet anchorage. Writing was the one space where my mind felt ordered and alive.In the early 1980s, I left for the Soviet Union and studied journalism at Lomonosov Moscow State University. The training was rigorous: deep reading, clear argument, disciplined writing. Those years sharpened my thinking and opened my world.I returned to India in the early 1990s with new skills but the same old doubt. Confidence had always been my Achilles’ heel. Even when prepared, I doubted myself. Competence and confidence are not twins.In 1994-95, I cleared the written entrance test for a leading regional English-language daily and was called for an interview. It was an opportunity honestly earned. As the day approached, however, anxiety overwhelmed me. I panicked and did not appear.Soon after, a visit to the office of a radical communist group in Delhi unsettled me deeply. I began to believe I was being followed. Every white car looked suspicious. Every ring on the landline seemed deliberate. This marked the beginning of a 15-year struggle with mental illness.Despair became normal. I smoked and drank heavily from morning onwards. Medication dulled my thoughts and drained my vitality. There were nights I gathered sleeping pills but never swallowed them. I stood by Sukhna Lake contemplating silence. Once, I accelerated my car toward a roundabout, only to swerve at the last second. For a while, the abyss felt rational, almost inviting.What saved me was not dramatic heroism, but quiet persistence around me. My father made my recovery his mission. My psychiatrist was humane and understanding. At one point, when my medicines were stopped, she told my mother, “Our aim is his recovery, not eternal medication.” Her words stayed with us. Over time, my parents grew gentler and more patient.Twenty-five years ago I married; 23 years ago my daughter was born. I found a new anchorage in her. Holding her changed the arithmetic of despair. I could no longer afford to collapse. For her sake, I chose steadiness and stopped smoking.With my father’s encouragement and my eldest brother’s moral and financial support, I immersed myself in a decade-long study of Marxism, politics and world literature. Books became my healing.Twenty years ago, a chance encounter in a Chandigarh library inspired my first haiku. The strict 5–7–5 form seemed to mirror my own recovery — life need not be an epic to be meaningful; it can live in small, precise observations.Since then I have written 15 books, mostly haiku collections on the urban working class and ordinary lives in Chandigarh. I continue to write on grief, injustice and war — sometimes solemnly, sometimes satirically. None of this would exist had I surrendered to those darker years.A line from Nikolai Ostrovsky’s “How the Steel Was Tempered” has guided me through it all:“Man’s dearest possession is life. It is given to him but once, and he must live it fully, so that he does not endure torturing regret for wasted years.”To every young person who feels defined by a single setback, I say this: you are not your lowest moment. One examination does not define you. A missed interview does not define you. A season of mental paralysis does not define you. The world is far larger and kinder than it feels in your darkest hour.What endures is your decision to continue — one day, one step, one breath at a time.Winter can be long and feel endless. But seasons turn — quietly, gradually, almost imperceptibly. And when they do, you will be grateful you stayed.You endured.— The writer is a Chandigarh-based poet and journalist

The winter does not last forever: A message for the youth

A deeply personal account of failure, mental illness, despair and survival

Manu Kant

The winter does not last forever: A message for the youth

A deeply personal account of failure, mental illness, despair and survival

Manu Kant

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