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AHMEDABAD: The phone rang, and the Kahnanis’ world came crashing down. Their daughter Drishti Raj Kahnani, a 25-year-old MBA-PGP student of IIM Ahmedabad, had ended her life at her dorm room on Wednesday afternoon.
The incident sent shockwaves through the IIM-A fraternity as this is probably the first case of suicide by a student on the six-decade-old campus.
The second-year student, who stayed in dorm number 8 on the old IIM-A campus, hailed from Muzaffarpur in Bihar and lived in New Delhi, said Satellite police. “Around 2.30 pm, her friends visited her room. When she did not respond to their knocks and shouts, they broke the door and found her hanging from the ceiling fan,” said inspector J B Agrawat.
By Drishti Raj
Women have been taught very early on in their lives to base their identity on everything else other than herself. Patriarchy teaches women to be a daughter, sister, wife and then a mother, and devoid her of become an individual with a sense of identity. Slowly and steadily, throughout her life, a woman learns that she is everyone else’s but herself. This belief is further reinforced by marriage which marks the transition of a woman from one social unit to another and she gives up her family name – a vital part of her identity till date- to take on her husband’s name. In India, this cultural belief that a woman is either a goddess to be worshiped or a precious family’s dhan to be controlled and protected is reinforced by films, rituals, music and other form of arts & tradition.