Uncertainities of Life

This is not the first time that I've seen a highly talented and intelligent student cracking under the weight of expectation and peer pressure.

The first such case, I remember is that of my assamese friend. It was he who one day approached me while I was studying in my room in the FIIT JEE's Hostel located in Munirka, South Delhi (Feb 1998) and asked, "Ravi, can I move into your room?". In the very first look he seemed to be a very studious and sincere student. I said, "sure".
In those 25 days, that he stayed with me as my "roomie" (My time wasting habits forced him to change room again), I realized that someone can actually study for more than 19-20 hrs in a day. His Physics and Maths concepts seemed to be crystal clear and in these papers, most often than not, his solutions for most difficult of the questions used to be the "perfect one". However, chemistry was always his achiles heel and may be it was the reason that he could not get a rank in JEE 1998.
I was a bit surprized to see him in the batch of 2000-04 at IITG. I approached him many a times but he did not seem to be very comfortable in my presence and as he was staying in a different hostel, we hardly met 3-4 times in a year.
A year latter, I was really shoked to know that this friend of mine suffered nervous breakdown after getting "F" grade in 02 papers. He was not attending classes for months. He was out of college for an entire semester. Latter I came to know that his parents used to stay in college from morning till night so as to take care of his son after and between classes.
My brother passed out from IITG two years after I graduated and by that time my friend had not completed even his third year.

Then there is case of some of my batchmets, who joined IITG alongwith me but dropped after a year and accumulating a few "F" grades. Its a different matter that they cleared JEE again and joined some other IIT two years latter. No idea, where they are now.

However, I'd never expected any such thing to happen with one of the sharpest brain of my batch, who passed out from IITG as (DR) Departmental Rank -02. The most liveliest of the guy, who can gel with anybody and everybody. He was not only favourite of "proffies", but also one of the most hated and talked about guy in girls hostel because of his "awaragiri wali harkatein".
In the year 2005, he joined IIM Bangalore. And I was all enthu, when I called him to know where has he been placed. When he did not pick up the phone, I called one of our common friend and what he told was really devastating to say the least.
No body is sure what happened, but this friend of mine is sitting in home since last six months. He does not speaks with anybody and nobody is sure if he'll complete his MBA or not. Thinking of his retired father whos only son sits idle in front of him all the time, give aches in the heart.

This reminds me of my arguments over "fate & luck" with a fellow old passenger, few years back while traveling to Baroda by train. I was like, "only losers believe in fate and luck. One can achieve anything and everything with hard work".
But now this incidence has really forced me to believe that fate does play an important role in one's life.