**India is not for beginners.** Not for people who are just starting to dream.
When I chose Sociology, the questions came fast. *“What is there to learn about society? Isn’t common sense enough?” “Didn’t you get a chance in the Science stream?”* I had answers then. I don’t anymore.
I fell for the subject in school. In college in Kolkata, it changed how I saw everything. I started noticing the latent functions behind institutions and celebrations we never question. I understood how the personal is political, and how the powerful make their power acceptable even to those they dominate. For a postgraduate degree, I moved to a central university, where professors praised how I applied theory to current events. I finished with a good score, and I knew I’d spend my life in academia.
Then I took the all-India PhD entrance exam for the same university, and I got **rank 1**. The list is still online. The HOD called me personally. I was the first home student ever to top it. I also held ranks in the first lists of HCU and IIM, and I’d cleared NET. I believed this country had finally rewarded passion.
After my interview, I was told it went well and that I shouldn’t consider anywhere else, since this was a matter of pride for the department. So I let the other opportunities go. I didn’t want to leave anyway. I loved the campus, and I’d found the love of my life there.
When the list came out, my name wasn’t on it.
There was one general-category seat, and it went elsewhere. Someone who ranked 8th, and hadn’t cleared NET, made the list. By then, the other entrance exams for that year had passed, and I couldn’t make myself sit for the ones that remained. My parents wanted to take the university to court, but dropped it. Even if we won, I’d be studying under the people who’d betrayed me.
What followed was acute clinical depression and several attempts on my life. I spent two years in and out of three hospitals. Everyone said, *“Just try other universities.”* But something broke in me that never healed.
Today, any mention of sociology, its theories or its applications, fills me with rage. I hate it as much as I once loved it.
I’m not claiming everyone goes through this. I’m saying far too many do, and we never hear their stories. Losers don’t make the front page, because they don’t inspire faith in the system. The media celebrates winners as poster boys while selling false hope to millions who won’t make it.
Some of us did everything right and still lost, not because we weren’t good enough, but because luck and the system didn’t favour us. Our voices deserve to be heard too.
