In most enlightened countries, sex education prevails. Considering the high incidence of suicide among our young, the need for sex education, at least from grade 8, is of paramount importance.

To begin with, the Principal could invite a trained volunteer from a "Befriending Organization" to a session with the staff, over lunch.

The writer’s conversation with a lady who was brought to him by a friend, gives credence to this assertion.

The problem with the lady, then 25, was that for the last 10 years, for no apparent reason, she would faint away. This was happening so frequently, she had told her friends, suicide would be a way out!

Her mother had taken her to several specialists, including psychiatrists, psychologists, Ayurveda physicians and even ‘Kattadiyas’, without avail.

To begin with I told the lady, that what she tells me will be absolutely secret. Even her friends who brought her to me will not know anything.

I asked the lady, now 25, whether she could remember anything special when she was 15 years old. She said that one day school had closed early and when she came home the front door was closed. She entered through the kitchen and found the bed room closed. She then placed a chair and peeped through the grill. Her first impulse was to scream, fearing that someone was trying to strangle her mother. When she saw that the stranger was the next door "kolla", she fell off the chair in a faint.

She also told me that this was the first time that she had told anyone what had happened when she was 15.