26YO Anna's Death - A Wake Up Call On Lessons Of What Success Versus Failure Is

26-year-old Anna Sebastian Perayil, a Chartered Accountant (CA) from Kerala, died nearly four months after joining her first job at EY India, a professional services firm, in Pune. The young CA represents the majority of the interns and new joiners in reputed organisations brutally referred to as “flunky” who uncomplainingly remain physically, emotionally and mentally exhausted after being overburdened in offices. Most are too young to understand personal boundaries. Some also grow up in homes, where the father is the hardworking, invisible man, and children need to match up to his accomplishments or be better than him. 

Let's Not Anna's Death Go In Vain

Organisations no longer have “employee unions” to curb the exploitation of employees. The death of Anna Sebastian brings forth a highly regressive society where youngsters are encouraged to go up the ladder, with parents whose guardianship itself is part of a flawed system that won’t encourage a child who doesn’t wish to enter the rat race. Maybe the alternative to high achievers is too frightening for most parents to contemplate, therefore they believe that those who wield power really must know what they are doing. 

Anna’s distraught mother, Anita, wrote in a letter addressed to EY's Chairman, "I am writing this letter as a grieving mother who has lost her precious child. She joined EY Pune on March 19th, 2024, as an Executive. But four months later, on July 20th, my world collapsed when I received the devastating news that Anna had passed away. She was just 26 years old." This letter can tear every mother’s heart into shreds. 

But the truth remains that no one is prepared to accept that the majority of children are raised to compete in examinations by burning the midnight oil. This narrative hasn’t changed across the world, and more so in developing nations where respect can be earned mainly basis of an individual’s financial success. 

Also, organisations have little respect or guilt for employees in the lower ranks when they are burdened with work, answering emails, doing project research or extra work on weekends or after office hours. There is no systematic review or process in place where this kind of exploitation or a cryout for burnout is curtailed or reviewed by the companies' HR departments. Even systems are not in place where senior management is held accountable for infringing on employees' right to privacy post-working hours. 

Changing these systems is not an easy task at hand. This is a problem that needs to be addressed by all stakeholders who mostly remain unaccountable for such incidents. They are bothered about the financial health of their spreadsheets and not the personal health of the people who work for them. 

Therefore, the question that arises is whether we are also preparing our younger generation with enough aptitude to be able to handle failure. We all agree that life is not a bed of roses and the increase in mental health issues among youngsters is alarmingly high. Most are not even cognitive about their stress triggers.

A 2021 UNICEF survey found that 14% of 15–24-year-olds in India reported feeling depressed or disinterested very frequently. Many young adults in India have a high rate of self-harm, and suicide is a leading cause of death. 


Indian billionaire and Infosys co-founder Narayana Murty has said that India's youth should voluntarily work 70-hour weeks. His first call for very long working hours came in October 2023, when he called on the nation's youth to work long hours out of a sense of duty to the nation. 

Sadly, the perfectionist parents and the poster papas only encourage extreme hard work, with no regard for personal time or recreation. They condemn their children to a joyless life of desperation. 

Children’s nursery isn’t over when parents have decided that the child will go on to become a banker, an engineer or a scientist. They project their failed ambitions via their children. A two-year-old toddler has a LinkedIn account. 

We all know that there are helicopter parents who "hover overhead", overlooking every aspect of their child's life. A helicopter parent is also known to strictly supervise their children in all aspects of their lives, including their social interactions. Which leaves the poor children with no scope to learn life lessons via mistakes. 

Anna’s death is a reminder that children are maybe hanging on to themselves, on the edge of a cliff where the fall is fatal but they have no hand holding them up to release them from this toxic culture of a life and love-denying mindset, where ambition is the only denominator to acceptance, of an individual’s arrival into this increasingly dystopian world where the paralysing sense of failure is a constant threat to their sense of well-being.

Views expressed are the author's own.

Mohua Chinappa is an author, and poet and runs two podcasts, The Mohua Show and The Literature Lounge. She is also a member of an award-winning, London-based non-profit think tank called Bridge India.