When life gives you lemons ... is the story of Anshuman whose life goes through a period of turmoil engineering due to a combination of destiny and his own volatile temper. On the verge of losing his career and the love of his life, he finally realizes his folly. But is it too late now? I looked at myself in the mirror and it wasn't a very pleasant sight. There was a small cut on my upper lip. My left eye was still a bit swollen. Over half a dozen bruises were visible on my face and neck. ...Read More

"What's wrong with the electricity today?" I screamed at the top of my lungs as the ceiling fan huffed puffed & then finally stopped. "Stop shouting. We are not deaf. Don't you read the newspaper?" My elder sister had appeared at the door of my room and she was certainly miffed at the way I had raised the issue of the power failure. "I know about the power cut," I said quickly "I was talking about the inverter" I raised my finger towards the fan. "Do you really live in this house?" she made a face "the batteries of ...Read More

"JEC, which engineering college is this?" My father looked at me with a combined expression of bewilderment and annoyance. swallowed hard before I could reply to him. There is a solid reason behind it. My father grew up in a rural background and after very hard work he had secured a job in the revenue department of the state. He had lived a very disciplined life and he was strict & unyielding in matters pertaining to studies. There was little or no scope of softness in them unless backed up by solid reasoning. It was one of those delicate ...Read More

The monsoon had finally arrived in Jaipur to give the citizens respite from a long grueling summer. Unfortunately, my of despair was far from over. I hopped on the metro at civil lines and settled into a seat at the end of the coach. I then took out earphones from the bag and plugged them into my ear. I didn’t turn on the music but closed my eyes and sat with my arms folded over my chest. This was my daily routine after getting into the metro and all of it was a part of a ruse. A lot ...Read More

“I expected something better” “This is all they have got here” Ashwin reluctantly took the pakoda in his hand and then smelled it. “Just eat it” Sulabh barked. Ashwin made a face and then slowly took one bite. A moment later the expression on his face changed. “It is not that bad,” he said and took another bite. Sulabh offered a piece to me too but I declined “I just had lunch” I signalled him towards my tiffin box. He nodded and started chomping on his own bread pakoda. I turned my eyes in ...Read More

My eyes could scarcely believe what I was seeing. This was another twist by fate in my life. I had gone by the rule of thumb in filling up the options for the second round. The college had taken priority over the stream as there was always a legitimate chance of getting your preferred stream in the second year if you score well. Getting the desired college was the first step in that direction. That is why I had opted for all the branches of both RV and SLC. At that point, I had barely spent 10 days in ...Read More

The first thing that caught my attention was her elegant earrings. My sister loved wearing similar kinds of earrings festive occasions. So it was a bit of a surprise for me to see her flaunting this piece of jewelry in a place like this college. Her hair was longer than most of the girls in our class and was neatly tied back. She had a round face with a small nose and a certain level of confidence was visible on her face. I was not able to move my eyes away for a couple of seconds. “Yes?” Prof. ...Read More

With the indecisiveness regarding my future out of the way, I had now slowly started embracing my college life. the things were not as rosy as I had envisioned before that entire ruckus happened, I was gradually warming to the best that was available to me. I was really thankful to Prof. Shiksha for this. Initially, my high hopes had dashed that day when she too repeated the same set of words. “You have to make that decision. Nobody else can make that for you” She had said flatly. An expression of annoyance emerged on my face ...Read More

I was a little surprised to see her there. Sulabh had told me in the morning that their chemistry class was free today as the concerned lecturer was on leave. Since we still had a very limited faculty, in situations like these, if there was no other free lecturer available, one of the lab assistants would take over the class. They were not supposed to teach. Their only job was to keep the students in check and not leave them unattended. This was one big problem with private engineering colleges. They were run like a school. Sameena was ...Read More

The whole third week of the month of September was sacrificed at the altar of 1st mid-semester exams. For who don’t know about it, two mid-semester exams are conducted in each semester. 30 % marks from these exams are considered in the final marks for the semester. So they are a crucial cog in the scheme of engineering. Two exams were supposed to be conducted each day between Thursday and Saturday. The whole atmosphere of the college had changed by Monday itself as students started scrambling for notes and books. For the first time, I missed the presence of ...Read More

That party at the end of the first mid-semester exams turned out to be the last one that we in our first semester. No, there was no significant reason behind it. It is just that we didn’t get time for that for the rest of the semester. This statement might sound a bit weird considering that the end of the semester came in the month of December. Yes, it is true that in between we had more than two months but most of that time was consumed by the studies only. The pace of the studies was a ...Read More