The Shift
In a sleepy town where buses came late and ambitions left early, there lived a boy named Arjun.
Not the mythological warrior, not the boy genius. Just… Arjun.
A regular student from a regular school in a town where street dogs outnumbered traffic lights, and power cuts were as frequent as tea breaks.
He had grown up on borrowed books, hand-me-down uniforms, and an internet speed that made glaciers seem fast.
His father, a quiet clerk at the local railway office, wore the same pair of shoes for five years.
His mother stitched clothes for neighbors to add a few hundred rupees to their monthly income.
They didn't understand coding, CGPA, or startups—but they understood one thing:
"A degree is his future."
And every evening, while his friends played cricket in narrow gullies, Arjun sat under a flickering bulb, solving physics problems and dreaming of "a good college."
He believed what every student from a middle-class home is told:
"Just a few years of hard work, beta. After that, life will be set."
He believed it. Lived it.
Missed festivals. Skipped weddings. Said no to birthdays and yes to backlogs of JEE questions.
He thought once he cracked an entrance exam, life would finally slow down.
He thought the struggle ended at the college gate.
When the entrance results came in, his name wasn't on the IIT list. It wasn't even close.
But he got into a decent college. Not famous. Not terrible.
One of those second-tier engineering colleges that would cost at least four lakh rupees—four years of study, and no backup plan—tucked between an IT park, a dusty Metro line under construction, unfinished hostels, and dry cricket fields.
The kind where lorries honked more than professors spoke.
The kind of place where your GPS never worked right.
The streets outside were packed with food carts, scooty horns, and cigarette smoke.
Crows and crows of students poured in and out of crumbling hostels, broken dreams scribbled onto notice boards, and chai tapris doing more business than the college canteen.
But for Arjun, it was freedom.
No parents to ask where he was going. No aunties peeking over compound walls.
Here, he could be anything.
He made friends—fast ones.
Boys who bunked classes like it was a hobby.
Girls who wore confidence like cologne.
They introduced him to things he hadn't known back home—group chats that never slept, all-night LAN games, hostel politics, fest auditions, and that feeling of belonging… even if it was shallow.
Assignments were done last minute.
Exams were approached with, "Tu notes de, main ratta maar lunga."
Group projects became solo efforts—just not by him.
He who once studied past midnight, now barely woke up for 9:00 a.m. classes.
He who once highlighted textbooks, now screenshot notes from WhatsApp groups.
He who once dreamed of innovations, now prayed for pass marks.
He had become… comfortable.
So comfortable, in fact, that one day, sitting in the middle row of a boring Data Structures lecture, he was staring into his phone like it held stock prices of a trillion-dollar empire.
In reality, he was mindlessly scrolling through reels.
He didn't even notice the silence that fell around him—until his friend nudged him with an elbow.
Arjun looked up. The lecturer was glaring at him. The entire class had paused.
"Out," the professor said coldly.
Arjun grinned, picked up his bag, and walked out without a word. But as he passed his friend, he winked.
His friend gave him a thumbs up.
What was exchanged in that silent moment? Only they knew.
Later, after class, the secret came out.
"You marked proxy, right?"
"Of course," his friend smirked. "I even faked a cough when sir took attendance."
They laughed. It wasn't even the first time.
Sometimes, when classes felt too boring—or too early—they skipped altogether.
Fake medical certificates. Backdated leave forms. Backup proxies.
They knew the loopholes. They played the game.
And yet, something had shifted.
Arjun, who once feared disappointing his parents… now feared missing out on a fest.
He stopped calling home every day.
He stopped tracking expenses.
And when he was short on money, he borrowed from generous friends or texted his father—who didn't know what the money would be spent on, but UPI transferred it the moment his son asked.
He even stopped checking his marks… until it became impossible not to.
But in the beginning, it felt like arrival.
In the chaos of the city, amidst the auto rickshaw screeches, under hostel tube lights that flickered like his discipline, Arjun had finally found what he thought was balance.
He told himself, "I work best under pressure."
He told himself, "I'll catch up next sem."
He told himself, "Everyone's doing the same thing."
"He used to say, 'I'll start tomorrow.' But he never realized: tomorrow has a cruel habit of becoming yesterday."
But pressure has a way of pushing back.
And while the city never slept, neither did the anxiety quietly building in his bones.
[To be continued…]