Student’s Corner

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The student corner is an exclusive section of LSquare which brings to you the literary creation, pen-craft, creative content contributed by students.

My Adventures on Sleepless Nights

My most significant achievement after joining IIMB is the new superpowers I have gained. I realized it somewhat accidentally. One night, while I was working on a project beyond all earthly hours, I heard a stifled yawn. Not wanting to waste my energy getting alarmed, I decided to pretend as if it never happened.

“Why can’t you just wind up and sleep? I’ve been up all day today. This project you’re working on makes me want to shut down and sleep.” Horrors, my laptop just spoke.

“Well, if she spent as much time working with you, as she did looking at me, we wouldn’t be here now.”, my smartphone commented sarcastically.

“Have you both been possessed by ghosts?” I exclaim, somewhat horrified at hearing my inanimate devices complaining about my lifestyle.

“The ghosts aren’t in today, dear. They went to attend their cousin’s death day.”, The sofa said, comforting me.

It was getting rather weird, and I did the best thing I could then. I slept.

The scene repeated itself every time I found myself up late. I was no longer afraid, though, and participated whole-heartedly in their banter. I even befriended the resident ghosts, who started giving me tips on my projects.

Today as I lie awake at night, quarantined away from all human contact, I am grateful for this superpower.

“You’re crazy,” my laptop comments, reading this article.

(All events mentioned in this article are purely fictional. I am not crazy. Yet)

– Aishwarya Nair
PGP 2020-22

Cold-Called!

Time is ticking away and here I am typing frantically, half an hour before another deadline. Maybe, I should also tell you about a minimized zoom call window on my screen with Prof RNS desperately explaining some concept in Financial accounting. (I couldn’t tell you which for obvious reasons). Suddenly there came a distorted signal from my brain.

It is not a drill! Mayday Mayday!!!….I got cold-called!

“So….is the overall percentage of tax equal to the individual ones?”….As the prof impatiently waited, my mind was fluttering all over the screen, to find some sense out of all those numbers. The next moment was emotional, just to see the amount of help that poured in through Whatsapp. With broken answers and confused expression, I managed to make him ask “Madam, were you drunk yesterday?”

Thanks to my friends, my face got saved. But then, there came a message from another…

” You have extreme guts, not to listen to Prof. RNS!”

“How did you know? I thought I gave satisfactory answers…”

“Yes, but next time, turn off the notification sound of your phone!”

– Namita S
PGP 2020-22

Into the Crystal ball

Date: February 20XX
Time: 22:35 hrs

I look into my crystal ball which goes by the name of smartphone and as I go on endlessly clicking, scrolling through pages of verbal bloodshed, the stories of Love have taken a backseat this year. Momentarily I know your emotions wander. However deep inside the significance of the week is not lost on you. Another Valentine’s Week is here, and you have not yet met someone like him/her. As you pace your empty flat with a half-burnt cigarette in your hand, the smoke blurs everything, but not the memories. How do I know? The crystal ball says so. They say you do not really become a writer unless you learn the pangs of the heart or you are drunk or drunk in love maybe. Well, I am neither but tonight I am going to write about you. I am an awfully poor writer, you see, because my heart has never really broken. You can only break someone’s heart if you take it in your palms and crush it with your bare hands till it crumbles to pieces. No one has taken my heart, so I guess it is still intact. But tonight, I will pretend to know everything about love because I have looked into my crystal ball. You can look too if you like. Let us see what we shall find.

You see the happy lovers, don’t you? Those with genuine smiles and a spring in their steps? Nah, they ain’t interesting enough. How about that one that is pacing the empty balcony, the one that looks just like you? You see, he rues a lost friendship, a connection forever lost. He says it is his fault. A blocked contact and a blank display picture are the only witnesses to the love he can never have. Love is supposed to be the most beautiful emotion in the world! But how does something so pure cause so much pain? He has read somewhere that there is power in one-sided love but all he has felt is agony. Day on day of waiting for the times to change till the love inside you chokes you and you fall apart taking down with you whatever connection you had.

One- sided love has two facets it seems. One, where you love someone and they never love you back and the other where you were both once in love, but she fell out of love with you while you still held on, the edges of a sharp string cutting into your skin till it bleeds red, drop by drop by drop. Empty whiskey glasses, stubs of cigarette, the darkness of the night slowly spreading into your room painting it pitch black. The weight of all that blackness pushing against your soul, the remnants of dead memories of this day, of what you wanted or what you once had. You feel yourself giving away and let a couple of tears soak away into your grey carpet.

Well, enough for today. As you snuff out the last stub, I know it is time to shut off my crystal ball for the day. Before you go though, here is a muffin for you, a little bit of sweetness at the end of a very special day for a sad single, given with the hope that one day when you wipe the dust away and let the sunlight in you might just be able to love again and this very week will seem much less like a burden than it does today!

– Shreyosi Samanta
PGP 2019-21

Of Breaks and 2X Speed!

As someone who always got things out of order, it is no wonder I am doing an online MBA. Working at my desk job, I prayed to God that I wanted a change of scenery. Sure, my scenery changed, but zoom backgrounds were not exactly what I was aiming for.

Online lectures are a different ball game. I sleep through almost all of them and watch them later, on 2X speed.

Coming to the classroom experience, in all my 26 years of humble existence on this Earth, I have never seen this much enthusiasm to cut short a break!

It was said in the Upanishads that you are not you when you are hungry. Oh, wait a minute, was it Snickers? See what are they doing to me?

It is excellent to have doubts. They listened enough, analysed it, and are responding. I am happy for them. Truly! But do not ruin the 15 mins of copious free time I get to think about my existence, world peace, and what to eat next, for some DCP.

Do not even get me started on the pre-lunch session. By 1 pm, all my mind can think is some rice, with rasam, a cute little fish fry, a bunch of potato fritters chilling together in a plate, chatting away and waiting for me to devour them. I wish I could tell them that I would love to, but I cannot. The mental trauma they must be facing. Whose fault is it when they end up with abandonment issues?

I wish I could tell them to stretch their legs, hands, and mind for that matter. To close their eyes and imagine themselves in a beautiful meadow, with horses grazing around and flowers falling all over them. Oh, that sense of peace!

Hold on to that, and All is well at the end.

– Varsha Vinod
PGP 2020-22