Aye, Love!

Prologue

College selections, the year 2014. I've managed to get a seat in one of the best colleges around the state. SRM, Kattankulathur, Chennai is now the college I study in. Coming from a middle-class family, I've never dreamed of studying at a place like this, but this was all hard-earned. My family had enough money to pay half the fee and other charges, though I wasn't able to get a free scholarship.

I, Aadhira Balakrishnan, am going to study at this university for the next four years. I am curious about how it's going to go, and also excited.

It was just two months ago that I came here with my parents to get the admission done in the UB. The environment here and the feeling of being in college are indeed as compelling as everyone makes it out to be. I've always been free-spirited, or that's what everyone around me says. I am an enthusiast, who's curious about everything, including other people's business, but I've never caused troubles for others by gossiping. I just like to hear people gossip because it's all just information to me. Whether or not it's important is a thing of future circumstances. As long as I have good hearing, I will listen in on everything around me.

In the past week, I've been here, in the hostel room, I got accustomed to the surroundings. I got my ID card and had orientation classes for a week before, finally, we get registered for classes. In the first year, the councilors take care of the schedule and the lectures to choose from since we know nothing about the faculty. Today early in the morning I had to wake up at 6:30 to get ready and meet my counselor in the staff room by sharp 8 o'clock.

Then, I had to wait for about an hour, where my counselor explains to me how my life on-campus is going to be.

After registering for the classes, all the students spread out to find their classes. I feel like I've been moving in a daze the entire day. I was so caught up in the feel of finally having some college experience that I gaze around like a total idiot.

I am not bad at academics, I can also call myself studious, but I am no genius. Now that I have the opportunity to study here, all I have to do is try to keep up with the other students.

I like the liveliness of the campus with all the students piling in, busy with their things like rushing to classes to avoid being late, taking notes on campus as if gathering for some project. Probably not, but who cares. I love it nonetheless. Maybe it wouldn't be the same every day but it's still a vast campus and I'll take my time exploring it for the next four years.

I walk towards the tech park where the registrations for the first-year CSE students are taking place. The crowd is just as big as before, which makes me wonder if all the students this year chose CSE. Couldn't be, since the university already has a limited number of seats allotted to each branch.

I instantly get giddy seeing the crowd, as I move forward in line, someone taps my shoulder. I turn around to face Amara, my roommate this year. She is a beautiful girl with long hair, longer than me, and big eyes, not bigger than me, with good skin tone, let's not compare the skin tone. What's more is she is more girly than me, not that I am girly.

"Waiting to get registered for classes?"

"No, I am here to order some samosa and chai. You want anything to eat too?" I reply. She's always like that, asking questions she knows the answer to. We've been roommates for one week and it feels like a year. We still have another roommate who we have yet to see.

"Don't tell me you're serious."

I turn my head and say to her "If I were serious, I would've brought my wallet."

She just smiled and dismissed my explanation. "It could've been that you just forgot to bring the wallet and eventually borrow money from me. There was about a 0.5% chance of you being serious. And I take every percentage seriously."