A Heart of Stone with a Coat of Gold

Truth and Lies Part 1

I have updated the chapter on 12-July 2021.

A small portion has been added at the bottom of the chapter in the format of a new chapter.

Please read it.

I am sorry and I am thankful.

Regards,

The Author

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I apologize for posting after so long. I am sorry but no words can repair the damage done.

This chapter is incomplete and editing is not up to the mark. My writing is rusty too.

Yet I am posting this is as sign of commitment to continue this to the end this time.
Hopefully I can make it this time.

This chapter would be completed by 21st of June

Dedicated to a very kind Reader.
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The alarm clock shrieked at half past six. Anu scrunched her eyes open even as the drowsiness refused to depart and soon she was sitting on her bed, her shoulders slumped, her face drooped, in a half dazed state. Soon thoughts started flooding her vacant and white cloudy space of a mind.

It was the first day. The first day of her new life.

A nervous albeit hopeful warmth rose in her guts as she dreamed more of the reverie, but it soon vanished into thin air when she cast a lazy blurred glance to the bed on the other corner of the room.

A girl was slumped there, on her stomach with her face burrowed deep in her pillow. Yesterday, she had been greeted to the first sight of her new roommate in the form of a bespectacled girl smoking pot in a dark dimly lit room. Damn her luck; why did she have to get all the smokers and stoners in her life?

Her classes started at eight so she had a good hour and a half to get ready. By the time Anu got ready and came back from her morning affairs in order to wake her roommate Ayushi for breakfast (out of courtesy of course), she had already left.

Chewing the surprisingly round and equally bland paranthas at breakfast, Anu felt something amiss. She was sitting in a distant corner of the mess having her food alone. Slowly the students trickled in the large hall with benches and tables arranged in neat rows. As she took a sip of the syrup like canteen tea from her mug, it struck her- she was missing her morning tea.

She longed for the dewy smell of cardamom aroma emanating from the delectable drink Neel made for her each and every day without fail. The sweet taste that melted like butter on the tongue. The slight bitter aftertaste that seemed like a trademark to remember its creator.

And all of a sudden she felt a pang. A light one. A very small one; but there.

The feeling grew larger and larger filling her guts until Anu felt she might puke. She threw her barely eaten breakfast in the trash can and headed for her first lecture, her new life.

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"ANISHA"

"ANIKA"

"Anu" She called out softly to her roll call, which the professor might have missed if she hadn't been sitting on the edge of the second row from the front.

The girl beside her smiled- an ultra wide gleaming-teeth smile. Anu didn't feel like talking, hell she felt so uneasy that she didn't feel like anything but she felt obligated to respond.