authorshell
When fifteen-year-old Naina Maheshwari leaves Kolkata for Bangalore, she doesn't know she's also leaving behind the version of herself she's always known. Stepping into hostel life for classes 11 and 12, she begins a brand-new chapter in a city full of unfamiliar corridors, new friendships, quiet loneliness, and sudden laughter. Surrounded by students far from home-each hiding their own stories-Naina slowly builds a family of strangers who feel closer than blood ever could.
Between dance rehearsals that keep her heart alive and cricket matches that make her feel at home, she stumbles into a friendship with Nivaan Kothari, the boy of quiet words and even quieter emotions. Where Naina is sunshine and noise, Nivaan is stillness and silence. Their lives collide in study halls, on cricket fields, and through late-night hostel conversations that slowly turn into moments neither of them can define.
Alongside them are friends who laugh too loudly, love too carefully, joke too much, and feel everything too deeply - turning ordinary hostel life into a season filled with memories that shape who they will become. As the years of eleventh and twelfth unfold in Bangalore, friendships change, emotions deepen, and hearts begin to understand what growing up truly means.
Almost Ishq is not a loud love story - it is a gentle one. It isn't about dramatic confessions or instant romance, but about the spaces between words, the silences that speak louder than promises, and the quiet devotion of people learning what it means to care without expecting forever.