‘‘The Switch Off Button ’’ – My Entry to the Get Published Contest’’

The Idea :
The story of Shyam Avasthi, a fresher in an engineering college.While his grades and marks reach an all time low, it doesn't really matter to him.Yes, a bunch of chemicals here and there in his brain had gone wrong. Gravitational and electrostatic forces seemed more of a shaggy dog story these days .New forces acted and acted quite well, pulling him towards Priya Gupta. But wait! Everything's not so easy in real life.While the speed breakers of life do their job can Shyam make it?
What Makes This story 'real' - The thoughts and mental dilemma of the protagonist make this story real
Extract:We sat on the roof of our hostel .For those who do not know, hostel roofs are solitary places where people with messed up test results, people with bitches as ex girlfriends, and people with an addiction to sutta turn up. We sat on the roof border.
I stared at the ground .A step forward and gravity would do the rest. I moved back a little .
“Why are we being taught Quantum Chemistry and DNA in the first year of our engineering courses? These won’t obviously be useful in our lives.” Gauti began his favorite topic again. This time to comfort me for my screwed up Bio test.
“Yeah they should rather teach us ‘How to get a girl’ or ,or ‘How to hypnotize people ’ right ?” I taunted.
“Exactly, No one cares about innovation, imagination and creativity here! All that matters is your score and the Average”
“Yeah Average itni jayegi, Average utni jayegi..Is Average ke chakkar mein ek din meri,jaan jayegi…”
Gauti didn’t say a word .He just stared at the sky. He continued staring at the sky for a while before his streak broke.
He got up and walked back towards the door, “Take lite and Come down. We’ll play TT.” He walked away.
Yeah take lite. The only thing I’ve done here in the past two months is taking lite . I stared back at the ground. I might end up with a B.Pharma dual, what’s the point wasting my parents money? .Priya might end up with some tall and handsome guy, what’s the point of texting her? I might end up nowhere in life, what’s the point of living?
Endnote: This is my entry for the HarperCollins–IndiBlogger Get Published contest, which is run with inputs from Yashodhara Lal and HarperCollins India.