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Fifteen turned sixteen like a page caught in the wind. With it came the tremors of Class 10 — the board year. In every house, in every classroom, in every parent's warning, the same phrase echoed: *"Yeh saal tumhaare liye sabse important hai."*
For Aditya, this year wasn't just important. It was everything.
The mornings were darker now, not because of time but because of pressure. His 4:30 AM routine turned into muscle memory. Brush, chai, one boiled egg. Pages of derivations. Practice problems. Then school. Then tuition. Then more practice. Then sleep. Repeat.
Zaid began calling him "Mr. Machine."
"Tere andar toh circuit lag gaya hai, bhai. Kabhi toh chill kar."
But Aditya couldn't afford to chill. The IIT dream had turned from a vague vision into a concrete mission. Every chapter of physics, every chemical equation, every math problem was a brick in the bridge that would lead him out of Bhairavpur.
---
Despite the storm of studies, Aditya's heart hadn't turned to stone. He still found time to meet Anjali during library hours. Their interactions were short, shy, and soft. A look. A smile. A shared book. It was a quiet companionship that neither dared define.
Once, she gave him a pen.
"For your exams," she said. "It's nothing fancy. Just... it writes smoothly."
He used that pen in every test afterward, treating it like a charm.
---
Meera and Ramesh had turned their world upside down for him. They had cut every unnecessary expense, even skipping their anniversary celebration, to buy him a set of second-hand IIT foundation books.
"Yehi humara gift hai," Meera said, placing the books on his desk.
Aditya swallowed the lump in his throat and touched their feet. That night, he studied harder than he ever had.
---
Then came March.
The Board Exams.
School felt different. The walls whispered nerves, and students walked with heavy steps. The first paper was Science. Aditya sat in the exam hall, heart thudding like a drum. When the bell rang, he turned the page. His mind went blank for two seconds.
Then the pen moved.
His hand didn't stop for the next three hours.
The days flew. English, Social Science, Math. He tackled them one by one. The last paper was Hindi. When the final bell rang, and he stepped outside, the sun felt different. As if congratulating him.
---
That summer was the strangest of his life. For the first time in years, Aditya had no syllabus chasing him. No deadlines. No early alarms.
He slept till seven. Watched clouds. Played cricket with Zaid. Helped Ramesh with accounts. And slowly, he began preparing for the entrance exams.
He borrowed online materials from a nearby cyber cafe and registered for a free mock test program run by an NGO. The gap between small-town limitations and big-city competition began to show.
His classmates from private schools had coaching from institutes like FIITJEE and Aakash. He had a hand-me-down guidebook and raw determination.
---
Results day arrived in May.
Aditya sat before the old desktop at the NGO center. The electricity flickered twice before the result page loaded.
92.4%.
He blinked.
Meera screamed when he told her. Ramesh went out and bought jalebis for the entire colony.
"Aditya Sharma: Bhairavpur ka gaurav," someone wrote on a handmade poster near the school.
But Aditya didn't celebrate long. He knew this was the beginning, not the end.
---
He enrolled in a state-level junior college with a science stream, one of the few that had a scholarship quota. He qualified with ease.
Commuting meant a 45-minute bus ride, but he didn't mind. He read notes during the ride, solving problems in a notebook balanced on his knees.
College brought new faces. Students from richer families. Branded clothes. Expensive phones. A different energy. But Aditya didn't feel small. He felt driven.
He formed a new study group: Riya, a topper from the city school; Manav, a tech geek; and Kartik, who was aiming for NEET but helped with biology cross-connections.
They studied in abandoned classrooms, library corners, and over WhatsApp messages during power cuts.
---
One night, while solving a difficult calculus problem, Aditya dozed off on his books.
He dreamed of standing on a stage, wearing a graduation robe, delivering a speech. His parents were in the front row, clapping. Anjali was in the audience, smiling.
He woke up with a strange ache in his chest.
Dreams had always been his fuel. But now, they were also becoming destinations.
---
By the end of the year, he had completed most of the Class 11 syllabus on his own. His weekends were spent attending free guest lectures at the district library, where retired IITians would occasionally teach as volunteers.
In one such lecture, the speaker said, "The fire to succeed must be bigger than your fear to fail."
That line hit Aditya hard.
That evening, as he walked home under a sky bleeding orange, he whispered to himself:
"Main tayyar hoon. Chahe duniya kuch bhi kahe."
And so, with a secondhand pen, an old school bag, and a heart burning with ambition, Aditya stepped into the eleventh grade.
The fire within him was real now.
It was no longer about escaping Bhairavpur.
It was about proving to himself that he could rise from anywhere, and still reach the stars.