Nishant came home directly from college and crashed on the bed. He could hear his mother in the background. She was asking him to eat something and then start studying, along with something like, this semester is very important and he should be maintaining the good score and college topper status etc. Usually these words would reach his brain straight away and would start sending signals to his body to wake up and take charge. But today was different. He just could not register those words and he kept lying on the bed looking at the ceiling. Somehow his mind was playing the scene with Shradha in loop. Those eyes kept disturbing him and he couldn't help but feel guilty as he had seen pain in those honey brown eyes. "What is happening here? Mom keeps saying not to get involved with these kind of people. But somehow I can't seem to get her out of my mind today. It's not like I am seeing her for the first time. We have been classmates since the first semester. However this must be the first time our eyes met. Am I jumping into conclusions about her based on incorrect data? That can't be right. My analysis has never been wrong. But.. I do not have enough data in the first place to analyze the situation. " Nishant kept talking to himself in low voice. He would have continued to murmur but knocks on the door interrupted the scene and the biggest distraction was tea and onion pakoda that was being offered by his mother. She had brought snacks to his room thinking it was better to sit in the room than being distracted by TV in the living room.
Tray was grabbed and wiped clean in just few minutes. Nishant knew his mother had high expectation from him. Her biggest dream was to be mother of a genius engineer. Now the genius engineer also needed to apply for masters degree in a prestigious university in USA, as it was an additional request from mommy dearest. As much as he hated the idea of staying away from home, Nishant knew how important these things were to his mother. She had emphasised on multiple occasions that her only son would be fulfilling all of those dreams which she never could realise. So starting the studies from day one was very much important.
One of the thick book was opened and the process of tending to the general expectation had started. Although Nishant's mother had been over enthusiastic about studies of her intelligent son, it wasn't much of a problem in the beginning. But with passing year and higher classes, intensity of her involvement had increased and there was also the 'inspirational and emotional' mother- son talks quite frequently. Unknown to his mother, this added stress to him and it was scary to think about not meeting those expectations and seeing disappointed look in those lovely eyes. As much as his father tried to decrease the load of presumptions, it never worked and Nishant was subjected to constant stress by his own mother. And she had no idea about the outcome of it. Nishant started getting panic attacks when he was in 10th standard. It was during the final exams that he first thought of what would happen to his mother if her beloved son failed to score the highest rank in exams. The thought freaked the poor boy so much, that he ended up breathless for quite a few minutes. And that was just the beginning. In the span of last 3 years, he had multiple panic attacks, mostly unknown to his family. This was one of the reasons why he liked to study alone. Desperate to keep these panic attack episodes hidden Nishant distanced himself from friends. He could not continue group studies and most of the people who were his friends stopped talking to him as the major advantage of the friendship was now, no more. Not that he minded, nishant preferred solitude over friends who were distractions. There were still few people who used to ask him to study with them during exams but he would hardly accept those invites.
From the time book was opened, Nishant had been staring at the words while lost in thoughts. He just could not brush off the feeling of doing something wrong. "Mom is right. Girls are really distractions" thinking to himself, Nishant jumped into the world of knowledge.
Next day morning during breakfast, Sheela was praising about some guy who got admission into one of the Ivy league universities for masters. The champion was apparently top rank student like Nishant and also had versatile academic profile. Lot of qualities which added weightage to a profile like Philanthropy, creativity, sports were embedded in him. Sheela heard the story from someone, that this top class student had been preparing for Ivy league since first year of his Engineering. This meant Nishant had to follow the same path. This had always been the case with his mother. She would somehow come across various 'success stories' about 'intelligent students' which mostly came from proud mothers, and since they were proven to show results Nishant had to follow those tactics or methods as well.
One time Sheela got to know that reading out loud helps in understanding the matter faster and better. So she made Nishant who was in 8th standard at that time, to read out loud, all the time. It was worst 2 weeks of his life. Eventually he had to speak in low voice, hinting throat injection and make up some weird stories about people losing voices by reading loud all the time. Then only he was allowed to go back to his old methods. Mr Sharma used to say "Ignore your mother and do what works for you". But then again Nishant just could not bring himself to listen to his dad and upset Sheela. Even now whenever Mr Sharma tried to control his over enthusiastic wife, all he would get in return was some emotional dialogues and maybe few tears. This time Sheela was adamant on Nishant joining some club at the college. She said he should concentrate on building the all rounder profile and come home today after joining one of the college clubs for now. As usual Nishant agreed to his mother's order and all the way to collage he was thinking of best club to join.
[1] Pakoda or Pakora are deep fried snack that are made with gram flour, salt, light spices and a main ingredient like onion or a vegetable