In the concluding chapter of Student City, Prof. Dr. Piyush Roy explores friendship, loneliness, self-discovery, and the unexpected bond between Avi and Rahul, bringing this nostalgic B-school coming-of-age saga to a poignant close.

Recap Of Parts 1–7

Across the first seven parts of Student City, Prof. Dr. Piyush Roy introduces readers to a vibrant MBA campus in Pune at the dawn of the new millennium. Through the eyes of Avinash (Avi), we encounter a diverse group of classmates led by the magnetic Rahul, the enigmatic Anisha, the volatile yet vulnerable Tamanna (Tammy), the affable Manish, the boisterous Pam and several others navigating ambition, friendship, attraction and identity.

The series charts the emotional politics of student life: freshers’ parties, classroom rivalries, group projects, discotheque outings, romantic misunderstandings, personality clashes and evolving loyalties. Avi remains an observer-participant, often on the margins, quietly studying the dynamics around him while grappling with loneliness and belonging. Tammy’s emotional entanglement with Rahul, Rahul’s effortless charisma, Anisha’s mystique, and the formation of shifting alliances gradually transform Avi from an outsider into a central figure within the group.

By Part 7, Avi’s growing friendship with Tammy, his complicated position between rival camps, and a housing crisis set the stage for an unexpected turn. Part 8 brings that journey full circle as a chance classroom incident leads to Avi moving in with Rahul, marking the beginning of a deep friendship and symbolically ending his long companionship with solitude.

From Doubt To Discovery

It so happened one fateful Friday that Rahul and I entered the class of Prof. Gureja, the institute’s most senior and strict faculty member, at the wrong time together, and were sent packing to the last row with a warning of being disallowed for the term if caught repeating the act. The lecture was on ‘Critical Thinking’; but his personal asides were far more stimulating for their radical detours from the popular pathways to fulsome living.

“An MBA may make you economically independent with a fat salary, a dream that’s got most of you here,” he began on a sombre note, before declaring with dramatic twist, “But if you are independent psychologically, no organisation can enslave you, nor can any person be your boss or master. Follow these principles, and you will come back, five, 10 or 20 years down the line, thanking me for guiding you towards a life lived well and happy.”

He paused to survey his now-stilled audience before unleashing, Messiah-like, his three commandments.

“Never let your doubt die. That’s the most precious thing you have got. It’s only your doubt that one day will help you discover the truth. So, doubt until you discover. Next, never imitate. To become someone is very easy; to be someone is very difficult. Finally, and most importantly, beware of knowledge. Because once you feel you are knowledgeable, you enter a sensitive psychological space where your ego will start making you believe that whatever you are thinking, or spouting, is your own wisdom. Never before was this danger so great as it is today, because never before was knowledge so easily available to you through all kinds of media…”

Meanwhile, my sullen ego, on being banished to the back of the class, had resurfaced to seek succour in some ‘critically thoughtful’ scribbled mumbo-jumbo spewing errant emotions of hurt creativity:

What’s wrong with me these last few days? Why does it happen that the classes bypass my assimilation like unseen parodies? Nothing registers beyond competition’s muted glee over slight failures. Nobody loves me. There’s none to wait for me for lunch at the college canteen. A semester is gone, and yet I have no lasting friendship. None that I can call a soulmate – a girl, a guy. Either. Neither! Friends are aplenty, but what about that special one, called buddy?

Now even the faculty has started picking on me — a model student of the class. Couldn’t that Gureja, before gurr-ing his old fangs, let me in without a reprimand before all? But then, what’s the point of reprimanding if you don’t make a lesson out of it for others?

And yet, how the hell did he club me with a compulsive latecomer like Rahul? I have been the only one diligently devouring his drum-roll discourses without doubt from day one.

Come again… Avi???

Did you realise what you just confessed to? Your days sound so boring… Woe, my solitude seeking solace in such sullen monologues. There I go again, yak… yak… yak… in self-pity. It’s high time I stopped making an issue of a passing scolding that I anyway deserved.

But then reputation’s such a shortlisted commodity. You are only as good as the length between your last achievement and the next faux pas. Grovelling at the base of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, I, the savvy sapien selected to study an MBA...

I paused.

Ah wait! Something deep within me rebelled and reasoned: Why make my choice for a career sound so base and abominable? But then it’s a confession done to the self, alone. So, what’s the hassle? I can live with it. At least a few morrows more, sans compunction.

   

Musings From The Last Bench

Topic change. I decided to transport myself to another subject, another teacher; opting to do some actual ‘critical thinking’ on my elective chosen this semester — Public Relations — the process of building and sustaining beneficial relationships, as the balding Mr. Madok, with his shining-to-perfect pate, had mugged us onto. That too is a facet in the life of one grooming to be an MBA, not bald pates (signs of future prosperity) but the ‘mug up’ act. LOL.

Turning a philosophical hue, I continued my scribble on searching credibility in marks-earning weekly assignments and presentations, through short and long discussion trips to a factory of jargons — churning USPs and NLPs, Positionings and IMCs — sieving through unlimited theories on any, or rather every possible human behaviour, from something as trite-sounding as the ‘Trying to Consume Theory’ to elaborate treatises on ‘Relationship Building...’

Funny or irony?

Equipping ourselves with supposed consumer-dictated survival kits in a third-world market, based on experiential feedback from economy analysts in the developed world. Foreign authors, foreign markets… subtly kindling a shrewd desire for foreign recruitments, which how many will anyway get, with retrenchment being the in-vogue HR mantra across companies and economies, already conditioning our ambitions for limited take-offs, with a year and a half still pending before the completion of our education.

Surprisingly, this big picture wasn’t a scare. It was more of a bore. To make it relatable, I changed gear, rather the ‘topic’, again, to the present moment — perhaps the only thing that matters.

“What a mockery, my fate today, that’s got me to share the desk, the banter and the beginning of my day with the class’ pathological snob (Rahul)... who’s been purposefully hitting me under the desk for the past few minutes now. He won’t chill before having us both thrown out for the entire semester.

Ouch... There again goes that knee-tap. Should I break his kneecap if he does it again?

Damned luck, a curse to thee, and thy sinister magnanimity, if Rahul’s the company you intend to bless my solitude with!”

I stopped abruptly, ending one more of my midweek blues, a frequently undertaken exercise in intellectual timeout, a scampered diary of scattered notes, for my timely surfacing suffers on recur.

I didn’t notice that Rahul was all along reading my note from behind, only to next snatch the copy the moment I let go of my pen. I pulled it back and was ready to give him the thud of my frustrations when he just smiled that half-smirk giggle of his.

  

The Beginning Of An Unlikely Friendship

As his mischievous eyes curled up, turning as small as those of a Tibetan Pekingese, I don’t know what took over me. I just felt like giving him a cuddle instead, as an effortless smile negotiated itself to the fore with an invitation to friendship writ large on my countenance.

“Nice copy… but why do you guys hate me so much?” Rahul scribbled back, a note of surprise vulnerability, after glancing through one more of my anytime musings on my class and classmates. He had read my private epithet, calling him a ‘pathological snob’! His frank assertiveness left my embarrassment groping for an answer.

Albeit, I wrote back, “But I don’t, and to prove that, can move in right now with you if you would only oblige to have me as your roomie.”

Just a verbal dare, it was meant to be!

I threw the option as a joking gauntlet, little realising that the moment Professor Gureja walked out of the class, Rahul would drag me down to his bike and drive straight to my place to pause only after pulling down all my bags from the racks.

“Pack up and let’s go to my place.”

The suggestion was offered and sealed, and I moved in with someone whom I had seriously interacted with only a few seconds ago. In the real sense of the word, for the first time in the few months that I had known him.

But did I really know him?

He had softened towards me after I had unintentionally saved him from that Tammy disgrace event in the pub. Well, who bothers…?

Our house-warming party of, by and for us two spanned the entire two days of the weekend, celebrated in the affordable pomp of bachelor’s regalia to a toss of exquisite French wine, as I was initiated into the luxurious tastes of my roommate and his world, which, if seen objectively, wasn’t any different from any of us at all.

He only wanted to live life king-size; with all the accompanying branded aggrandisements.

Farewell To Loneliness

Living alone until now had become a habit for me — the severely independent recluse.

I loved my loneliness seeped in its bounties of pampered narcissism, a way of life that I had begun to associate with even fun, of late. I had rarely ever thought of letting anyone into my closely guarded fortress of solitude.

However, as that miasma disappeared with sudden predictability, was I happy, for not even a tear was shed on the loss of – loneliness – my closest buddy of the last three years.

The End.