ONE FEBRUARY AFTERNOON, after a
long accounting class, I sat on the stairs
near the library. I noticed the pink and red
cut-outs everywhere, a preparation for
the Valentine’s Week events. I paused for
a moment because the light from the window
hit a particular section of the wall
and made the paper hearts glow faintly.
Somewhere between the tests and classes,
I realised I was spending more time
with my textbooks than with friends.
Strangely, I didn’t mind.
BETWEEN PAGES AND PAPER HEARTS
I moved into the library. The Taxation textbook
that I had borrowed sat on the table
exactly where I had abandoned it the previous
night. The pages had such fine print
that I wondered if the publishers expected
students to carry magnifying lenses. At
one point, I gently held the page under the
tube light, and my classmate joked that
I was trying to read the “Terms & Conditions”
of life.
Meanwhile, Auditing had its own special
charm. One evening, I sat glancing at
the auditing standard “Identifying and Assessing
Risks.” My mind drifted to my own
life risks: missing the bus, losing pens, and
so on. “Risk identification and assessment”
suddenly felt very personal. Still, something
about auditing felt oddly steady.
The subject didn’t try to impress; it just sat
there, like the dependable friend in movies
who quietly holds the plot together.
There was a day when I found myself
smiling at the phrase “true and fair view.”
Not because of its meaning—but because
it reminded me how little efforts in my
own days felt slightly more “true and fair”
too. The very act of showing up to class
or going through a chapter slowly, without
rushing, felt like a small alignment
inside.
THE QUIET KIND OF LOVE
Mental well-being wasn’t something I
consciously followed. It simply began appearing
in quiet pockets of time. One day,
14th February, at the dosa Bandi, when I
was pleasantly surprised by a heart-shaped
dosa, a group of students were arguing
about whether Corporate Law or Auditing
was “the more loyal partner” in a student’s
life. Corporate Law demanded constant attention.
Auditing wanted understanding.
I ate my dosa silently, amused, watching
their debate.
There were evenings when I went to
the beach, listening to the sound of the
wind. During all the commotion, I found
myself drawn to the thought of my open
notebooks in the hostel room—pages halffilled
with workings from costing classes,
scribbled margins, and sometimes sloppy
handwriting. For reasons I couldn’t fully
explain, those pages felt comforting, like
familiar characters in a story I was slowly
learning to appreciate.
Some nights, the moonlight fell on
the corridor in my hostel room in a way
that made the pages shine like fireflies.
I would run my finger along the lines I
had highlighted, recalling the small
triumphs—solving a problem without
checking the answer at the back.
These weren’t big victories; they were
small ones, probably meaningless to others.
But they stayed with me.
February was more about discovering
that affection could grow in unexpected
corners: between pages of a difficult book,
in the rhythm of a solved problem, or in
the dosa Bandi’s steam curling up into
the winter air. Maybe February didn’t
need violins after all. Sometimes it simply
leaned quietly toward the things that
steadied the mind.