Chapter 3: Homesickness and Pressure

Days slowly turned into weeks, and weeks began to feel like months. Inside the coaching centre, time no longer felt real. Every day looked the same—same classrooms, same thick books, same tired faces bent over notebooks. The only sound that filled the corridors was the scratching of pens and the turning of pages.

At first, she had tried to stay strong.

"This is for my dream," she reminded herself again and again.

But as days passed, the excitement she once carried slowly faded, replaced by a dull ache in her chest—a feeling she couldn’t ignore anymore.

She missed home.

Not just the place, but everything about it. The smell of her mother’s cooking drifting from the kitchen in the early morning. Her father’s voice calling her name. The comfort of her own bed. Even the small, ordinary noises of home now felt like precious memories.

Here, life felt mechanical.

Wake up. Study. Eat. Study again. Sleep.

There was no laughter, no music, no freedom. Phones were not allowed. There were no games, no television, no time to simply sit and breathe. Even during meals, students discussed formulas, diagrams, and mock test scores as if marks were the only language they knew.

Nights were the hardest.

When the lights were switched off at the fixed time, silence filled the dormitory. But sleep didn’t come easily. She would lie awake, staring at the ceiling, listening to the faint sounds of someone turning pages under a blanket or quietly sobbing into a pillow.

She wasn’t the only one who felt this way.

One night, she noticed the girl on the bed next to hers wiping her eyes.

"Are you okay?" she whispered softly.

The girl hesitated before nodding, but tears continued to roll down her cheeks.

"I miss my mother," the girl admitted in a trembling voice. "She used to call me every night before I slept… Now I don’t even know how she is."

Her words struck deep.

She swallowed the lump in her throat. She wanted to cry too, but she held it back. Crying felt like weakness in a place where only strength and marks mattered.

During the day, the pressure never stopped.

Teachers constantly reminded them of competition.

"Thousands of students are fighting for a few seats," one teacher announced loudly during class. "If you relax even for a moment, someone else will take your place."

Those words echoed in her mind long after the class ended.

Every week, mock test results were displayed on a large notice board. Students gathered around it anxiously, pushing and stretching their necks to find their marks.

Her heart raced each time she searched for her name.

Some days, the marks were good enough to bring a small smile. But on other days, when the scores dropped, fear gripped her tightly. It felt as if her entire worth was written next to her name in numbers.

She began to notice changes in everyone around her.

Some students stopped talking altogether. Others studied even during meals, holding books in one hand while eating with the other. A few grew irritable, snapping at friends over small things. The pressure was turning them into strangers.

Even laughter became rare.

One evening, while sitting at her desk, she opened her notebook but couldn’t focus. The words on the page blurred as tears filled her eyes.

She missed her parents more than ever that day.

She remembered how her mother would sit beside her during exams at school, bringing snacks and encouraging her with gentle words.

"You can do this," her mother always said.

Here, there were no comforting voices—only instructions and expectations.

Sometimes, she wondered if all of this was worth it.

But then, another thought would rise within her.

Her dream.

The dream that had brought her here in the first place. The dream of wearing a white coat one day. The dream of making her parents proud.

That thought became her strength.

Even on the hardest days, she forced herself to sit straight, pick up her pen, and continue solving problems.