Colleague

It’s just past 10 PM on a Wednesday night here in our small Bengaluru office, and the air is thick with the smell of stale filter coffee and the low hum of servers. My younger brother, Rohan, is hunched over his keyboard, his face illuminated by lines of code, a familiar silhouette I’ve seen since we were kids. Twenty years ago, we’d be fighting over a single video game controller. Tonight, we’re arguing about the deployment strategy for our app's next major update. Some things never change. And for that, I’m incredibly grateful. [Image: A candid photo of two brothers working late in a modest, modern office. One is coding intensely while the other looks at a whiteboard covered in diagrams and notes.] Anyone who has a sibling knows it’s a relationship forged in a unique fire of rivalry, shared secrets, and an unspoken, unbreakable bond. You’re each other’s biggest cheerleader and harshest critic. Which, as I’ve discovered over the past two years, are the exact same qualities you nee...

It was the kind of week every college student dreads: mid-terms looming, caffeine levels critically low, and a project deadline that felt less like a finish line and more like a cliff edge. Mine was a particularly complex coding assignment, and I was drowning in a sea of syntax errors and logic bugs. That's when Sarah walked into my life, or more accurately, into the computer lab, looking just as stressed as I felt. [Image: A slightly messy but cozy computer lab scene, two students (one resembling the narrator, one Sarah) are hunched over laptops, surrounded by energy drink cans and textbooks, with a soft glow from the screens.] We were in the same advanced algorithms class, but I'd barely spoken to her. She was quiet, focused, and always seemed to have her act together. Today, however, her usual calm was replaced by a frantic energy as she wrestled with her own project – a complex data visualisation that refused to render. "Everything okay?" I asked, probably soundin...

I hit "publish" on my first book with a mix of terror and exhilaration. For years, I had poured my soul into its pages, and now it was out in the world. I imagined readers eagerly discovering it, the sales numbers ticking upwards. The reality? Crickets. My book was a digital needle in a massive haystack. The initial sales came from my incredibly supportive mom, my best friend, and my aunt. After that, flatline. Every marketing guide I read screamed the same thing: run ads, pay for promotions, hire a publicist. There was just one problem—I had a budget of exactly zero. It felt hopeless. How could I, an unknown author, compete with the massive marketing machines of traditional publishers without spending a single rupee? The answer, I discovered, wasn't to compete with their money, but to connect with something far more valuable: readers. I had to stop thinking like a seller and start acting like a storyteller in every aspect of my work. My marketing couldn't be about tr...

It all started with a classic Bangalore evening—drizzling rain, the smell of wet earth, and two friends, me and X, sitting in a cozy Koramangala cafe. We were scrolling through our phones, admiring creators from afar, when X looked up and said, "We could do this. We love [Your Niche] more than anyone we know. Why not us?" That was the spark. We were full of passion and armed with a smartphone, ready to take the digital world by storm. We launched our page, posted our first picture with a carefully crafted caption, and waited for the magic to happen. And we waited. For the first few months, our follower count was mostly just our supportive friends, family, and a few bots. We were posting consistently, using the "right" hashtags, but it felt like we were shouting into a void. Bangalore is a city teeming with talent and content. How could we, two people with an idea, ever stand out? The turning point came when we stopped trying to be generic influencers and started try...

When I told my family I wanted to study mechanical engineering, they pictured me in a hard hat, surrounded by massive industrial machinery. In my own head, I imagined myself as a modern-day inventor, sketching revolutionary designs on a sleek tablet. The reality, I soon discovered, was far less glamorous and infinitely more challenging. It began in a classroom at a university here in Lucknow, with a professor filling a whiteboard with equations that looked more like abstract art than a language I was supposed to understand. The first two years were a trial by fire, a blur of thermodynamics, fluid mechanics, and material science. My life revolved around textbooks filled with laws and principles that felt completely disconnected from the real world. Nights were spent wrestling with complex calculus problems, fueled by countless cups of chai. I wasn't building machines; I was building a foundation, brick by painstaking brick, and frankly, I was starting to doubt if I was cut out for i...

The afternoon buzz at our local coffee shop in Lucknow is my favourite kind of chaos. It’s a mix of students cramming for exams, professionals on a break, and the constant hiss of the espresso machine. It was in the middle of this familiar scene that my friend, Anjali, slid into the chair opposite me, a determined but slightly worried look on her face. "I need your brain," she said, skipping the pleasantries. "I've started this new thing, but I'm completely stuck." Anjali is one of those people with infectious energy. She had recently taken on a role selling a range of organic, artisanal food products for a local startup. The catch? It was entirely commission-based. No sales, no income. She believed in the products—they were high-quality and ethically sourced—but her initial enthusiasm was starting to wane after a few weeks of minimal results. "I just need some marketing ideas," she said, pulling out a notebook. "How do I get people to actuall...

The idea was solid, the product was taking shape, and the ambition was buzzing in my veins. I was ready to dive into the world of product marketing. I'd read all the blogs and listened to the podcasts. They all agreed on one thing: the money is in the list. The email list, that is. So, I did what any aspiring marketer would do. I signed up for an email marketing service, chose a sleek template, and drafted what I thought was the perfect introductory email. I was ready. I clicked over to the "Contacts" tab, ready to import my audience, and was met with a stark, humbling reality: a blank white screen. A spreadsheet with zero rows. I had the message, but no one to send it to. My first instincts were... well, not great. "I'll just find emails online," I thought. I spent a few hours scraping websites of local businesses, feeling more like a spy than a marketer. The list I compiled felt cold and impersonal. These weren't leads; they were just random addresses....