Banni simply listened. Calm. Attentive.
One of the senior professors, a tall woman in a handloom sari with kind eyes, stepped up to the podium and said,
> "You are not here just to pass exams. You are here to find your voice. Read, write, speak, question. You are not children anymore. You are thinkers in training."
Something stirred in Banni's chest. Not fear. Not pride.
Possibility.
---
The Magical Space Reacts
That evening, after returning home, Banni sat cross-legged in her room. Her laptop glowed softly in front of her, and beside it, her college ID card lay face-up like a silent witness.
The magical space had been quiet all day. But now, as if sensing the day's significance, it stirred.
A pulse. A shimmer.
Then a gentle whisper only she could hear:
> "Host has entered a new phase of growth. Unlocking: The Time-Weaver."
She blinked. "Time-Weaver?"
A glowing grid appeared within the magical interface—a soft lattice of light and hours, flowing gently like a digital river. It looked like a calendar but behaved like something far more alive.
A voice emerged, clear but calm:
> "This tool allows you to stretch time for deep focus, slow down overwhelming moments, or revisit conversations and lectures with clarity. The more you use time with awareness, the more time you will have."
Banni's eyes widened. No alarm clocks. No pressure. No multitasking. This was clarity, organized.
Her fingers moved toward it instinctively.
> Stretch time during English lectures. Slow down when confused. Breathe during presentations.
She wasn't being handed shortcuts.
She was being taught how to wield time.
---
A Home that Breathes with Quiet Work
Downstairs, her father was making inventory notes for his mini supermarket. A pencil rested behind his ear, and he occasionally reached for the calculator beside the weighing scale.
In the corner, Harsha sat with the laptop open, sketching a digital logo for a local chai vendor who promised to pay him in two batches.
Banni joined him after dinner.
> "Did you install that editing app?" Harsha asked.
> "Yes. And Microsoft Office too."
Bani sat cross-legged on the floor, surrounded by a ring of open books, handwritten notes, and a cup of now-cold coffee. Her laptop screen blinked with a half-written paragraph on Virginia Woolf. Her pen paused above the page, not from fatigue, but from something deeper—a question pressing against the edges of her identity.
Why was she truly studying English?
The answer came not in words, but in a feeling. A steady pulse. A calling.
She wasn't doing this to chase a job. She wasn't interested in taking the expected road—completing her degree just to return to the same classroom as a teacher, teaching the same lines she'd already memorized. That life, while noble, felt like a circle to her. Safe, yes. But it didn't offer flight.
Bani wasn't meant for echoes. She wanted resonance.
---
Language as Compass
For her, English was not a subject. It was a space.
It was a mirror, a map, a melody. It allowed her to interpret silence, question systems, and describe the unspeakable. She was drawn to its textures—the rhythm of poetry, the layers in essays, the raw honesty in memoirs.
What she longed for wasn't just fluency. It was fluency with depth. She wanted to shape her speech into clarity, her writing into expression, and her presence into quiet strength. When she read Toni Morrison or heard Chimamanda speak, something in her spine straightened. She wanted that elegance. That precision. That command.
She didn't need English to define her future. She needed it to define herself.
---
Beyond the Classroom
And yet, Bani knew what most people around her thought.
Master's in English? Oh, so she'll be a teacher.
She had nothing against the profession. Teachers had built her foundation. But that wasn't her destination. She didn't want to replicate what already existed. She wanted to create. To expand. To evolve.
There was a fire within her that couldn't survive in chalk dust and repetition.
She envisioned her education not as a staircase, but as a prism reflecting in every part of her life. In how she observed people. In the metaphors she used. In the confidence of her stride. In her ability to communicate across cultures, opinions, and spaces.
She wanted her intellect to be felt, not just seen.
And Then, the Mirror
But there was another dream. One that lived in her wardrobe, in magazine cutouts folded into notebooks, in the curve of her eyeliner and the posture of her spine.
Fashion.
Bani had loved it for as long as she could remember. Not just the surface-level glitter of it, but the art. The stories behind fabrics, the language of silhouettes, the emotion of colors. To her, style was not vanity. It was vocabulary. And the body was a canvas.
People said it was strange—a girl studying Woolf and Wilde also practicing her walk before a mirror. But Bani saw no contradiction.
"I don't want to choose between mind and body," she often said to herself. "I want to embody both."
Her dream? To model not just locally, but globally. Not as a mannequin, but as a woman of intellect and style. She didn't want to be looked at — she wanted to be seen.
International Dreams, Local Roots
She kept her dreams quiet.
In her neighborhood, young women were praised for marrying early, dressing simple, and working steady. To want a Master's in literature and dream of walking international runways? It felt almost rebellious.
But Bani didn't care.
Her silence wasn't submission. It was strategy.
College had settled into a rhythm—messy group projects, half-hearted lectures, and the quiet comfort of new friendships. I wasn't alone anymore. There were girls I liked, boys who were kind, and a few souls who felt like they might just stay in my life a little longer.
Still, some days felt hollow. Like today.
As I sat in a mind-numbing lecture, the professor's words faded into background noise. My mind wandered—to that secret space only I knew. A strange, unexplainable dimension I could slip into when reality felt too flat. I called it the Magical Space System—a name as odd as the place itself. It wasn't a dream, nor a fantasy. It was mine. A realm where I could speak my intentions, my questions, my doubts—and sometimes, it spoke back.
Today, I had one clear question:
"How do I begin to shape myself for the world I want?"
Because if I truly wanted to walk the runways, pose in front of flashing cameras, and wear elegance like second skin—I had to transform. And not in spirit alone.
The truth was, I was painfully skinny. Clothes hung on me like empty fabric. My bones showed more than beauty did. There was nothing wrong with being thin, I knew. But modeling demanded presence—soft strength, graceful shape. I wanted to carry clothes, not disappear inside them.
I needed to gain weight.
It sounded so simple—eat more, move less. But my body never worked like that. In what felt like another life, I'd struggled with this well into my thirties. No matter what I ate or how little I exercised, I stayed the same—slender to the point of worry.
So this time, things had to change. I wasn't aiming for curves or size. I just needed enough softness—some lean muscle, some visible vitality. A little flesh to hold the dream.
And then there was the matter of walking. Not the kind everyone does, but the walk that stops the world. I needed to train—heels, posture, balance. Every step had to speak. So I made a note to find the perfect pair of training heels. Something strong but forgiving, like I hoped I'd be.
Yes, I had the height—5 foot 9, long enough for designers to notice. But height alone wouldn't carry me. Presence would.