“Ah God, why!?” With our heads in our hands, the four of us sat in the campus library.

“We still have two days, right? Guys, we can still make it!” Neeraj, with his usual optimism. This time, however, he spoke as though he didn't believe it himself.

“Guys, the library is closing! Pack up!”

Great. It’s already 9 pm. We gathered our laptops, notes, and the floor plans scattered around the table. As I looked around, I couldn’t help but feel sorry for the ones who had to clean this up. We had made such a big mess. Discarded sketches (like a zillion of them), food wraps, broken pencils, torn-up paper, working drawings, and whatnot.

We left the library and headed to Kaav, the house where half our batch stayed. Over the past few months, it had transformed into a dedicated ‘LIK mandir.’ Everyone worked, ate, slept, and coexisted within those four walls. One room was even sealed with black cloth over the windows for on-hand sketching and rendering, ensuring the gateway sheets wouldn’t fade in sunlight. Sheets occupied the rooms, while people slept in the halls and corridors.

There was a silence on the stroll. We had no idea how to carry on a discussion. Each is lost in a world of their own.

How long has it been since I had a proper sleep? It’s just the Second year of my architecture education, and here I am strolling under the streetlights with my hands so full with drawings that they might fall if I sneezed. What am I even doing here, studying architecture? Do I even like it? Let’s talk statistics here.

What is the best part about a B.Arch. Degree?

• In five years, if all goes well, I'll proudly be known as Ar. Lakshmi, it has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?
• I get to wander around, admiring gorgeous buildings and cities, and call it a ‘case study.’
• I wear black all day, because it screams ‘professional,’ not ‘I’ve given up on life.’
• I get to design buildings that might stand for a hundred years. Hmm, slightly flattering, slightly terrifying.

What’s the worst part about a B.Arch. Degree?

• Sleep? What’s that?
• Breakfast? Never heard of it.
• Energy drink? You mean coffee, right?
• Rest? Vacation? Sanity? You are at the wrong place.

I was surviving my second year there, holding on to dear life, when the infamous LIK TROPHY came knocking on my door. A prestigious architectural competition run by NASA India, it wasn’t just another event; it was a tradition, almost a rite of passage in our college. Every year, our seniors make it to the shortlist, carrying the legacy forward. The one batch that failed to submit or get shortlisted? Blacklisted. And this time, the weight of that legacy landed squarely on our shoulders.

The seniors guided us and divided the batch into teams, each focusing on different areas of work. This year, NASA decided to mix things up and included a design component along with the usual documentation. And somehow, I ended up as the head of the Design team. The most significant one, indeed. We had two months to come up with an innovative redevelopment proposal for an existing project of our choosing. A month slipped into a week, then into days… and now here we were, standing in front of our seniors as they tore our design apart, calling it “lame” and tossing it aside like it never mattered.

Well, no big deal, we still have two days to make a better design. No big deal at all.

We spent the whole last month drowning in this project while our academics were left in ruins. We had to make a decision. Should we just give up or give it our all? I looked up at my team, who were just as lost in thought as I was. I don’t even know how to handle this. I’m supposed to lead them, guide them, and show them the way, but right now, I feel just as lost and fragile as they are. All I want is to crawl back to my room and cry. How was I supposed to fire them up when I couldn’t even find the spark in myself?

Neha stopped on her tracks and turned around, breaking the silence.

“Are we doing this or what? Come on! We’ve been through worse. Remember the time when we had like 4 assignments due and the whole city had an all-night blackout? Phones dead, lights out, coffee useless…and somehow, we survived.”

“No, no, the time when gel flex-quick ran out of stock and we had to glue the final semester models with that pathetic liquid flex-quick? That was worse.”

“Are you all seriously forgetting about the time when we figured out that the letters H, B, and O don’t align on the HBO logo!?”

“Ah! Why would you bring that up! Now the H, B, and O are going to haunt me in my dreams.”

“Dreams? Bold of you to assume you’re getting any sleep.”

For the first time in hours, a ripple of laughter.

“So… are we doing this?” I was still unsure.

“Hell yeah, we are.”

“No more walking around like depressed kittens. Well, look at the bright side, we are already at rock bottom, it can’t get any worse.”

Just like that, my team was back. They knew I was broken; they knew I didn’t have it in me to make an uplifting speech. This was their way of telling me they had my back.

“Then let’s do it. One last shot. Forget about winning for now. We had worked a month for this, poured everything into it, and we were submitting it. No matter what.

LIK was on.

23/02/23

D- DAY

“Just put it somewhere! It doesn’t matter!” I snapped at Kichu as she tried to arrange the final drawings in Photoshop, asking for my suggestions. The whole place was chaos, everyone shouting over each other. Honestly, I don’t know how she stayed calm. If it were me in her place, I would’ve lost it long before that.

All the other teams, the analysis team, the construction and materials team, even the history team, were already done and dusted. And there we were, the design team, still scrambling while the whole room stared us down, waiting. From the corner, someone muttered, “What a messed-up team.” Ah, I wanted to pluck his eyeballs out.

Everyone was looking at us like, “Yep, these guys are totally going to screw this up.” Well, thanks for the moral support, I guess. The deadline was 6 p.m., and here we were, already past 6, still scrambling to finish. We finally shoved the last six sheets in to get scanned and merged with the rest into a PDF.

I walked out of the hall and slumped into a corner, head down on the table. I was heartbroken. We were so close, yet somehow managed to trip right at the finish line. The technical drawings? No scale, no proportion, no North sign, hell, they weren’t even aligned properly. I didn’t even bother looking at the rest of the sheets. What was the point? We’d already lost.

I could hear people shouting, “Can’t upload!” “The site’s closed!” Chaos everywhere. I didn’t even have the strength to get up, let alone react. I hadn’t eaten all day; I couldn’t even remember the last time I showered. And for what? I was too heartbroken to cry. I just lay there, eyes shut, cursing everything and everyone in my head. No sign of Neha, Neeraj, or Aapu, my fellow design teammates. Probably tucked away in their own corners, just as broken. Honestly, I was glad no one tried to wake me or console me. I would’ve snapped. I just wanted to suffer in silence. Well, nothing dramatic, really. Just two months of sleepless nights and skipped meals, all for something that turned out to be a complete mess, and yeah, I feel like dying.

“Get up, and come with me!” Aapu woke me up

“What? Why?”

“Just come!”

I followed her out to the balcony. There was Kichu, with her laptop, working on our messed-up sheet.

“Didn’t we submit it?” I asked. Not having a slight clue about what was going on.

“No, the site is closed, the boys are sending an Email or something. We can try to fix this in the meantime.”

“Do we have time?”

“Shut up and tell me what to do.” It felt like we’d just been handed a second life. Maybe we still had a shot. Maybe not. But if there was even the slightest chance, no way in hell was I going to waste it. It was already pushing 8:30. I jumped in to help Kichu rearrange the sheet, and Aapu sorted out the drawing scales. Everything was moving at breakneck speed. Chaos, but with purpose this time.

“OK, we are going to try and submit the sheets again,” I heard the guys shouting from the room.

“Wait! We are making some changes to the design sheets!”

“What? QUICK! Send it now or we’re submitting the old one!” These guys were going to be the death of me. Well… can’t even blame them. We were already three hours past the deadline, and at that point, one more delay could mean not submitting anything at all.

The seniors were calling, worried, and they went on with” just submit what you have!”

We were almost done. Aapu fixed the scale, and with that, we were done. We fired off the new sheet to Arjun, and he swapped it with the old one. At last, the PDF was edited and ready to upload. Of course, it had to be 100+ MB, because why not? Uploading that beast was a whole other nightmare.

People were running around with the laptop, hunting for a better Wi-Fi signal. At one point, Arjun was standing on a chair, laptop held high like some kind of offering to the internet gods. The clock was ticking. The site was open. We filled in the details and hit upload. And then… that little uploading sign just kept spinning.

All of us stood there, frozen, eyes locked on the screen, hearts pounding. Two months of working like cavemen, no sleep, barely eating, had led to this. This was the moment. The one that would decide if it was all worth it or just another punchline.

SUCCESSFULLY UPLOADED.

The words flashed on the screen, and the whole crowd erupted - screams, cheers, and tears. We did it. We were just a bunch of people with dark circles, dirty clothes, who hadn’t showered in God knows how long, laughing aloud and crying in pure bliss. Moments ago, we were shouting, snapping, and cursing each other. Now? None of that mattered. Everyone’s arms were around everyone. In the end, we all wanted the same thing. I couldn’t hold back my tears any longer. I hadn’t felt that kind of happiness in ages. We really did it! What more could I possibly want? Winning didn’t even matter at that point. We submitted it; that was the victory. We proved our worth to the people who wrote us off.

“WE DID IT,” the words echoed around the room.

Yes, the LIK gave me nightmares for months. But the kind of experience, knowledge, and friendships I got from it make everything else worth it. I met the best people. The people with whom I shared years of laughter. And I know, Years from now, when I look back, LIK won’t just be a project, it’ll be a memory stitched with sleepless nights, crazy deadlines, and the kind of bonds that last a lifetime. And honestly, that’s worth everything.

And hey…second place isn’t too shabby for a team fuelled by panic and caffeine.

.    .    .