Tea, Trains & Goodbyes: A Story of Love, Friendship, Engineering and Finding Home

Some journeys begin with a plan. This one began with a train ticket to a town nobody had heard of, for a course he didn't choose, in the middle of a pandemic.
In the middle of a pandemic, Rahul's dreams seem uncertain. After missing the branch he wanted and spending months trapped behind a screen, he finally boards a train to begin engineering college - not the one he imagined, in a small riverside town called Nodipur.

What follows is four years he never saw coming: hostel corridors and late-night tea stalls, train journeys and riverside sunsets, friendships that turn into family - and a chance message from a girl named Kartika that changes everything.
Tea, Trains and Goodbyes is a coming-of-age story about falling in love in the most unplanned circumstances, building friendships that outlast the years that made them, losing what you thought was permanent, and finding your footing when placements, plans, and people all seem to fall apart at once.
From COVID-era lockdowns to Holi celebrations, from beach trips at Digha to the anxiety of placement season, this is a story for anyone who has ever boarded a train not knowing who they'd become by the time it reached the next station.
A nostalgic, heartfelt read for anyone who has ever loved, lost, dreamed, failed, and started again.