The year 2013 opened in the whispering chill of Dehradun's spring — the kind of air that seemed to carry stories from the distant Himalayas. Within the walls of the Prajnadhara Institute of National Excellence (PINE), stories of a different kind were brewing — mischief, misadventures, and the slow cementing of a brotherhood that would one day command the world's attention.
But for now, they were just second-year students.
And they were about to fail.
Academic Divergence, Friendship Convergence
By their second year, the trio had carved out distinct intellectual identities, though they shared the same campus, the same late-night chai, and the same habit of skipping breakfast lectures.
Agniveesh had gone deeper into strategic analysis and global conflict theory, developing a strange obsession with Cold War diplomacy and deterrence doctrines.
Aadesh had entered the grueling halls of public policy and internal security studies, where debates on law enforcement, insurgency responses, and administrative reforms consumed his evenings.
Veer, the quietest of them all, pursued energy infrastructure and environmental intelligence, a course built around crisis management, ecological modeling, and geopolitical resource planning.
Their paths rarely crossed in lecture halls.
But they always found each other after hours — usually by the old broken bench behind the Geostrategic Hall, under flickering tube lights and the occasional sweep of a security drone.
Living Like Kings, Studying Like Fools
The second year at PINE was where most students either sharpened their edge — or blunted it entirely.
Our trio, confident from their growing friendship and a successful first year, leaned too far into the winds of pleasure.
They became legends on campus.
Agniveesh once reprogrammed a strategy simulator to mock the professor's accent.Aadesh held open-floor debates in the mess hall that lasted until 3 a.m., often ending in cheers or chaos.Veer would disappear into the town's second-hand bookstores for days, returning with old maps and weatherworn journals he never finished reading.
They smoked too much, slept too little, and treated their coursework with the kind of ironic detachment only very bright young men can afford—until the system reminded them they couldn't.
The Wall Hits Back
When the mid-year assessment results dropped, the impact was like an earthquake contained in manila folders.
All three had failed.
Not dramatically — no cheating, no absences. But they had underperformed, and PINE didn't tolerate underperformance. Especially not from students on elite government fellowships, groomed for future leadership roles.
They were reassigned to academic probation. They lost research access, simulator privileges, and—worst of all—their bragging rights.
Each reacted differently:
Agniveesh went quiet, clocking hours alone in the library but refusing to seek help.
Aadesh got into arguments with faculty, accusing the system of "killing brilliance with bureaucracy."
Veer simply disappeared for a weekend, leaving behind a note that read: "Don't worry. Thinking."
Reconstruction Through Routine
After a few stormy weeks, something clicked.
They didn't apologize to anyone — not to professors, not to each other. But they slowly began building new routines, silent pacts wrapped in action rather than words.
They began waking up early.They joined separate study groups.They met every evening without fail — not to party, but to decompress, to talk, to keep each other from falling apart.
Failure hadn't broken their bond.
It had tempered it.
Veer's Character Comes into View
It was during this quiet period of recalibration that Veer's personality began to emerge more clearly.
He wasn't just the calm one. He was the observer, the analyst, the one who didn't speak unless there was something worth saying. He read people with the same precision others applied to books.
After college, this quality would make him invaluable in analyzing threats, managing logistics, and seeing three steps ahead of anyone else in the room.
But for now, he was just the guy who always knew when his friends needed silence more than advice.
And that made him irreplaceable.
Lessons Not in the Syllabus
They passed their probation eventually, scraping by with the help of each other and the kind of personal growth that can't be measured by GPA.
They didn't make the Dean's list that year.
But they found something else — something PINE didn't list on any curriculum sheet:
The value of failing without falling apart.
The power of friendship that doesn't need to be loud.
And the early taste of a system they might one day choose to defy — not out of rebellion, but because they'd seen its cracks up close.
That was 2013.
The year they failed on paper — but began rising in shadow.