Heartbreakes & Dreams! The Girls @ IIT  (English, Paperback, Heartbreaks, Dreams . Girls@IIT)

Heartbreaks & Dreams! The Girls @ IIT is about life at IIT from a different perspective.

Summary Of The Book

There are a lot of Indian authors, graduates of IIT or IIM, writing books based on their experiences in these reputed institutes. The most famous of these is Chetan Bhagat and his Five Point Someone.

Most of them though, especially the IIT based novels, are written from a guy’s point of view. It is about the experiences of boys at IIT. But, there is another breed, still rare, but growing in number - IIT Girls.

No book has thus far been written about life at an IIT campus from the female point of view. Heartbreaks & Dreams! The Girls @ IIT fills that void.

Tanu is from a middle class family with an ambition to prove herself equal to her siblings. She decides that to do this, she has to get into IIT. She takes the entrance exam, and is accepted into IIT, Delhi.

She arrives with hopes and dreams, but is soon lost in that institution, still dominated by males. She finds she is the only girl in her department and it attracts a lot of attention, some nice, some not. She also discovers long held biases against girls, especially among lab assistants.

Trying to negotiate her way through all this and prove herself academically, Tanu is soon drawn into a romantic tangle. She has fallen in love with the guy who sits next to her, her lab partner and a senior fall in love with her, and soon, her personal life begins to get out of hand too.

Tanu makes friends with three other girls, Charu, Puja and Divya. Together, the three try to overcome unique issues facing girls at IIT, and also some common issues that arise in college life.

They have to deal with their studies, tough exams, crazy professors, college elections, the jealousy of seniors, relationship with the boys and so much more during their time at IIT. All this is told with empathy and humor, and it offers a new perspective on campus life at one of India’s most prestigious educational institutions.

About Parul A. Mittal

Parul Agarwal Mittal is herself an IIT alumni, an IT professional, and an author.

Heartbreaks & Dreams! The Girls @ IIT was her first novel. She has followed this up with another book, Arranged Love.

Parul Mittal graduated from IIT, Delhi with a degree in Electrical Engineering. She then obtained a masters degree in computer science from the University of Michigan. She has worked for many big corporations in the IT sector, but now runs her own business, an e-venture called RivoKids. One day, her husband gave her the book, Five Point Someone by Chetan Bhagat. Chetan was her batchmate at IIT, and this led her to wonder if she, too, could write a book about life on campus. Heartbreaks & Dreams! The Girls @ IIT was the result.