Short fiction by Nisha Susan: A young boy takes help from ChatGPT to write his homework

My family can’t understand my English problem. They are all very good at English. My sister could have become an English professor if she wanted but decided to study maths instead. Even my older brother, who is doing a PhD in physics and is not as smart as my sister, used to get really high marks in English. It’s hard to explain doing badly in English when that’s the only language you speak.

When I said I wanted to go abroad to study marine biology, my parents were like, hmm. They looked shady and wouldn’t give me a straight answer. My brother Ajay didn’t reply to my text for three days. He was like that even before he went to the UK. Then I got a text: “bro, you have MIT ambitions but I am not sure even a local Bangalore college will take you with your marks.” I almost threw my phone from the balcony. What a brother. What a family.

After first term, when I brought it up again, my mother said, “Okay, let me think about it,” and then she drove off to work. That weekend she said, “Michael, if you really want to go to the US, we have...

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