“I had got admission, but because I didn’t have an economics degree, the college wanted me to attend summer school as well,” says Shanker. Put together, the fee for the summer school and the MSc course in economics worked out to be much more than he could manage to raise.

In desperation, Shanker wrote to almost every financial institution in London, promising to work with them for a period of five years if only they would pay for his studies. “Eight to nine per cent of the companies replied. All of them said their policy did not allow for such financing,” says Shanker. “Just after that, they would write, ‘All the best for your studies.’ The letters frustrated me no end.”

Student loans were also not an option, as the fee was too high — £55,000, including the fee for summer school, the two-year course, and living costs. Shanker did not want to surrender his parent’s only house as collateral for a loan. With no options left, he deferred his admission by one year. Yet time for arranging finances was fast passing by. “At that point I asked a business associate for help. He just looked at me and said, ‘You have nine months to get creative’,” recalls Shankar. That’s when an idea hit him. Shanker decided to start a blog to help him pay for his studies. “I decided to start writing a short story every day for the next 180 days on my blog. The revenue I would generate, from advertisements and page views, would pay for my studies,” he said.

The idea seems to be working. Though the blog was started on December 1 this year, in 15 days, ‘Wake up and smell the million dollar story’ (http://milliondollarstory.blogspot.com) has already collected $140 for Shanker.

“There are two parallel story series that I have been working on, both are inspired from experiences my friends and I have been through,” explains Shanker. The first series, features Vichitra, a boy in love with Chanchal, who couldn’t care less about him. The second series is about the misadventures of Willie Cash and Rick Shaw, two comical characters who magically get transported to different planets.

Readers seem to be lapping it up. “Till now over 7,000 people have come to my blog. Fourteen bloggers from across the world have supported me by putting my blog’s address on their pages, diverting their readers to come and read my stories,” says Shanker. But one question still haunts Shanker: Will it be enough? “I sure hope so. One day when I am finally in college, I will publish the entire series for people who are supporting me now.”