My name is Indra Awasthi, and I come from the old, dust-scented lanes of Lucknow—a city that held me, raised me, and sometimes swallowed me whole. I studied Psychology at Lucknow University, then wandered a little farther into Manipal University, Jaipur for my master’s, gathering research papers the way people gather proof of their own existence. Now I find myself at IIT, pursuing a PhD in the very subject that has both dissected me and saved me.
But none of that explains me.
What explains me are the nights.
The ones where the world pressed its weight onto my chest so firmly that breathing felt like a negotiation. There were times when the darkness didn’t frighten me—it invited me. Times when stepping out of life seemed like the last remaining act of control. I stood there, on that invisible edge, more than once, wondering if vanishing would finally make the noise stop.
And then, in the middle of that labyrinth, someone appeared. Not as a hero, not as a miracle—just as a presence. A quiet rebellion against the idea that I was meant to disappear. His arrival wasn’t dramatic; it was almost Kafkaesque—sudden, inexplicable, like a door that opens in a room you were certain had none. And somehow, he shifted the internal machinery of my world. He didn’t rescue me; he reminded me that I still existed.
This book is the echo of that transformation.
A record of the mind that broke, observed itself breaking, and then learned—slowly, clumsily—to rebuild.
If you find yourself in these pages, then maybe you, too, have lived in those dim corridors. And maybe, like me, you’ll discover that even one unexpected person can alter the whole architecture of your life.