Chandrayan Gupta's Blog

I'm an idiot. A complete jackass. Let's just get that out of the way first. I thought that simply writing a book would be enough. Marketing? What's that? I thought that people would think - "Look at him! He published a novel at only 19 years of age! Let's all read it and love it and make him happy!"

Boy, was I wrong.

Since I don't want anyone else to repeat my mistakes, here are the top five lessons I learnt from self-publishing both my novels -

Writing a book is only half the battle - Actually, perhaps even less than half. Ever wondered how a novel you hate has so much positive feedback? Or how a first-time author has so many reviews? It's because they properly marketed their book. Trust me, I know a few books that deserve awards, and are instead sitting idly on dusty, untouched shelves. If you self-publish, you won't have your publishing house doing all the marketing for you. No, that burden will fall squarely on your shoulders, and it's very hard work. Which brings me to my next lesson...Be prepared to spend some money - Even if you find a publishing house with whom you can publish your novel for free, you will have to spend a good amount of money to promote it. Buying promotion packages, social media advertising, advertising in general, all require money. Prepare to run at a loss for the first few months, even years. If you've got an image in your head of hitting Publish and watching piles of notes fall into your lap, you're out of luck.Be active on social media - This is the one area I will never be able to commit to, because I am a born introvert. Twitter and Instagram are great social media platforms for spreading the word about your book. But social media marketing goes beyond simply tweeting a link to your book and then wondering why no one's clicking on it. You have to make connections first, healthy relationships. Build a following.Speaking of a following - In the first line of this article, we established how I'm an idiot. Here's another reason. I didn't have a following when I published my first novel. Hell, I wasn't even on social media. Think of it this way. A bullet travels fast, but the universe is expanding at a faster rate. If you fire a bullet in space, it won't reach nearby stars. Not at the speed it's going at. Similarly, unless you have an established fanbase, a group of dedicated followers, you won't be able to keep up with your competition. Simply publishing a book and expecting people to read it is like walking out of the cave you've been in for the past 5 years, standing in the middle of Times Square, and yelling - "I've published a book!" Pardon the language, but no one gives a shit. No one knows you. If they don't know you, they don't trust you. If they don't trust you, they don't trust your work. Ergo, they won't read your work. I cannot overstate the importance of having an organic, dedicated following prior to publishing your book. In a way, you're not selling your books. You're selling you.Some of the backlash toward self-publishing is justified - I hate ending on a bad note, but you will not believe the kind of absolute filth I've read in the past two years. I won't name names, obviously, but here's the thing - self-publishing makes it accessible to publish a book. Literally anyone can do it. Which, in a way, is a very good thing. But it also means that every once in a while, you will come across writing that makes your skin crawl, that makes you feel ashamed of identifying as a self-published author. Yes, it's that bad. Of course, then there are those works that'll make you wonder why they aren't winning any awards. There seems to be no middle ground in self-publishing. Either it's very good, or it's crap. All of this is to say that you'll face some judgement when you declare yourself to be a self-published author. Don't let it faze you - as long as you're confident in your writing ability, you'll make it.

In case anyone's interested, I write crime thriller novels that also tackle various mental health issues in today's time (based on my own experiences with clinical depression and GAD). They've both been favorably-reviewed. You can find The Rage Within here.

I never wanted your body

I just wanted your heart

You know, love is today

A dying art

The warmth in your eyes

The scent of your hair

Are nothing compared to

Your words, I swear

You doubted my intentions

You distanced yourself from me

I never wanted what the other boys did

Now, oh now do you see?

Love has today

Become a synonym of lust

More to do with looks

Than with safety and trust

But I am an old-school romantic

Please let me show you

Love is more than a toxic relationship

More than one and one makes two

Love is more than a definition

I’ve seen love that can heal

Love that can destroy

And love that makes you kneel

Love is not possessive

And it has no place for pride

When you’re truly in love

You can put all your pettiness aside

Love is all-consuming

It makes you blind

It takes complete control

Of your heart and mind

And that’s the beauty of love

That it forces you to let go

Forces you to lose yourself

In another person’s glow

I convinced you to stay

Convinced you to give me a chance

Convinced you to let me

Make your heart dance

You make me crazy

I can’t breathe when you’re here

You’re the only one who can make me do

Everything that I fear

You made me let my guard down

You made me open up to you

And the craziest thing

Is that I actually wanted to

I let go of my insecurities

I let myself trust once more

I did all of it even though

My heart was so very sore

When you said, “I love you”

My heart skipped a beat

You moved me, my Sweet

And that, is no mean feat

You healed my bleeding heart

Which once was almost dead

It’s a shame then that girl,

You’re only in my head.

I've wanted to write this post for a long time now, but never got around to it. Well, better late than never!

Mr Robot - Among all the television shows in the world, Mr Robot will always be my favorite. It's about a socially awkward cybersecurity engineer suffering from clinical depression who gets contacted by an anarchist to bring down the very company he protects by day. The cybersecurity engineer in question, Elliot Alderson, is also a vigilante hacker by night, and the very first scene of the series shows him bringing down the owner of a website that serves child pornography. Needless to say, this is an emotionally heavy show, but with a startling amount of humanity. Season 2 is a bit slow-paced, and the only reason, I think, that Mr Robot isn't more popular. People stopped watching it after the first season. But the third season brings the show back to form (and then some), and the fourth season is the best season of television I have ever watched. This show will always have a special place in my heart. I followed it from its very first episode to its very last one, and it's helped me through some tough times. Luther - Luther is a British crime drama television series. It's dark (quite literally, especially the fifth season), gritty, psychological, and superbly acted, i.e., my kind of show. I would have watched it years ago, but I had a rule against watching anything in which dogs die (I still do, but if the show is good enough to justify it, I'll keep watching). Once I got past that, I discovered just how good this show is. The cinematography, the chilling atmosphere, the originality of the crimes... I think I'll rewatch it now, thank you.The John Wick Movie Series - I know I'm cheating here, putting three movies in one entry, but it's my list, so piss off. Again, I came across John Wick years ago, but didn't pursue it because the very premise spelled out that a retired assassin must jump back into action when a group of Russian criminals steal his car and kill his dog, a gift from his dying wife. Also, I was under the misconception that this would be a mindless action movie, but boy oh boy was I mistaken. This is action at its finest, with no shaky cam nonsense and no quick cuts. Keanu Reeves is at his finest here as a laconic killing machine with enough emotional depth to humanize him and keep his motivations relatable. I finally watched the first movie around a month ago, and just had to gobble up the next two in as many days. The Gift - This is a 2015 psychological thriller movie, which was once my favorite of all time. It's about a couple who moves into a new neighbourhood, and immediately the husband stumbles into an old schoolmate, who's a little weird. Keeps leaving them gifts, turns up uninvited, that sort of thing. It soon escalates into something more dangerous, and the wife launches an investigation of her own so as to ascertain who this man is and why he's obsessed with her husband. This is a slow-burn movie, which keeps expertly building tension until the final gratifying release. Psychological drama at its most compelling.Seinfeld - Possibly the most out-of-place entry in this whole list, but I couldn't leave out this gem. Most sitcoms (such as the overrated - yeah I said it, overrated - Friends, and the comparatively better How I Met Your Mother) have change as a plot device. What I mean by that is that things happen in those shows. Ted and Robin get together, Phoebe has kids, Barney and Robin get together, Rachel has kids, Don and Robin get together, Monica has kids. Things with consequences and far-reaching impact. But the very premise of Seinfeld is that nothing happens on that show. It's a show about nothing. They did one episode about the gang waiting for a table at a Chinese restaurant, and another about not being able to find their car in a parking lot. This is a hilarious show, what you'd call a "time-waste" show, and is possibly the funniest sitcom of all time.

 Have you ever felt like something was fundamentally amiss with the world? Like the very air around you was… wrong?

 The December night air is brutally cold, a chill I never thought Kolkata would ever experience. Even wrapped in a sweater under an overcoat, my fingers approach numbness and my ears hurt. And yet I stumble on aimlessly, going nowhere. I am in a place called Elaichigram, on the outskirts of this City of Joy. The earphones I have on are just for show; my phone’s battery ran out a while ago. Usually unable to survive without music, right now I hardly notice its absence. My head hurts from lack of sleep, and it takes an unimaginable amount of mental strength to stay upright, to not collapse to the ground, curl up in a ball, and stay there until I die.

 And yet I stumble on aimlessly, going nowhere.

 When my mom sat me down in my bedroom an hour ago with a grim expression on her face, I expected a scolding regarding my recent increase in smoking. She has never told me not to smoke, knowing that it would have little effect, but has always maintained that I must not cross a certain limit of her choosing. Over the past few weeks, I had been breaking that mandate with impunity, and I supposed that the time had finally come for a rigorous talking-to.

 That was not the reason behind her consternation, however. And right now, I wish it were. Anything but what she just told me.

 In the distance, I hear wedding music playing loudly. Sometimes, houses in Elaichigram are rented out to couples getting married. These houses are reasonably large, and come equipped with a sizeable lawn for mass gatherings. Without thinking, I set off towards the wedding. The stillness of the night is suffocating me, and I need some noise around me now. A crowd to disappear in, somewhere to hide. Something to numb my senses, blunt the knife in my heart.

 As I walk on, random thoughts keep colliding in my head, robbing me of the ability to think clearly, with purpose.

 ‘You guys look nothing alike,’ they’d say when they saw mom and me, and it is true. I am tall, dark, thin. Gangly, even. My mom has always been fair as snow, stocky, short. Barely five feet. We speak differently, act differently, think differently.

 ‘The incongruity is so striking!’ they’d say, and then, with a giggle, ‘It’s almost like you’re…’

 Adopted.

 ‘You’re twenty-one now,’ mom said while I sat staring into space. ‘You have a right to know. So now you know. I’m… sorry. I know hearing this must be difficult.’

 ‘Who…’ I started, before a coughing fit came over me. My throat was completely dry. ‘Who’s the father? And the mother? Have they ever reached out to you?’

 Mom had told me before that dad had died in a car crash when I was a year old, and I’d never questioned it. Perhaps I should have.

 ‘No. I found you on my doorstep one fine morning. I’d never married, and had never planned on having any children, but when I gazed into your eyes… please don’t hate me. Whatever you’re feeling right now is completely justified, but as far as I’m concerned, I raised you. You were, are, and will always be, my son.’

 It was then that I had stood up, and wordlessly left the house. Is this what shock feels like? The complete absence of cognizable thought, just a reasonless clump of words and sentences with no identifiable meaning? A meandering stream of syllables and sounds that fail to make sense?

 What do I do now? What would you do?

 ‘Oh, excuse me,’ I say automatically, before realizing that I just bumped into a suited man.

 ‘It’s okay,’ he mutters, before returning to his conversation. Where am I? I am inside the wedding house, aren’t I? A quick look around confirms it; there are waiters walking around with refreshments and finger foods, groups of well-dressed men and women with permanent, plastic smiles on their faces, a burst of laughter here, a hug there. Colorful lights adorn the primary house, from inside which emanates the sound of wedding rites being recited, the repugnant yet intoxicating aroma of fire. Out here, people walk around, eat, take selfies. A break from the mundanity of everyday life.

 Pushing my thoughts to the back of my mind, I wander around, gulping down soft drinks, chewing on delectable fish fries and kebabs, my mind a complete blank. The minutes pass by, and I begin feeling more at ease, like no one knows me, like I don’t ever have to leave here, never have to face the real world. Completely anonymous, completely incognito. A drop of water in a vast ocean.

 For the first time tonight, I smile a little.

 And then my eyes fall on her.

 Across the lawn, we stand staring at each other, transfixed, each knowing who the other one is, each lost for words, paralyzed inside a moment neither had ever imagined would come.

 I cannot breathe. It’s her. I can tell. I know. She must be fifty, tall like me, dark like me. Thick hair like mine.

 Why did you leave me?

 Was I not good enough?

 Do you want me back?

 Do you hate me?

 Speak, mother. Speak to me. Why won’t you speak to me?

 A man taps her on the shoulder, says a few words. Presumably asks her what’s wrong. Turning around, I break into a run. Almost knocking over an old woman in the process, I rush out of the premises, not stopping until I am in a quiet, deserted alley.

 And finally, the tears come.

 ‘What’s wrong?’ mom asks, watching me curled up in a ball, bawling my eyes out.

 ‘I don’t know,’ I spit, even as she wraps her arms around me. ‘I feel… I feel alone.’

 ‘Don’t be silly,’ she says comfortingly. ‘You’ll never be alone as long as I’m alive.’

 ‘Something feels wrong. Something’s missing. I’m not seeing something. I dunno what’s happening to me.’

 ‘Shhh… I’m here. I’m here for you.’

 ‘You are? I’m not unwanted?’

 ‘No, and don’t you ever dare think you are. I love you with all my heart. All of it. If something happened to you, I couldn’t bear it. You are my everything, and I’ll always be there for you. I’ll always love you.’

 I’ll always love you.

 Somehow, the memory only makes me cry harder. Now I know what was wrong. I’ve found out what was missing.

 Or rather, who was missing.

 Suddenly, someone places a hand on my shoulder, and I instantly know who it is.

 ‘Please don’t cry,’ she says, her voice soft as velvet, mellifluous and welcoming. ‘Oh God, what have I done? I’m so sorry.’

 Turning around, I face her, look her in the eye. She seems conflicted, unsure of what to do. A very pretty woman, but far from beautiful.

 And suddenly, I know.

 Over the next few seconds, I slowly force myself to stop crying. As I wipe my eyes with the handkerchief, I can finally feel cognition returning to my mind. I can think again, feel again.

 I can finally be again.

 Turning around once more, I begin walking away.

 ‘Wait,’ she calls out behind me, and I come to a stop. ‘Where are you going?’

 ‘Home,’ I say, back still turned to her.

 ‘Stay. Please. Tell me about yourself. Tell me who my son has become.’

 ‘She raised me,’ I say flatly. ‘You might have given birth to me, but you’re not my mother, and you will never be. I need to get back to my real family.’

 Before she can react, I begin walking again, and this time, I don’t stop until she is far behind me, lost in an endless sea of faces.

 You were right, mom. I was, am, and will always be your son.

 Because at the end of the day, we all have the right to choose our family.

Today, I'd like to weigh in on an ongoing debate that has the world divided. I'm talking, of course, about whether a citizen's right to privacy outweights national security concerns of the country. Should a citizen be subject to wiretapping and surveillance that they never consented to, in order to keep the borders of the nation free of bomb-wearing maniacs?

That is an impossible question, truth be told. Whichever side you choose, there are serious drawbacks. If you completely reject the State's incursions into your private life, there's a more-than-substantial chance that an enemy combatant shall take advantage of it. If, however, you forfeit your right to privacy, you hand over your most intimate details to the Government, possibly facilitating the rise of a totalitarian, police State.

The truth is, as is the case in most debates, there is no one right answer here. Let's say that the State has no right to engage in any kind of surveillance on its citizens. You're sitting at your dinner table, raving on about how noble the Government is, while your neighbor Ram is staring at the stick of C4 on the table, calling his co-conspirators and raving about how dumb the Government is. Completely plausible.

On the other hand, if the Government does have the right to engage in surveillance on its citizens, you'd be afraid of calling anyone ever again. Your neighbor Ram was taken away in the dead of night by a dozen masked commandos, and you can still hear his screams in your nightmares. Meanwhile, your friend Karun was arrested in broad daylight yesterday because he used the trigger-word "bomb" over the phone while referring to a girl he liked.

You might think that me equating mass surveillance with totalitarianism is a logical fallacy, but it's really not. In the initial stages, the Government would be hesitant of arresting anybody on terrorism or criminal charges. What if they turned out to be mistaken? They'd have turned the life of an innocent man upside down. Then, lo and behold, they turned out to be right! If Paresh had not been arrested when he was, his children would be motherless today. Well, don't they feel relieved, and a little bit heroic as well.

Time moves on, and the Government becomes more comfortable about arresting suspect citizens. Priya was planning to murder her boss. Ibrahim was planning to take out his parents. Ramesh was planning to wipe out the city of Mumbai. We know we're right, because we have audio clips and text messages where they can be heard planning it. We're heroes.

And then that fateful day comes. Your boss passes you over for a promotion that you rightfully deserve. In the heat of the moment, you call your wife and spit ruefully, 'I could kill him right now!'

Next thing you know, you're being whisked away by uniformed policemen with their chests puffed out importantly. You were planning to murder your boss, and we have the audio clip to prove it. And that's it. There'd be no turning back from that moment. Now, anyone who dared mutter anything unacceptable, no matter in what state of mind, would be arrested. And it would be completely acceptable.

See, the moment you take a questionable decision in the name of national security, you open a door that can never be closed again. Everything becomes about national security. You begin treating the very people you claim to be protecting as potential enemies of the State.

So, I think that the most acceptable option here is to strike a balance between the two extremes. Allow the State access to your life, but only to a certain, reasonable degree. If anything goes wrong even after that, well, there's nothing to be done. Not everything can be prevented.

In all the debates I've observed, over a variety of topics, participants seem to have this idea that only one option is absolutely correct, and the other horrendously wrong. It's polar opposites. No compromise. The moment you discount any opposing view as being not even a little bit valid, you welcome intolerance into your mind.

It's high time that people realized something.

Doubt is not a weakness. Doubt is what keeps man open-minded.

I said goodbye to you today

Walked away from you and I

It wasn’t an easy thing to say

To distance myself from your high

I knew from the moment I met you

That you were oh so unique

I know you never thought so too

You believe you’re a worthless geek

I wish I could make you see

How special you are to me

How, oh how can it be

That the ocean thinks itself just a sea?

The agony of walking away from you

Is enough to paralyze a man

I feel myself sinking into an endless blue

For this day, I never did plan

I don’t want to see you go

I don’t want to feel this pain

Over these years you helped me grow

So why do I feel it was all in vain?

For all the happiness you gave me

For everything I’ll now have to go through

For all the darkness I will now see

I’m sorry, but I wish I never met you.

I like to think that no matter how hopeless a situation seems, there is always a way out. It's not perfect, it's probably not even ideal, but it is a way out. As things stand right now, humanity needs a way out. We all know what I'm talking about, so let's not waste time rehashing things I've already said before.

Instead, I'd like to posit four possibilites about where the human race is headed - essentially, how things will end for us. I shall try to keep this post free of any unnecessary morbidness.

That said, the first possibility is that we ALL DIE SLOW, PAINFUL DEATHS FROM IRREVERSIBLE CHANGES TO MOTHER NATURE. Sorry, I had to. Things are heating up, that's no secret. Estimates made by scientists regarding how much longer we have range from just over a decade to a few centuries at most. There is a plethora of scientific evidence out there that climate change is real; what's less certain is when and how those changes will catastrophically culminate. I'm no scientist, so I shan't venture a guess. Unlike SOME people, I don't dish out opinions on things I don't understand. Yeah, you heard me.

All we know for certain is that the sun shall explode in another 4 to 5 billion years, once it uses up all its hydrogen, and has nothing left in the tank it keep itself going. Who knows, maybe humans will be around till then. If Darwin's opinions are anything to go by, humans will evolve to counteract any changes in the atmosphere that would otherwise annihilate us. Maybe we'll have something akin to natural air coolers inside us or something. Humans have come a long way since the first homo sapiens of 200,000 years ago. Maybe we shall evolve further to adapt to changing climatic conditions. Or maybe we'll die out like prehistoric animals such as the Woolly Mammoth. That would be such a... mammoth... bummer, right? Hahahaha get it? Mammo... no? Okay, I'll move on.

The second, and in my opinion more likely, possibility is that we kill each other off. Apparently, overpopulation in and of itself isn't anything to be afraid of. We could take every human being alive today and fit them all in the city of London. It'd be cramped, for sure, but it's possible. Logically, I think that too much of the population is concentrated in areas that are just too small for it to be comfortable. If humans were spread out equally across the world, we wouldn't be tripping over one another.

Anyway, the point is that the human race isn't getting smaller. People still procreate, for some reason. I mean, Jesus Christ are babies stupid. I hate babies. They cry all the time, and they just always WANT something. They have those big eyes, too. Ugh. More people equals more chances of conflict. We have nuclear power now. It's not that far-fetched that America decides to take out another high-ranking official in another country capable of responding in kind. America is a bully now, and eventually someone's going to fight back. When that day comes, it's boom time.

The third possibility is that the human race shall have no end. Who knows, maybe we'll have emigrated to other solar systems by the time the sun explodes. And by the time that solar system explodes, we'll have moved on to the next one. If history has proven anything, it's that we're very, very smart. I know it doesn't seem like it when you go on Twitter and Facebook, but the human race is capable of great things when it wants to be. The rate at which technology is evolving, it's entirely possible that the colonization of Mars shall begin by the end of 2050, or at least by 2100. Elon Musk has plans to send roughly a 100 people to Mars by 2024 to colonize the planet. I expect that won't happen. Let's be realistic here - we have yet to step foot on Mars, get a feel for the place and its radically different planetary conditions. Being prepared to colonize it in 4 years seems a bit of a stretch. But given a long enough timeframe, I believe it's possible. In 1920, if you said you wanted to land on the moon, your friends would advise you to bite a lemon. The way things are now would've seemed impossible back then. We're constantly bettering ourselves. It's not beyond the realm of possibility that we'll one day be able to not only adapt to natural changes, but also influence them. If that seems fantastical now, I would like to remind you that the very concept of an internet was born only in the late 1960s in the form of the ARPANET. A computer tried to send a node-to-node message to another computer. The message was LOGIN. The network crashed by the time G was being sent. Compare that to today, and, well, things have changed.

The fourth, and my personal favorite, possibility, is that it's a waste of time to ponder the future of the human race, because it's not in our hands. See, the Simulation Hypothesis states that just like every screen is made of tiny pixels, which light up in turn to give the illusion of movement, when nothing is actually moving at all, the very air around us breaks down into tiny pixels as well. Nothing is actually happening, because nothing actually exists. We're in a simulation created by intelligent beings with access to higher dimensions than we're capable of even perceiving. The end of the human race will simply be the end of the simulation. Maybe our universe was just an experiment by a being who wanted to prove to his buddies that he could code as well. We're not in control. We're just pieces of code doing whatever we're programmed to do. Any counter-arguments to the Simulation Hypothesis can be dispelled by simply stating that it's just part of the simulation. Maybe the fact that humans can even grasp the possibility of them just being pieces of code has been coded in, i.e., it's just part of the simulation.

It's like Last Thursdayism, another theory that I love. Last Thursdayism states that the universe was created last Thursday, but with the appearance of being created billions of years ago. All our memories, and everything around us, were just created last Thursday. It can never be disproved, because if you show any of its proponents a picture that you took years ago, they'll just reply that the picture, along with the apparent timestamp, was inserted in the world last Thursday. Since it can never be disproved, its not taken as a scientific theory, just a philosophical one.

So there you have it - my four theories about where the human race is headed. I had a lot of fun researching and writing this article, and I hope you liked reading it as well, and that it made you think. Feel free to let me know any of your theories about where we're going.

Until next time!

I've begun writing Book Three in my Radha Bose series of detective thrillers, and I've titled it Too Far Gone. The book shall be more surreal, more psychological than the previous two. The title kind of summarizes the theme of the book - Aditya and Radha were in a very bad place at the end of The Rage Within, and Too Far Gone will witness their continued descent into darkness.

Aditya will be dealing with THAT bombshell dropped in The Rage Within, and Radha will be grappling with the vengeful instincts, awoken in the previous book, that threaten to make her more of an antihero, a vigilante.

As I said, I've begun writing the book, but it won't be completed anytime soon. I expect a year-end release, probably around November or December. This is also the first time that I named a book before I began writing it, so progress.

Stay tuned for more. In the meantime, check out Birth of a Duo and its sequel The Rage Within.

We promised to never grow apart

We’d be the ones who stayed from the start

I will be your friend

Forever, till the end

I fell for it, too

I couldn’t see you

You made me let my guard down

And I, not realizing I was going to drown,

Believed your lies

You wore a very convincing disguise

I couldn’t see

You were using me

You would leave once you were done

Having your twisted, awful fun

I let myself believe

And I let you deceive

Well, never again will I let anyone in

Never again will I let my optimism win

Now I know

Hope is my biggest foe

I let warmth into my heart

That was a mistake on my part

So it is time to say goodbye

Time to stop believing every lie

Remind myself of the truth you can’t deny

That if you trust, you die.

If I have one word for the 2010s, it's "tough". I started off the decade just fine, a regular school-going kid with a regular life. Then came the clinical depression diagnosis in 2013. The next 5 years were the toughest of my life. I had to wrestle with an all-consuming, invisible illness that I still don't fully understand, but the worst part was that clinical depression is rarely an isolated affliction. It brings with it other complications, too. For me, it was panic disorder. I've stated it before and I'll state it again - I would choose clinical depression over panic disorder any day. Depression is my life; I know how to handle it now. But anxiety, panic attacks? They bring me to my knees. There were many nights I was certain would be my final ones on this planet. I cannot put into words how taxing and draining those 5 years were, so I won't even try. Just know that it was bad, and I consider myself lucky to have made it out of them alive.

I formed a hobby over those years - writing. I wrote poems and short stories, merely for my own pleasure. You can read some of them on this blog. I've been reading novels since I was 4 or 5, and I've always idolized authors. It was a goal of my mine to become an author one day, and I believed in my ability to make it possible despite everything. Even when logic said that it was impossible, I didn't forfeit the dream to one day hold a book in my hand, one which said "Chandrayan Gupta" on the bottom. Of course, now I have two of them, but I'm skipping ahead.

You see, when you're 14 years old and your biggest worry is making it through the night without slitting your throat open, you gain a sort of... perspective. While other kids my age were doing, well, whatever it is that 14-year old kids do, I was in my room, writing and reading what I thought was important. Hint - Bollywood masala movies, Chetan Bhagat novels and the sex life of celebrities did not make the cut. I think I unconsciously reprogrammed my brain to believe that I wasn't just different from those around me, I was superior. Being an outcast was my badge of honor, a mark that I didn't get swept away by pop culture, that I stayed true to myself. Because I could see the world differently than most people, I was better than most people.

It was bullshit.

The truth is that I went to bed every night wishing that I could be more normal. Because I couldn't fit in anywhere, I made myself believe that I didn't need to. Everyone and everything else was "stupid", and I was the victim. I didn't realize that this defence mechanism didn't serve its purpose; it didn't make me feel better about myself, it made me feel worse. I wanted nothing more than to fit in, but every time I tried to, I failed. I kept failing to be normal. I kept failing to overcome my social anxiety. I kept failing to connect with anyone. In trying to lift myself, I ended up burying myself. I became my own worst enemy. Protecting myself against the duplicitous, back-stabbing world became my only goal. In trying to survive, I forgot to live.

All that changed when I penned the short story The Suicide in 2017. I won't name names, but my desire to become a writer was strengthened by one person's insistence that it was impossible. I was 16 when they told me that, that I was fighting an uphill battle, and would most likely fail. I used that as motivation, because the thing I enjoy the most in this world is proving people wrong. When I wrote The Suicide, it included only Radha Bose, a beautiful but damaged private investigator grappling with guilt over her father's death. I thought that it was an interesting concept - meshing psychology and mystery together. Why not write a detective thriller, my favorite kind of novel, in which the protagonist suffers from mental health issues, my favorite kind of protagonist? To my knowledge, it has rarely been done before. I know psychology, so I can write the character and her struggles faithfully, and I have what has been described as a very twisted and vivid imagination, so I could probably write a nice murder mystery plot as well. So I expanded on The Suicide. Second draft over, and still the only main character was Radha Bose. It was not until the third draft, in which I had to plug a major plothole, that I introduced Aditya Gokhale. Me, in essence. I put a fictionalized version of myself in a story. I made him say the things I wanted to say, do the things I wanted to do. I lived vicariously through Aditya Gokhale.

All my life, I had been a hardcore introvert who always kept his feelings bottled up. But then I wrote the final draft of what would eventually become Birth of a Duo, and I realized that self-expression is one of the most gratifying things in the world. I didn't need to keep things bottled up. I didn't need to keep everyone locked out. I didn't need to not let anybody in. I just needed a better screening process, and I needed to trust more selectively.

I started opening up to people I decided to trust, and it was wonderful. It was like being ushered into a whole new world. I became far more active on social media as well. I once scoffed at Instagram. Now, it's my favorite social media platform ever. I'd always held a strong belief that if I showed my true self to people, they would run away. Not only did they not run away, they loved me. I am so, so grateful to everyone who was there for me when I needed it.

In 2010, things were normal. In 2015, it was everything I could do to not kill myself. In 2019, I completed the final phase of my internal transition from a loner to, well, less of a loner. Don't be fooled - I still am who I was before. The packaging may change, but the product remains the same. All it'll take is one emotional disaster to throw me back to 2015.

My depression, which I once viewed as my biggest enemy, is a double-edged sword. It took away so much from me, but it also gave me the ability to empathize with people and their problems. It gave me perspective, and it gave me maturity. For the longest time, I thought that I became a writer despite mental illness.

But now, I see that I became a writer because of mental illness.