By Rohan Vashisht (BFIA’26)

Harsh, who has too many friends in his hometown, was too excited to explore and step out of his place for the first time. He worked extremely hard and stepped into his favourite college—Shaheed Sukhdev College of Business Studies (Sukhdev)—and awaited this new chapter in his life with only exciting experiences and running interesting memories, besides becoming friends and growing as a person. But all of a sudden, he reached Sukhdev and faced reality. Excitement drenched out in no time, and soon, he felt lost in the mammoth sea of unknown faces. That seemingly inviting and vibrant Sukhdev was now congested and isolating. He tried hard to reach out to people and make friends, but he couldn’t even get close to anyone. The more he became isolated, the more painful his sorrow was. Soon, his academic performance began to suffer because he missed classes and assignments.

As weeks changed into months, loneliness increasingly intensified Harsh’s feelings. Family dinners were missed, and the laughter of friends, home, and comfort in his own room were part of his memories. Weighty solitude became intolerable; he often sat in his rented apartment room, staring at walls to just be needed. He often silently wept, feeling himself plunged into an eternity of hopelessness. On a drizzly afternoon, Harsh thought of leaving for a café so he could get out from there. He saw a girl sitting alone in a cozy little corner, lost in a book, named Shreya. There was something about her very calm and serene nature—perhaps it was just when she seemed lost in her world but had a warm kind of aura around her.

Summoning all his courage, he stepped forward and began talking to her. It’s incredible how they instantly clicked. They talked about their favourite books and shared stories about their lives. They discovered that some dreams for the future were the same. Every day went by, and the more time he spent with Shreya—studying in the library, exploring Delhi, or just having coffee in that same café—gave him a flicker of hope. He found himself understood and accepted for the first time since leaving home. Their friendship bloomed amidst shared laughter and deep conversations that joyfully came back into his life.

Yet with time, as they got closer, Harsh started becoming too dependent on Shreya for happiness, more than he even realized. He became completely stuck in his mind, thinking about her and couldn’t wait for any spare moment of his time to spend with her. Friends around him couldn’t help but comment on the fact and whispered behind his back that he had gone “obsessive” over someone he just met. But it was, for Harsh, a lifeline while he was going through all those issues. So, one day, Harsh was feeling very elated with their affair and was of the opinion that now it was time for his mother to have a glimpse of this important person in his life.

In the introduction via video call with his mother, everything went so well till he saw his mother change her expression suddenly. While concern instantly replaced warmth, she soon dialed a number on her phone without much further explanation. Minutes later, an ambulance pulled up outside Harsh’s apartment—a mental health emergency ambulance. He was quickly overwhelmed by confusion as a sense of reality dawned on him; his mother had seen through all the efforts to act normal as his mind was slipping away slowly, and he had been doing his best to hide it all from everyone.

It was there, amidst the mess and the terrifying moment, that Harsh came to understand that friendship would not be a very good replacement for self-awareness and healing. He saw the ambulance pull into his doorway as he sunk in his belly—this was a visit from mom, but a wake-up call on how far down he had sunk in despair. He glanced toward the girl who had brought life back into his; she was standing there silent, her smile gradually wearing away as a dawning reality came to both of them.

Harsh felt the wave of loss come into his apartment with the paramedics. As the paramedics entered Harsh’s apartment, he looked towards Shreya. She was standing in one corner of the house with no expression and asked Shreya if she knew what was happening, but Shreya stood there in complete silence and just said one phrase, “You should not dwell into someone that you remove the barrier between imagination and reality,” and slowly started to shatter into the air and vanished in front of Harsh’s eyes.