‘My parents, my home and my past are what I dread the most. I don’t want to face any of them again. I’ve worked very hard to build this life for myself. I don’t really want to go back. As a grown-up, you often start hating a lot of people you might’ve otherwise loved while growing up. The fault is not completely theirs though, because it’s not that they have changed. It’s just that you’ve evolved. And where it’s possible to shut these people out of your life, you end up doing so.’

‘But all of us also have that one person whom we can’t totally shut out. We have to deal with them. In that case, finding the tiniest bit of good in them can help us stay positive. Attracting too much negativity or dwelling too much on it is bad for our health,’ Shahnawaz says.

I nod my head, thinking about the first time I went for a therapy session after my panic attack. What were the odds that I’d have another panic attack of sorts right when there’s a psychiatrist sitting next to me! ‘I’m sorry for all the crying and the venting,’ I tell him. ‘I didn’t mean to screw up your day.’

‘Crying is your superpower. It’s the first thing you did when you popped out of your mother’s womb because it’s proof that you’re alive. I don’t mind you crying. You can do it again if you want,’ Shahnawaz says kindly.

‘I wish my mother had known you. She’s never really cried in front of me or let me cry even though we had to go through all sorts of shit in life.’

‘You can easily go back to India, Kiana. We live in the twenty-first century. All you have to do is log into some app or the other, book your tickets and fly off.’

‘I can’t, really.’

‘What am I wearing?’ he asks, pointing to his glasses.

‘Specs?’

‘Do you agree that if I were born in a different century, I wouldn’t have had specs and the quality of my life would have been significantly different because I would have been living like a half-blind person?

‘Yes. What’s the point?’

‘Think?’

‘Okay … do you mean to say that I shouldn’t think of silly excuses to not go back to India when we live in this new era of convenience?’

‘Yes, exactly. People posted love letters from war-torn countries just a century ago and you can’t even book a ticket to possibly meet the person you say you love?’