My name is Amrendra Pandey, and this story is based on my life.

  I live in Bandipora, a very young district in Kashmir, recently separated from Baramulla, near the Ladakh border, in a time when Jammu & Kashmir still had special status. I come from a lower-middle-class family. My mother, Amrita Pandey, works in a nearby shop and does tailoring to support us. My father died of cancer years ago, leaving behind memories that are more blurred than real. Since then, my elder brother Arjun Pandey, a soldier in the Indian Army, has been the head of our family—half father, half friend, and everything in between.

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  I don’t have many friends. The only one who truly matters is Anirudh Kashyap, my classmate—rich, sharp, and far smarter than me. I am in my final year of school, struggling to keep up. I chose science after class 10, not because I was good at it, but because of my male ego, and I’ve been paying for that mistake ever since.

  And then there was Disha Malhan—the best and most intelligent girl in my class.

  For the last one year, she has been a part of my life, and that year became the happiest I had ever known. Everything felt lighter then. Simpler. Like, for the first time, I wasn’t just surviving—I was living.

  But before I can tell you how things moved forward, you need to know how it all began.