Dear Stranger

I found the letters, musings, drawings, and cartoons searching, uplifting and even challenging at times (I think it’s only right that the best writing takes you through a panoply of emotions). But most of, the anthology gave me an overwhelming feeling that ‘Dear Stranger’ might be just the thing needed by people struggling to find happiness in their lives because of mental illness (their own or somebody else’s). This book is about succor and comfort but it’s also about life, hope and, of course, happiness.

Now it has been published (July 2), it’s your opportunity to see what I mean. Twitter is already buzzing with #dearstranger tweets – this is clearly striking a chord. Please buy it, not just because it’s raising money for Mind (at least 199 for each copy sold), it’ll make perfect summer reading and it’ll look great on your bookshelf but also because, by my reckoning, it is an important anthology that gives hope and may also help to rebuild or even save lives.

When we look around us, the youth is seen to flaunt their physical appearance, be it with makeup or activities that would make their biceps swell. But how many actually think about the makeup of mind and soul? 

After hearing so much about India leading in hosting depressed individuals, now some of us have started and that takes us straight to the 'self-help' section of a bookstore. Most of the books throw light on how to suddenly stop being sad and beam with happiness. It's very good advice but how can it happen in a whip? How can someone who has forgotten the very reason for his existence observe goodness? Indeed, happiness is a choice and a feeling but so is sadness and pain and sadly, very addictive too. Then how should a person take a leap and cover this bipolar distance? 

Therefore, it's a sheer need to have someone tell us what happens during this journey emotionally and how can we cope through it gracefully; How not to alienate any emotion and just let it flow and contemplate a better future ahead. And that someone who can tell this will only be able to do so, will be able to term every change as normal because he has been through it in ways that make him understand every minute detail about it. Ever found someone like this? Well, it's the book,'Dear Stranger, I know how you feel'

Written by Ashish Bagrecha, it is not about the dos and don'ts. It is also not an autobiography. It's his soul that iterates his journey from helplessness to hope and healing. It's his heart comforting his readers saying that it's okay not to be okay, to feel the way they do and that there is a lighthouse watching over them while they are swinging into the stormy sea. The book enlightens every emotion in such microscopic detail that one tends to question whether they really understand themselves and the way they feel or not. Every word is soaked into a potion of emotion. It is not just a book but a manual to live through this beautiful incident called Life, to embrace whatever it brings with open arms and trusting the universe's magical and mysterious ways of operating it. Through the book Ashish sir attempts to hold the hands of his readers and whisper to them, "you'll never walk alone"

I am such lobe with this that whenever I feel low I used to read a page of it and get again back to my work and my goal.