Schizophrenia is a difficult illness. The people involved with the patient get troubled and sometimes harassed. The same must have been true with my illness. I unconditionally apologize to everyone involved with me during these times who got troubled.

But given that I have been able to continue my life in a seemingly normal way, help must have been there. I would like to thank few people for the journey on which this novel is based.

My family for showing their confidence in me and helping me get out of the immediate trouble.

The people associated with the Institute who let me complete my PhD.

My current employer University for giving me the space to recover while working.

My students, who never judged me on my mental health. And gave me the confidence that I could teach.

My good friend Laknath Jayasinghe, the first person I opened up to at the University and with whom I can be honest.

My dear friend Shilpi Bhattacharya, a noble soul, who I could narrate the deepest of my problems and who would hear with all the empathy one could think of.

My dear friend Arpita Gupta, whose passion for health taught me that walking could be such fun. And there were many days when I would only talk to her in the whole day while walking.

To the people at stck.me for giving me a platform to publish the novel.

My psychiatrist Madhusudan Singh Solanki, who is always respectful of my wishes and never forced any opinion on me.

Durgesh Ojha, at the Ehsaas Psychotherapy unit at Ambedkar University, Delhi. And Ishita Bhatt, my therapist. Both of them have been immensely helpful in helping me understand my past and my illness.

I also read a number of books and research papers to understand my illness. Noting down few books here:

1. Anatomy of an epidemic: Magic bullets, psychiatric drugs, and the astonishing rise of mental illness in America (Robert Whitaker)

2. Your voice in my head (Emma Forrest)

3. A beautiful mind (Sylvia Nassar)

4. A book of light: When a loved one has a different mind (Jerry Pinto)

5. Em and the big hoom (Jerry Pinto)

6. Sepia leaves (Amandeep Sandhu)

7. The body keeps the score: Brain, mind, and body in the healing of trauma (Bessel Van der Kolk)

8. The center cannot hold: My journey through madness (Elyn R Saks)

9. Schizophrenia in hindi (Diwakar Chaudhari)

10. Living with voices: 50 stories of recovery (Marius Romme, Sandra Escher)

11. Maine mandu nahi dekha (Swades Deepak)

12. The quiet room: A journey out of torment of madness (Lori Schiller, Amanda Bennett)

13. An unquiet mind: A memoir of moods and madness (Kay Redfield Jamison, Andrew Solomon)

14. Recovery from schizophrenia: Psychiatry and political economy (Richard Warner)

15. The collected schizophrenias (Esme Weijun Wang)

16. I never promised you a rose garden (Joanne Greenberg)

17. Inferno: A memoir of motherhood and madness (Catherine Cho)

18. This book will change your mind about mental health: A journey into the heartland of psychiatry (Nathan Filer)

19. The love trauma syndrome: Free yourself from the pain of a broken heart (Richard B Rosse)

20. Mind fixers: Psychiatry's troubled search for the biology of mental illness (Anne Harrington)

21. The Memory palace: A memoir (Mira Bartok)

22. Is there no place on earth for me? (Susan Sheehan)

23. I am not sick I don't need help! How to help someone with mental illness accept treatment (Amador Xavier, Pete Earley)

24. Surviving schizophrenia: A family manual (Torry E Fuller)

25. Words on bathroom walls (Julia Walton)

26. Asylum: The battle for mental healthcare in India (Daman Singh)

27. Parveen Babi: A life (Karishma Upadhayay)

28. The Unsafe asylum: Stories of partition and madness (Anirudh Kala)

29. Memoirs of my nervous illness (Daniel Paul Schreber)

30. Hidden valley road (Robert Kolker)

31. The three christs of Ypsilanti (Milton Rokeach)

32. The Snake Pit (Mary Jane Ward)

I read a lot along with doing my work and can confidently say that it was the most useful aspect in my recovery. Otherwise I would have still been struggling.

This novel was written as a process of understanding my illness. It was also to create something I was looking for while trying to uncover what the hell schizophrenia is. The novel has already helped one person, which is me. Hope it can help someone else. Thank you for reading.