Author's Note

Dr Angad J. K.

I sit at the ghats of Rishikesh. The sun warms my shoulders. The Ganga flows endlessly before me, carrying whispers of memories, of days I can never forget. A book rests in my hands.

“I never thought I would write a book…” I whisper, letting the words drift into the river.

I was raised in the quiet, disciplined world of a Navodaya, shaped by medicine, trained to become a pathologist—someone who studies causes hidden beneath the surface, someone who finds truth under a microscope. Writers lived in another universe, I believed. A universe of words, not slides; of metaphors, not microscopes.

But life has a strange way of nudging us toward the things we fear we cannot do.

The seed of this book was planted when I least expected it. After long, tiring hospital days, I escaped into cricket tournaments with my Virat Kohli edition MRF bat, watching every ball of the Anderson–Tendulkar Trophy 2025. Both teams fought with a kind of honesty only test cricket can carry. I watched Mohammed Siraj bowl 185 overs, pushing through exhaustion, pressure, and expectations… and something about him stayed with me.

That night, I watched his interview.

“Just believe in yourself,” he said.

Three words that hit me harder than any yorker I had ever faced.

That same night, thinking of her—the girl who had lived in my memories for seventeen years—something stirred inside me. My final-year exams were nearby. I should have been studying, revising, preparing like every other medical student. But the mind does not obey the calendar. It obeys the heartbeat.

Cricket had been a flower, but love was a tree in full bloom. And as I replayed every match in my head, my own story began to feel like a test series. Each chapter a session… each year a day of play… each memory a ball I had watched carefully.

And then the question came:

“I have a story… but can I write it down? Can someone trained to dissect truth—but not express it—write a love story?”

The answer came in Siraj’s voice: Just believe in yourself.

So, I began.

Words came slowly at first, like raindrops before a storm. Then they came in waves. I cried. I smiled. I didn’t sleep. I forgot about exams. I walked away from everything I was supposed to do and walked into the world of everything I needed to say.

This book is the result of that night. Of that voice.

It is imperfect, raw, honest. Stitched together from memory, longing, and hope. A story that survived years of silence, distance, and waiting.

If you are reading this, you are stepping into memories that refused to die, into emotions of friendship that demanded to be written, into a journey that began with her sight… and continued because I dared to believe.

It is also a story of unseen courage—the courage to feel, to remember, to hope quietly in a world that moves loudly. The courage to chase something fragile, distant, intangible—and make it alive again through words.

And Navodaya is woven into every line. Seven years of mornings before the sun, of books, drills, friendships, discipline, and silence. A place that shaped body, mind, and soul. Where strength did not shout—it stood quietly. Where greatness was not dramatic—it was earned in routine, in patience, in perseverance.

I wrote this book not to impress. Not to teach. But to honour what cannot be ignored: the heartbeat of seventeen years, the laughter, the heartbreak, the quiet mornings, the long nights, and the girl who never really left.

Thank you.