Akriti Tiwari

NITH did not start now. It began long before it was ever given a name. It began in classrooms that were louder than my voice, on the last bench where I learned how to be present and invisible at the same time. Laughter moved easily across rows, but it rarely reached me in the same shape. What was harmless fun for others often stayed with me long after the day ended. I carried tones, pauses, and expressions home with me. I was not dramatic, but rebellious in ways that were extraordinary and invisible. I simply experienced everything without a filter, and that made the world feel sharper than it looked from the outside. It took me years to realise how much of that atmosphere had settled inside me, slowly shaping the way I react to the world today. I learned to read rooms quickly. Silence became another skin — not weakness, but protection. As I grew older, that quiet endurance followed me. Attachments became fragile. People I loved never stayed — some drifted away, some chose to leave, some were taken by death. Grief stopped arriving as a shock and began to feel like a pattern. Trauma does not always explode; sometimes it seeps. It teaches you to anticipate loss before joy, to prepare for disappointment before hope. I had two choices: to take a knife and cut myself down, or to hold a pen and carve the truth instead. I choose the pen — writing my sadness, selling my emotions, trading pain for a little recognition and money, if that's what survival demands. Writing became both witness and transaction. I carved truth onto paper, turned demons into dialogues, and allowed vulnerability to structure me. If pain was inevitable, then at least it would not remain shapeless. The title NITH carries layered meaning. In older usage, it referred to social stigma — the loss of honour, the making of a villain. Yet the name also connects to ideas of healing and sacred ground, of courage and rebuilding. I have lived somewhere between those meanings — between stigma and strength, between disgrace and rebuilding. NITH is not simply a title. It is contradiction. It is wound and recovery occupying the same space. And perhaps it is the most honest name I could give to a life that has never moved in straight lines. In the end, this is who I am, wearing a wine-collared shirt.