A Bittersweet Nostalgia

A few of us are troubled enough that we choose to walk the remainder of this road called "life," searching for answers and achieving some significance and bliss.

An adolescent found the courage in his frailty to renounce everything and escape into the refuge of the wilderness of Northern India.

Due to a vivid nightmare, he faltered at the last moment and stayed put within the confines of his tormented urban existence.

A year passed and his compulsive impulse for that escape was suppressed.

Rebuilding a new way to live, he channeled and fed those impulses by trekking into the mountains of Maharashtra, trailing through the forests of Bhandavgarh and Tadoba Andhari, whilst getting too close to tigers and crocodiles.

In doing so, he transformed himself into a true backpacker.

But something was still amiss. Love. It took just one woman to undo all the good. The adolescent turned man found himself weaker than ever before and drenched in despair.

He was back where he started, fighting the same impulse to escape into the Northern Mountains.

Will the road cease for him or will he find a silver lining ahead?

See where his path leads him in A Bittersweet Nostalgia. Vishal Gupta spent his childhood and teenage years in a boarding school in the mountains of Panchgani, India.

He graduated from Mumbai University and now lives in Mumbai. "The story is personal and real, but I have used elements of fiction because sometimes narrating the truth indirectly through fiction is better done than any other medium or method." Publisher's website: http://sbpra.com/VishalGupta