This piece is not an academic or a journalistic write-up; it is my heartfelt narrative for all the students who have internalised fear. I write this not because I want to preach, but because I feel responsible for giving you a kind and better world. It is challenging for me to recount a small (or rather, huge) incident from my life, and that too publicly, but I want all students to read and engage with my lived experience, even if they disagree.

So, here goes my anecdote:

Since childhood, I have had a phobia of lizards. Phobia to the extent that I wouldn’t enter a room if I could spot a lizard even behind a tube-light in a room. I would get nightmares of them, I would run away at the thought of them, and I felt that my life would always be confined and constrained because, well, they are everywhere! I wondered why I have the phobia; was it something in my childhood?