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  • Beyond the Breaking News-Part 3

    Violence, Fear, Perception and Agency

    Deepali Bhattacharya

    In conversation with TD, Clinical Psychologist  ·  An eleven-part reflection, with notes and references

    PART III

    When Violence Is Chosen

    “The deepest wound is not always death. Sometimes it is the knowledge that another human being chose to inflict it.”

    Not long ago, I found myself thinking about two families.

    One had lost a loved one after a long battle with cancer. They spoke of hospital visits, hope, setbacks, prayers and finally acceptance. Their grief was immense, but woven into it was the painful recognition that illness had followed its own course.

    The other family had lost a young member in an act of violence.

    As I listened to them, I realised that although both families had experienced profound loss, their grief was different.

    The second family kept returning to the same question.

    “Why?”

    Why would someone do this?

    What kind of anger could make another human being take a life?

    Could this have been prevented?

    These questions had no easy answers, yet they refused to disappear.

    When I shared this observation with TD, he remained silent for a few moments before responding.

    “Because intention changes everything.”

    It is such a simple sentence that one can easily overlook its depth.

    Natural disasters destroy homes.

    Diseases claim lives.

    Road accidents leave families devastated.

    Yet deliberate violence carries a different psychological burden.

    It is not simply that someone died.

    It is that another human being made a conscious decision to cause suffering.

    Psychologists often describe this as a rupture in our fundamental assumptions about the world. 7

    Most of us move through life believing that although bad things happen, most people are basically decent. We trust strangers enough to board a train, send our children to school, seek help when we are lost, or knock on a neighbour’s door.

    Deliberate violence unsettles these invisible assumptions.

    It forces us to ask not only whether the world is safe, but whether people are.

    That is why acts of intentional violence leave behind something more than grief.

    They leave behind doubt.

    I have often noticed this during conversations with survivors.

    Many speak less about the injury itself and more about the betrayal.

    “It was my husband.”

    “It was someone I trusted.”

    “It was my neighbour.”

    “It was a relative.”

    “It was someone everyone respected.”

    Violence committed by strangers is frightening.

    Violence committed by people we trust is psychologically devastating. 8

    The injury is no longer only physical.

    It becomes moral.

    It shakes our confidence in relationships themselves.

    Perhaps this is why violence against women within homes leaves such deep scars.

    The home is meant to represent safety.

    Marriage is meant to represent companionship.

    Family is meant to represent belonging.

    When violence emerges from these very spaces, the injury extends beyond the individual.

    It disturbs the meaning of home itself.

    The same is true for violence against children.

    Children are not merely hurt by abuse.

    Their understanding of trust is altered.

    Their sense of security becomes uncertain.

    The world no longer feels predictable.

    As I reflected on this, another thought emerged.

    Perhaps violence frightens us not because it reminds us that death exists.

    We already know that.

    Perhaps it frightens us because it reminds us that human beings are capable of choosing cruelty.

    And yet, if this is true, another truth must also exist.

    Human beings are equally capable of choosing compassion.

    Every act of violence is someone’s decision.

    Every act of courage is also someone’s decision.

    Perhaps the real question is not whether human beings are capable of darkness.

    History has answered that many times over.

    The question is whether we are equally committed to choosing light.

    A QUESTION THAT STAYED WITH ME…

    If deliberate violence destroys trust, how do societies rebuild it?

    Perhaps the answer lies not only in those who commit violence, but also in those who witness it.

    Because sometimes the deepest lesson is not what one person did.

    It is what everyone else did not do.

    Notes:

    7. Janoff-Bulman (1992) calls these “shattered assumptions”: trauma’s deepest damage is to our implicit beliefs that the world is benevolent, meaningful, and that we are safe within it.

    8.  Freyd (1996) terms this betrayal trauma: harm inflicted by those we depend on and trust is processed differently — and often more damagingly — than harm from strangers.

  • Beyond the Breaking News-Part-2

    A GYANINANI CONVERSATION | Series 2 | Part-2 of 11

    Violence | Fear |Perception| Agency

    Deepali Bhattacharya

    In conversation with TD, Clinical Psychologist  ·  An eleven-part reflection, with notes and references

    PART II

    When Fear Becomes Selective

    “Not every act of violence enters the national conscience. That, too, tells us something about ourselves.”

    A few years ago, I was sitting with a group of women during a field visit. The discussion had moved from livelihoods to marriage, from marriage to daughters, and almost inevitably, from daughters to dowry.

    One woman looked at me and said almost matter-of-factly,

    “Madam, every time we hear that another girl has died after marriage, we feel sad. Then life goes on.”

    There was no anger in her voice | No surprise | Only acceptance.

    That sentence disturbed me more than I admitted at the time.

    Not because she lacked compassion. But because violence had become familiar.

    Contrast this with what happens after an act of public violence.

    A murder inside a train

    A terrorist attack

    A school shooting

    A bomb blast

    For days, sometimes weeks, they dominate public conversation. News channels replay the footage. Experts debate motives. Politicians visit families. Security measures are reviewed. People change their routines. The violence enters our collective imagination.

    But the violence that unfolds quietly inside homes often follows a different trajectory.

    A woman dies after years of abuse.

    An elderly parent is assaulted by family members.

    A child is repeatedly abused by someone they know.

    A young bride is burned for dowry. 4

    The grief is devastating.

    Yet the public response is often muted.

    Why?

    This question stayed with me long after my conversation with TD.

    I asked him whether our minds respond differently to different forms of violence.

    He smiled before answering.

    “The human mind is influenced by visibility, proximity and novelty,” he said. 5

    “But society adds another layer. It decides which stories are repeatedly told—and which remain confined to private spaces.”

    His words made me think of something psychologists have long recognised.

    Human beings do not simply respond to events. We respond to how those events are framed, repeated and remembered.

    A violent incident that is filmed, replayed and discussed acquires psychological weight far beyond the number of people directly affected. Every replay tells us that this is important. Every headline reinforces its urgency. The story becomes part of our mental landscape.

    The violence inside homes rarely follows this path.

    It is hidden by walls. Protected by silence.

    Wrapped in words like adjustment, family honour, private matter, or these things happen.

    Many survivors of domestic violence have told me that the deepest wound was not only the abuse itself.

    It was the loneliness of carrying it.

    No cameras.

    No witnesses.

    No hashtags.

    No breaking news.

    Only another day.

    As someone who has worked on gender issues for much of my professional life, I have often wondered whether our public imagination has developed an unequal relationship with violence.

    We are startled by the unexpected. We are less disturbed by what repeats.

    Not because repeated violence hurts less.

    But because familiarity has a strange psychological effect, it slowly erodes our ability to remain shocked. 6

    Children growing up in violent homes often begin believing that shouting is normal.

    Communities living with caste violence may stop expecting justice.

    Women repeatedly exposed to harassment may begin planning their routes around danger rather than questioning why the danger exists.

    What begins as adaptation can quietly become acceptance.

    Psychology reminds us that human beings are remarkably adaptable. That is one of our greatest strengths.

    It is also one of our greatest vulnerabilities because we can adapt not only to kindness-

    We can adapt to cruelty.

    We can adapt to injustice.

    We can even adapt to fear.

    And once that happens, violence no longer needs to terrify us.

    It only needs to become ordinary!

    Perhaps that is why some of the most dangerous forms of violence are not those that explode into public consciousness. They are the ones that disappears into everyday life.

    This is not an argument against mourning public tragedies. Every life lost deserves our grief.

    Rather, it is an invitation to ask whether our compassion has become uneven.

    Why does one death become a national conversation while another remains a family secret?

    Why do we remember some victims by name while countless others are remembered only by statistics?

    There are no easy answers. But there is an uncomfortable truth.

    A society reveals its deepest values not only by what it condemns loudly.

    It also reveals them by what it quietly learns to live with.

    A QUESTION THAT STAYED WITH ME…

    When violence becomes familiar, do we become stronger as a society?

    Or do we slowly lose our ability to recognise suffering when it stands quietly beside us?

    In the next part, I want to explore another question that emerged from my conversation with TD: Why does deliberate violence disturb us so much more deeply than illness, accidents or natural death?

    Notes

    1.  On indirect, media-based exposure to violence: Holman, Garfin and Silver (2014) found that repeated media exposure to the Boston Marathon bombings was associated with higher acute stress than direct presence at the event — empirical support for the idea that widely broadcast violence is psychologically “experienced” by people far beyond the scene.

    2.  The mind’s preference for stories over statistics is well documented: the availability heuristic (Tversky & Kahneman, 1973) shows that vivid, easily recalled events inflate judgments of risk, and Small and Loewenstein (2003) demonstrate that a single identifiable victim moves people far more than statistical lives.

    3.  On fear as evolved survival machinery, see LeDoux (1996) on the brain’s ancient threat circuitry.

    4.  The scale of this quiet violence is documented annually: the National Crime Records Bureau’s Crime in India 2024 recorded 5,737 dowry deaths in that year — roughly sixteen every day — with researchers noting these figures are likely undercounts. NFHS-5 (2019–21) found that around 45% of women and 44% of men considered a husband justified in beating his wife in at least one circumstance — a measure of how far such violence has been normalised.

    5.  On how repetition and framing confer public importance: agenda-setting research (McCombs & Shaw, 1972) shows that media attention shapes what the public regards as significant, and framing analysis (Entman, 1993) shows that how a story is told shapes what it is understood to mean.

    6.  Psychology describes this erosion as habituation and “psychic numbing”: Slovic (2007) shows that human feeling fails to scale with repeated or mass suffering — we can remain moved by one story yet grow numb to a pattern.

  • Beyond the Breaking News-Part 1

    A GYANINANI CONVERSATION | Series 2 | Part-1 of 11

    Violence | Fear |Perception| Agency

    Deepali Bhattacharya

    In conversation with TD, Clinical Psychologist  ·  An eleven-part reflection, with notes and references

    PART I

    When Violence Travels Beyond the Victim

    “Violence does not end where it happens. Sometimes it begins there.”

    There are some news stories that disappear by the next morning.

    And then some stories refuse to leave us.

    A few days ago, a man was murdered inside a crowded local train. The argument was ordinary. The violence was not. Within hours, the footage was everywhere. It appeared on television screens, WhatsApp groups, social media feeds and dinner-table conversations. Friends called one another to ask, “Did you see what happened?” Parents told their children to be careful while travelling. Office colleagues discussed whether local trains had become unsafe. For many people, the next morning’s commute felt different. The train had not changed. The city had not changed. Yet something inside us had.

    The victim had died in one compartment.

    But fear had boarded every compartment.

    That image stayed with me—not because it was the first act of violence India had witnessed, but because of the speed with which it entered our collective imagination. I found myself asking a question that I have often carried back from the field after meeting survivors of domestic violence, grieving parents, police officers and social workers.

    Why do some acts of violence become everyone’s fear, while others remain someone else’s tragedy?

    For over three decades, my work has taken me into places that rarely make the headlines. I have sat with mothers who lost daughters to dowry. I have listened to women whose bruises remained hidden behind the walls of respectable homes. I have spoken with children who had learnt, much too early, that silence was often rewarded more than truth. Violence was present in all these places. Yet much of it never became a national conversation.

    And that contrast has always troubled me.

    As I reflected on the recent train incident, I discussed it with TD, a clinical psychologist. Our conversation quickly moved away from crime and entered the terrain of the human mind.

    TD said something deceptively simple.

    “The mind does not count statistics. It remembers stories.”

    That single sentence changed the way I looked at the incident.

    Psychologists describe this process as socialised fear. An isolated act of violence, when repeatedly witnessed through television, mobile phones and conversations, begins to feel personally relevant to millions of people. We no longer watch it as observers. We begin to experience it as participants. Somewhere inside our minds, we quietly ask ourselves: 1

    “What if that had been me?”

    Our brains evolved to learn through stories long before they learned to interpret statistics. For thousands of years, stories protected human beings. If someone in the community encountered danger, everyone else learned from that experience. Today, technology has amplified this ancient survival mechanism. A single video can be replayed millions of times. Each replay becomes another emotional rehearsal. The violence happens once, but psychologically it is experienced over and over again. 2

    Fear, therefore, spreads not only because violence exists, but because imagination is extraordinarily powerful.

    This does not mean our fear is irrational.

    Far from it.

    Fear is one of humanity’s oldest survival instincts. Without it, our ancestors would not have survived predators, wars or disasters. The problem begins when fear quietly changes from being a protective companion into a permanent resident. When every crowded train begins to look dangerous. When every stranger appears threatening. When ordinary life starts shrinking because of extraordinary events. 3

    This distinction is important.

    Because fear itself is not the enemy.

    The question is: what does fear persuade us to become?

    As I reflected on this, another memory surfaced.

    Years ago, while working with women who had survived domestic violence, one of them said something that has never left me.

    “The beating stopped,” she told me quietly, “but the fear never did.”

    At that time, I understood her words as a description of trauma.

    Today, I realise they also describe society.

    Violence often ends before fear does.

    The incident on the train lasted minutes.

    Its psychological life continues long after.

    This is why conversations about violence cannot stop at policing, punishment or law alone. Those are indispensable, but they address only one part of the story. Violence also reshapes how people perceive safety, trust strangers, travel to work, raise children and imagine their own futures.

    The visible injury belongs to the victim.

    The invisible injury belongs to society.

    Understanding that invisible injury is perhaps one of the most urgent conversations of our time.

    Because if violence changes how millions think, feel and behave, then our response cannot be limited to catching perpetrators alone. We must also learn how to protect our collective psychological well-being.

    That journey begins by understanding fear—not dismissing it.

    And perhaps by asking a question we rarely ask after the headlines fade.

    A QUESTION THAT STAYED WITH ME…

    If one act of violence can make millions afraid to board a train, what determines which acts of violence enter our collective imagination—and which ones quietly disappear behind closed doors?

    That is the question I carry into the next conversation.

    Notes

    1.  On indirect, media-based exposure to violence: Holman, Garfin and Silver (2014) found that repeated media exposure to the Boston Marathon bombings was associated with higher acute stress than direct presence at the event — empirical support for the idea that widely broadcast violence is psychologically “experienced” by people far beyond the scene.

    2.  The mind’s preference for stories over statistics is well documented: the availability heuristic (Tversky & Kahneman, 1973) shows that vivid, easily recalled events inflate judgments of risk, and Small and Loewenstein (2003) demonstrate that a single identifiable victim moves people far more than statistical lives.

    3.  On fear as evolved survival machinery, see LeDoux (1996) on the brain’s ancient threat circuitry.

  • Trust Fund Kids

    Trust Fund Kids

    |Understanding Our Times | Series-1

    Beyond “Trust Fund Kids”: Youth Addiction, Trauma, Aspiration and Social Inequality in Urban India

    By Tathagat Dwij

    Edited by Deepali Bhattacharya

    Abstract


    Public conversations on youth addiction often move between two simplified images: the wealthy “trust fund kid” who turns to substances because life offers too much comfort, and the poor adolescent whose substance use is explained through deprivation, neglect or crime. Both images are incomplete. Drawing on practice-based reflections from work with adolescents across elite schools, community settings, vulnerable children and youth in conflict with law, this article argues that youth addiction must be understood through the interaction of trauma, aspiration, belonging, class location, family systems, mental health and access to substances.
    The article uses the “trust fund kid” as an entry point to examine one pathway into addiction: material security without emotional containment or purpose. It then places this alongside the experience of young people from low-income communities, where substance use may emerge from educational exclusion, family stress, violence, lack of opportunity and weak mental health infrastructure. The article argues for a trauma-informed but not trauma-reductionist approach. Addiction may be a response to trauma, but it is also shaped by biology, ADHD, depression, anxiety, peer culture, availability and the addictive properties of substances themselves.
    The article concludes that prevention and recovery require multi-layered responses: early assessment, family work, adolescent mental health services, humane de-addiction support, school counselling, community programmes, and stronger public health infrastructure.

    Keywords: youth addiction, trauma, aspiration, adolescent mental health, substance use, class inequality, urban India, belonging, rehabilitation

    1. Introduction
      Youth addiction is often discussed through blame. The wealthy child is called spoilt. The poor child is called delinquent. The adolescent using substances is seen as weak, immoral, rebellious or beyond control. These labels may satisfy social anxiety, but they do not help us understand addiction.
      Addiction among young people rarely has a single cause. It emerges where vulnerability meets availability. A young person may carry trauma, loneliness, anxiety, depression, ADHD, family conflict, shame, peer pressure or a deep absence of belonging. The substance then becomes more than a substance. It becomes relief, identity, escape, confidence, numbness or social entry.
      This article argues that youth addiction must be understood across class locations. In affluent contexts, substance use may emerge from purposelessness, performance pressure, entitlement, emotional neglect or excessive access. In low-income contexts, it may emerge from despair, violence, school exclusion, unemployment, family stress and lack of services. Both contexts are different, but both can weaken aspiration and belonging.
    2. The Trust Fund Kid: Wealth Without Necessity
      The term “trust fund kid” is not a clinical category. It is a social phrase used for young people whose financial futures are secured through inherited wealth, trusts or family assets. Wealth itself is not the problem. The problem begins when wealth removes necessity without creating responsibility, meaning or purpose.
      For many young people, aspiration is shaped by need. Education, work and achievement become meaningful because they are linked to dignity, autonomy and survival. But when survival is already guaranteed, effort may lose urgency. If this is combined with emotional distance, weak boundaries, family conflict or social pressure, a young person may experience life as comfortable but empty.
      Substance use can enter this emptiness. Drugs or alcohol may offer stimulation, rebellion, escape, peer belonging or emotional numbing. In such cases, addiction is not simply hedonism. It may be a response to a life that is materially full but emotionally thin.
    3. Addiction as Trauma Response — and More
      Addiction is often described as a trauma response. This is an important insight. Many people use substances to numb pain, regulate anxiety, manage shame, soften loneliness or escape memories of violence and neglect.
      However, addiction cannot be reduced to trauma alone. It is multifactorial. Biological vulnerability, family history, ADHD, depression, anxiety, impulsivity, peer culture, social pressure, substance availability and the pharmacology of the substance all matter. A young person may start using for social reasons but continue because the substance begins to regulate mood, sleep, confidence or emotional pain.
      The question, therefore, is not only “What trauma happened?” but also “What function is the substance serving?”
    4. Poverty, Despair and Substance Use
      Among young people from low-income communities, addiction may follow a different pathway. A child may grow up with poor schooling, unstable housing, family violence, migration stress, hunger, unemployment or neighbourhood exposure to substances. Mental health services may be absent. Recreation may be limited. The young person may be carrying adult responsibilities long before adulthood.
      Here, substance use may offer relief, status, belonging or escape. It may also become linked to petty crime, street survival, school dropout or conflict with law. The issue is not merely individual choice. It is a social ecology of risk.
    5. Aspiration and Collapse
      Aspiration is the capacity to imagine a future and believe that effort can move one toward it. Both privilege and deprivation can damage aspiration.
      In privilege, aspiration may weaken because nothing feels necessary. In deprivation, aspiration may weaken because nothing feels possible. One produces excess without purpose. The other producers struggle without hope. Both can lead to nihilism, risk-taking and addiction.
    6. Belonging and Shame
      Substance use is often a search for belonging. Adolescents are deeply shaped by peer acceptance. A young person who feels unseen at home or school may find identity in a group that drinks, smokes or uses drugs together. The group becomes a substitute family. Intoxication becomes both chemistry and community.
      This is why shame-based responses fail. When adults respond only with anger, punishment or ridicule, the young person hides more. Recovery requires accountability, but it also requires dignity.
    7. What Must Be Done
      A serious response to youth addiction must include:
      • Early screening for substance use, depression, ADHD, anxiety, trauma and self-harm.
      • Family counselling is safe and appropriate.
      • School-based mental health support.
      • Humane, evidence-based de-addiction services.
      • Community youth programmes that use sports, arts, mentoring, and livelihood exposure.
      • Post-treatment relapse prevention. Stronger public investment in adolescent mental health and addiction care.
    8. Conclusion
      Youth addiction is not only a problem of rich children with too much money or poor children with too little support. It is a problem of pain, emptiness, disconnection, availability and failed systems of care.
      Some young people use substances to numb trauma. Some use them to belong. Some use them because they have no purpose. Some use them because they have no hope. Many use them for all these reasons together.
      If we want prevention and recovery, we must move beyond labels. We must ask what young people are missing: safety, meaning, care, opportunity, structure, treatment or belonging. Addiction begins where these absences deepen. Recovery begins when they are rebuilt.

    About the author:
    Tathagat Dwij is a clinical psychologist with experience working with adolescents and young adults across diverse settings in Mumbai, including elite international schools, community-based organisations, vulnerable children, and youth in conflict with the law. He has worked with Salaam Baalak Trust and facilitated art-based therapeutic sessions under the mentorship of the therapeutic artist Sanjay Ojha. His interests include youth mental health, trauma, addiction, identity, and the relationship between social inequality and psychological distress.

    See you soon with our next…

  • From the Founder’s Desk

    From the Founder’s Desk

    Journal Entry #1

    Opening the Doors to the GyaniNani Reading Room

    1 July 2026

    “We believe that meaningful conversations can change the way we see ourselves, each other, and the world”

    Some dreams arrive quietly.

    Not with applause.
    Not with announcements.
    But with a feeling that refuses to leave.

    For years, I have written reports, research papers, evaluation studies, policy briefs and training manuals. My work has taken me into villages, schools, hospitals, old-age homes, juvenile homes, community centres and government institutions. It has introduced me to extraordinary people whose names may never appear in newspapers but whose courage has transformed the lives of others.

    Wherever I travelled, I returned carrying stories.

    Stories of women rebuilding their lives after violence.
    Stories of children searching for belonging.
    Stories of parents trying to understand their teenagers.
    Stories of farmers protecting seeds for future generations.
    Stories of widows discovering dignity again.
    Stories of hope that quietly survived in the most difficult places.

    I realised that behind every statistic I analysed, there was a human being waiting to be heard.

    Over time, another realisation emerged.

    The world does not suffer from a shortage of information.
    It suffers from a shortage of meaningful conversations.

    We have become skilled at speaking.
    Less skilled at listening.

    Quick to react.
    Slow to reflect.

    Certain of our opinions.
    Less curious about each other’s journeys.

    That is why this Reading Room exists.

    Not as another website.
    Not as another social media page.

    But as a place where conversations are allowed to breathe.

    Here we will explore psychology, parenting, gender, relationships, ageing, mental health, social change, purpose, grief, resilience and the many questions that quietly shape our lives.

    Sometimes the conversation will be with a clinical psychologist.

    Sometimes with a teacher.

    Sometimes with an artist.

    Sometimes with a social worker.

    Sometimes with someone whose voice is rarely heard.

    And sometimes, perhaps, it will simply be a conversation with ourselves.

    One of our first conversations, Beyond the “Trust Fund Kid,” reminded me that before asking what young people are using, perhaps we should ask what they are missing. That single shift—from judgment to curiosity—is the spirit in which this Reading Room has been created.

    I do not promise answers to every question.

    I do promise thoughtful conversations.

    I hope this becomes a place where research meets compassion, where lived experience matters as much as evidence, and where disagreement is welcomed with respect rather than hostility.

    If even one conversation helps someone understand another human being with a little more kindness…
    If one parent pauses before judging…
    If one young person feels less alone…
    If one reader leaves with a question worth carrying…

    Then this Reading Room will have fulfilled its purpose.

    Thank you for walking through these doors.

    Take your time.

    Browse slowly.

    Read deeply.

    Question freely.

    Return often.

    Because wisdom is rarely found in hurried conclusions.
    More often, it grows quietly through conversation.

    The doors are open. Come right in.

    With warmth,

    Deepali Bhattacharya
    Founder, GyaniNani Reading Room

    If this conversation made you pause, it has already begun its work.

    -GyaniNani Reading Room