Suha Riyaz Khopatkar describes herself as the kid who would go the extra mile to make a birthday card. This seems believable if you've already read her debut book Just Give Me Some Space (published by The People Place Project, and distributed and marketed by Penguin Random House) that releases today at Kamla Raheja Vidyanidhi Institute for Architecture and Environmental Studies (KRVIA) in Juhu. Accompanied by hand-drawn illustrations, Khopatkar presents a light-hearted, yet engaging account of being an architecture student. It's also a narrative of a time when your life is in circles but you're stuck in an institution with a time-table.

So, you'll find snippets ranging from writing an entrance exam and the task of group assignments to roommates and relationships. And although it's primarily targeted towards architecture students — drawing from Khopatkar's own experience at KRVIA — she avoids the technicalities of the subject. Given her own writing process that began when she was 20, the book chronicles her academic life chronologically. Khopatkar's frequent use of jest, though, comes with a serious undertone. To make this statement clear, we ask the city-based writer about a physical menace that she addresses multiple times: hair fall.