My mind is an animal I cannot control. I feel starved for real human contact. No matter how much I have, it isn't enough. I fixate on people I barely know without even the slightest provocation. I expect transcendence. I expect permanence. I expect to be proved wrong." This was an entry in screenwriter Shaheen Bhatt's diary at the age of 27, in 2016.

Last week, she put vignettes of it out there for everyone to read in her new book, I've Never Been (Un)Happier (Penguin Random House). In the book, Shaheen — filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt's daughter and actor Alia's elder sister — has chronicled her fight with depression, which she refers to as "the feeling", since the age of 11. "I have been keeping a diary ever since. It was my catharsis. It was the only way I could make sense of things, and put them in perspective," she tells us over a telephone call.