Book summary “Life Is What You Make It”: summary

Introduction

You may believe that your life is entirely under your control until sudden heartbreak, intense academic pressure, or chemical imbalances destabilize your mental health. When psychological foundations fracture, everyday routines become unbearable, and the future you planned suddenly vanishes. You might wonder how a bright and promising youth can descend into severe mental illness without any warning.

Preeti Shenoy explores these exact vulnerabilities in Life Is What You Make It. The book follows Ankita, a young woman whose vibrant college experience, leadership ambitions, and romantic attachments mask a fragile psychological state. When severe trauma and a bipolar disorder diagnosis shatter her world, she must navigate institutional barriers, failed medical treatments, and the darkest depths of despair. The narrative charts her painful descent and her eventual path toward healing and emotional resilience.

You will discover how academic pressures and personal conflicts trigger underlying mental health struggles. The text demonstrates how manic episodes and severe depression manifest in daily behavior, affecting relationships and cognitive function. You will also examine the challenges of psychiatric care, the trial-and-error nature of medications, and the crucial role of structured rehabilitation.

• How do early relationship conflicts and family dynamics influence your vulnerability to trauma?
• What are the warning signs of a transition from normal ambition to manic grandiosity?
• How can you navigate the frightening experience of psychiatric hospitalization and recovery?
• What practical steps allow you to rebuild your life after profound psychological collapse?

1. College Life and Relationships

Conservative upbringing often clashes with the desire for social freedom and romantic connection among young college students.

Strict parents often inadvertently permit alternative channels of communication when visible social interactions are heavily policed. While Ankita was barred from going to movies with a mixed group of friends after her Class 12 exams, she was allowed to exchange frequent handwritten letters with her boyfriend Vaibhav in Delhi. A posted letter took 5 days to travel between Cochin and Delhi.

A New World

An all-female institutional environment creates a unique psychological space that removes traditional inhibitions regarding male gaze and social scrutiny. Studying exclusively among thousands of women liberates students from constantly worrying about clothing choices, bra straps, or male judgment, fostering a distinct subculture.

St. Agnes College accommodated approximately 3000 students. Students openly participated in a tradition where they stared directly at the crotch of their sole male lecturer for Mercantile Law, affectionately nicknamed Porukki-merki. Exactly 120 female students attended the Mercantile Law lecture.

Operation Mission Phone-call

Maintaining long-distance romance before the era of mobile phones required complex operational planning and precise timing. Communication relied on fixed telephone lines and early morning coordination, factoring in family members' sleeping schedules and daily routines to avoid interception.

Vaibhav and Ankita executed Operation Mission Phone-call on Ankita's eighteenth birthday. They timed the call precisely at 5:45 a.m. while her parents were out for a walk and played a Jefferson Starship song over the line.

Secret long-distance communication involved specific operational hurdles:

• 4 to 7 minutes of conversation time for a successfully executed phone call;
• 10 rupees extra early-morning fee charged by the telephone booth operator;
• 45 minutes spent hiding under the bed when parents returned unexpectedly.

2. Student Leadership and Festivals

Stepping into student politics and inter-collegiate festivals tests personal resilience and leadership capabilities under intense pressure.

Election Selection

Non-political campus elections in an all-women college can still generate intense competitive spirit and elaborate campaigning strategies. You witness campaigns featuring dedicated teams, drums, bugles, and handmade posters to rally votes for major student union positions.

Suvi and her friends nominated Ankita for Arts Club Secretary without her prior consent. They organized a full campaign entourage complete with a hired drum and bugle.

The student body structure involves distinct roles:

• Arts Club Secretary
• General Secretary
• Chairperson

Ankita eventually addressed a crowd of 3000 during the investiture ceremony.

Symphony

Unexpected crises during inter-collegiate festivals test leadership capabilities and force student representatives to step outside their comfort zones. When scheduled participants suddenly become unavailable due to personal emergencies or illness, you must substitute for them immediately to prevent point penalties.

College buses traveled 45 kilometers to the venue for the Cochin University festival called Symphony, which featured 15 events. When St. Agnes lost its English Elocution participants on the day of the festival, Sanjana and Ankita stepped in at the last minute to compete.

St. Agnes won the overall championship by a narrow margin of 10 points.

3. Emotional Dynamics and Obsession

Intense emotional attachments and traumatic backgrounds can distort personal relationships and lead to volatile romantic conflicts.

Local cultural customs and street food traditions shape the backdrop of romantic pursuits in regional settings. You encounter regional practices such as placing a flickering brass oil lamp at the doorway to welcome the Goddess of wealth. People frequently visit local pushcart food joints akin to northern dhabhas.

During a nighttime motorcycle ride to Cochin, Abhi takes Ankita to eat dosas and appams at a local pushcart called a thatu kada. They still have thirty kilometres of the journey remaining.

Thatu Kadas and Customs

Extreme emotional attachment can manifest through dramatic gestures and meticulous observation of personal details. Knowing each other for only three days before an initial confession leads to rapid emotional escalation.

Abhi writes a letter to Ankita using his own blood from his ring finger to prove his love. The capital letters written in blood measure two inches in height. The letter includes a detailed list of every outfit and accessory worn over multiple days.

Manifestations of Obsession

Abusive parental backgrounds can deeply scar individuals and heavily influence their emotional expressions. Severe physical punishment by a strict parent attempting to enforce ideological or religious submission creates deep-seated hatred and resentment in the victim.

Abhi reveals the angry welts and bruises criss-crossing his back caused by his missionary father using a belt to punish him for refusing to join his mission in Pretoria.

4. Institutional Betrayal and Ambition

Geographical shifts, career ambitions, and institutional hypocrisy can fracture long-distance bonds and alter life trajectories.

Educational institutions often hypocritically abandon students during scandals despite celebrating their achievements previously. When a political police raid targets students at a hotel party, college authorities scapegoat the students to protect their reputation while replacing leadership with compliant figures.

Following a police raid at the Mahatma Gandhi University Youth Festival, St. Agnes college authorities promptly expel student leaders Sanjana and Suja and replace them with a spineless stooge. The youth festival event lasts four days. Sanjana wears a pair of heels measuring six inches in height to the party, which is scheduled to start at eleven p.m.

Youth Festival Scandal

Geographical proximity and shared trials can erode long-distance relationships in favor of emerging local bonds. Frequent interactions, shared responsibilities during cultural events, and mutual experiences gradually cause you to emotionally detach from a distant partner.

Ankita gradually stops eagerly awaiting calls from her childhood boyfriend Vaibhav in Delhi as her bond with Abhi strengthens through frequent bike rides and festival organizing.

Career Versus Romance

Personal ambition and career goals should take precedence over compromising your future for a romantic partner. When competitive entrance examinations yield superior opportunities for one partner, expecting them to settle for a local backup option out of romance is unreasonable.

Ankita secures interview calls from four elite MBA institutes including one in Bombay, while Abhi only gets a call from CUSAT and pressures her to stay behind with him.

5. The Weight of Tragic Loss

Failing to value genuine love can result in profound lifelong regret when sudden tragedy strikes someone close to you.

Never Belittle Love

A casual dismissal of someone who cares deeply can carry catastrophic consequences that you cannot reverse. When you reject a secret marriage proposal and refuse to promise future contact, you may not realize the emotional devastation you leave behind.

Abhi goes missing after Ankita rejects him and leaves for her new life in Bombay. His body is recovered in Vypeen after he drowns while intoxicated.

The Aftermath

Grief arrives with an overwhelming burden of guilt when you recognize your own callousness too late. You might hear words that haunt your future interactions and reshape how you view human connections.

Abhi's grieving grandfather delivers a message that stays with Ankita forever, telling her in Malayalam:

• sneham mathram puchikaruthu;
• never belittle love no matter where it comes from.

6. Mental Escalation in Bombay

A sudden surge in physical stamina, perfectionism, and manic energy can serve as an early indicator of an underlying psychological shift.

Large urban environments operate on massive scales, with daily commuter volumes surpassing entire regional transit networks. You navigate overwhelming transit systems where millions of people move through dense urban grids every single day.

Ankita takes the local trains daily, becoming one of the six million commuters on the suburban railway.

Bombay Commute

Life in a metropolis demands rapid adaptation to overwhelming sensory inputs and relentless schedules. You learn to measure distances by commute time rather than physical miles.

Associating information with specific visual colors and spatial arrangements can dramatically enhance memory retention and recall speed. You can transform dense material into vivid mental pictures that require minimal effort to retrieve during examinations.

Ankita uses green for Philip Kotler's explanations and orange for illustrative examples, allowing her to visualize pages mentally.

Academic Perfectionism

An obsessive drive for perfection in academic settings can transition from high achievement into an unhealthy and aggressive fixation. You might find that normal success no longer satisfies your expectations.

Ankita scores 98 out of 100 on her Information Technology exam but remains furious about the two lost marks.

A sudden, uncharacteristic surge in physical stamina and manic energy can be an early indicator of an underlying psychological shift. Your body might push past normal biological limits without apparent fatigue.

Ankita times her sprint in the Institute quadrangle and clocks 100 metres in about 13.8 seconds, shocking Joseph and her classmates.

7. Recklessness and Grandiosity

Manic mental states strip away normal inhibitions, driving individuals to engage in life-threatening stunts and grandiose social acts.

Heightened psychological states can enhance verbal fluency and spontaneity during high-pressure public speaking engagements. You might find yourself pushed onto the stage for a "Just a minute" contest during a college cultural festival.

Ankita speaks for three minutes straight instead of one on the topic of Clint Eastwood's drinking preference. She keeps talking for two more minutes before she realizes and then interrupts herself to roaring applause.

Rooftop Peril

You might experience a complete loss of fear and a powerful feeling of invincibility. This lack of caution can translate into dangerous physical risks.

Ankita climbs onto the terrace parapet of a ten-story building and balances over the edge, laughing at Joseph's terror. Her peers fear she will fall to the pavement with a drop of more than 10 floors.

Distributing Notes

An inflated sense of discovery can drive you to perform grandiose, socially uncalibrated acts of sharing personal work with an entire institution. You might become convinced that you have invented revolutionary systems that will change the academic world.

Ankita orders seventy photocopies of her study notes and plans to distribute them to the Dean and her professor. She decorates the colour-coded pages with cartoon stickers before handing them across her class.

Unprocessed trauma and grief can resurface violently when triggered by ordinary artistic hobbies or environmental cues. You might channel these overwhelming memories into compulsive writing during a manic phase.

Ankita stays up all night writing a 42-page letter to Suvi about her past relationship with Abhi. The handwritten document runs to forty two pages of raw emotional disclosure after she paints a waterfall in her residential complex.

8. Parental Conflict and Crisis

The destruction of deeply personal letters by parents causes a severe psychological fracture and triggers extreme self-destructive coping mechanisms.

Ankita's parents discover Abhi's blood-soaked letter and her file of letters from Vaibhav. They burn them in the kitchen balcony. This act destroys your sense of privacy and emotional anchor.

Ankita's father pours kerosene on Abhi's blood-soaked letter and Vaibhav's letters and burns them on the kitchen balcony, prompting Ankita to cut her wrist with a paper-cutting knife. She applies undiluted Dettol to physical cuts to replace her internal phantom pain with real, manageable physical pain. Writing long letters and poems serves as an obsessive emotional outlet while simultaneously being misconstrued by medical professionals as a thought disorder.

Ankita writes a 16-page letter to Vaibhav filled with hearts, drawings, and stickers, and later writes a poem about a stop gap relationship comparing her emotional state to those of street women. She uses poetry as a mechanism to process her unexpressed feelings for Abhi. Psychiatrists later examine these writings as evidence of persistent disturbances to conscious thought and delusions.

Onset of Panic Attacks

Severe psychological distress can manifest as sudden, irrational panic attacks and overwhelming fear without any clear external triggers. You might experience intense episodes of terror that have no logical connection to your actual environment or academic success.

Ankita experiences a severe panic attack while standing at her regular bus stop on her way back to her MBA course, forcing her to return home in a daze. Her parents attempt to reassure her and force her to return to her college routine.

These panic attacks paralyze you at the bus stop and force you to retreat permanently to your room. On the fourth day, Ankita realizes she cannot continue going to college and stays home. She watches the street from the sixth floor window of her apartment, isolated from the world below.

9. Cognitive Decline and Diagnosis

Severe depressive disorders impair basic cognitive functions and require formal psychiatric evaluation and immediate pharmacological intervention.

Cognitive Shutdown

Severe mental health crises can impair basic cognitive functions such as reading comprehension and focus, making previously effortless tasks impossible. As blackness and a deep void settle into your mind, you find yourself unable to read books or even your own meticulously color-coded study notes.

Ankita tries to read Arthur Hailey's Hotel and her marketing book by Kotler, but finds she cannot comprehend a single paragraph, eventually sweeping her notes and a reading lamp off her desk in frustration. When attempting to read, you realize you forget the beginning of a sentence by the time you reach the end. This memory failure leads to intense frustration and physical outbursts.

The Ink Blots

Clinical assessment of depression and psychological distress often relies on standardized projective tests such as ink blots to evaluate patient responses. Accompanied by your parents, you visit a young psychiatrist named Dr. Mukta Nagraj. You answer preliminary questions about your sleep, eating habits, and background in monosyllables.

Dr. Mukta Nagraj shows Ankita ten abstract black-and-white ink-blot cards to analyze her responses and test results for a psychiatric evaluation. Dr. Nagraj requests 5 minutes to study the responses, but takes twelve minutes to analyze them fully before recommending a two weeks follow-up period.

Following the evaluation and ink-blot test, Dr. Nagraj diagnoses you with severe depression and states that medication must be started immediately to prevent your condition from worsening. Her parents obtain a prescription for tablets meant to help her sleep and regulate her low mood, marking the formal start of her medical treatment. Dr. Mukta Nagraj diagnoses Ankita with severe depression and prescribes medication, after which her father purchases the tablets from a chemist's shop.

10. Medical Failure and Despair

Incorrect psychiatric medication can worsen a patient's condition, inducing severe physical side effects, emotional numbness, and thoughts of suicide.

Ineffective Meds

Initial treatments with mild relaxants and heavy doses prescribed by doctors like Dr. Mukta and Dr. Kohli fail to cure the underlying condition. Instead, they induce extreme drowsiness, constant vomiting, severe weight gain, exhaustion, and a frightening internal blankness that strips you of your creativity and ability to read or think. These interventions alter serotonin levels without addressing the true nature of bipolar disorder, leaving your mind trapped behind a thick cognitive wall.

Ankita becomes so heavily medicated and physically degraded that she throws up violently, gains significant weight, and loses the ability to read her management books.

Plan for Final Exit

Intense isolation and despair can drive you to plan a final escape when medical treatments fail to bring relief. You meticulously weigh various methods, ultimately selecting the terrace of your building for a fatal jump. The attempt is thwarted at the last moment when unexpected human interactions or parental vigilance intervene.

Ankita stands on the edge of the eighth-floor terrace ready to jump, but is distracted by neighbors talking nearby before her father finds her. A fall from fifty feet is considered lethal, but her father reaches the roof just in time to pull her back from the precipice.

11. Hospitalization and Bipolar Truths

Admission to a mental health center provides the controlled environment necessary for stabilization, accurate diagnosis, and targeted treatment.

After traveling from Bombay to Bangalore to consult senior doctors, Ankita is admitted to a mental health center against her will. The clinical environment and hospital room initially trigger panic, rage, and a feeling of profound abandonment.

Ankita screams, throws bedsheets, and reacts hysterically when her parents leave her alone in the hospital room, resulting in a sedative being administered.

Admission Fear

Fear often accompanies the realization that you have lost control over your mind and circumstances. Loved ones may need to make agonizing choices to place you in a facility for your own safety.

The physical reality of a psychiatric ward starkly contrasts with the outside world. Doors lock behind you, and freedom of movement vanishes.

Lithium and Bipolar Disorder

Mental illnesses like bipolar disorder are chemical conditions beyond personal control, requiring specific targeted medication rather than willpower. Dr. Madhusudan diagnoses Ankita with bipolar disorder, explaining that the illness operates in cycles of extreme highs and lows. He replaces previous inappropriate antidepressants with Lithium, emphasizing that patients have no more control over mental illness than they do over physical fractures.

Dr. Madhusudan draws a wave-like graph on a notepad to illustrate the mood cycles of bipolar disorder to Ankita.

Electroconvulsive therapy is a medical procedure used at rock-bottom stages of severe mental illness to prevent suicide and produce rapid results when antidepressants are too slow. Although feared and poorly understood due to negative portrayals in media, ECT serves as a life-saving intervention for severe bipolar disorder when immediate action is required to stop recurring suicide attempts. Sister Rosaline and Dr. Madhusudan explain the necessity of ECT to Ankita after she regains consciousness from a sedative.

Medical interventions follow specific clinical protocols:

• ECT is administered twice a week when rapid stabilization is required;
• Lithium replaces previous ineffective drugs to regulate chemical imbalances;
• senior doctors evaluate symptom patterns through detailed clinical interviews.

12. Rehabilitation and Recovery

Structured daily routines, occupational therapy, and empathetic mentorship foster gradual recovery and help rebuild cognitive endurance.

You leave the acute ward for an expansive 80-acre campus housing the occupational therapy wing. The environment feels like a resort rather than a hospital. A cheery atmosphere replaces clinical sterile walls with gardens and open spaces.

Occupational Therapy Wing

A strict daily schedule organizes your time from 10.30 A.M. to 10.30 P.M. You receive art materials, psychotherapy, and designated leisure hours. The structure removes external pressures and provides a safe space for healing.

Dr. Madhusudan shares his personal history to validate your emotional struggles. He grew up in Kerala and lost his older sister to suicide at age 22 when he was a young boy with a fourteen-year age difference between them.

Dr. Madhusudan tells Ankita the story of his sister jumping into a backyard well to explain why he takes such a deep interest in helping suicide survivors.

Cognitive Rehabilitation

Severe mental illness drains cognitive function, leaving you unable to concentrate or read. Recovering from cognitive burnout requires starting from absolute basics.

Dr. Namita and Dr. Madhusudan introduce children's books and dictation exercises to rebuild your mental endurance.

When Ankita failed to retain the meaning of simple sentences in a children's book, Dr. Namita had her write out entire stories through dictation until her concentration improved.

Healing also involves reframing your identity and emotional depth. Dr. Madhusudan explains that extreme sensitivity and intense emotional states allow creative individuals to channel their experiences into art or writing.

Dr. Madhusudan discusses Vincent Van Gogh's life and his extreme emotional struggles to help Ankita understand her own condition and recognize that bipolar disorder often shares space with high creativity.

13. Life Choices and Epilogue

Trauma can trigger total paradigm shifts, leading individuals to abandon conventional prestige in favor of authentic personal fulfillment and mental wellness.

Dropping Out

You realize that previous corporate ambitions become completely meaningless after surviving a major psychological crisis. When your priorities change, you refuse to return to standard career paths that no longer fit your inner values.

Despite her father reminding her that the fees were already paid, Ankita refuses to return to her MBA course and enrolls in a post-graduate diploma in creative writing at Bombay University.

Managing bipolar disorder requires strict adherence to prescribed medication schedules and cautious, gradual tapering under medical supervision. Dr. Madhusudan outlines the tapering process for Lithium, moving from once daily to alternate days, then every third day, and finally twice and once a week before stopping.

Society attaches heavy stigma and fear to mental health issues, frequently mislabeling non-conformity as insanity. Ankita writes in her letter to Vaibhav about the fine line between sanity and insanity and how society unjustly uses terms like crazy or lunatic.

Fifteen Years Later

Individuals who recover from severe mental health crises can achieve exceptional personal and professional fulfillment when supported by proper therapy and a strong community. The epilogue traces the lives of the characters fifteen years later, showing successful career and life outcomes resulting from personal resilience.

Ankita earns six academic degrees, marries a supportive man, and practices as an independent art therapist living without medication.

Bipolar disorder remains a widespread medical condition affecting millions across densely populated regions. The author notes population statistics for Bipolar disorder sourced from the Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance, highlighting that 12-15 million people experience the condition.

You can overcome profound psychological distress when you secure proper medical care and build a life centered on authentic personal passions.

10 Key Ideas

1. Strict parents often inadvertently permit alternative channels of communication when visible social interactions are heavily policed.
2. Abusive parental backgrounds can deeply scar individuals and heavily influence their emotional expressions.
3. Failing to value genuine love can result in profound lifelong regret when sudden tragedy strikes someone close to you.
4. A sudden, uncharacteristic surge in physical stamina and manic energy can be an early indicator of an underlying psychological shift.
5. Manic mental states strip away normal inhibitions, driving individuals to engage in life-threatening stunts and grandiose social acts.
6. The destruction of deeply personal letters by parents causes a severe psychological fracture and triggers extreme self-destructive coping mechanisms.
7. Severe depressive disorders impair basic cognitive functions and require formal psychiatric evaluation and immediate pharmacological intervention.
8. Incorrect psychiatric medication can worsen a patient's condition, inducing severe physical side effects, emotional numbness, and thoughts of suicide.
9. Mental illnesses like bipolar disorder are chemical conditions beyond personal control, requiring specific targeted medication rather than willpower.
10. Structured daily routines, occupational therapy, and empathetic mentorship foster gradual recovery and help rebuild cognitive endurance.