They said it would make him strong. They were right — but nobody warned him how.

At eleven, he walked through a gate with a trunk full of clothes and no idea what was waiting on the other side. What waited was five AM wake-ups, seniors who could silence a room with a look, punishments that became the best stories he ever told, and a world so complete, so intense, so entirely its own — that seven years later, standing at that same gate for the last time, he couldn't make himself leave.

Seven Years Behind the Gate is the true story of growing up inside one of India's most demanding residential schools. It is not polished. It is not perfect. It is exactly what it was — terrifying and hilarious and painful and magnificent, sometimes all in the same hour.

It is the story of dormitory life at its most honest. Of bonds that form when you have no choice but to survive together. Of the boy who arrived crying and the person who left — changed in ways he is still discovering.

If you ever belonged somewhere so completely that leaving felt like losing a part of yourself — this book already knows your heart.

And if you never got the chance to live something like this — by the last page, you will feel like you did.

Raw. Funny. Honest. Unforgettable.

Once a Saikorian, always a Saikorian.