when i started going through applications, i expected introspection. i expected people to write about themselves, their ambitions, the things they were figuring out. and most did. but somewhere along the way, as i worked through over 300 applications, something unexpected kept showing up: stories that weren’t just personal. they were a mirror of the society we live in.
i was not prepared for that. and honestly, it was the best surprise i’ve had.
Kiran M. wrote about child marriage, not as something she had read about, but as the reality she watched unfold in her own classroom, classmates wearing mangalsutras in the 11th grade while she was still figuring out who she was. Asmi Jain turned the lens on her own home, a household that preached jain values of kindness toward all living beings, and asked the uncomfortable question of why that kindness didn’t extend equally to everyone inside it. Saanvi Agrawal questioned something far quieter but just as deeply held: the unquestioned faith her marwari family placed in ghar ka khaana, and what it cost her before she started asking.
three completely different people, three completely different worlds. but what made their stories stand out wasn’t the topics they chose. it was the honesty they brought to them. the willingness to speak from exactly where they stood, without softening it, without making it palatable.
that is what authentic storytelling looks like. it doesn’t announce itself. it just makes the room go quiet.
when you bring together people from genuinely different backgrounds and give them the space to speak truthfully, perspectives that would otherwise never find each other, do. and that exchange, quiet as it sometimes is, is how people actually begin to see the world a little differently.
i started restless dreamers to find people like this. turns out, they were already out there, waiting to be asked the right question.