Skip to main content

Borderline by Shabri Prasad Singh


Borderline personality disorder has been the theme of many books but Shabri Prasad Singh brings out a fresh perspective to it with an intriguing story, mostly based on reality.  It is a woman's emotional journey through the borderline disorder and the emotional upheaval it causes. 

Borderline is about life of Amrita Srivastava. It is the journey of her mentality, her being and her soul. The book begins with Amrita's backdrop, her birth and family history. It shows the basic settings of a tender close knit family and how the family breaks apart due to a terrible divorce which impacts Amrita mentally.

Thereon Amrita is fully reliant on her father and she worships him. Upon moving to America for further studies Amrita falls in love, due to her dependence and growing insecurities, the relationship does not work. Amrita comes to India on a holiday only to find her father dead the next morning. This turn of life shatters her everlastingly. She cannot move past her father's death, although her mother remarries, Amrita is hell bent on locating love which in turn makes her obsessed with the men that come in her life leading up to a mental crash.

When Amrita moves back to India she again gets close with another guy but it doesn’t last long. She is required to move into her mother’s home and she finds it difficult to make any connection with them. Amrita finds freedom and liberty when she gets involved with a married man who is called“Pink”, who is the only man who understands her mind and her wavering emotions. 

When her best friend pens an awful book on her Amrita has another mental breakdown and goes to a psychiatrist who diagnoses her with Borderline Personality Disorder.

From here onward, Amrita tries to heal herself and goes to regular therapy. Things seem to look up but when she meets and forms a bond with another woman analyzed with the same disorder who ultimately commits suicide. Amrita becomes psychotic and is taken to a rehabilitation facility. When she comes back from rehab, Amrita has an internal stirring and she confronts her demons and her past by having an internal debate with herself. She reaches catharsis and she takes up writing as a vocation.

Comments

Also read

Why do we crave bookshops when life falls apart? A deep reading of Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop

This article reflects on Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop by Hwang Bo-reum, a gentle novel about burnout, healing, and second chances. Through Yeong-ju and her quiet community, the book reminds you that meaning often returns slowly, through books, people, and ordinary days that begin to feel like home again. Why do so many of us secretly dream of walking away from everything? At some point, usually on a crowded weekday morning or during yet another meeting that could have been an email, you wonder if this is all there is. You did what you were told. You studied, worked hard, built a career, stayed responsible. And yet, instead of contentment, there is exhaustion. Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop begins exactly at this uncomfortable truth. Hwang Bo-reum’s novel does not shout its intentions. It does not promise transformation through grand revelations. Instead, it sits beside you quietly and asks a gentler question. What if the problem is not that you failed, but that you nev...

Spill the Tea: Noor and the Silence After Doing Everything right

Noor has done everything she was supposed to do — moved out, built a life, stayed independent. Yet beneath the neat routines and functional success lies a quiet emptiness she cannot name. Part of the Spill the Tea series, this story explores high-functioning loneliness, emotional flatness, and the unsettling fear of living a life that looks complete from the outside. The verandah was brighter than Noor expected. Morning light lay flat across the tiles, showing every faint scuff mark, every water stain from old monsoons. The air smelled of detergent from a neighbour’s washed curtains flapping overhead. On the table, the paneer patties waited in a cardboard bakery box I’d emptied onto a plate. A squeeze bottle of ketchup stood beside it, slightly sticky around the cap. Two cups of tea, steam already thinning. In one corner, a bamboo palm stood in a large terracotta planter. Thin stems. Too many leaves. Trying very hard to look like it belonged indoors. Noor sat down and pulled the chair ...

What if You Could undo every regret? An uncomfortable conversation with The Midnight Library

Have you ever replayed your life at night, wondering how things might have turned out differently? The Midnight Library by Matt Haig asks you to sit with that question. Through Nora Seed’s quiet despair and imagined alternatives, the novel explores regret, possibility, depression, and the fragile hope that living at all might be enough. Have you ever wondered if one different choice could have changed everything? You probably have. Most people do. Usually at night. Usually when the world goes quiet and your mind decides to reopen old files you never asked it to keep. The job you did not take. The person you loved too late or too briefly. The version of yourself that felt possible once. You tell yourself that if you had chosen differently, life would feel fuller, cleaner, less heavy. The Midnight Library begins exactly there, in that familiar ache. Not with drama, but with exhaustion. Not with chaos, but with a woman who feels she has quietly failed at everything that mattered. Mat...