The girl who was always in the room
Before any of this, Anubhuti was the student everyone noticed. A college topper, a regular at every debate on campus, active in every cultural fest going. She was the one who loved the camera, the one who wanted the light and the mic. Then, in her second year of college, she had a brain surgery.
Physically, she recovered. But something else began to shift in the months that followed, slowly enough that she did not notice it happening.
The weight no one saw coming
"People who have never been overweight in their life do not realise it when it happens to them," she said. After the surgery, steroids and a much less active routine changed her body in ways she could not track in real time. Then Covid arrived, and with it, a year and a half at home with her brother, staying up after their parents slept to bake fifty gulab jamuns in a night, just because the stress of the time made sweet food feel like comfort.
By her early twenties, Anubhuti was dealing with constant body pain. Her feet hurt every single day for years, so much that she rubbed them with heeng oil, wrapped them in towels, and got through each day on a rotation of painkillers. Her face and body swelled regularly. She was topping her exams the whole time, and almost no one around her knew what her days actually felt like underneath it.
Hiding from her own camera
The detail that says the most about what Anubhuti went through has nothing to do with the scale. It is what happened to her photographs.
She had always loved taking pictures of herself. It was simply part of who she was, a small daily ritual that made her happy regardless of how her day had gone. When her coach later asked for a photo from that period, she went looking through her old hard drive and found almost nothing. A photo of her shoes. A photo of her hands. A half photograph here and there. She had been avoiding the camera so completely that she did not even notice she was doing it, until she looked back and saw the gap for herself.
Watching someone else's journey first
Anubhuti found Kayapalat by watching a fellow student, Pragati, transform over a few months, and by talking to her directly about what the experience actually felt like. Pragati told her the change would not only be physical. She promised it would come with a sense of family and a lighter load to carry the journey with. That conversation is what made Anubhuti decide to join in July 2023, even though she described herself as deeply skeptical going in.
She discussed it with her parents first, wanting their blessing before starting, and her father supported the decision the way he supports most of hers, without hesitation.
What she actually did
Anubhuti is clear that nothing in her life was taken away from her. She still eats kachori. She still eats bhatura. She still has a paratha most afternoons. What changed was the structure around those choices, understanding what to eat, when to eat it, and how to balance the rest of the day around it.
"I have lived this journey," she said. "I have not given up anything in my life. I have just learned how to balance when to eat and how to eat."
Fifteen kilos and twenty-six inches later
Over the following months, Anubhuti lost 15 kgs and 26 inches. She now runs 8 kilometers regularly, something that would have felt impossible to the version of her hiding behind half-cropped photographs a few years earlier.
The people closest to her noticed the change beyond the number too. Her roommate, the same Pragati whose journey first inspired her, now watches Anubhuti walk into her room to return the encouragement she once received. Her lab colleagues have started commenting on how different she seems. Her parents, who once quietly carried the weight of watching their daughter struggle after her surgery, now describe simply feeling proud.
What changed for Anubhuti was never really about becoming someone new. It was about becoming comfortable being seen again, camera included.