Trigger warning: This story contains mentions of suicide, depression and self-harm.

Born and raised in a happy family, Raj Dagwar grew up as a content kid with dreams and aspirations.

However, neither he nor his family could have anticipated that life would take such a toll, leading him to contemplate ending his own life.

“It was when I was in Pune for my engineering when things started to go downhill. I was in a relationship with a person and it did not work out. I was not doing well at college either. Suddenly, life felt hard and I felt alone in all of it,” he recalls, adding that he felt helpless.

Raj would lock himself in a room and not come out of it for several days.

“This adversely affected my attendance and academic performance. I did not eat for days and felt like I was in a bottomless pit of darkness,” he recalls.

Suffering silently, Raj could not communicate with either his friends or family about how he was feeling.

It was a professor in his college who noticed Raj’s behaviour and advised him to see the campus therapist. This visit to the therapist changed his life for the better.

While still in therapy and getting better, Raj found a video on the internet of a man who was paying a small amount of money to people to tell their stories. “I decided to replicate the same in India,” he says.

So when the world opened its doors again and Raj was back at his college, he decided to stand outside his college with a sign that read — “Tell me your story and I will give you Rs 10.” He posted about the same on his Instagram handle.

This attracted a lot of people and within a few days, Raj was flooded with DMs [direct messages] and requests from both people who wanted to talk and people who wanted to listen.

“This is how the Listener’s Army started. Today our non-profit is around 600 listeners strong who are all volunteers,” he says.

The volunteers or listeners and the people who want to tell their stories are from all over the country like Bengaluru, Mumbai, Pune, Jaipur, etc.