I bought Lollapalooza, Mumbai tickets the second they announced Linkin Park. Same day. Didn’t even think about it.

Because how do you not show up for the music that kept you alive?

I was in 10th grade when Pranav Bhaiya handed me a burned CD. Two Linkin Park albums, one just released. I had no idea what I was about to hear. No idea that music could do that. Reach inside and name things I didn’t have words for.
I couldn’t talk to my friends about what was happening to me. About the anger from violations I’d experienced. About feeling so out of control in my own life, my own body. About being fifteen and carrying things that were too heavy and too secret and too much.

And then I heard Crawling.

It wasn’t written for me. It was written about substance abuse. I didn’t care. It was mine. Every word of it. That feeling of your own skin being wrong. Of rage and helplessness living in the same moment. Of desperately wanting control when control has been ripped away from you.

I played it over and over and over. Let it scream what I couldn’t.

Somewhere I Belong and Numb gave me something else – they told me it was okay to not fit. That being different, feeling like an outsider, not belonging anywhere – that wasn’t my failure. When you’re drowning and can’t tell anyone why, those songs become oxygen.

Standing at Lollapalooza when Crawling started, I didn’t just sing it.

I screamed it.

Every word. Every line that held me together when I was fifteen and breaking. That crowd, that moment – it was the first time that rage and pain and survival got to be loud. Got to take up space. Got to exist without apology.

I don’t know how else to describe it. Every version of me was there. early version of me who survived, the one who’s still figuring it out, the one who bought tickets without hesitation. We all got to breathe. Finally.

That fifteen-year-old inside me got their moment. Got to release what they’d been holding for over twenty years.

Thank you, Pranav Bhaiya. You gave me survival tools when I needed them most. You gave me a way to feel things when feeling anything was dangerous.

I finally got to say thank you the only way that made sense.

By screaming it.