Some days it hits harder than you expect
A nineteen-year-old Indian student studying in the United States has offered the internet something rarer than a highlight reel — an honest account of what it costs to build a life far from home. His short video, filmed in a dorm room and watched by hundreds of thousands, touches the quiet underside of a dream that is often sold without its shadows: the loneliness of festivals spent on video calls, the weight of practical adulthood arriving all at once, and the particular silence left behind when family is no longer in the next room. In naming what so many carry without language, he has reminded a generation that resilience and grief are not opposites — they are, often, the same experience.
- A 19-year-old's unfiltered dorm-room confession — 'living alone isn't as glamorous as it looks' — cut through the curated imagery of studying abroad and went viral almost instantly.
- The emotional ambush arrives not in grand moments of crisis but in ordinary ones: a festival celebrated over a video call while family laughs together in a room thousands of miles away.
- Beneath the academic pressure lies an avalanche of adult firsts — taxes, bank accounts, cooking, credit — all arriving simultaneously in a country built on assumptions the newcomer was never taught.
- Thousands of students and young professionals flooded the comments with recognition, surfacing a collective silence: the struggle behind the foreign-country dream is real, widespread, and rarely spoken aloud.
- Kanav's own framing holds the paradox steady — 'moments like these build you' — pointing toward a resilience that is genuine precisely because it does not deny the cost of earning it.
Kanav is nineteen, sitting in a dorm room in the United States, speaking directly into his phone camera. What he says reaches hundreds of thousands of people who recognize themselves immediately. 'Living alone isn't as glamorous as it looks.' It is a simple sentence carrying everything nobody mentions when they sell you the dream of studying abroad.
For young Indians, the narrative around American education has always been polished — Instagram posts at coffee shops, sprawling campuses, the promise of unlimited possibility. Kanav's video cracks open what happens in the hours between those photographs. He walks through the practical weight first: managing money, understanding taxes, figuring out how to eat, navigating systems designed for people who grew up inside them. The classes feel alien. The people around you move through the world with assumptions you don't share.
But the hardest part, he says, is the festivals. Watching his family celebrate Diwali over a video call — together in the same room, laughing, making memories he is not part of — captures a loneliness that is not about being physically alone. It is about missing the people who know you, the rituals that shaped you. 'Some days it hits harder than you expect,' he says. The grief arrives without warning: during lunch, late at night, in the middle of class.
What makes the video resonate is that Kanav neither wallows nor performs. He simply names it honestly: this is hard, and it is also making me stronger. He captioned the video 'Building a life' — three words that hold the whole paradox, the cost and the growth arriving together.
The comments filled with recognition. 'Nobody talks about how lonely festivals feel abroad.' 'You are learning life much earlier than many people do.' 'People only see the foreign country part, not the struggle behind it.' In naming the gap between the connections you have and the connections you need, Kanav gave thousands of other students quiet permission to stop pretending that gap does not exist.
Kanav is nineteen years old, sitting in a dorm room somewhere in the United States, looking directly into his phone camera. What he says next will reach hundreds of thousands of people who recognize themselves in his words. "Living alone isn't as glamorous as it looks," he tells them. It's a simple sentence, but it carries weight—the weight of everything nobody mentions when they're selling you the dream of studying abroad.
For young Indians, the narrative around American education has always been polished. You see the Instagram posts: students at coffee shops, road trips across state lines, sprawling campuses, the promise of world-class learning and unlimited possibility. The dream is real enough. But Kanav's video cracks open what happens in the hours between those photographs, in the quiet moments when you're alone in a foreign country for the first time, responsible for everything.
He walks through the practical weight first. Managing money. Understanding taxes. Figuring out how to eat when you're not sure how to cook. Navigating credit cards and bank accounts and systems designed by people who assume you grew up understanding them. The classes themselves feel alien—nothing like high school back home. The people around you speak differently, think differently, move through the world with assumptions you don't share. And underneath all of it, there's the constant low hum of being away from your family, missing the rhythms that held you together.
But the hardest part, Kanav says, is the festivals. He describes watching his family celebrate Diwali or another holiday over a video call, thousands of miles away, while they're together in the same room, laughing, making memories he's not part of. "Some days it hits harder than you expect," he says. It's not constant despair—it's the ambush of it, the way grief arrives when you're not braced for it. During lunch. Late at night. In the middle of class. The loneliness isn't about being physically alone; it's about missing the people who know you, the rituals that shaped you, the version of yourself that existed when you were home.
What makes Kanav's video resonate is that he doesn't wallow in it. He doesn't pretend it's all fine, and he doesn't perform suffering either. He simply names it: this is hard, and it's also making me stronger. "Moments like these, they build you. They make you mentally stronger. They teach you how to stand on your own," he says. He captioned the video "Building a life," and in those three words is the whole paradox—the cost and the growth happening at the same time.
The internet responded with recognition. Thousands of students and young professionals who've lived abroad saw themselves reflected back. "This is so real, nobody talks about how lonely festivals feel abroad," one person wrote. Another: "You are learning life much earlier than many people do." A third: "Living alone teaches you things no classroom ever can." What struck people most was the honesty—not the highlight reel, but the actual texture of the experience. One comment captured it precisely: "People only see the foreign country part, not the struggle behind it."
What Kanav articulates without quite naming it is the particular silence of living far from home. You leave behind the noise—family conversations, the sound of meals being prepared, the ambient presence of people who've known you your whole life. Suddenly it's quiet. Sometimes that's freedom. Sometimes it's crushing. Psychologists understand this: loneliness isn't simply the state of being alone. It's the gap between the connections you have and the connections you need. For international students, that gap opens up without warning, in ordinary moments, and it takes real strength to sit with it and keep moving forward. Kanav's video works because it names that gap, and in naming it, he gives thousands of other students permission to stop pretending it doesn't exist.
Notable Quotes
Living alone isn't as glamorous as it looks. No one really tells you about these parts.— Kanav, in his viral video
Moments like these, they build you. They make you mentally stronger. They teach you how to stand on your own.— Kanav, reflecting on the growth that comes from hardship abroad
The Hearth Conversation Another angle on the story
Why do you think this video hit so hard with people? There are thousands of students abroad—why did his particular words matter?
Because he didn't perform. He didn't say "it's hard but worth it" in a way that lets you off the hook. He said it's hard, and then he said it builds you, and he let both things be true at the same time. Most people online are either showing you the dream or complaining about it. He just showed you the actual texture.
The festival part seems to be what people latched onto most. Why is that harder than, say, missing your birthday or a regular weekend?
Festivals aren't just about you. They're about your whole family being together in a specific way, doing specific things. When you're home, you're part of that. When you're abroad watching it on a video call, you're not part of it—you're watching it happen without you. That's a different kind of loneliness.
He mentions that this makes you stronger. Do you think that's true, or is that something people tell themselves to make the pain bearable?
It's probably both. The pain is real. But the strength is also real. You do learn things about yourself when you're forced to manage everything alone. Whether that's worth the cost—that's something each person has to answer for themselves.
What surprised you most about how people responded?
That so many people were relieved to hear someone say it out loud. Like they'd been carrying this guilt for feeling lonely while also being grateful for the opportunity. His video gave them permission to hold both feelings at once.
Do you think this changes anything? Or is it just catharsis?
It's catharsis for now. But maybe it also shifts the conversation a little. Maybe the next student who comes here sees this and doesn't feel like they're failing because they miss home. That's not nothing.