In Conversation with Bhanu Srivastav : The Alchemist of Words

An intimate dialogue with the bestselling author who transforms pain into purpose

Interview by Alka Pandey

There’s a particular quality to meeting someone whose work has already touched your soul. When I sat down with Bhanu Srivastav, bestselling author of The Alchemy of Supergirl, The Empty Seat, and The Lies We Bond With, I expected literary brilliance. What I didn’t expect was the quiet depth of someone who writes not to be remembered, but to help others remember themselves.

Over the course of our conversation, Bhanu revealed the philosophy behind his transformative work, the personal crucibles that shaped his voice, and why he believes the greatest revolution happens not in streets, but within hearts.

The Making of a Writer: Engineering the Soul

Alka Pandey: Bhanu, you hold a degree in Mechanical Engineering and have built a distinguished career in Banking and Finance, specializing in everything from Cyber Security to Business Process Reengineering. That’s quite a departure from writing books about love, loss, and self-discovery. How did you bridge these seemingly opposite worlds?

Bhanu Srivastav: [He pauses, a gentle smile crossing his face] You know, Alka, I don’t see them as opposite at all. Engineering taught me to understand systems, how things break, how they’re rebuilt, how small adjustments create massive changes. Banking showed me the architecture of human behavior under pressure.

But writing? Writing is where I engineer the soul.

Every system I’ve ever studied operates on principles: inputs, processes, outputs. The human heart is no different. My books are essentially manuals for recalibrating the most complex system we’ll ever encounter, ourselves. The Happiness Switch, for instance, was born from this precise intersection: the neuroscience of emotion meeting the technology of transformation.

AP: You’ve earned over 100 certifications, including CISA from ISACA, ISO/IEC 27001 Lead Auditor from the British Standards Institution, and Certified Ethical Hacker from EC Council. Your research in Artificial Intelligence was published by the University of Munich. That’s an extraordinary commitment to learning while working full-time. What drives that hunger?

BS: Curiosity married to service. I realized early that knowledge isn’t meant to be hoarded, it’s meant to be applied in service of others. Every certification, every course, every late night studying wasn’t about collecting credentials. It was about becoming capable enough to solve real problems for real people.

Whether I’m securing information systems or writing about emotional security, the mission is the same: protect what’s precious. In banking, that’s data and assets. In writing, that’s the human spirit.

The Alchemy of Pain: When Heartbreak Becomes Art

AP: Let’s talk about The Alchemy of Supergirl. This book feels profoundly personal, a meditation on one-sided love, silent devotion, and the transformation that comes from loving someone who never knew the depth of your feelings. How much of Bhanu is in these pages?

BS: [His voice softens, thoughtful] All of me. And none of me.

For years, I whispered her name in prayers every single day. She never knew. When she married another, something inside me didn’t just break, it shattered so completely that I had to rebuild from the foundation.

But here’s what I learned: that breaking wasn’t destruction. It was sacred alchemy. The person I became through loving her in silence, through letting her go, through transforming that pain into purpose, that person could never have existed otherwise.

The Alchemy of Supergirl isn’t just my story. It’s for anyone who’s loved beyond reason and risen, impossibly, from the ashes. It’s for those who typed messages they never sent, who stayed up wondering “what if,” who broke in a language only they understood.

AP: You explore the neuroscience of “almost love” in the book, why connections that never bloom cut the deepest. Can you explain this for our readers?

BS: The brain doesn’t distinguish between almost and always. When we love someone, our neural pathways light up, releasing oxytocin, dopamine, creating patterns of attachment. But when that love goes unspoken, unreturned, we experience what I call “the liminal wound,” suspended between hope and grief, possibility and impossibility.

This creates a unique kind of pain because there’s no closure, no final chapter. The story remains unfinished, playing on loop in our minds. That’s why almost-love haunts us longer than relationships that had their ending.

But, and this is crucial, that same neural plasticity that creates the wound also creates the possibility for profound transformation. The question becomes: will you let this break you, or will you let it remake you?

AP: “The brutal truth: Some people don’t stay to love you, they leave to remake you.” That line from your book has resonated with thousands of readers. Did you always believe this?

BS: [He shakes his head] No. For a long time, I believed she was taken from me as punishment. It took years to understand she wasn’t taken, she was given. Given to show me what love could be, to crack me open, to make me brave enough to feel everything.

She didn’t leave to hurt me. She left because her absence would teach me what her presence never could. That realization didn’t erase the pain, but it transformed its meaning. Suddenly, my greatest loss became my greatest teacher.

The Wrong Seat, The Right Life

AP: The Empty Seat presents such a powerful metaphor, sitting in the wrong seat on a flight, meeting the life you abandoned at 23. You co-wrote this with a chief flight attendant who has spent 20,000 hours at 35,000 feet. What inspired this collaboration?

BS: We both recognized the same pattern from different vantage points. My co-author would watch passengers board, sit in their assigned seats, and spend hours looking uncomfortable, restless, unfulfilled, when sometimes the perfect seat was just rows away.

I did the same thing, except with my life. I sat in Seat 23C, the safe corporate trajectory, the predictable path, while Seat 23F, the life my soul actually wanted, remained empty.

The book asks a question we’re all avoiding: What if you’re living someone else’s assignment? What if the turbulence you feel isn’t external, it’s your soul trying to breathe in a seat that’s suffocating you?

AP: The book is written for people at 23, but it clearly speaks to any age. Why 23?

BS: Twenty-three is when most of us make the defining compromise. Fresh out of college, facing pressure from family, society, ourselves, we choose the “responsible” path over the truthful one. We bury the art, abandon the dream, accept the seat assigned to us.

But here’s what I learned: you can be 23, 43, 63, the moment you realize you’re in the wrong seat, that’s when you’re 23 again. That’s when you can still choose.

The plane is always landing. The question is: will you move before it touches down?

AP: You left the corner office yourself to write, to create, to live what you call “the life your soul demanded.” That must have taken immense courage. How did you know it was the right decision?

BS: [He leans forward] I didn’t. That’s the secret, Alka. Courage isn’t the absence of fear, it’s moving while terrified.

I remember my last day at the bank. I had everything society said I should want: security, status, respect. But I’d also calculated something else, the cost of staying. And that cost was my soul.

So I asked myself: Would I rather risk failure doing what I love, or guarantee success at something that’s killing me slowly?

The answer became my resignation letter.

The Lies That Bind Us

AP: The Lies We Bond With tells the story of Shreya, who made a childhood promise, “If I’m perfect, they will finally love me,” that became the invisible script controlling her adult life. This feels like it goes beyond fiction into something almost therapeutic. What prompted you to write this?

BS: I wrote it because I lived it. Not Shreya’s exact story, but my own version of the same lie.

Most of us bond with lies disguised as love before we’re old enough to recognize them. “Be strong, don’t cry.” “Your worth is your productivity.” “Good children don’t question.” “Success means sacrifice.”

These aren’t just beliefs, they’re bonding agreements we made to survive childhood. The tragedy is we carry them into adulthood, where they no longer serve us. They cage us.

Shreya’s journey mirrors what I hope every reader experiences: the courage to excavate those childhood promises and ask, “Was this ever true? And if it was, is it still true now?”

AP: The lost diary that finds its way back to Shreya, that’s such a powerful device. Have you had a similar moment of confronting your younger self?

BS: [He nods slowly] I found old journals from when I was twelve. Reading them was devastating. That boy had such pure dreams, he wanted to write, to create music, to touch hearts. Somewhere along the way, I convinced him those dreams were impractical.

I betrayed him by becoming practical.

The Lies We Bond With is my letter of apology to that twelve-year-old. And my promise to finally honor what he knew before the world taught him to doubt it.

AP: “She was never broken. She was loyal to lies wrapped in love.” That realization is so profound. How do readers begin to identify their own lies?

BS: Start by noticing your automatic thoughts. When you’re about to do something and hear a voice say, “You can’t,” or “You shouldn’t,” or “Who do you think you are?” That’s not wisdom. That’s a childhood lie still running the show.

Then ask: Whose voice is that, really? Your mother’s? Your father’s? A teacher’s? Once you identify the source, you can finally decide if you still want to believe it.

The lies we bond with aren’t always malicious. Sometimes they come from people who loved us but were themselves imprisoned by lies. Breaking free isn’t betraying them, it’s healing the pattern so you don’t pass it down.

The 60-Second Revolution

AP: The Happiness Switch makes a bold claim: that transformation doesn’t take years, it takes 60 seconds. In an age of quick fixes and shallow solutions, how is your approach different?

BS: Because we’re not offering a fix. We’re offering a protocol.

My co-author and I, a Cognitive Expert and a wounded healer, spent years understanding one thing: the human system operates on frequency. Your thoughts have frequency. Your emotions have frequency. Your entire life is calibrated to the frequency you’re broadcasting.

Most people try to change their lives by changing circumstances, new job, new relationship, new city. But if your internal frequency remains the same, you’ll recreate the same patterns in new settings.

The Happiness Switch teaches you to change the frequency in 60 seconds. Not to erase pain, to reclaim agency over your internal state. It’s the difference between being a thermometer and a thermostat.

AP: Can you walk us through what happens in those 60 seconds?

BS: The protocol has three phases, Interrupt, Install, Integrate.

First, you interrupt the current pattern. Your brain runs on loops; most of your thoughts today are identical to yesterday’s. A 60-second interrupt, through breath, movement, or focused awareness, breaks the loop.

Second, you install a new frequency through what we call “strategic recalibration.” This isn’t positive thinking; it’s choosing which emotional state serves your highest good in this moment.

Third, you integrate by anchoring the new frequency to a physical cue, a touch, a word, a gesture. This creates a neural shortcut. With practice, that cue becomes your switch.

Sixty seconds to interrupt. Sixty seconds to install. Sixty seconds to integrate. Three minutes total to change your trajectory.

AP: Skeptics might say this sounds too simple to be real.

BS: [He smiles] Good. Skepticism means they’re thinking. But I’d ask them this: How complex does transformation need to be to be valid?

We’ve been sold the story that healing is hard, that change takes years, that you need to suffer to evolve. What if that’s just another lie we bonded with?

Complexity sells therapy sessions and self-help courses. Simplicity sets you free.

The protocol works because it’s based on how your nervous system actually operates, not on how we romantically think healing should look.

The Rhythm of Words and Music

AP: You’re also a songwriter. How does music inform your writing, and vice versa?

BS: They’re the same conversation in different languages. Music is emotion without translation, it bypasses the thinking mind and speaks directly to the heart. Writing is emotion with architecture, it gives shape and meaning to what music makes you feel.

When I’m stuck on a chapter, I’ll pick up my guitar. A melody will reveal what my prose couldn’t. When I’m stuck on a song, I’ll write until the lyrics find their rhythm.

Both are about frequency. About vibration. About creating something that resonates with the frequency of truth inside the listener or reader.

AP: Your music carries the same sincerity as your books, lyrics and melodies crafted to comfort, question, and heal. Is there a song you’ve written that particularly reflects your journey?

BS: There’s one I haven’t released yet. It’s called “The Prayer She Never Heard.” It’s about loving someone so deeply that your love becomes a prayer, even when they never hear it.

The bridge goes: “I whispered your name to the morning sky / You married someone else, I learned to fly / Some prayers aren’t answered the way we want / But every whispered word rebuilt my heart.”

That song is The Alchemy of Supergirl in three minutes.

The Philosophy of Presence

AP: People often compare your aura to Keanu Reeves, non-boasting, grounded, filled with humility and kindness. In an industry that often rewards self-promotion, how do you maintain that groundedness?

BS: [He pauses, considering] By remembering what matters.

I don’t write to be famous. I write because someone, somewhere, is whispering a prayer in silence, feeling broken, wondering if they’ll ever heal. If my words reach them in that moment and remind them they’re not alone, that’s everything.

The applause is nice, but it fades. What endures is the message someone sends saying, “Your book saved my life.” That’s not about me, that’s about something moving through me to reach them.

Staying grounded means remembering I’m just the vessel, not the source.

AP: You find joy in simple acts: cooking, storytelling, listening deeply. Tell us about the importance of these everyday practices.

BS: Because greatness lives in everyday grace, not in grand gestures.

Cooking teaches presence, you can’t rush the caramelization of onions. Storytelling teaches structure, how to hold someone’s attention with truth. Listening teaches humility, recognizing that everyone carries wisdom I don’t have.

These aren’t distractions from the work. They are the work. They keep me human. They remind me that before I’m a writer or banker or anything else, I’m a person learning to be here fully.

AP: What does a typical day look like for you?

BS: [He laughs] Less glamorous than people imagine.

I wake early, usually around 5 AM. First hour is for silence, meditation, journaling, letting my mind settle. Then I write. Best work happens before the world wakes up, when the only voice I hear is the one that needs to speak.

By 9 AM, I shift to my banking work, meetings, strategy, solving problems. People assume you have to choose between corporate work and creative work. I don’t see them as separate. Both require problem-solving, both serve others, both demand I show up fully.

Evenings are for music, reading, cooking. Some nights I’m experimenting with a new recipe. Some nights I’m experimenting with a new melody. Either way, I’m creating.

And I try to end each day with gratitude, three things I’m grateful for. Usually, they’re simple: a conversation that moved me, a sentence that finally clicked, a meal shared with people I love.

On Writing, Process, and Truth

AP: You’ve written multiple bestselling books while maintaining a full-time career. What’s your writing process?

BS: I don’t wait for inspiration. Inspiration is a myth sold to keep people waiting.

I treat writing like engineering: show up, assess the problem, build the solution. Some days the words flow. Some days they don’t. But I write either way.

I usually outline extensively, mapping the emotional journey I want the reader to experience. Then I write without editing, letting the first draft be messy. Only in revision do I refine.

But here’s the secret: the best writing happens when I stop trying to be clever and start trying to be true. Readers don’t connect with your vocabulary, they connect with your honesty.

AP: Who are your literary influences?

BS: Paulo Coelho taught me that wisdom can be simple without being simplistic. Khalil Gibran showed me that brevity and depth aren’t mutually exclusive. Rumi proved that ancient truths still breathe in modern hearts.

But honestly? My biggest influence isn’t a writer. It’s every person who’s trusted me with their story, the colleague who confessed their depression, the friend who shared their fear, the reader who emailed at 3 AM saying my book stopped them from giving up.

Those stories shape my writing more than any literary master ever could.

AP: What’s the hardest part of writing?

BS: The gap between the vision in your head and the words on the page.

I’ll have this crystalline understanding of what I want to say, then I’ll write it and realize I’ve captured maybe 60% of the truth. That gap is humbling. It’s also what keeps me coming back, the pursuit of closing that gap, even knowing I never fully will.

The other hard part? Vulnerability. Every book I publish is me standing naked in front of strangers saying, “This is where I broke. This is how I healed. Maybe it helps you too.”

That never gets easier. But it’s necessary.

The Business of Heart

AP: You’ve worked extensively in Business Process Reengineering, Human Resources, and Industrial Relations, always, as you put it, “with a human touch at the center.” How does that inform your view of leadership?

BS: True leadership is stewardship. You’re not managing resources, you’re serving souls who happen to work for you.

In every role I’ve held, I’ve asked: How do we create systems that honor human dignity? How do we engineer processes that enhance rather than diminish people?

Too often, corporations treat humans like variables in an equation. But people aren’t variables, they’re the equation. Get that right, and everything else follows.

AP: You’ve specialized in Cyber Security and Information Technology. Given your focus on emotional security in your books, do you see a parallel?

BS: Absolutely. Both are about protecting what’s precious from threats, external and internal.

In cyber security, we build firewalls, encryption, access controls. But how many people have emotional firewalls? How many protect their inner world from toxic inputs as carefully as we protect data?

We spend billions securing networks but leave our minds completely vulnerable to comparison, criticism, and lies. That’s what The Lies We Bond With addresses, building emotional security protocols.

The principles are the same: identify vulnerabilities, assess threats, implement protection, monitor for breaches, and when breaches happen, because they will, have a recovery plan.

The Future: Books, Dreams, and Beyond

AP: You’ve published several bestselling books. What’s next?

BS: [His eyes light up] I’m working on something different, a book about what I call “intentional becoming.” Most self-help focuses on achieving: get the job, find the relationship, make the money.

But what if the real work isn’t about getting, it’s about becoming? Becoming the person whose life naturally reflects what you value, whose presence creates the change you seek.

It’s less about goal-setting and more about identity-shifting. Less about doing more and more about being different.

AP: Will you ever leave banking to write full-time?

BS: [He smiles thoughtfully] I used to think I had to choose. Now I realize the tension between both worlds keeps me honest.

Banking grounds me in reality, real problems, real stakes, real people depending on solutions. Writing lets me explore meaning, why we do what we do, what we’re searching for beneath the surface.

If I only wrote, I might become too abstract. If I only worked in finance, I might forget why any of it matters.

Maybe the point isn’t choosing. Maybe the point is integration.

AP: What do you hope readers take away from your work?

BS: [He pauses, his voice becoming softer] That they’re not broken. That their pain has purpose. That the thing they think disqualifies them might actually be their greatest gift.

I want them to close my book and feel something shift, not because I gave them answers, but because I gave them permission to ask different questions.

And maybe, hopefully, I want them to whisper their own name in prayer. To honor their own story. To recognize that they, too, are alchemy in progress.

The Rapid-Fire Round

AP: Let’s end with some quick questions. Book you’re currently reading?

BS: The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk. Understanding trauma and healing at the somatic level.

AP: Favorite place to write?

BS: Early morning, in my study with tea going cold beside me because I’ve forgotten to drink it.

AP: If you could have dinner with any three people, living or dead?

BS: Rumi, Carl Jung, and my grandmother. Imagine that conversation about love, shadow, and wisdom.

AP: Best advice you’ve received?

BS: “Do what you love or love what you do. Everything else is suffering.”

AP: What keeps you awake at night?

BS: Two things: unwritten sentences demanding to be born, and the responsibility of knowing my words might shape someone’s life.

AP: One word to describe your mission?

BS: Remembrance. Helping people remember who they were before the world told them who to be.

Final Thoughts

AP: Bhanu, this has been extraordinary. Before we close, what would you say to someone reading this who’s standing at their own crossroads, sitting in the wrong seat, bound by old lies, nursing a silent heartbreak?

BS: [He looks directly at me, and through me, to whoever’s reading]

I’d say: I see you.

I see you typing messages you never send. I see you staying up wondering “what if.” I see you choosing the safe path while your soul screams for something more. I see you trying so hard to be perfect that you’ve forgotten how to be real.

And I want you to know: you’re not broken. You’re not too much or not enough. You’re not behind or failing.

You’re in the sacred pause before transformation.

That discomfort you feel? That’s not weakness, that’s your life trying to reorganize itself around truth instead of lies. That pain? That’s not punishment, that’s the old you dying so the real you can finally breathe.

So here’s what I need you to do: Stop waiting for permission. Stop waiting for certainty. Stop waiting for the “right time” because the plane is landing and the right time is now.

Move to the seat that calls your name. Question the lies you bonded with. Transform your heartbreak into something greater. Flip the switch and reclaim your frequency.

Not someday. Today.

Because the world doesn’t need more people living half-lives in wrong seats. The world needs you, the real you, fully alive, fully awake, fully here.

And if you need a reminder, if you need a map, if you need proof that transformation is possible?

That’s what I wrote these books for.

That’s what I keep writing for.

For you. For us. For everyone still learning that the broken places are where the light gets in.

AP: Thank you, Bhanu. For your words. For your heart. For your courage to transform pain into purpose and loneliness into literature that heals.

BS: [He smiles, that gentle smile that seems to hold both grief and grace] Thank you for asking questions that matter, Alka. And thank you to everyone reading this. Your story isn’t over. In fact, I suspect it’s just beginning.

The plane is landing.

Will you move before it touches down?

Bhanu Srivastav’s books including The Alchemy of Supergirl, The Empty Seat, The Lies We Bond With, and The Happiness Switch are available at major retailers worldwide. To learn more about his work, visit his official website or follow his journey on social media.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity while preserving the authenticity of the conversation.