Restrung is Gupta’s unflinching memoir of breaking apart and remaking a self. It begins with a boy raised between the strict devotion of Bengali immigrant parents and the ruthless demands of the conservatory. It follows him through the shimmering world of elite orchestras, into the depths of burnout, and ultimately toward an unexpected reawakening, where he discovered that the music he’d spent his life studying was seen not as a curio of high culture or mere entertainment, but a lifeline of connection, most vividly in Skid Row, where people living through addiction, homelessness, and incarceration heard it as survival itself.