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EPISODE 5 — “FRIDAY” NAINA Day seven. Friday. The word has been sitting in my chest since Wednesday like something I swallowed wrong. I’ve been at Ghar since 4 AM. Not because there was work to do at 4 AM. Because lying in bed thinking about whether forty-seven thousand followers would translate into actual human beings walking through an actual door felt worse than being here doing…

Last week I found myself thinking about something. The stories that stay with me the longest are almost never the ones with the biggest twists. They’re the ones with women I can’t stop thinking about. The ones who make terrible decisions. Brilliant decisions. Questionable decisions. The ones who refuse to become background characters in their own lives. Which is probably why this week’s…

Some characters don’t ask for permission before they become your favourite. They simply walk onto the page… Say exactly what they’re thinking. Ignore everyone else’s expectations. And quietly take over the entire story. I love female protagonists like that. Not because they’re perfect. They’re usually gloriously imperfect. They make questionable decisions. They overthink. They…

There are two kinds of people at game night. The ones who proudly announce, “I’m terrible with words.” And then somehow win anyway. And the ones who insist they have an incredible vocabulary… Only to completely forget the word banana the second someone starts a timer. Word games have a funny way of doing that. They make your brain work overtime. They make you question words you’ve been…

EPISODE 4 — “APERITIVO” NAINA Day 5. Milan. That is the only thing going around in my head. I feel like I have been here long enough to get into the rhythm of the restaurant but at the same time I feel it’s not enough. I arrive by 5. Leave by 11. Eating and standing at the pass because honestly sitting down feels like slowing down. I am trying my best to not think about the situation much and…

“THE MENU.” NAINA It’s morning day 2 in Milan. I couldn’t sleep well knowing that I had work to do. It reminded me of my old days when I was in London doing relentless work without a day off. I guess I don’t like unfinished business which would explain why I have been up since 5?  I sat down at table 4 with my laptop. Ghar accounts opened. Checked out what has been going on for the last few…

Every Friday I tell myself the same thing. “This weekend I’ll finally catch up on everything on my watchlist.” And every Sunday night I’m somehow left with… …an even longer watchlist. New releases arrive faster than I can keep up. Some are genuinely brilliant. Some are… let’s just say they looked better in the trailer. So instead of making you scroll endlessly through every streaming…

Six Books by Indian Authors That Deserve a Spot on Your Shelf There is something Indian authors do with romance that I haven’t quite found anywhere else. It’s never just about two people falling in love. It’s about an aunt who has opinions before she’s even met them. The cousin who accidentally leaks family gossip. The wedding that somehow becomes a full-scale political event. The mother…

There comes a point in every board game lover’s life when you realise… You’re no longer buying games because they’re cheap. You’re buying them because you’re already planning who you’re going to play them with. That’s usually how you know you’ve crossed over. The good news? It’s a very fun place to be. Premium card games aren’t expensive because they come in bigger boxes. They’re expensive…

EPISODE 2 — “TABLE SEVEN” NAINA Malpensa on a Thursday afternoon looks almost beautiful. I had forgotten about that. The light comes through the arrival doors in that specific October gold that makes everything look deliberate — like Milan arranged it knowing I was coming and wanted to make a point. I walk through arrivals with two suitcases, one technically overweight carry-on and the…

EPISODE 1 — “COME WHEN YOU CAN” NAINA Being a chef has always been a dream for me. Recognising flavours. Understanding spices. Knowing exactly what could turn a plate of food into something that felt like a hug in a bowl. Food had always made sense to me because it was layered. It could be simple. Elegant. Complicated. Spicy. Bland. Sometimes the taste mattered. Sometimes the memory…

Choosing what to watch shouldn’t feel like a full-time job. And yet somehow… You spend twenty minutes scrolling. Watch three trailers. Reject everything. Then end up rewatching the same comfort movie you’ve already seen fourteen times. We’ve all been there. So instead of giving you one genre, I thought I’d give you one recommendation for every mood. Feeling like laughing? There’s…

I’ve said this before, and I’ll happily say it again. The book usually wins. Not because the adaptation is always bad. Sometimes it’s brilliant. Sometimes it introduces thousands of new people to a story that deserves every bit of the attention. But… There is something magical about meeting the characters on the page first. Imagining the world your own way. Falling in love with the…

Buying someone a board game is surprisingly risky. Not because games are bad gifts. Because the wrong game becomes… furniture. It sits on a shelf. Gets admired exactly once. And quietly gathers dust while everyone goes back to playing UNO for the seventeenth time. The right board game, though? That’s the one people bring up months later. “Should we play that game again?” “Wait, where’s…

ACCIDENTALLY REAL VEER It has been three days since Anaya asked me to think not just about the deal but everything else.  It looked like I had been breaking my own rules a lot now. I started thinking about decisions before my morning coffee which was cold and untouched. I don’t know what was about to happen, I checked my phone and there were no texts from Anaya. I was controlled but I wasn’t…

Nobody has ever watched just one episode of a K-drama. Nobody. You start because someone says: “Just give it one episode.” Seems reasonable. Then suddenly you’re twelve episodes in, emotionally attached to people living thousands of kilometres away, Googling whether the actors are dating in real life and wondering why every other show suddenly feels emotionally unavailable. It’s a slippery…

THE FOURTH MEETING VEER I have a rule about mornings. No calls before eight. No meetings before nine. No decisions made before the first coffee has finished doing whatever coffee is supposed to do to a person who hasn’t slept properly in four days. I broke all three rules before 7 AM. The deal terms were sitting in my sent folder — clean, fair, the kind of document I usually felt nothing…