A day later I am still the same — lost in my thoughts of what is lost and what more will be fought. I go about my way, grind coffee reminding me of the Colombian girl and her Bangladeshi boyfriend. Are they still together? Both countries have lost so much, they have found love under the coffee trees flowering. I have been spiraling down; caffeine was not helping. Even the new flavored tonic water that Big Basket delivered was unable to lift my deflated self. We watched ex-M

A personal review of Chiraiya on JioHotstar (2026) I watched Chiraiya on JioHotstar on a Sunday afternoon. My friend Sonali had requested I watch it, and finally, on this particular Sunday, I found some time to let my guards down. Chiraiya — which translates to "Bird" in Hindi — is a six-episode Hindi-language drama web series directed by Shashant Shah and produced by SVF Entertainment. It stars Divya Dutta as Kamlesh — a woman who challenges family traditions and societal no

On music, resistance, and the human refusal to be silenced This morning, during my normal scroll through my Instagram feed, I stopped at an Outlook post featuring Ali Ghamsari , a young Iranian musician playing his instrument at the gates of the Damavand Power Plant — playing on, in the face of Trump's announcement of the annihilation of Persian civilization. The post also featured another musician, Hamidreza Afrideh . His music school had crumbled back to earth. He played s

For the last three years, April has been my favourite month — not for its mangoes or its lazy, stretched-out afternoons, but for the small, delicious ritual it ushered in. The drawing up of reading schedules. The curated list of books. The orders placed online, and then the quiet joy of waiting — watching for the courier, feeling the weight of each parcel, the unhurried pleasure of browsing through new spines and making tidy piles according to the reading schedule. April mean