Even if it's misplaced curiosity, I find myself spotting all these interesting juxtapositions here. A blue ladder, a green coat of something on the walls, a block of wood put together as a temporary switchboard, a flash of a rani pink saree, but the golden hour remains my favorite. There is always a mood of bustle and transience, chaos and commotion - but it is all part of the process in creating something permanent and stable for us.

She stood over the stove for hours slowly coaxing the milk to condense into the rich creaminess suffused with a hint of saffron. It tasted so divine that I felt she had poured all her love and warmth into this bowl of Kheer as we celebrated a special moment.

This one plant brought home so much joy, old and new. I couldn’t have enough Mogra in my daily life…It brightens my mornings and calms me in the evenings. A simple thing anyone could try out.

I listened to Anoushka Shankar playing ‘Stolen Moments’ the other day - a nippy evening in Pune, the stage flanked by tall slender trees, with a beautiful full moon peaking through them - and I felt the rich, soulful notes of the sitar taking me away from time itself. Maybe, I thought, a pause is just a moment stolen from our own lives. And what better way to pause than with music, live preferably.

We are emotional beings after all and we do get attached to things, and feel a certain way about everything including the coterie of objects that we assemble around us. Choosing them with thought and care is the only realistic way I can think of to go about it.

“No, we don’t need more sleep. It’s our souls that are tired, not our bodies. We need nature. We need magic. We need adventure. We need freedom. We need truth. We need stillness. We don’t need more sleep, we need to wake up and live.” Brooke Hampton

A pinch of salt artfully flung onto the hot kadai, the blanket folded with that flick of a wrist, a stain removed or a weed plucked off a plant, the day’s newspaper folded with a flourish, and the spectacles folded over and kept aside on the table - it's all done so gracefully and effortlessly.

The candle and tea light holder nestle against a wooden framed mirror that I had picked up years ago in a small antique store in Bangalore that has shut its doors during the pandemic. The tea light holder was a gift from a previous client from Good Earth, a home decor brand that I absolutely love. How such a motley mix came together to create that perfect little moment for me.

Muri by Nilaya is a series of soulful portraits of our intimate spaces, of how we connect with and experience with what we surround ourselves with.

I got this product a few months ago and I can vouch for its functionality and beauty. There is a sense of warmth around this piece. Every time I walk by the stack of fruits, there is an impression of abundance and nourishment, that translates to feeling taken good care of.

Everybody needs a home. Everybody needs to feel like they belong to some place. More so, when they are away from their roots. There is no one right way to go about doing this. We all do it differently and well in our own ways. What is your go to thing to do while setting up a home away from home? What makes you feel like you belong to space that isn’t yours forever?

I wished that the project could have promoted Khadi as the fabric for the flags. Not only would it have been a promotion for a sustainable material, it would have been a simple, yet powerful nod to our beautiful past.

Who was to be blamed, when everyone he held close to his heart disappeared forever? Who could he have turned to for help when life, as he knew it, was gone in the blink of an eye? Such is the paradox of life, they say. Life is never fair, they say. Come to think of it, I can only say how odd is life - I started 2021 reading 'Shuggie Bain' and ended it with 'The Small-town Sea'.

But whenever I came across a beautiful paperweight or a vintage typewriter - things I could totally survive without - my heart would skip a beat and do a little hankering jig. I knew I wanted things. I would always want more. Maybe what I loved to pieces now, might fade away from the spotlight eventually. Maybe it will become all the more dearer.

It is beautiful when a new place can give you such a sense of home. Here are some snippets of a city I love, captured over the years and collated into a day -

Staying true to Malayali simplicity, the decor at Kayal is understated, sustainable and inviting. An old world charm seeps out of the woven cane and wooden furniture, the vintage doors and windows, and these rustic framed mirrors.

Today, we have come to the close of this weird, sad year. Knowing full well that tomorrow isn't going to be all that different. There is just a faint glimmer of hope trickling through all that gloom. Let's just hold on to that and walk on.

As Ingo Maurer, the 'Poet of Light' said, "light is not a thing, but the spirit which catches you inside.” I guess it is this spirit that we need to work with. Lightly. Gently. So that it is just enough. So that there is some magic to how it interacts with the objects around and how we perceive it.

"Japanese paper gives us a certain feeling of warmth, of calm and repose… Western paper turns away the light, while our paper seems to take it in, to envelop it gently, like the soft surface of a first snowfall. It gives off no sound when it is crumpled or folded, it is quiet and pliant to the touch as the leaf of a tree."

To anyone planning to buy a Teak Lab product - here’s urging you to think twice!! From a personal experience, they have been unreliable, unprofessional and their nonchalance and arrogance when it comes to customer service is beyond imagination.