It's 11 PM in Dubai, or 9 AM in New Jersey, or 7 PM in London. You're on a video call with a property agent in Pune or Hyderabad or Kochi, watching a phone camera sweep across an empty flat, while… Read more

Walk through your home right now and count the mirrors.The dressing mirror in the bedroom. The one on the wardrobe door. The decorative mirror in the living room the interior designer insisted on.… Read more

Every festival on this blog asks a home to be ready for one day, or at most nine nights. Shravan asks something different: for thirty days, an entire home quietly, gently, belongs to Shiva.

A month ago, we wrote about a home that quietly belongs to Shiva for thirty days — every Monday sacred, a small flame kept, a Shivling honored morning after monsoon morning.

"The flat is perfect. Great light, good society, within budget. But... the main door faces South."

Every year, in the weeks before Diwali, something remarkable happens in crores of Indian homes simultaneously.

Nine nights. One flame that must not go out. And a home that, for those nine nights, holds the presence of the Goddess herself.

Somewhere right now, a family is standing in an empty flat with a floor plan in hand, asking the oldest question of Indian home-making: "Which room should go where?"

There is a moment every Ganpati-celebrating family knows by heart.

There's a specific moment that happens in most Indian families.