With two sisters and no brothers, my FOMO would peak annually during Raksha Bandhan season. Older and wiser, I don’t believe the rakhi is exclusively meant only for male siblings and cousins, but every one who protects us, showers us with love and wisdom, and makes life a little more playful and colourful.

"Paani chala jayega toh tissue se dhona padega?" It might well be a reality in the age of a severe water crisis. In A Parallel Universe reimagines this: It's 2030 and all the water has vanished off the face of the earth. How would Indians react to it?

Eid is great from a purely gluttonous point of view, but the day after Eid is the real deal. Baasi Eid is what food dreams are made of. It’s an afterparty for two – me and my hungry soul, where I gorge on the leftovers. The dress code is a pair of comfy pyjamas and the preferred and only music is the slurping of my fingers.

Malgudi Days introduced my family, which until then had only read some of Girish Karnad’s works, to his charm and subtle elegance. His WT Srinivasan represented an entire generation of Indians who had been exposed to English education and civility but stuck to their roots when it mattered the most.

The virtuous austerity of Malayali men is the formal middle style – conceited neither in flamboyance nor in simplicity; serious but not boorish; casual but not loose. The middle style is a time-honoured Malayali respectability, alas one waning under a global monoculture.