21st Nov, 2028. And there she was – twenty-eight, planted eleven hundred miles from the “Nobody dares turn off the AC” among scorching heat waves of Delhi that she grew up with, yet somehow right at home, because New York was finally pouring the kind of sideways rain that makes the city smell like damp concrete and electric possibility.

I am standing by the floor-to-ceiling windows on the seventeenth floor, an Earl Grey cooling between my palms, steam fogging the glass just enough to blur the taxi headlights almost twenty stories below. If you listen closely you can hear a Golden Retriever snoring somewhere behind me, paws twitching in a dream marathon, who has no idea that I promised myself a dog the day I’ll be able to afford my New-York-City-Girl-Dream-Life!

Yes, I kept my promise. There is a dog. Technically two – the jury is still out on whether Cane Corsos belong in high-rise apartments, but I am convinced I can mother two dogs with all the love I have in my body, a soft carpet that can withstand the nail-scratching session of fur-babies and of course… OF COURSE, a giant, humongous sofa because while the retriever can call my lap his bed, I am sure the Corso wouldn’t feel the same.

I press my forehead to the window, let the chill bite through the fog of caffeine (that’s just for the purpose of setting the mood, trust me I don’t count Earl grey as caffeine), and whisper a thank-you.

A thank you to God, to the almightly who has blessed me with enough that I can call myself a privileged person. He blessed me with a fully functional body and mind, the ability to see, hear and experience every aspect of the world and understand the difference between the goods and bads of life, I will forever be indebted to him, who never for once had me thinking - “What will I have on table tomorrow”, despite having gone through some of the darkest moments of life.

A thank you to Mom, without whom I wouldn’t be here (literally too haha). I shared with you already my story on WHAT my mom has been through to raise me and my brother, so I won’t go again into that again and have you think “Girl wants sympathy”, NO NO NO! But yeah, Mom >>>. Periodt. That lady fought with her life not just to put us through good education but a lifestyle wayyy above than others around us, just so her kids wouldn’t feel any less compared to their peers??? I mean major mom energy right!!!

A thank you to my partner, who undoubtedly believed in me and honestly has been one of the most supportive humans I have ever had, apart from the times he gets on my nerves but what’s a husband that doesn’t make you want to rip your hair out? A fictional character, exactly! But he balances that out with all the generosity and love + surviving my 2 AM strategy rants and 3 AM cries when life is totally upside down, so its all good.

You might think that is a cliché. Wait until you go through some massive tsunami in your life and see your closest people giving up their comfort and way more than that, to help you succeed and then try standing in a rain-lit skyscraper without your knees wobbling at the memory.

I take a breath, the environment around me smells like bergamot, wet concrete, a faint smell of vanilla (well these days I am into candles). I notice the ridiculous number of plants, an almost-obsession I got from my family, it runs in our genes. When I was in school, my friends used to remember my home as the one that’s got a balcony looking like an evergreen forest.

So,very naturally…there’s a monstera in the corner which should be in a rainforest, not an apartment, yet there it is, leaves flexing like it pays rent. I pat one of those leaves, partly to check if I’m still dreaming. We both stare out the glass together, thinking “How did we end up here?”…”Is this real?”, “What did we do to deserve this apartment’s wabi-sabi-meets-modern-woody-vibes”. But deep inside me (maybe us) I know exactly what blender I put myself into to be here today.

Chaos and peace, that is the headline of this chapter.

Flash back ten hours, I was backstage at Madison Square Garden – yes, the Garden, tell the eight-year-old me clutching a glittery diary – rehearsing a keynote about personal branding. People paid actual money to hear me explain that your content needs a heart, not a hashtag. The house lights dimmed, my name flashed hot white across a screen the size of my childhood bedroom, and I walked onstage in a white pantsuit, the exact dream my 21 year old self had when she first started advocating about Personal branding in the online space.

I told the audience that the courage to fail surpasses the desire to win (a quote born in my mind during an all-steps shower routine), and a thousand strangers applauded like I had handed them a secret map. Ten years ago that scenario lived on my vision board next to a motivational quote and some very questionable interior-design clippings. Now it is a Tuesday. Oh btw, feel free to steal the quote, I owe the universe royalties anyway.

“The courage to fail, surpasses the desire to win.”

If you remember page 108, that was the quits-her-job-with-no-backup-plan era. Twenty-four, living with my mom, and thankfully a Wi-Fi connection. Everyone called it reckless. I called it calculus for the soul: risk now, regret never. Spoiler alert, the math checked out. Apparently, betting on yourself gains compound interest.

I look back at everything, every late night, every sacrifice, every week turned into a weekend and weekend turned into business days, and there’s this sense of pride, you know. But the one with humility. The one tells your ego to shut the damn up because history is proof that the moment ego creeps in, it takes less than two seconds for a king to become the next beggar, and I walk with that on my sleeve.

Behind me, plays the “Song Request” by Lee So Ra and SUGA, gotta set the mood. There’s folders of tomorrow’s campaign assets flickering on a laptop screen, and a to-do list that basically ate another to-do list. On paper, life is chaotic. Inside, it is unexplainably calm, like the moment after you leap but before gravity remembers to pull.

If you’re tracking themes for your book club, highlight this:

The bad experiences teach you how to NAVIGATE through life. The good experiences teach you how to actually LIVE the life. Because life happens not in the big events, but in the small moments. Life happens not in the milestones, but in the microseconds.
Whether it’s a keynote applause or a dog snore, stay awake for the ordinary. That is where the payoff hides.

Rain taps harder, tea goes lukewarm, and the city keeps glowing. I take one more sip, let gratitude settle somewhere between my ribs and whisper, kudos to another amazing year.