​I have been writing since early teens. And been in advertising and communications since adulthood. Which means I have spent most of my life either making things up or watching other people make things up. Both are instructive.

 

Ten countries. Four continents. Two languages. One persistent suspicion that the official version of most things is the least interesting version.

 

I grew up in Mumbai with an instinct for language and a deep distrust of received wisdom. Advertising gave that instinct a professional shape and took me from Mumbai to Paris to Amsterdam to Lagos to Dubai, via several “grown-up” and “growing” countries, boardrooms, client briefs, and enough dinner tables in enough cultures to confirm one central theory: people are far more alike than geography suggests. The anxieties travel. The aspirations travel. The performance of confidence in front of a wine list travels everywhere without a visa.

 

After twenty-five years of writing for briefs, I started writing for myself. The pivot turned out to be more interesting than any brief I was ever handed. I pursue two interests which will never go out of fashion - wine and culture (the lived one, not the museum one).

 

That produced a wine blog - The Second Pour - that observes wine arrive in cultures that never grew up with it, and records what happens at the collision. It produced a book of short stories - Stillness In The Air, and its French edition Respire, Résiste, Réinvente - stories about the strange, stubborn resilience of ordinary people when the world goes quiet. And it produced a body of editorial work in English and French, for people who need words that do not sound like they were assembled by a committee.

 

In 2025, my article, “Monsoon Diaries with Riesling” won the Judges’ Choice Award - the top prize - at the JancisRobinson.com Wine Writing Competition. The world’s most authoritative wine writing platform. First Indian, Asian and Dubai-based winner. Both eyebrows went up briefly, then one returned to its default position.

 

I live in Dubai. I write in English and French. I also speak three Indian languages that surface at dinner tables and in moments of genuine surprise.

 

I observe. I raise an eyebrow. I write.

 

This is where all of it lives.