Whatever we do, we hope for happy endings and new beginnings. It was a sentiment my family and I shared when we moved house for the first time in decades, from the suburbs of Mumbai to the city side. The move, late last year, was inevitable but not unanticipated: our apartment block was going to be rebuilt.     We respond to most changes in the course of life with apprehension and excitement in more or less equal measure. Relocating to another home miles away from our comfort zone falls in...

Not everything that happens in a year is breaking news or makes headlines. That doesn’t make these other stories less interesting. They just go unnoticed if we aren’t paying attention.   2025 had plenty of the second kind—nothing newsy or heavy, just moments that didn’t trend for long, but somehow felt good, relevant and insightful. These are some of the uplifting global news stories from 2025 that you may have missed—stories that remind us that good things are still happening, often away...

We live in a time when everyone seems to be rushing past one another, texting on their phones, chasing deadlines and targets or caught up in the rat race with little or no time to spend with family and friends, the company of people—even if they are total strangers—can be a pleasant and unexpected change.   Picture this.   One evening, at a restaurant in Bandra, a group of people from mixed backgrounds and probably little in common arrive one by one and share a table with someone they have...