May
here’s to
Golden Hour in the Pink City
Sunset spots, books, and mocktail recipies
let’s start by setting
the playlist right
Books for Finding Your Rhythm
A Suitable Boy
Set in the heat and haze of post-Partition India, it's sprawling, warm, and alive with the texture of an Indian summer. A book you sink into slowly, like the evenings here.
The God of Small Things
Kerala summers, forbidden love, the weight of beauty and loss. Roy writes like golden light — everything is drenched in it. One of the most gorgeous sentences ever put to paper.
Stardust
For when the evening sky makes you feel like magic is real. A fairy tale for adults — about wonder, journeys, and the things we chase across impossible distances.
Films That Move You
recipe to try
Raw Mango Shikanji Mocktail
The taste of a Jaipur summer evening
Ingredients:
1 raw mango (kairi), boiled and pulped
2 tbsp sugar (adjust to taste)
1/2 tsp roasted cumin powder (bhuna jeera)
1/4 tsp black salt (kala namak)
Pinch of regular salt
Handful of fresh mint leaves
Soda water / chilled sparkling water
Ice
Method:
Boil the raw mango until soft, peel and extract the pulp
Blend pulp with sugar, cumin, black salt, and regular salt into a smooth base
In a glass, muddle a few mint leaves lightly
Add ice, 2–3 tbsp of the mango base
Top with chilled soda water and stir gently
Garnish with a mint sprig and a pinch of cumin on top
Best enjoyed:
On a rooftop, just as the sky starts turning. The tartness of the kairi hits different when the evening breeze finally arrives.
rituals and practices
Chase your golden hour. Deliberately.
Pick one evening this month, just one, and make it sacred.
Go to a spot where you can watch the sunset without distractions. No errands after, no plans pulling you away. Bring the mocktail, bring a book, bring a friend or go alone.
Watch the light change. Notice the exact moment the sky tips from blue to gold to pink. Stay until the first stars appear.
We spend so much of summer surviving the heat. This ritual is about choosing, for one evening, to find it beautiful instead.
The golden hour is there every day. We just forget to look.
Poem to carry
In Blackwater Woods
Look, the trees are turning their own bodies into pillars
of light, are giving off the rich fragrance of cinnamon and fulfillment,
the long tapers of cattails are bursting and floating away over the blue shoulders
of the ponds, and every pond, no matter what its name is, is
nameless now. Every year everything I have ever learned
in my lifetime leads back to this: the fires and the black river of loss whose other side
is salvation, whose meaning none of us will ever know. To live in this world
you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it
against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go.
— Mary Oliver
Quote for the month
"There is a sunrise and a sunset every day, and you can choose to be there for it. You can put yourself in the way of beauty."
— Cheryl Strayed
Here's to your sanctuary. Find your golden hour. Let yourself be lit up by it.
See you in June…