Some books arrive like an invitation you didn’t know you were waiting for. You open the first page expecting light chatter, a pleasant distraction, maybe a few smiles between sips of coffee—and then, somewhere between one chapter and the next, you realise you’ve been quietly pulled into a room full of lives that feel oddly familiar. The Secrets of Floor Five did that to me. It didn’t knock. It simply slid into the seat across from me and began talking, softly, honestly, until

I launched my first book at 44 My daughter launched hers at 11 — published by Pais Friends Library, Dombivli. And somewhere between those two milestones, I discovered that sometimes children don’t just follow our footsteps… they show us new paths.   That revelation came to me through The Day I Stopped Watching Reels, the debut story by my daughter, Vira Gudhate. When she handed me the manuscript, I expected innocence. But what I found inside those pages was something far more