Pune is the second city I’ve loved deeply, after Mumbai. I’ve been there countless times—often enough to know the older parts by instinct, to recognise the quiet charm of its lanes, and to slowly understand the language of its newer, faster edges too. If life ever asked me to move away from Mumbai, Pune would be the only city I’d agree to without a long internal argument. It has that rare quality of familiarity without ownership, closeness without pressure. Reading Pune Junct

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