A Brief Pause

Hail!¹

Life is a whirlwind lately as I send this letter to you sitting in my teenage bedroom in Mumbai under my parent’s roof. I haven’t been kicked out of my life in London, don’t worry, but I have to be in Mumbai to help the family. I wasn’t expecting or planning it but life had other plans.

But this change in city, in locales, in continents has been quite drastic and it’s left me a little turned around. Not in a bad way but in an unexpected way. I’ve also suddenly found a little nugget of time and space for myself to really pause — who knew Mumbai of all places will help me pause?

So I’m going to lean into it. As the year nears its close, I’m pausing my newsletter. Basically, what this means is that I won’t send one out in December, collect all my juices from brain wrangling I’ll end up doing in this paused period and return with a lot more fun and energy in 2026.

That’s the plan anyway.

Until then,

Clean those nibs,

Akshay

PS: Oh, and as a quick cheeky update: one of my live stories is up on the Spark True Stories Live Podcast. You should check it out, it’s a fun one!

1. I’m currently reading the book The Strength of the Few by James Islington. It’s Book 2 in Hierarchy series. In it, the characters all greet each other with “Hail”, which the Merriam Webster’s dictionary’s Instagram page has informed me is the root word for hello, and “hail” was used to indicate greeting and derived from the word hale which meant good health.