It began, as so many things do now, with a screen. A laptop, propped on the duvet, playing Rohena Gera's Sir, a film I’ve watched a handful of times since 2019. It’s a film of tight spaces, of the kind of intimacy born from enforced proximity: the sleek, modern apartment, a gilded cage; the broad, almost sculptural shoulders of Vivek Gomber; the quiet, relentless movement of Tillottama Shome through the kitchen, a space both servant and sanctuary. These elements press together creating a kind of elegant claustrophobia, a breeding ground for a desire that feels almost inevitable, yet still, somehow, illicit.

As Sir played on the laptop screen, burning slowly, flowing like molasses, I stole glances at the grey skies outside. It was drizzling, a kind of greyness taking over in the middle of this mid-March day. After I finished lunch, I looked up Shome’s Instagram and scrolled past her recent posts. To my surprise, they were from my side of the world — she is/was in Berlin, posting like a child full of glee about her sandwiches, and coffee. She had been on walks spotting lichen and snow-laced tree barks in the Grunwald (green forest) that surrounds the German capital.