I was sitting there listening to Frank trying to pin a date on my life, like he is putting a small flag on a map. “Monday the 16th of February,” he said, and then he said something that made me laugh inside, because it was so Frank—half teasing, half serious: “A year ago you didn’t…
There are two things that can instantly make adults philosophical: power outages and politics. This week’s Lunch began not with lofty reflections, but with electricity—or rather, the absence of it. Fruitloop casually mentioned that she might not have power for the afternoon. Which, in South Africa, is not drama. It’s a normal Thursday. Frank’s brain…
The Mayor opened the call in his usual way: a little practical scene-setting, a little weather, and then straight into the uneasy heart of the theme. Ritesh was still joining from Bengaluru, while Ismar was already present from Campo Grande, where the day had started bright and hot — 27°C at nine in the morning…
By the time the recording light blinked on, confusion was already in the room. Frank was confused. Natalie was half-visible at the far end of her living room in Seoul. Someone had moved a table. Someone had changed a plug. Someone else had disappeared entirely—then reappeared, cheerfully, like a magician who’d forgotten the order of…
It begins, as these things often do, with shoes. Frank, dialling in from France, wants to know how his size 44 translates into continental Europe. Janita—Fruitloop to the group—hazards a guess, immediately doubting herself. Somewhere between the UK size, the European size, and “that other mysterious number inside the shoe,” the conversation warms up. Laughter…
The table is a virtual one, but it feels real enough. France, Brazil, South Korea, London, South Africa—five locations, five time zones, one shared question: where does our attention actually go, and how do we get it back? Janita—known affectionately as Fruitloop, a name that already tells you this won’t be a stiff conversation—opens with…
It began with a small, almost comic detail—Ritesh sitting at home in Bengaluru, headphones on, trying not to overhear a family conversation in the next room. His brother-in-law had just had a baby. The house was alive with chatter, pride, excitement, the warm chaos of family news. And yet Ritesh was here, committed to a…
There is a particular sound a Lunch meeting makes when it really gets going. A mix of greetings in different accents, laughter arriving slightly before the punchline, and the gentle chaos of people remembering—mid-sentence—that they are, in fact, being recorded. This one began like that. Warm. Slightly unruly. Comfortably human. The theme on the table…
It’s early in Brazil. Late evening in Bengaluru. And mid-afternoon in Europe—right in the messy middle of a Monday that’s already too full. That’s the quiet comedy of this conversation: three men, three continents, three different pressures on their calendars, trying to talk about a single idea that sounds simple until you live it—“living in…
The call begins the way many January calls begin: with teasing, a little disbelief, and that ceremonial moment where someone’s age becomes a group event. Ritesh isn’t “twenty-something” anymore. He’s 30 now—officially “mature,” officially “downhill,” officially (according to the folklore) halfway through life. The joke lands, but underneath it you can already feel the real…
