Welcome Home

For those who love many things- and belong to many places.

Hi, I’m Tanya, and welcome to The Big Smokey Apple. This is a diary of life’s little wonders — of the colours of cities and the sounds of the countryside, of beauty, culture, and the emotional residue of the many things we encounter.

From the energy of New York and the romance of London to the lush tenderness of the Malabar Coast, discover with me the incredible joy of loving many things. This is an archive of a life lived across many places, for people who love many things.

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Life in the Big Smoke

Living in London was a dream come true. In the three years I spent in the Big Smoke, I spent every day falling in love—countless times—with charming alleyways, with old buildings, with the moments before curtain call in old theatres, and with the way the city lights up for Christmas.

Here, I write love-letter reflections of every brilliant thing from the city where I learned to build a life for myself, and by myself.

Life in The Big Apple

Moving through a city I have met many times, but I am still getting to know as the chapter unfolds.

Life on the Malabar Coast

In the morning, we’d be woken up by our parents and, on the occasions I had a lower berth on the train, I’d draw open the curtains. Outside the window was a light, fog- and dew-encrusted morning, with expansive paddy fields lined with coconut trees and clear water snaking its way through it.

In those moments, the earth reclaims me, telling my heart what it already knows—I am home.

Life in the Athenaeum

In 2026, I resolved to return to reading more intentionally. But I also promised myself that I would be more thoughtful about how I consume art – to reflect on how it leaves me, how it meets me, and to savour the taste it leaves in my soul.

Welcome to The Athenaeum. We are all wanderers here – find a book, a canvas, a dance floor, or a couch.

We explore the best parts of who we are here.

Life in Transit

Mamma’s blood coursed with the same electric spirit of discovery that lived in her father. She raised my sister and me to fall in love with movement—to make do, to not just vacation, but to have a hunger to experience and see all that the world, and our country, had to offer.

Oh, the stories we could tell you!

But I cannot help thinking that the best way of knowing God is to love many things.

Vincent Van Gogh

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