I want to tell you about today.
Not yesterday. Not the hard years. Not the losses or the betrayals or the nights I wasn't sure I would make it through. Those things happened. They are part of me. But today — today is what I want to talk about. Because today is not a recovery. It is not a return. It is not the end of a difficult chapter.
Today is a beginning.
And I say that carefully. I say that with intention. Because I am afraid — genuinely, consciously afraid — of calling what I have been through merely a phase. A phase implies it is behind me, contained, filed away. What I want — what I am choosing, deliberately and out loud — is for this moment to be a foundation. A starting point. The first day of something I am building with every part of who I am.
So let me tell you who I am. And then let me tell you what today means.
Where it began
My father, a self-made entrepreneur in the lead and steel industry, had nineteen dogs when I was growing up. He never spoke about love as a grand thing. He just showed up for them, every day, without making a performance of it. That is where I first understood that love is not something you feel and set down when life gets complicated. Love is something you do. Especially when it is hard.
Who I am
I have an MBA and a filmmaking background. I am a classical dancer. I am a teen beauty pageant winner. I am an author — my book, Living Legends: Learning Lessons, carries the stories of people who built something real and left something lasting.
I am deeply blessed that when I launched my work, Ratan Tata, N R Narayana Murthy and Dr. Philip Kotler came and endorsed me. People who have shaped industries, changed thinking, moved the needle on what is possible — they chose to show up for me. I do not take that lightly. I never will.
I spent years in media. Building. Creating. Telling stories that mattered.
And then I did something that felt, to many people around me, like a pivot — but felt to me like coming home. I built a world around dogs. A petting zoo. A dog café. A dog swimming pool. Dog food manufacturing. Dog clothing. An entire ecosystem, built from scratch, rooted in the love my father first showed me in a home of nineteen dogs.
I called it 19 DOGS. Because nineteen was his number. And whatever number is mine — it carries his forward.
This is who I am. Not one thing. Not one industry. Not one chapter. All of it, together, at once — a woman who has always built, always believed, always loved at full volume.
What happened
I will not linger here. Not because it doesn't matter — it does — but because it is not the point of today.
In what felt like almost the same year, I lost my grandparents, my mentor, my cousin, my younger brother, and even my mother. I was betrayed — brutally, completely — by people I had loved and trusted with everything I had. And I was financially at zero. Actually less than zero. Everything I had built, everything I had believed in, everything I had given my energy to — all of it shook at once.
I kept going. Not gracefully. Not with any kind of composure that would make a good story. I kept going because nine lives were waiting for me. Because a space with my name on it was sitting locked, lights off, holding three of my family inside it. Because my father had shown me, in a home of nineteen dogs, that love is not something you feel and then set down when it gets heavy. Love is something you carry. Love is something you show up for. Love is something you do, every day, regardless of what is happening around you.
I ran faster. I moved faster. I sorted things one at a time — because all at once was what had broken me, and I was smart enough to know it. And slowly, painstakingly, piece by piece, I built my way back.
My nine
Zarah came first. My first golden retriever. My first puppy as a grown-up — which is its own particular and profound kind of love. When you choose your first dog as an adult, entirely of your own volition, with no one else's hand in it, the bond is something different. Something chosen, completely and consciously. Zarah was that choice. She has been with me through everything. She is home.
Then came Simba. My brother. The one whose eyes I saw on the worst nights, the one whose face pulled me forward when I had no other direction. Simba came right after Zarah — into the life I was building, into the love I was learning to scale.
And then — because love, when it is real, multiplies — came their children. Veera and Shiva are with me today. Alia , Milo , Rambo and Rocky — I loved them completely and found them beautiful homes. Not because they were less. But because love sometimes means being generous enough to let go. I carry every one of their names. I always will.
My three Shih Tzus I named The Great Gatsby, Love and Happiness. In my home, The Great Gatsby found Love and Happiness right beside him. A better ending than Fitzgerald gave him.
Today my family is nine. Nine dogs, nine lives, nine different souls who have taught me more about presence, patience and unconditional trust than any classroom, any stage, any boardroom ever has.
What I am building now
Today I reopened the space.
And I want to be clear about what that means. It is not just a business reopening. It is not a professional milestone. It is the moment my whole family is home. It is the moment the lights come back on in a place that has been waiting, patiently and faithfully, for me to return.
My team is here. These beautiful, talented, committed people who have gathered around what I am building — they are here. And Simba is here. Tail moving. Eyes bright. Completely, wholeheartedly present in the way that only dogs know how to be — as though he never once doubted this moment was coming.
I hugged him today. And for the first time in a very long time, I felt it. That thing I had almost forgotten. That quiet, complete, unperformable feeling of being genuinely, deeply happy.
I am meeting beautiful people again. I am building again — with strong conviction, with clear purpose, with the kind of energy that comes not from desperation but from direction. I am back in rooms with people who inspire me. I am back in conversations that light something up.
And I am afraid — I say this honestly — to call this a phase. I refuse to call it a phase. Because I am not recovering. I am beginning. There is a difference that matters enormously to me. A recovery looks backward. A beginning looks forward. And I am looking forward. Fully, firmly, with everything I have.
Love as purpose
Here is what I know now, in a way I did not know before — or perhaps always knew but could not yet say with this kind of clarity.
Love is my purpose.
Not as a soft thing. Not as a feeling I fall into and out of. As a purpose. As the foundation on which I am building everything that comes next — the businesses, the community, the brand, the work, all of it.
Love is a responsibility. It is the thing that makes you scale up. It is the thing that makes you run faster, work harder, hold more carefully to what matters. It is not the reward at the end of the effort. It is the reason for the effort in the first place.
And the love I feel for my nine — for Zarah, for Simba, for Veera, Shiva, and every one of them — that love is my purpose today. It is the first purpose I name, and I name it proudly. Everything I am building with 19 DOGS, everything I am rebuilding in myself, everything I am stepping toward with this reopened space and this returning energy — it starts here. It starts with them. It starts with love as responsibility, love as action, love as the most powerful force I know.
What I want to say — to you
I do not know where you are in your story right now. I do not know if you are at the beginning, the middle, or somewhere in the dark stretch where you cannot yet see the shape of what comes next.
But I want to say this to you, from someone who has stood in that dark stretch and found a way through it.
Do not call it a phase. Do not let the hard years be merely something you survived. Let them be the thing that clarified you. Let them show you — as they showed me — what you are actually made of, what you actually love, what you are actually here to build.
Find your purpose. Name it. Say it out loud, with pride, without apology.
Mine is love. Mine is nineteen dogs and then nine dogs and then everything that grows from that root. Mine is a brand called 19 DOGS that carries my father forward and my family with me and my conviction that love — when it is lived as responsibility — will always, always make you win.
Today is where it begins. Not where it ends. Not where it lands. Where it begins.
And I have never been more ready.
