The Nod

Twenty years ago, Sam and Erica Barclay had a plan: graduate college, get married, make a career. The end. The childhood sweethearts, who ‘met’ at the age of five and grew up in the same rural Michigan town, hadn’t bargained on moving to India, much less permanently. “Ours is a story that will either make you go ‘awww’ or roll your eyes—you decide,” Erica had mused when I interviewed the couple several years ago. (For the record, I had awww-ed.) After attending undergraduate school in different...

If Vinu Daniel had had his way, his life would have been very different. For one, the Dubai-raised, India-based architect would be spending his days on a stage, not a site, trilling Carnatic romanzas and still living tax-free somewhere in the Gulf. “I never thought I’d be an architect,” reflects the former aspiring musician and present-day principal of architecture practice Wallmakers. Indeed, had his Malayali parents not played doomsayers and coerced him into picking something more m...