A WINTER IN MOSCOW. (December, 2025)

Vaidehi Sharma is twenty-seven when she steps into the Indian Embassy in Moscow which is her first posting in a city she has only seen in pictures. Everything feels colder than she imagined it to be. The snow covers the roads and buildings and the embassy halls feel very quiet and even more grand. Every time she walks through them, she reminds herself to keep her head high and speak carefully.

At the head of it all is Sidharth Shah, India's Ambassador to Russia. He is thirty-seven, calm and serious, with a face that rarely shows what he is thinking. People say he is brilliant and strict, and that he keeps his personal life far away from his work. Everyone calls him Sir. Vaidehi does too.

Her days are filled with writing reports, drafting speeches and attending meetings where she mostly listens and takes notes. Sometimes he looks at her work and makes a small correction, and she says "Yes, Sir".

But outside work, she is quirky and bubbly and the most fun person to be around. She works hard and parties harder once in a while.

He is haunted by a failed marriage and the burden of not being able to see his daughter, Netra as much as he would like to.

She hides her laughter behind formal words and he guards old wounds behind the calm in his eyes and yet, they see each other extremely clearly. They are not opposites but they are not alike either.

She never planned to care for him and he never thought he could feel this way again and neither of them accept that something exists, would they?