Your 5pm to 9pm routine after your 9 to 5?

Haha 5 to 9 is my day! That's not the question everyone thinks they're asking. I wake up at 5am. Then I do my meditation, spend time with my daughter, a workout, then work, work, work, then my daughter again, then whatever's left of me by nine. After that, my brain shuts even if my eyes don't. Twenty-year-old Neha slept till 9am and called it recovery. She'd look at 5am Neha and ask, recovering from what, exactly? The thirties teach you to do what you need to do, and somewhere in not negotiating, I ended up with a head start I never asked for.

A book or show you recently read/watched that you would recommend?

I'm reading Butter, and it's not a clean recommendation. Every chapter makes me hungrier, to the point where I resent the book for making food sound better than it'll eventually taste. Someone needs to create a Butter tasting menu, dish by dish, chapter by chapter. Until then, I remain a woman reading about food she cannot eat and will not make.

What wins would you like to celebrate from the last six months, at work or in life?

Right now, mine is that I'm writing this from Goa, third week in, still unable to book my return ticket. Every notification used to feel like an alarm. It hasn't, not once, this whole time. I'm with my almost three-year-old daughter, the kind of quality time that doesn't usually survive a working life. The hours I give to work are somehow better, not less. The team fills every gap I leave behind without being asked twice. So do they need me? But did they ever need to need me?

Which industry leader has impacted you the most?

Piyush Pandey, Prasoon Joshi, Prahlad Kakkar, Josy Paul. They built the industry I grew up wanting to be good enough for. I used to wonder why that era was always the ad men and never the ad women. Now I see Kainaz Karmakar, Lulu Raghavan and many where they come from running creative at the top, and that question isn't a question anymore. It's why I hope no other ad girl has to ask it at all.

The biggest development in the A&M industry this month...

Zepto made INR 1,636 crore in advertising last year, purely from ads sold inside an app built to deliver groceries. That doesn't tell me television or news is dying. It tells me everything has become an advertising platform. Social media did this a decade ago. Now it's quick commerce, and who guessed you'd be advertising against someone's one kilo of onions at midnight? You're still fighting for someone's attention, just in a room nobody thought to call a room until it was full of ads. The real question isn't what quick commerce did. It's what's next.

An ad film from the previous month that caught your attention?

Honestly, nothing this month, and I'd rather say that than reach for an answer that sounds better than it is true. There's pressure to always have a film ready, proof that you're still paying attention. I think this says less about the industry than me. I'm quite exacting about work, mine most of all. Ask me about advertising from the nineties, and I'll happily talk your ear off.

This column was first published in our August issue. Click here to buy a copy!