I'd be a self-obsessed delusional prick if I said I foresaw any of this. So let me make it absolutely clear - I foresaw none of this. Nothing. Nada. Zilch.
You see, I had no plans, no strategy, no cues. Quite honestly, the pod was a figment of my sickly fever dream from the hot Easter Day weekend of April '22. I was on a two-week 'COVID Quarantine Leave', locked up in my tiny one-bedroom apartment in Delhi NCR.
It was solitary confinement without the crime, but with awful COVID sprinkles thrown in. It was here, lying limp on a rented sweat-soaked bed, shivering in the sweltering Delhi summer heat that I had the idea for a pod. Dramatic.