The first etiquette lesson I ever learnt had nothing to do with a fork. It wasn’t about which side the bread plate belonged on, how to fold a napkin or where the dessert spoon rested. It was about looking another human being in the eye and making them feel acknowledged.I learnt that as a schoolboy at Modern School, Vasant Vihar, where I became the first—and, until I graduated, the only—boy to enrol in meal planning. Surrounded by remarkable women teachers, I discovered that meal planning was never merely about recipes or table settings. It was about hospitality. It was about making another person feel seen, heard and welcomed.Years later, after moving to New York, I fell in love with a man whose bedside reading included Emily Post’s Etiquette. Together we discovered that etiquette was really another language for gratitude: handwritten thank-you notes after dinners, thoughtful correspondence, and the quiet understanding that consideration is remembered long after the menu is forgotten.My education continued through hospitality, luxury retail and, unexpectedly, on our farm in upstate New York. Living among hundreds of birds and animals taught me that even nature has rhythms of coexistence. Every creature understands boundaries, respect and shared space. Civilization, I realised, begins wherever living beings learn to live alongside one another with grace.Perhaps that is why Manik Kaur’s Everyday Etiquette: The Art of Mindful Living resonated with me so deeply. She is not writing another manual on social polish. She is attempting something far more ambitious. She asks us to reconsider etiquette not as inherited protocol but as mindful citizenship. Her premise is elegantly simple: etiquette is awareness made visible.Her beloved Badimama becomes both teacher and metaphor, reminding us that refinement begins long before guests arrive. It is how we greet domestic staff, answer messages, listen without interruption, leave a room and carry ourselves when nobody is watching. Throughout the book runs one beautiful conviction—that grace is a daily discipline rather than an occasional performance.What impressed me most was her understanding that the digital age has not eliminated etiquette; it has made it even more necessary. WhatsApp groups, social media, email, video meetings and endless notifications have not replaced human relationships. They have merely changed their geography. Courtesy still matters. Perhaps today it matters even more because screens make it dangerously easy to forget that every message reaches a living heart.Story continues below this adKaur also performs a quiet act of social correction. Etiquette books have traditionally been marketed almost exclusively towards women, as though civility were somehow their responsibility alone. This book refuses that outdated assumption. Fathers, sons, executives, students, entrepreneurs and leaders all inhabit these pages. That is precisely why I hope men read it.We live in an era where identities are evolving, conversations are increasingly performative and certainty is mistaken for strength. Yet genuine confidence has never been loud. It listens. It apologises. It acknowledges. It makes room for others. Kaur reminds us that refinement is neither masculine nor feminine. It is profoundly human.If I have one reservation, it is a gentle one. Occasionally the book becomes slightly too eager to teach. Checklists, summaries and repeated exercises interrupt the warmth of Kaur’s storytelling. I found myself wishing she trusted her anecdotes a little more. They already carry the wisdom. Ironically, the book could have benefited from practising one of its own principles: restraint.That, however, is a very small criticism within an otherwise thoughtful work.It is perhaps no surprise that Everyday Etiquette is already finding an enthusiastic readership. Booksellers are reporting strong demand, suggesting that Kaur has tapped into something many had assumed was fading: India’s enduring appetite for civility, gentleness and thoughtful conduct. Beneath the speed of modern life remains a culture that still values grace, and Kaur has found an authentic language for speaking to it without ever sounding nostalgic.Ultimately, this is not really a book about etiquette.Story continues below this adIt is a book about belonging. It reminds us that we never inhabit the world alone. We share it—with family, strangers, colleagues, neighbours, technology, memory and history itself. Every encounter leaves a trace.The greatest compliment anyone has ever paid me after a meal was never, “The food was extraordinary.” It was, “You made us feel at home.”That, I suspect, is also the finest compliment one can pay Manik Kaur.She has written a book that reminds us how to make the world feel a little more like home.