1. Her memory was wiped by aliens. “I grew up between Bombay, Chennai and Muscat, but have absolutely no recollection of any of it.”
2. She worked for madmen. “I was allowed to write and report for a newspaper in Chennai at 14. In hindsight, they were both generous and insane.”
3. She nearly killed her folks. “I moved to New York to study writing at Columbia University. And my parents had a four-year-long heart attack caused by their daughter’s inevitable unemployability.”
4. She’s analog inside. “I developed an obsession with the print industry and worked for anyone who would have me. This included some cool places like Rolling Stone and The New Yorker.”
5. But you won’t believe what she gave it all up for. “My first day at BuzzFeed was like stepping into a Twitter timeline – the walls were covered with LOLs and OMGs. Plus Kanye West, Madonna and Grumpy Cat often visited.”
6. What happened next changed 13 million lives. “My post, ‘27 Shocking And Unexpected Facts You Learn In Your Twenties’, got 13 million views. Clearly nothing is more viral than post-teen angst.”
7. She won’t say no. “There’s no such thing as a bad pitch. If a writer cares about something, chances are thousands of others will too.”
8. She’s crushing on her colleague. “Everyone should follow @MattBellassai. His tweets make me laugh more than all of Twitter combined.”
9. She has just one kinda weird ambition. “If the best sentence I ever write is comparable, in skill and precision, to the worst sentence Joan Didion ever wrote, I will die happy.”
10. She makes ICQ references that are a dead giveaway. “My age? Let’s just say I stopped responding to A/S/L requests years ago.”
Jersey t-shirt, stylist’s own. Satin skirt, The Source. Studded leather platforms, Salvatore Ferragamo. Enamelled metal necklace, Manish Arora for Amrapali
Photograph: Arjun Mark; Styling: Nidhi Jacob; Make-up and hair: Claire Schultz/Inega Model Management; Assisted by: Neha Salvi
