In our first week at Cambridge, every speaker seemed to preach the same gospel: leave room for serendipity. 

We must admit, we didn’t buy it at first.

Then we met. We fell into conversation and didn’t climb out; within an hour having the disorienting sense of having known each other for years. Long story short, we are now business partners.

The Shalimar Room was Zahra’s dream alone before it became ours together: a members’ club drawn by and from the South Asian diaspora, named for a pre-prohibition Lahore lounge of the 1960s and the Indo-Persian paradise gardens that gave it its name. 

One afternoon we were wandering the Fitzwilliam, drifting from room to room, when we looked at each other and understood the thing at the same moment: why build it apart when we could build it together? So now we are.

Now we understood what the speakers had meant. Serendipity is not luck you wait for. It is in fact what a certain kind of room produces on purpose. Put remarkable people in a well-designed space, and you can manufacture that “luck.” That is the whole thesis of the Shalimar Room, and it is also, we realised, a description of the Cambridge ecosystem.

We are, in a sense, only trying to bottle what happened to us here. Brilliant professors who poked at our thinking until it held its shape. Supportive classmates who hand over their expertise to help us build successfully. An ecosystem that opened its arts and cultural life to two outsiders, and centuries of gathering (colleges, societies, long dinners) constantly reminding you that the best ideas arrive between people rather than within them.

Cambridge has allowed us to meet and make this a reality. We’ve already worked on events together in Paris with Zahra’s nonprofit Brief Shalimar that she started alongside colleagues from her alma mater, the Parsons School of Design and recently, we threw our co-founder “engagement party” here in Cambridge. Under candlelight in St Paul’s Church, guests sipped cocktails while watching Bharat Natyam dance, listening to live piano, and bidding in an art auction. It was a taste of what’s to come, and a vision of Shalimar Room as it will be soon. 

Our good fortune was not an accident; it was infrastructure. We now intend to build it for others.

Stay up to date, learn more, and join us at group.shalimarroom.com and @shalimarroom on Instagram. You can also follow the Paris salon, Brief Shalimar at @briefshalimar.