The Word

The word travelled further than the object.

Ainak in Hindi. Aenak in Punjabi. عینک in Farsi and Urdu and Dari.

From Isfahan to Lahore to Rotterdam — the word has always known how to cross borders. It moved along trade routes, through empires, across scripts. Devanagari. Gurmukhi. Arabic. Latin. The same root, the same meaning, carried by different hands in different centuries.

We named our house after it. Not as a marketing device, but because it was already ours. Three founders — Afghan, Indian, Sikh — and a word we all grew up hearing. Aenak. Glasses. The thing you reach for every morning without thinking about where the word came from.

We thought about where it came from. And we built something to carry it forward.

Aenoq, Rotterdam.