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  • Lighting Up The West

    Diwali, the Indian festival of lights, celebrated on an Amavasya, or new moon night, is around the corner, and around the world, the celebrations have begun. Diwali holds a special significance for those who have moved away from home. This is a time for people who have moved away from home — to introspect but also to celebrate, and to forge deeper connections with friends and family. For some, Diwali is a reminder of the people, food and atmosphere of India.

    The festival borrows from the great Indian epic, Ramayana. It marks the much-awaited return of its protagonist, Lord Rama, to his home, Ayodhya. This happens after he has spent fourteen years in exile and defeated the evil king, Ravana, who had abducted his wife, Sita. In South India, the festival celebrates Lord Krishna’s feat of defeating a monster. Diwali is also celebrated in the Caribbean and Sri Lanka, and in Nepal, it is celebrated as ‘Tihar’. The common thread that remains is the celebration of good over evil, and of course — illumination and colors!

     

    “
    The renowned filmmaker Mira Nair co-hosted another soiree at an Indian restaurant named Passerine in Gramercy Park — as she steps into a new role this year: being the mother of New York City's mayor, Zohran Mamdani. Earlier, at a much smaller scale, she co-hosted a small dinner party with Salman Rushdie and Radhika Jones.
    ”

     

    And it is this spirit of a shared festival that finds expression in countless ways among Indians living overseas.

    Madhurima Chakraborty, who is also a resident of New Jersey, looks back at her experiences of celebrating the festival. Working at an Indian bank, her colleagues are of Indian origin, and hence Diwali celebrations are taken very seriously at work. “They include everyone in the Puja, arrange for food — clients distribute boxes of sweets. We dress up wearing ethnic clothes and take pictures.” With her friends, she has now started a tradition of driving to Edison to buy sweets, and playing the card game, Teen Patti.

    For those who have spent years away from India, recreating the atmosphere of Diwali back home is often an important part of the celebrations. Preeti Pooja, an entrepreneur and social media strategist based in London, believes that keeping cultural traditions alive is what makes a foreign country feel like home.

    “Moving abroad meant leaving home, but keeping my culture and traditions alive is what makes me feel at home. Diwali comes just once a year, and it’s when I get to be fully myself and connected to my roots.”

    What she misses most about Diwali in India is the people — family and friends, and the ease of visiting one another during the festive season. She also misses the noise, the busy streets, the sparkling lights and the smell of local food shops.

    Now a mother, she puts in considerable effort to create a festive environment so that her son can learn about his roots and feel proud of where he comes from. For her, it is a reminder that home is where the heart is, and that culture and traditions can be kept alive if one makes the effort.

    Madhurima’s experience is echoed by Malika Kamboj, a marketing specialist based in New Jersey, who also misses the effortless festivity of celebrating Diwali in India. “What I miss most about Diwali in India is how you don’t have to make an effort to feel festive. The lights, the mithai, the family gatherings, the chaos of getting the house ready, it’s all around you. In New York, life goes on like any other day, and you have to create that festive feeling yourself.”

    Over the years, however, she has started bringing little pieces of India to New York. Last Diwali, her entire menu was inspired by the street food and chaat of her hometown, Varanasi.

     

     

    Malika Kamboj and her family readying to celebrate Diwali. Photo Courtesy: Malika Kamboj.

     

    A similar sentiment resonates with Sayali Dongre, living in London, for whom this will be her third Diwali away from home. “When I think about Diwali, I don’t immediately think of the grand celebrations. I think of those mornings when the entire house would be awake before I was, the smell of faral coming from the kitchen, everyone getting ready, and someone reminding us that we were already running late. I think of sitting outside making rangoli, spending hours with my cousins building our little Diwali killa, bursting crackers, visiting relatives, and making plans with friends that would somehow change every other hour,” she says, “And it wasn’t just home. It was the entire city. The colourful akash kandils hanging outside houses, the streets glowing with lights, the crowded markets, the sound of crackers in the distance. Even stepping outside for something as small as buying groceries felt festive.”

    This year, she is organizing her first Diwali Pahat celebration in London, extending the same spirit of togetherness to a larger community. She hopes that those celebrating their first Diwali away from home, particularly students and recent arrivals, will find familiar music, faral, new friendships and a sense of belonging. “I started doing all of this because I missed home. I never imagined that, in trying to find a little piece of it for myself, I’d get the chance to create that feeling for so many others,” she reflects.

     

    “
    A large section of these is made up of students also seeking a piece of their home. Juggling deftly between academic pressure and assignments, they find a way to throw a dinner party at home — often older students making space for the younger ones.
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    Sarmistha Ghosh Moulik, who has spent 15 years away from home, talks about feeling confused about the dates on which Kali Puja and Diwali would fall, and marking the festival by lighting diyas and burning a few sparklers. At present, however, her teenage daughter is more keen on observing Halloween. “Diwali is now mostly dressing up and going to a friend’s party, while our firecrackers lie tucked away in the basement, thanks to suburban firecracker laws. And slowly the glimmer of Diwali has been reduced to that one lone diya on my doorstep,” says Ghosh Moulik.

    For some, the passage of time has also brought a change in the way the festival is celebrated. Chef Nupur Arora, who arrived in New York almost thirty years ago as a new bride, remembers the early years of celebrating Diwali in a joint family.

    The family clung to Sindhi rituals and YouTube aartis but “while we bahus dutifully served the Sindhi dish satt bhajiyoon (7 vegetable mélange) and prayed for prosperity, I secretly spent every Diwali night daydreaming of the classic Punjabi Sookhay Aloo, Poori and  Chholay from my Bengali mom’s kitchen! This was the only menu  I had associated with Diwali from the day I was born and no vegetable mélange could erase that memory!” says Arora. 

    This year, however, Arora is hosting a ‘Lunch and Paint’ Diwali at her restaurant, Mughlai Indian Cuisine — no bridal make-up, no heavy lehengas, just a cosy oasis of diyas, urlis, fresh flowers and samosa chaat. It is a ‘Ghar Wali Diwali’, designed for friends who have lost both parents and feel orphaned, college students who are miles away from home, and empty nesters like her who spent their youth making everyone else’s Diwali perfect but forgot all about themselves in the process.

     

    Professor Bhramar Mukherjee’s students at Yale participating in Diwali festivities at her house. Photo Courtesy: Professor Bhramar Mukherjee / Cover Photo Courtesy: Madhurima Chakraborty

     

    A large section of these is made up of students also seeking a piece of their home. Juggling deftly between academic pressure and assignments, they find a way to throw a dinner party at home — often older students making space for the younger ones.

    A Virginia Tech PhD student, Madhuri Deb, who completed her postgraduation at Rutgers last year, says that “last year, during my time at Rutgers, I made some wonderful friends — a husband and wife. The latter was pursuing her Master’s in Computer Science. They kindly invited me and a few friends to their Diwali party. I took some homemade vegetable pakoras along with kaju barfi and besan laddu for the couple. We spent the evening talking, playing ‘Never Have I Ever’, and enjoying the incredible spread of food the other guests had brought. Rutgers also had so many vibrant student organisations — from the Hindu Yuva and Hindu Student Council to the Jain, Malayali, Bengali, Tamil, Marathi, etc. Student Associations. They represented nearly every state in India. It is New Jersey, after all, the heartland for desis!”

    Bhramar Mukherjee, Anna M.R. Lauder Professor of Biostatistics at Yale University, reflects upon this time of the year. A few days before Diwali, she invites her colleagues and students to celebrate Lakshmi Puja at her home, and encourages them to dress up in Indian clothing. The food for the occasion comes from a restaurant in Jamaica, New York City, while she gets her home in Branford, Connecticut, ready. She feels that one’s personal religious identities do not get in the way of these gatherings, and neither does one’s race and nationality.

     

    Professor Bhramar Mukherjee’s students celebrating Diwali at Yale University. Photo Courtesy: Professor Bhramar Mukherjee

     

    The fact that New York’s public schools have been observing holidays for the last three years also speaks to the political and cultural clout the community wields in the US. The states of Pennsylvania, Connecticut and California also commemorate Diwali as a public holiday after members from the Hindu community rallied behind the cause. Even the US Postal Service recently issued a stamp to celebrate Diwali.

    Since 2023, Walt Disney World in Florida has been observing a new tradition — the Diwali Dance Fest. In 2026, nearly 500 people participated in the dance performance, donning elegant purple lehengas and cholis as the Disney castle structure stood tall in the background.

    In a more formal capacity, federal engagement around this festival began in 2003, when the George W. Bush administration hosted the first official White House Diwali celebration in the Indian Treaty Room. Barack Obama lit a diya in 2009 within the premises, and under the Biden-Harris administration, Diwali celebrations were observed with a grand reception. In Canada, former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was known for partaking in Diwali rituals and engaging with the Indo-Canadian community during the festivities.

    The renowned filmmaker Mira Nair co-hosted another soiree at an Indian restaurant named Passerine in Gramercy Park — as she steps into a new role this year: being the mother of New York City’s mayor, Zohran Mamdani. Earlier, at a much smaller scale, she co-hosted a small dinner party with Salman Rushdie and Radhika Jones (ex-editor of Vanity Fair) for her friends and associates, held to support the Asian American Writers’ Workshop. At previous functions, guests lit candles and made rangolis at her home in the Upper West Side.

    After all, home isn’t just a place on a map; it is a living, breathing feeling that we carry with us. As Kamboj says, “I think that’s the beautiful thing about living away from home, you don’t leave your culture behind; you find new ways to keep it alive.”

  • Global Luxury Is Embracing Diwali

    What happens when one of the world’s biggest luxury stores meets one of the world’s biggest festivals? The answer, for most of us, came via Instagram, when Harrod’s of London lit up its entire facade to celebrate Diwali. Within those multi-coloured walls, the store offered exclusive Indian couture designed by Gaurav Gupta, and a multitude of Diwali-focused food and beauty experiences.

    When one of the world’s most recognisable luxury department stores dedicates an expansive program to Diwali, the significance extends well beyond festive merchandising. Harrods’ growing engagement with the festival reflects how dramatically the cultural and commercial landscape of global luxury is changing, and how India is increasingly becoming central to that conversation. It’s no wonder that Harrod’s is choosing to woo the South Asian consumer. This report says that the retailer saw a 50% swell in footfall by Indian consumers this festive season alone.

    The fact that Harrods has increased its investment in Indian labels including Verandah, 100Hands and Kartik Research across menswear and womenswear, is also an indicator that Harrod’s attention to the community is not trend-led; it is in fact, a wider shift accommodating brands of Indian origin that sit cheek by jowl with other Western labels.

     

     

    “
    Luxury retail is increasingly about cultural relevance and emotional connection, not simply access to expensive products. For a department store such as Harrods, recognising the importance of Diwali is a way of recognising the communities and cultural influences shaping the future of its customer base.
    ”

     

    Harrods is just one of many though. Across the luxury sector, international brands are developing increasingly elaborate India-focused initiatives. News just dropped about Anita Dongre creating an exquisite carrom board, a cultural artefact of sorts, for Gold House, marking their ‘Gold Diwali’ celebration. Ferragamo and Burberry have both introduced dedicated Diwali collections, while Jimmy Choo has marked the festival through multiple seasonal initiatives. Bvlgari has taken the engagement further with its first global Diwali campaign, Passing the Light, a collaboration with Indian artist Doyel Joshi on an installation featuring 4,500 handcrafted terracotta elements inspired by the traditional diya. From Christian Louboutin designing exclusive designs for India inspired by Navratna gemstones last year, to Franck Muller’s limited edition watch that pays tribute to Lord Ram, onwards to Jo Malone’s London potli designed in partnership with Arpita Mehta, international luxury brands are looking beyond conventional festive campaigns to engage with India’s cultural identity. And this is just a small smattering of examples.

    India’s economic growth has served its elite very well, making them amongst the most sought-after consumer audience for international luxury businesses. Businesses know that Diwali is not the time for a tight fist. Diwali is a time for spending, and has long been one of the country’s biggest occasions for luxury spending, especially in jewellery and fashion, and the numbers underline this. Industry figures cited for the September-to-early-November festive period put Indian consumer expenditure at $27 billion, representing a 25 per cent increase year on year.

    There is certainly a pragmatic reason for this: as mainland China’s personal luxury market shrank by 3% to 5% in 2025, the next obvious market was India. But the significance of this market cannot be measured by spending alone. Indian consumers are not simply a customer segment to be activated during a festival. They are part of a wider shift in luxury consumption, in which cultural identity, craftsmanship, provenance and exclusivity increasingly influence purchasing decisions.

    For Harrods, Diwali offers an opportunity to connect with several audiences simultaneously: Britain’s established South Asian communities, affluent Indian visitors to London, customers from across South Asia and the Gulf, and international shoppers interested in discovering new designers and cultural experiences.

     

    Photo Courtesy: Pexels

     

    Perhaps the more interesting development is the way Indian design is being positioned. For years. Indian designers have been buttonholed into designing traditional Indian clothes usually associated with weddings and festive apparel. European heritage, craftsmanship and cultural codes shaped the aspirations of Indian luxury buyers. Today, those same global brands are looking towards Indian heritage to create products that resonate with local consumers while drawing on the richness of the country’s cultural identity.

    The decision to turn the store’s façade into a public Festival of Lights display is therefore significant. It takes Diwali beyond the transaction and into the public cultural life of London. The conversation is no longer pigeonholed into global luxury brands making themselves relevant to India. It is about Indian culture becoming a source of relevance, aspiration and desirability on the global luxury stage.

    There is also a longer-term ambition at work. Harrods has said that the Diwali Gift Box performed beyond expectations last year, prompting increased volumes this year.

    Yet luxury retail is increasingly about cultural relevance and emotional connection, not simply access to expensive products. For a department store such as Harrods, recognising the importance of Diwali is a way of recognising the communities and cultural influences shaping the future of its customer base.

  • A City Of Her Own

  • A Note From Our Founder

  • From The Prophecies To The Pictures (Of Darpan Ray)

  • Ode To A Corner Shop

    Whether it’s picking up ramen after a long day at work, shopping for last-minute toiletries before your flight, browsing drinks for a night out, or grabbing ibuprofen and electrolytes for the morning after, the corner shop is an integral cog in the British economic machine. Identifiable by its trademark layout and trusty essentials, the corner shop is arguably one of the only places that will see you in every state of being, apart from perhaps your bedroom. If you’ve ever lived in the UK, chances are, there’s a corner shop right down the lane that you swear by. But it’s not just the products that make such a store; it is the people. 

    In the Victorian era, their function was to provide provisions and daily necessities for the people residing in slowly expanding industrial settlements in and around the UK. Long working hours in factories and mines exposed a necessity for quick, cheap, and easily sourced food. The shops sold dry goods, such as flour, pulses, tea, salt, sugar, bread, and bacon, and were essential for feeding a growing middle class in small homes with no space for pantry staples. Transactions were noted in ledgers and settled between owner and customer on pay day. The corner shop kept adapting to the changing times — functioning as a newsagent between the First and Second World Wars, a hub for confections and toffees after the war. In this way, the corner shop became both a neighborhood staple and marvel. 

    The 1950s and 1960s saw an influx of South Asian immigrants settling in the UK. They entered a market with labor shortages and limited opportunity without capital, and so retail became one of the few industries that appreciated the family-run setup, one that allowed the shops to stay open for longer hours than other establishments. Dr Kiran Sahota is the founder of Believe In Me, an organization aimed at educating youngsters about South Asian history. He says: “These shop owners were used to long hours, but more importantly, [opening a shop] allowed freedom and job security. They took pride in owning a shop because it gave them social status in the community. And it created a mini community point for other newly arrived immigrants.”

    Soon, the British corner shop became synonymous with South Asia, and it continues to be so, providing shelter and occupation to refugees from Sri Lanka and Afghanistan. These stores are defined by the Bossmen (and women) who run them. A term of endearment for immigrant corner shop owners, Bossmen are gaining popularity on social media, especially amongst younger generations of consumers. As one TikTok caption says: “While Starbucks is closing at 8pm, bossman’s still there giving you a Lucozade and vibes. These corner shop legends keep the community running – no reservations, no £7 coffees, just pure hustle.”

    India’s pop culture introduction to the corner shop may have been from the 1995 film Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, where actor Amrish Puri played the character of Chaudhry Baldev Singh, a surly owner of a corner shop in London. However, India has a very similar retail experience: the kirana store. A shop often smaller than the size of a typical room, a kirana store is a neighborhood shopping staple, hosting a variety of goods from pantry goods to the latest edition of your favorite comic book. The kirana store dominates grocery retail in India, with close to 12 million documented stores as of 2020. 

    Kirana stores thrive because of the demographic they serve. Often selling at subsidized prices compared to supermarkets, these stores are lifelines for low-income families. Operating on low costs and stocking up stores within a 24-hour rotation, these businesses funnel goods from local farmers and warehouses. Both the corner shop and the kirana store hold similar footholds in their respective societies; from business to community building, they’ve got it all. 

     

    Image Courtesy: Pexels / Deepak Bhandari

     

    Shopkeepers have long met their challenges with determination, and many still do today. In the UK, these stores stand as a symbol of resilience and community spirit, especially through times of political turmoil. In 2012, roughly 50% of corner shop owners were Asian or Asian British. By 2025, that share had fallen to 33%, a decline driven partly by growing economic opportunities for immigrants, and partly by the discrimination they continue to face. Babita Sharma, BBC presenter and daughter of corner shop owners, speaks about her experiences in her book, The Corner Shop: Shopkeepers, the Sharmas and the Making of Modern Britain. “The riots that engulfed the early 1980s would provide ample opportunity to play Speaker of the House…Our family observed the mantra of “keep your door open, your mouth shut and smile sweetly at any passing trade”. It saved us any aggro in the longer term,” she says. 

    But shops have a way of pulling through. Their ability to respond quickly to the changing needs of the community enables their perseverance through tough times. Londis N16, situated in East London, is one such corner shop. Karsan and Mahalaxmi Patel opened the store in 1979, after immigrating to the UK from Zambia. Now, the next two generations are running the store. Priyesh Patel, their grandson, says: “They passed on to us that we should be accessible and provide something for everyone in the community. We can evolve with the community, because the community is always changing as different people move in.” 

     

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    Kirana stores are run on trust and goodwill; a quick phone call to the local dukaandaar (shopkeeper) would have a dozen eggs and a kilo of sugar at your doorstep, perhaps even faster than an app could.
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    Another sign of a changing community comes with the rise of apps like Blinkit, Swiggy Instamart, and Zepto in India and Deliveroo and Uber Eats in the UK, which deliver a level of convenience the neighborhood shop can’t match. Questions of the shop’s ability to persist against this wave of superstore conglomerates and quick commerce are aplenty. A report by Grant Thornton Bharat describes a reduction in reliance on kirana stores by 51%; but not to worry. As the report notes, “This does not indicate a loss of relevance; it reflects a redistribution. Consumers still visit kiranas, but for different kinds of shopping: planned purchases, routine top-ups, and trust-driven transactions.” 

    Kirana stores are run on trust and goodwill; a quick phone call to the local shopkeeper would have a dozen eggs and a kilo of sugar at your doorstep, perhaps even faster than an app could. The personalized service pays — these stores are expected to retain an 86% share of the Indian grocery market split, above supermarkets and quick commerce. With rising charges and hidden fees, it’s becoming cheaper to pop over to the nearest corner shop for a carton of milk. According to a report by The Observer, Gen-Z spends on average nearly £1,000 a year in corner shops. 

    Despite tough times, Sharma describes her parents’ love for their store: “They don’t miss the early morning wake-up calls or long hours. What they miss most is you, their customer. Whether the corner shop can survive long term depends on the unwritten pact between shopkeeper and customer. If obeyed, it shall continue to serve a nation.” Thus, our neighborhood powerhouses continue to thrive, as does our love for them. 

  • The Mandava Effect

    Bhavitha Mandava has just become one of the 25 winners of the 2026 Instagram Rings Award, an award that celebrates creators who aren’t afraid to take creative chances, establish cultural shifts and spark positive conversation and change in their fields. This comes on the heels of her breakout year in the world of fashion, all of which started when she was scouted at the Atlantic Avenue subway station in Brooklyn, New York, while heading out for a bite of biryani. Since then, she has captured international attention, especially for her role as the opener for Chanel’s Métiers d’Art 2026 New York show. However, beyond her many achievements, one of the most compelling aspects of Mandava’s journey is her Indian heritage. 

    Indian representation on the global modeling stage is still rather nascent, which is why there is something particularly significant about the conversation surrounding Mandava. Undoubtedly, part of this stems from her being the first Indian model to open a fashion show for Chanel. With being the first comes the opportunity to pave the way for others, and the hope that such milestones will become increasingly commonplace. But what might this mean for the next generation? Mandava herself offers a thoughtful perspective: “Young girls might look at my story as an example and think their dreams will come true in the US. In reality it’s really, really difficult. The Cinderella story sells, but that’s not the reality.”

     

    “
    “Indian” and “plus-sized” are not categories that can fully capture a person's identity or potential. There are individuals, talents and stories beyond these labels, and recognizing them is how the fashion industry can continue to move forward.
    ”

     

    Mandava’s journey invites us to think about the perception of beauty across cultures. India’s beauty industry has its own complex history, which includes a colonial-era penchant for lighter skin. At the same time, Mandava’s international fame highlights the importance of upending conventional ideas of beauty. Her journey also raises an important question: how can the industry ensure that recognition translates into lasting opportunities for more Indian talent?

    This is not to diminish the pride that Mandava’s success rightly deserves. Fashion houses like Chanel have historically been associated with Eurocentric ideals of beauty, making these milestones particularly meaningful. One of the most notable cases in the industry is the 2007 L’Oreal “BBR” controversy. A fax from the company became public, describing the kind of women that the company executives wanted to recruit – between the ages of 18-22, size 38-42, and “BBR”, shorthand used to refer to white French people. 

    Even so, the tides seem to be turning. In 2021, L’Oréal Paris appointed Nidhi Sunil as its first Indian model brand ambassador, and model, artist, and activist Amrit became the first Indian talent to front a global fragrance campaign for Chloé’s Eau de Parfum Intense. Mandava herself has gone on to become a Chanel House Ambassador, a groundbreaking achievement in itself.  

    Recent conversations around Calvin Klein’s “Feel The Fit” campaign, for instance, have highlighted how much public expectations around representation have changed. The campaign’s casting of conventionally attractive actress Sadie Sink prompted comparisons with the brand’s 2019 #MyCalvins campaign featuring Black plus-size rapper Chika Oranika. Such discussions, alongside wider conversations about representation in campaigns by Gucci, American Eagle and Swatch, demonstrate the importance of continuing to question the industry’s jaded ideas of beauty.

    This brings us to an important question: can Mandava’s success be replicated? The answer lies in the opportunities the industry creates beyond individual success stories. There are more Indian faces on the global stage today than ever before, from models like Dhyani Kandagama and Bhoomi Yadav to actresses like Simone Ashley and Maitreyi Ramakrishnan. And regardless of the Ozempic epidemic, body positivity is here to stay. Yet, how do we ensure that these developments translate into sustained change, creating space for another Mandava, and another, and another?

    Perhaps the most important step is to move beyond celebrating Mandava solely for her Indian identity and recognize her talent, individuality and achievements as a model. Representation matters, but it should also open the door to a world where identity is not the defining feature of someone’s success. “Indian” and “plus-sized” are not categories that can fully capture a person’s identity or potential. There are individuals, talents and stories beyond these labels, and recognizing them is how the fashion industry can continue to move forward.

  • The Desi Litfest Takes Over America

    Come August, and the South Asian writers’ diary begins to fill up with desi-inspired literary festivals in the USA. At last count, there were at least ten, not counting smaller, more focused functions such as the Lahore Literary Festival in NYC.

    And no wonder.

    The global South Asian diaspora is amongst the biggest in the world, more populous than entire countries. It is a community that wields gigantic political influence in the US, unleashed in part by what they see as a rapidly globalizing India. And it is a community that holds immense cultural clout. Recently, even Robert Downey Jr. and Chris Evans shared a Diwali video message to announce their latest Marvel Avengers film. North American influencers have besieged Instagram with glowing reviews of the movie adaptation of the Hindu epic Ramayana. Netflix’s whip-sharp Best of the Best received plenty of international acclaim. And in its wake, there has been tremendous buzz around the Netflix adaptation of Jhumpa Lahiri’s Unaccustomed Earth, starring Freida Pinto, amongst others.

    Lahiri is one of multiple writers who have consistently captured the eye of the global literati, and is a beloved author both in India and abroad. In 2022, Sri Lankan writer Shehan Karunatilaka’s The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida took home the Booker Prize, with Indian writer Geetanjali Shree and her translator Daisy Rockwell simultaneously winning the International Booker Prize for Tomb of Sand. In 2025, Banu Mushtaq and her translator Deepa Bhasthi won the International Booker Prize for her collection of short stories, Heart Lamp. It is no surprise to anyone that South Asian writing is now a prominent part of the literary pantheon. There are even bookstores now that cater to South Asian and AAPI writing, across the USA.

     

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    A particularly poignant time to host one, it was a gentle act of defiance, perhaps, in the face of the rising hate that Indian immigrants are suddenly confronting in the USA.
    ”

     

    This goes some way to explain the profusion of literature fests. The 2026 calendar alone includes several editions of the Jaipur Literature Festival. Alongside sit the South Asian Literature and Art Festival (SALA) in the Bay Area, the inaugural South Asian American Literary Festival (SAALF) in Chicago, the Indo-American Arts Council Literary Festival in New York and the Chicago Indian Literature Festival, and the tally reaches at least ten.

    It is a geographical spread that would have been difficult to imagine even a decade ago, with the festivals ranging from established, multi-city international events to smaller, community-led gatherings.

    But who exactly is filling up the seats at these festivals?

    In an interview in September 2026, Kiran Malhotra, one of the founders of SALA, explains that their “speakers and participants are a mix of the older generation and millennials. Some are born here in the US while others came as immigrants many years back.” Malhotra puts its daily average footfall at between 1,000 and 1,200 people.

    The Indo-American Arts Council’s 2026 Literary Festival in New York, for instance, welcomes submissions from Indian and diaspora authors, as well as writers of all backgrounds whose work draws inspiration from or is rooted in India’s cultural heritage. This gestures at attempts to create a wider audience for South Asian literature, rather than narrowing it simply to people of South Asian origin.

    Some festivals were being held for the first time. The inaugural South Asian American Literary Festival (SAALF) took place on August 22, 2026, at the South Asia Institute in Chicago. A particularly poignant time to start a festival, it was a gentle act of defiance, perhaps, in the face of the rising hate that Indian immigrants are suddenly confronting in the USA. The South Asian Literature and Art Festival (SALA) 2026, held in the Bay Area, implicitly acknowledged this in its publicity literature, stating that at a time when headlines condense people to statistics, borders and conflicts, it wished to move past such flattening. In many ways, a literature festival is the perfect venue to grapple with serious matters, many of which may have direct bearings to the diaspora itself.

    But notwithstanding the heft of the discussions, many festivals have the feel of a party, with music, food trucks, even fashion perhaps. For many people, the big daddy of them all is the Jaipur Literature Festival (JLF). In India, of course, the JLF, as it is colloquially called, is an exhilarating experience for anyone remotely interested in books, and offers the rare chance of bumping into luminaries such as Kajol and Olga Tokarczuk, who might not otherwise hobnob with Indian readers at all. With music and dance performances, multiple food and drink stalls, and a cavalcade of Bollywood film actors, JLF has been described as a behemoth of a mela, a funfair, which it certainly is. And Indians love a mela, after all.

    “I think the credit for South Asian festivals in the US (and other parts of the world) goes in large part to the Jaipur Literary Festival,” says the author Manil Suri. “The original festival in Jaipur became so successful that it just could not be contained — it followed in the path of millions of Indian emigrants and began taking root in the larger metropolitan areas where they had relocated.” There is now a JLF in North Carolina, a JLF in Los Angeles, and others in Seattle, Colorado, New York and Houston.

    “I think it is a simply amazing way not only for South Asian literature to spread, but also for cross-pollination between different cultures to take place. There are so few US newspapers that carry book reviews any more that these festivals offer a vital means to bring readers and desi writers together.”

    Perhaps that is ultimately what these festivals are about: not just celebrating a literature and a culture that have travelled across oceans, but creating spaces where they can meet, mingle and be taken seriously — without necessarily having to take themselves too seriously.

  • The Peasant Diaries

    Where would the modern world be without the peasant? That’s the premise of Maryam Aslany’s latest book, Peasants: Makers of the Modern World. Peasants are at the heart of our societies, and the book delves into their histories — from India’s sugarcane fields to the rice plains of Cambodia, Peru’s cocaine valleys and Ghana’s cocoa belt.

    In the chapter ‘Sugarcane: Rebels From The Field’, the Maharashtrian peasant takes center stage. Toiling in the dense thickets of the sugarcane fields, the peasant farmer is part of an industry that has helped define the modern age; we would be nowhere without sugar.

    In India, the history of the industry harks back to 1000 BCE, and sugar would grow into the ideal luxury trading commodity for the Chinese, the Persians and the Egyptians. The Sanskrit words sakkara and khanda are still used 2,500 years later; shakkar, of course, being the Hindi word for sugar, and khanda transforming into ‘candy’.

    But this romanticized history says little about the farmer’s position today. In the present day, Maharashtra’s sugar economy connects cultivators to mills, labor contractors, markets and consumers. But sugarcane is a thirsty crop, and one that requires processing almost immediately after harvest. These are factors that leave the peasant farmer vulnerable to sugar mills and processors. The hardships congeal further for those from indigenous and oppressed castes, many of whom do not even have an acre of land to call their own. They function essentially as bonded laborers, living in perennial fear of missing a workday.

    The consequences are particularly serious for women agriculturists. Multiple women — as many as one in five, according to the figures cited — undergo hysterectomies in their twenties and thirties to avoid period-related inconveniences and illnesses that might lead them to miss work. Those, therefore, most essential to the production of sugar shoulder the heaviest burdens.

    These are not peripheral problems belonging to an old-fashioned rural world. They are part of the machinery of modernity itself.

     

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    This is what makes the book’s movement between Maharashtra, Cambodia, Peru and Ghana so significant. Sugarcane, rice, coca and cocoa belong to different histories and economies, but their growers share a position at the beginning of supply chains whose benefits and risks are unevenly distributed.
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    Two tropes dominate most writing about the countryside: either the rural life is tinged with roseate hues, painted as some sort of bucolic paradise away from the clanguor of the city, or it is seen as some sort of regressive state of being that should have been relegated to the pages of history. The word ‘peasant’ itself feels medieval in some way, a leftover from some distant agrarian past.

    The world’s lens focuses continually on urban narratives. But by knuckling rural narratives to the margins, we’re eviscerating a crucial part of our civilization. This is what makes the book’s global foci  – Maharashtra, Cambodia, Peru and Ghana – so significant. Sugarcane, rice, cocaine and cocoa belong to wildly different geographies and histories, but their growers all share one thing i.e. a position at the beginning of supply chains whose benefits and risks are unevenly distributed. The comparison makes the rural crisis legible as a global problem rather than an isolated failure of Indian agriculture.

    The book’s larger historical argument is equally important. Peasants did not merely survive the making of the modern world; agricultural labor helped make states, cities and industrial economies possible. Capitalism itself would collapse without the underpinning of peasantry.  The countryside was never outside history. It helped finance and feed the transformations that later appeared to render it obsolete.

    Today, during the era of the climate crisis, peasants are also the most dependable custodians of the land, forming a crucial buffer against ecological calamities. Sustainability, explains Aslany, is not “just a nice concept…it is the principle without which peasant life breaks down.”

    Peasants doesn’t have simplistic solutions for resolving the contradictions of small-scale agriculture. Its contribution is to change the perspective from which those contradictions are understood. The farmer is not a fragile beneficiary of state development, nor a primitive figure from the past. The farmer is already part of the modern world, sustaining it even when its institutions fail to sustain the farmer.

    In Maharashtra’s sugarcane fields, that paradox is especially stark. The crop travels outward, entering factories, markets and everyday consumption. The uncertainties of cultivation remain behind. Aslany’s book asks readers to follow the commodity back to its source — and to recognize that the story of economic progress cannot be complete while the people who make it possible remain unseen.

  • Lights, Camera, Algorithm: How AI Is Rewriting Bollywood

    There’s much to feel queasy about when it comes to the use of AI in the arts. Bollywood too, has seen a flurry of complaints, although the criticism has felt somewhat muted.

    Anil Kapoor, the Bollywood star, recently went to court to protect his likeness from AI-powered deep fakes. A 2013 romantic tragedy Raanjhanaa, was re-released in 2025 with the tragic ending re-engineered into a happy one, through the use of AI; it faced a volley of criticism from viewers who felt the soul of the film had been sliced away by the remake. India’s Screenwriters Association are upset about copyrighted work being used for training AI without the whisper of consent or compensation. And voice actors are sounding alarm bells about their possible (imminent) replacement by a software.

    In fact, they aren’t the only ones with precariously-positioned jobs. Special effects experts could slowly get muscled out of the industry. Extras, already shouldering the burden of being nameless crowd fillers, are equally at risk. Walk on roles, of the kind that actor Nawazuddin Siddiqui took on as a junior artiste before being catapulted to fame, might vanish entirely. And a sea of behind the scenes experts, from make-up artists to backup singers to art directors might be rendered useless. In fact, why would you even need an actor anymore if you could build an entire movie using just his or her likeness?

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    One major concern is the impact on employment. Editors, visual-effects artists, dubbing professionals, designers and other creative workers may find that some traditional tasks become automated.
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    Notwithstanding  this sea of worries, Bollywood has apparently taken AI to heart. The Tamil film Weapon, starring an older actor Sathyaraj, is slated to have a two and a half minute sequence of purely AI – generated action, in which the star has been digitally de-aged. Border 2 has used the technology to amplify crowd scenes that would have otherwise required a sea of people. Similar suspicions have dogged that behemoth of an epic film, Ramayana, in a scene in which Ravan is seen addressing a crowd of what seems like millions. Using AI to dub lines in different languages is catching on too. And Reuters reports that plans are afoot to generate eight mythological films using generative AI.

    The scale and speed of adoption has been staggering. Unencumbered by strong workers’ unions unlike in the West, and unhindered by a legal system that is still struggling to keep pace with this technology, film studios are merrily embracing it. Their top two reasons are obvious; a far speedier result, coupled with gutter-low costs are naturally attractive propositions for producers and studios unwilling to dip into deep pockets. But there are less obvious advantages too – a stunt that might otherwise have endangered lives can now be digitally created (bringing down insurance costs in the process).

     

     

    There is little doubt that if we disregard environmental, privacy, consent and compensatory concerns, AI offers much to titillate the imagination. Its infinite possibilities could eclipse anything a human might be able to achieve.

    What then, happens to an entire industry built on the backs of tremendous manpower? What of jobs? And what of that dying artefact of human emotion – creativity? The thought alone is enough to curdle it.

    And there is an even bigger question to ponder. For even a tiny taste of Bollywood, thousands slog through years of auditions and trials. Part of the glitz and glamor of Mumbai draws from its film industry, magnetizing millions to come to the city from the most far-flung corners of the country. Every day, dozens of fans hang about outside Shah Rukh Khan or Salman Khan’s house hoping for a wee glimpse of the stars. But soon enough, AI could render them obsolete. After all, Hollywood has already worked on an AI-generated actor, Tilly Norwood. Where would Mumbai and its stars be then?