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Author: aakriti

  • The Payment Revolution Was Not Televised

    In November 2016, the lines began forming before dawn. Outside banks and ATMs across India, people stood clutching ₹500 and ₹1000 notes, the very lifeblood of the cash economy, suddenly rendered worthless. The Indian government had announced demonetisation overnight, pulling most of the nation’s currency out of circulation in a bold (and widely debated) move against corruption and black money. For millions, it felt like the ground had shifted. What followed was weeks of chaos, and then, a quiet transformation.

     

    In the absence of physical cash, Indians turned to something new, a real-time digital payment system called UPI.

     

    In 2025, India saw 228 billion UPI transactions across the year | Image Credit: Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash

     

    By the end of 2025, that system was processing record volumes. In December alone, UPI logged 21.6 billion transactions, the highest monthly total since its launch. Across the year, it handled roughly 228 billion transactions worth close to ₹300 trillion. While most of the world wasn’t watching, India quietly built one of the largest public digital payment systems anywhere, leapfrogging plastic cards and bypassing private fintech monopolies.

     

    So what exactly is UPI, and why are people from Nigeria to France now paying attention?

     

    What Is UPI?

     

    UPI, or Unified Payments Interface, is a real-time, mobile-first system developed by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), a non-profit entity backed by India’s central bank.

     

    At its simplest, UPI lets anyone send money to anyone instantly, 24/7, and directly from their bank account, using only a phone number or a virtual ID. There’s no need for a credit card, transfers are typically free for everyday use, and there’s no waiting for settlements.

     

    “
    UPI doesn’t resolve the contradictions inherent in digital finance. It simply shows what happens when the infrastructure itself is treated as something everyone is allowed to use.
    ”

     

    What makes UPI unusual is its structure. While it deals with transactions, it is not a financial product. Simply put, it is actually a form of public infrastructure. Like roads or railways, it’s open to all and owned by none. Any bank, app, or fintech can plug into it. There are varieties to choose from, but the rails remain the same.

     

    How Is It Different?

     

    In the US, digital payments often come with a fee and multi-day delays. Venmo, Zelle, PayPal, and Apple Pay are convenient, but fragmented. But, more importantly, they’re all private.

     

    UPI, by contrast, is unified and universal. It works across platforms, banks, and economic classes. You can pay a street vendor with Google Pay, split a bill in a fancy restaurant via PhonePe, or receive a government subsidy, all using the same system.

     

    Perhaps its other most significant and distinct aspect is that it is interoperable. The system doesn’t privilege one brand or bank over another. It was also built with financial inclusion in mind. So, small transactions are typically free, interfaces exist in multiple Indian languages, and users don’t even need a smartphone to be able to use it. UPI can work via basic phones using USSD codes.

     

    In the Indian context, this story is about efficiency.

     

     

    In 2023, the US launched FedNow, its long-awaited instant payment system. It was a significant step, but a limited one. By the time it arrived, Americans were already relying on a patchwork of private platforms that work well enough for most people, even as credit cards continue to dominate retail payments, along with their fees and fraud risks.

     

    Apple Pay has smoothed some of that friction, but only within its own ecosystem.

     

    India took a different route. Instead of building around private platforms, it invested early in shared rails and let banks and apps compete on top of them. That decision came with trade-offs. Privacy concerns haven’t gone away. State involvement in technology still makes many uneasy. There are unresolved questions about fees, governance, and who ultimately bears the cost of keeping the system running.

     

    Other countries have navigated similar tensions in different ways. In Kenya, M-Pesa made mobile money possible without bank accounts. In Brazil, Pix spread quickly as a state-backed alternative to cards. In China, WeChat Pay and Alipay became everyday tools, tightly held by corporate ecosystems.

     

    UPI doesn’t resolve the contradictions inherent in digital finance. It simply shows what happens when the infrastructure itself is treated as something everyone is allowed to use.

     

    So, maybe the payment revolution wasn’t televised. But you know what, it certainly was scanned.

  • Gold Standard: Why India’s Obsession With the Metal Still Glitters

    You’ve probably seen it before, perhaps at a family wedding or on one of those inevitable afternoons spent sifting through your mother’s old sarees. Nestled inside a fading velvet box is a necklace: heavy, intricate, and unmistakably gold. It might have belonged to your grandmother, who wore it on her wedding day before passing it on to your mother, who cherishes it for the memories it holds in addition to its karat value. Because in India, gold has never been just adornment — it’s emotional security shaped into metal.

     

    In a culture where daughters traditionally leave their family home after marriage, jewellery has been one of the few forms of wealth that remains wholly theirs. Gold becomes a safeguard you can wear in joy and sell in crisis, a portable inheritance passed through generations.

     

    That emotional weight has been put to the test in recent years. In 2024, gold prices in India smashed records, crossing ₹1 lakh per 10 grams for the first time — hitting ₹1,01,350 — amid a mix of global uncertainty, inflation, and currency volatility, and they stayed close to that peak into mid-2025. Yet instead of dampening enthusiasm, demand remained unshaken.

     

    A bride’s jewellery is one of the few forms of wealth that remains wholly hers | Image Credit: Freepik

     

    Why Gold Endures

     

    In the West, a diamond might say “forever,” but in India, gold says “for every moment that matters.” It is woven into the rituals that mark life’s milestones: newborns receive tiny bangles, brides in Kerala are layered in kilos of gold, and during Diwali, shopfronts glitter with coins and chains. Across the country, a woman’s jewellery is her streedhan — legally and culturally hers, even after marriage. And for generations, this was the only wealth women legally controlled. Asia now accounts over half of global gold jewellery demand, with India among its biggest drivers.

     

    “
    Even global luxury brands are reimagining gold through South Asian aesthetics; French maisons have introduced designs echoing filigree, jali work, and vintage coin pendants — proof that the allure travels well.
    ”

     

    This bond with gold isn’t only symbolic. It’s practical. In rural and semi-urban India, gold loans remain one of the fastest, most trusted ways to raise cash — no paperwork, no questions. A single bangle can cover school fees. A pair of earrings can fund surgery. The Reserve Bank of India notes that gold-backed loans form a significant share of short-term liquidity in the country. Even the smallest piece — a nose pin worn by a domestic worker, a threadbare bangle on a labourer’s wrist — is both dignity and safety net.

     

    A Cultural Code Shared Across Borders

     

    India’s gold story is echoed across Asia. Chinese families gift gold during Lunar New Year as a blessing for prosperity, and Vietnamese weddings often include gold jewellery as dowry, symbolising stability and honour. Across the region, gold isn’t just ornament; it is security, inheritance, and a cultural shorthand for continuity. In South India’s temples — from Tirupati to Padmanabhaswamy — tonnes of donated gold lie in vaults, much of it given not by kings, but by everyday devotees offering a sliver of personal wealth to the divine.

     

    Changing the Shape, Not the Sentiment

     

    What’s remarkable is how this attachment to gold has adapted without losing relevance. Today’s brides may not want the heavy, rigid sets of their mothers’ era, but they still want gold — just in forms they can wear beyond the wedding day.

     

    “I wanted something I could wear again, not just lock away,” says Zenia, 28, who paired her grandmother’s ornate gold choker with a hand-embroidered gara saree at her Parsi wedding. Instagram is now filled with side-by-side photos of brides alongside their grandmothers, the captions celebrating “tradition meets now.” Jewellers report rising demand for lighter, modular pieces — stackable chains, coins, vintage-inspired designs — that carry heritage without feeling locked in the past. Even global luxury brands are reimagining gold through South Asian aesthetics; French maisons have introduced designs echoing filigree, jali work, and vintage coin pendants — proof that the allure travels well.

     

    Gold is a shorthand for continuity | Image Credit: Lara Jameson on Pexels

     

    The Legacy That Outshines Volatility

     

    India’s households hold over 25,000 tonnes of gold — more than what most central banks keep in their vaults — a quiet sign of how deeply people here trust tangible wealth over markets or digital assets. And more than 60% of that demand still comes from weddings.

     

    That’s the quiet truth beneath the glitter: when families pass down gold, they’re passing down more than wealth. They’re passing down memory, meaning, and a promise that some things — no matter how the world changes — will always hold value.

  • The Rise of the Bandra Girl

    She’s walking her dog in Dior slides. Sipping iced matcha through a glass straw. She has Pilates at 7am and still makes it to Soho House by sunset. She doesn’t need a job. Her job is being herself, or at least a version of herself that fits neatly inside Instagram’s soft-focus universe. She says “bhaaya” like it’s punctuation, or at least that’s what the memes insist.

     

    In Mumbai, she’s the Bandra Girl. In New York, she’s the Brooklyn Girl. On the internet, she’s everywhere.

     

    The Bandra Girl began as a joke, a shorthand for a very specific kind of privilege in one of Mumbai’s most gentrified neighbourhoods. But like most jokes the internet finds useful, she didn’t stay contained. She spread. The caricature softened, flattened, and slowly hardened into something else, an archetype.

     

    But that shift matters more than one thinks. Because the Bandra Girl is no longer just someone we laugh at. She’s someone we recognise, replicate, and quietly aspire to. A soft-lit, soft-spoken fantasy of urban womanhood that feels effortless, curated, and endlessly watchable.

     

    So why her?

     

    Labubus showed up as bag charms | Image Credit: Vadim Russu on Unsplash

     

    Why does she go viral? Why do we keep reproducing her in memes, Reels, Pinterest boards, and lifestyle content? Why is there a Bandra Girl and a South Delhi Girl and a Brooklyn Girl, but no Nalasopara Girl, no Vikhroli Girl, no Bronx Girl?

     

    The answer has less to do with humour and more to do with how platforms reward familiarity.

     

    Algorithms are built to amplify what is instantly legible and widely palatable. The Bandra Girl fits that logic perfectly. She’s stylish but safe. Privileged but nonthreatening. Aspirational, yet familiar enough to feel attainable. She looks like someone you’ve already seen before, maybe on Instagram, maybe at a café on a Sunday afternoon.

     

    Repetition does the rest. The more recognisable the archetype becomes, the more the algorithm rewards it. Familiarity turns into circulation, and circulation into desirability. Over time, what began as a stereotype acquires cultural authority.

     

    “
    That’s what makes the Bandra Girl more than a punchline. She isn’t a real person, and she isn’t a villain. She’s a composite, shaped by repetition and reward.
    ”

     

    But like most internet aesthetics, this one is deeply classed.

     

    She can be a meme because she’s also a moodboard. Her minimalism, her matcha, her quiet (or very loud) luxury are all underwritten by money. The internet knows how to romanticise her because it already believes her life is worth romanticising.

     

    You don’t see jokes about the Nalasopara Girl because the internet doesn’t know how to aestheticise working-class femininity. It doesn’t know how to filter it into something aspirational. This is why there’s no Bronx Girl aesthetic on TikTok in the way there’s a Brooklyn Girl, even though both are real places, full of real women. One fits neatly into vintage lenses, curated mess, and algorithmic warmth. The other doesn’t fit the fantasy.

     

    This flattening isn’t unique to Mumbai. Every global city produces its own version. The Shoreditch Girl. The Marais Girl. The South Delhi Girl. These figures aren’t real women so much as cultural shorthand. They help platforms learn what “cool” looks like, what desire looks like, what a sellable version of womanhood should resemble.

     

    And when culture is built through curation, only certain lives survive the edit. The kind that looks good in natural light. The kind that can be parodied without discomfort. The kind that doesn’t ask for too much space.

     

    The Dior slides | Image Credit: marrosassv on Instagram

     

    That’s what makes the Bandra Girl more than a punchline. She isn’t a real person, and she isn’t a villain. She’s a composite, shaped by repetition and reward.

     

    What began as a joke has acquired authority. Not because it’s the most accurate representation of urban life, but because it’s the easiest one for the internet to recognise, amplify, and sell.

     

    The Bandra Girl doesn’t reflect who we are. She reflects what platforms know how to see, what advertisers know how to package, and what culture has learned to reward.

     

    Everything else remains present.

     

    It just doesn’t make the edit.

  • The Rise of Sober Curiosity in Urban India

    For much of the past decade, alcohol functioned as shorthand for social fluency in cities around the world. Rooftop lounges in Mumbai, weekend brunches in New York, and club nights in Madrid were as much about signalling ease as they were about what was in the glass. To drink was to belong. To refuse a round, even for personal reasons, often came with questions.

     

    That assumption is beginning to loosen, though not everywhere, and not in the same way. Among Gen Z, shifts in drinking habits and social rituals are becoming more visible. This change is not about wholesale teetotalism. It is about curiosity and choice.

     

    In recent years, a growing number of people globally have begun questioning their relationship with alcohol. Not by quitting outright, but by asking smaller, situational questions: Do I actually want a drink tonight? Do I need it to socialise? To unwind? To feel like I belong? This orientation has come to be known as sober curiosity, a loosely defined movement that encourages moderation, intentional drinking, or opting out altogether, without moralising abstinence.

     

    In the United States and Europe, sober curiosity emerged largely as a response to excess. Youth drinking declined, wellness culture took hold, and the pandemic reshuffled ideas of productivity and self-care. Choosing not to drink became associated with control, mindfulness, and even moral clarity.

     

    A coffee rave underway at Corridor Seven Coffee Roasters in Nagpur | Image Credit: Mithilesh Vazalwar on Instagram

     

    India’s version looks different, and that difference is the story. For much of the past decade, alcohol in India’s major cities also functioned as a social shortcut, but under different conditions. Drinking was not just about taste or leisure. It was about urban fluency. To drink was to signal modernity and belonging in spaces that were already classed, gendered, and regulated.

     

    Now, across metros and increasingly in tier-2 cities, young professionals are opting out of alcohol situationally rather than ideologically. They are skipping rounds without apology, leaving earlier than expected, or choosing daytime socialising altogether. This is not prohibition, and it is not a backlash. It is conditional participation. Alcohol is no longer an automatic assumption for a social hang.

     

    “
    Globally, sober curiosity emerged as backlash. In India, it looks more like recalibration. Less about excess. More about time, cost, and permission.
    ”

     

    Globally, this behaviour fits under the banner of sober curiosity. In India, it arrives with complications. Unlike Western markets, where sobriety often signals restraint from abundance, India’s relationship with alcohol has always been uneven. Large sections of the population abstain for religious, cultural, or economic reasons. What is new is not sobriety itself, but who gets to frame it as intention rather than constraint.

     

    In English-speaking, urban spaces, not drinking is slowly becoming legible as a choice. That shift is visible in the market. India’s non-alcoholic and zero-proof beverage industry, valued at roughly ₹1.37 lakh crore in 2023, is projected to cross ₹2.10 lakh crore by the end of the decade. Bars in Mumbai and Delhi now offer zero-proof cocktails priced like their alcoholic counterparts, complete with garnish, glassware, and ceremony. The point is not abstinence. It is equivalence. You can opt out without opting out socially.

     

    But the more revealing shift is not happening in bars. Across cities like Pune, Indore, Nagpur, and parts of Mumbai, early-morning “coffee raves” are drawing crowds that once would have gathered at nightclubs. Loud music, packed dance floors, caffeine instead of alcohol, and an exit time before noon. Similar sober daytime parties exist in New York or London, but in India their appeal is structural. They replace nightlife rather than supplement it. They fit around long workdays, shared housing, family expectations, and cost.

     

    This is where India diverges sharply from Western sober-curious narratives. The appeal is not only wellness or mindfulness. It is also efficiency. Alcohol costs time. Hangovers interfere with already compressed schedules. Late nights disrupt routines in cities where commutes are long, private space is scarce, and burnout is ordinary. In this context, sobriety reads less as self-denial and more as control. Not drinking is not about virtue. It is about being functional.

     

    A bottle of Pomegranate Kombucha | Image Credit: Shannon Nickerson on Unsplash

     

    Still, this permission is uneven. Choosing not to drink is celebrated when it appears intentional and curated. It is far less visible when abstention is expected or imposed. Women in India have long navigated sobriety without praise. Working-class abstention has rarely been framed as lifestyle. The current moment becomes visible largely because a certain class can afford to turn moderation into identity.

     

    That tension is what makes India’s sober curiosity worth paying attention to. This is not a wholesale rejection of drinking culture. Alcohol remains central to many social scenes. What is changing is the default. Refusal no longer requires justification everywhere. Social life is slowly learning to accommodate absence.

     

    Globally, sober curiosity emerged as backlash. In India, it looks more like recalibration. Less about excess. More about time, cost, and permission. This shift, uneven and easy to overstate, still marks something real. It reflects a change in how people gather, celebrate, and belong. In a culture where participation has long demanded conformity, opting out without disappearing is a meaningful shift.