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  • The Trust Economy

    Something is brewing in the business world.

    To understand what that is, let’s angle our lens towards the Indian financial services company, Zerodha. Zerodha’s profits last year were ₹4,237 crore. So why is its co-founder and chief investment officer, Nikhil Kamath, buying creative agencies like BTG (By The Gram) and One Hand Clap?

    Up until very recently, brands rented distribution by buying advertising space to flash their latest campaign to would-be consumers; the more you scaled up, the wider the reach. But when the campaign ended and a new one began, the whole model repeated itself, over and over and over again. But that model is changing. Kamath is no longer looking for reach.  He’s buying that indefinable thing called taste, and proximity to culture. Different vehicles, same road: to work with the people who already have a room full of listeners, rather than build a room and hope for an audience to show up.

     

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    Kamath is hardly alone in this endeavour; much of India’s creator economy is mirroring these strategies too. In 2025, Network18 (a group whose business model was predicated on the old-fashioned TV model) launched Creator18 as a formal push into creator-led advertising. It already has exclusive contracts with over 1,000 creators, a pointed sign that owning creator relationships is as central to a news conglomerate as owning TV channels.

    Creators are also becoming investors. Raj Shamani, host of Figuring Out, has backed 11 companies, including becoming an early investor in Wint Wealth. The podcaster and content creator, Ranveer Allahbadia, has moved into a cluster of businesses — Monk Entertainment, Level Supermind, and BigBrainCo — while angel-investing in wellness and fintech startups.

    And capital is also flowing the other way round, towards commerce-shaped creator infrastructure rather than the pure content plays. In 2026 so far, the most notable creator-economy deal in India internationally has been Wishlink (a platform enabling creators to monetize through commerce rather than brand deals), which accounted for roughly a third of all Asia-Pacific creator-economy funding this year.

     

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    The government is already on board, with this year’s Union Budget allocating resources to the “Orange Economy” and creator-skilling initiatives, recognizing content as an asset akin to any other form of intellectual property.
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    Consolidation is happening from the influencer-agency side too. Good Glamm Group has merged four separate creator-and-content businesses, including Plixxo, Winkl, Vidooly and MissMalini Entertainment, into Good Creator Co. as it looks to build an end-to-end content-to-commerce ecosystem, rather than a series of one-off campaigns. Chtrbox, an agency founded by Varun Duggirala, Roshan Abbas, Gaurav Kapur and others, was acquired by US-based QYOU Media in 2021 to grab a toehold in Indian creator culture, and in 2025 it became the first influencer marketing agency to list on the BSE SME platform.

    This isn’t just a domestic phenomenon. Take Publicis, one of the world’s largest advertising holding companies that just spent over $675 million, buying Influential and Captiv8, creator networks spanning 15 million-plus creators. Later’s $250 million acquisition of Mavely, an affiliate platform, did more or less the same thing. Both traditional advertising agencies, both simultaneously concluding that the economics of renting versus owning audience relationships no longer favored the former.

     

    Ranveer Allahbadia is a content creator and entrepreneur. | in.pinterest.com

     

    BCG estimates that Indian creators would impact anything between $350–400 billion of consumer spending annually, and that figure is projected to cross $1 trillion by 2030. The government is already on board, with this year’s Union Budget allocating resources to the ‘Orange Economy’ and creator-skilling initiatives, recognizing content as an asset akin to any other form of intellectual property. This is the message that one agency founder was quick to seize upon while speaking to reporters about the Budget. He noted that while renting audiences was an option, brands that invested in building their own media infrastructure would reap disproportionate rewards. Not that it wasn’t obvious already.

    After years of brands asking “how do we get people to notice us,” the more interesting question circulating in Indian boardrooms right now seems to be: what do we own that makes people want to listen to us in the first place? The biggest brands of the next decade may not possess the biggest budgets. They may not have the biggest stars. But they’ll be the ones with the best relationship with their audience, one that doesn’t need to be rebuilt over and over again.

  • Framing The Subcontinent At TIFF

    Perhaps no major street in Toronto has transformed over the past two decades as Bathurst Street. Home to working-class folks from Jewish and Black families, and thick with bookstores, galleries and quirky businesses, it possesses a rather bohemian air. Recently, quite out of the blue, a soundtrack album of the 2008 film Slumdog Millionaire was found at one of its thrift shops.

    Slumdog, once intended as a direct-to-video film, exploded in popularity after showings at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), grossing over USD $387 million at the box office off of a $15 million budget – one of the most profitable movies ever, taking in eight Oscars at the Academy Awards along the way. Even then, though, it was a divisive film, critiqued for turning poverty and social evils into entertainment and distorting India’s economic boom. Even the director Danny Boyle, acknowledged in 2025 that the film would not be made in the current climate.

    Boyle’s reflections nearly twenty years later raise the larger questions: how has Indian filmmaking changed, and who is it for?

     

    A still from RRR: the director of the film, S.S. Rajamouli, was a keynote speaker at TIFF in 2022, where he discussed the global phenomenon of Telugu cinema.

     

    TIFF’s India Story

    Decades ago, most arthouse film festivals would praise Satyajit Ray and Mrinal Sen, while ignoring commercial films in India. Reflecting the growth of Toronto’s Indian population (from 6% in 1991 to 14.6% in 2021), then-TIFF programmers Noah Cowan and David Overbey, altered that course, by creating 1994’s ‘India Now!’ program, featuring Shekhar Kapur’s Bandit Queen, Dev Benegal’s English, August, Anand Patwardhan’s Father, Son and the Holy War, and films by Mani Ratnam.

    Cameron Bailey (now the CEO) recognized that Shah Rukh Khan or Amitabh Bachchan could electrify crowds in the same way Matt Damon or George Clooney did. That’s how Karan Johar’s Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna premiered in Toronto, with thousands of fans thronging to greet the cast. In subsequent years, Bollywood blockbusters such as Singh Is Kinng, Dil Bole Hadippa!, and English Vinglish have appeared on screens; a recognition of their tremendous commercial opportunity, noted Meenakshi Shedde, Indian film critic and advisor to TIFF.

    Notably, two audience segments easily co-existed – one for Bollywood, and one for arthouse cinema – exciting a commercial cinema fan base, while simultaneously broadening its appeal. After all, Bollywood was once a cultural language that united new immigrants, many of whom were urban professionals from Delhi, Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Gujarat, Kerala, and other parts of India, settling primarily in Toronto and Vancouver, and sharing a common frame of reference built around Hindi cinema.

     

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    Many of these films are backed by industry powerhouses Anurag Kashyap, Guneet Monga, and Karan Johar – all regulars at TIFF, often casually walking the Canadian streets – but they highlighted contemporary India which simultaneously appealed to recent immigrants, second-generation millennials and non-traditional fans.
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    But that unifying force has weakened as the diaspora itself has grown more fractured. Canada’s South Asian population has quadrupled from 1996 to 2021, with statistics revealing that immigrants now come from 111 different countries of birth – a record high – making the diaspora far more complex and fragmented. Films have always held up a mirror to changes in society, and this was no different. As an example, Malayalam has recorded an 811% increase in twenty years, as a spoken language in Canada, with South Indian films like RRR (2022), KGF: Chapter 2 (2022), Ponniyin Selvan II (2023), Kalki 2898 AD (2024), and Pushpa 2 (2024) becoming major draws for Canadians of South Asian origin.

     

    An Evolution

    During his trips to India, Bailey observed this changing Indian film economy. Multiplexes were beginning to create room for smaller, edgier films aimed at urban audiences that sat in between commercial hits and arthouse film, and TIFF’s 2012’s ‘City to City’ program highlighted them. This was to become a landmark event for the diaspora. In the following years, The Lunchbox (2013), Angry Indian Goddesses (2015), Lion (2016), Village Rockstars (2017), and All We Imagine as Light (2024), and Homebound (2025) have all been shown, signaling a new wave of Indian cinema: more local, yet internationally connected, and difficult to categorize.

    When Bollywood did appear – as it did with Priyanka Chopra Jonas in Mary Kom (2014) and The Sky Is Pink (2019), Irrfan Khan in Talvar (2015), Manmarziyaan (2018), Bhumi Pednekar’s Thank You for Coming (2023), and Reema Kagti’s Superboys of Malegaon (2024) – it was more prestige Hindi cinema than masala films.

    Many of these films are backed by industry powerhouses Anurag Kashyap, Guneet Monga, and Karan Johar – all regulars at TIFF, often seen casually walking the Canadian streets – but they highlighted contemporary India which simultaneously appealed to recent immigrants, second-generation millennials and non-traditional fans.

     

    A throwback to 2008’s big release, Slumdog Millionaire, a film with a problematic cultural legacy.

     

    2026: Continuing the Journey

    If early Indian films highlighted auteurs, a later era incorporated Bollywood, and more recent films showcased edgier and prestige Hindi cinema, TIFF’s September 2026 slate appears to reveal the diversity of region and form.

    Films such as Angh (Nagaland), Dorothy (Tamil Nadu), Half (Kerala), Phoolan (North India), and Strong Son (Canada) will be shown, many of which are world premieres. Toronto-born Richie Mehta, most famous as the creator of the Emmy-winning Delhi Crime, returns to TIFF for a third time with Phoolan, inspired by the maverick bandit queen.

    Documentary filmmaker Shaunak Sen, whose 2022’s All That Breathes won top awards, appears with his Termite, with Kolkata-born Rahul Roye’s Aman, British-Indian Varun Raman’s Into the Betaverse, and Prajjwal Rajawat’s Butter Chicken to Go, about three South Asian food-delivery drivers in the winter in Canada, also in the short films section. Before becoming a full feature, Canadian filmmaker Ian Bawa’s Strong Son, began as a short as part of TIFF’s talent development initiative in 2021.

    Indian films aren’t seeking permission to explain themselves anymore. Half, a Malayalam vampire revenge movie is premiering for the popular Midnight Madness crowd, accustomed to action, horror, and fantasy. Angh will compete in TIFF’s prestige program, Platform, highlighting emerging filmmakers.

    TIFF is not a mirror of Indian cinema: its goal is to select films capable of crossing cultures and borders through often a neat package of cinematography, universal narratives, international financing and established stars. But it continues to diversify its palette, the same way Indian audience members are. This is, in many ways, simply demography catching up with programming: a diaspora this fragmented was never going to stay satisfied with a single national cinema speaking on its behalf. The diaspora is moving away from questions of ‘am I represented?’ to ‘which India is being shown?’

    TIFF will undoubtedly look to the subcontinent for the trifecta of a Bollywood blockbuster, an established auteur such as Payal Kapadia, and a diaspora or Indo-Canadian filmmaker like Deepa Mehta. But nearly twenty years after Slumdog Millionaire, the question is no longer whether an Indian film will be in Toronto. It is which India arrives: Mumbai or Nagaland, Bollywood or Malayalam horror, a new immigrant’s India or a Canadian-born.

  • Gold Dust

  • A World Full Of Dumplings

    There’s something about a plate of momos that just feels like home — even if you didn’t grow up eating them. Fat little parcels of warmth and comfort, ladled steaming hot onto paper plates, dipped into a pool of chile sauce or chutney: in Indian cities, they’ve become a kind of emotional staple. Cheap and filling, momos are sold on bustling street corners, in high-end cafés, and at 2 am outside college hostels for empty-bellied students.

    Momos arrived in India with a cloud of Tibetans who fled the Chinese annexation of their homeland. But Indians took them to heart; they are Delhi’s most ubiquitous street snack, pot-bellied with tandoori masala or sweetened with a stomach of chocolate.

    But here’s the thing: you’ll find a similar joy halfway across the world.

    China has, expectedly, a universe of dumplings: Shanghainese shiaomai, soupy xiaolongbao, shuijiao (boiled dumplings) and guotie, pan-fried till their skins are crisped and gilded.

     

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    But the dumpling cannot be restricted to any particular geography. In Polish kitchens, it’s the pierogi. In Turkish households, it’s the tiny, hand-folded manti. In Korean feasts, it’s the plump mandu. In Nigeria, there’s moin-moin — a steamed bean cake, savory and wrapped. In Nepal, it’s the jhol momo, swimming in a spiced sesame broth. In Korea, the mandu might be stuffed with tofu and kimchi. In Italy, ravioli could hold ricotta and spinach. Georgian khinkali is a knob of dough pinched and twisted and stuffed with meat or vegetables.

    Closer to home, in Southern India, there’s kozhukattai, often stuffed with jaggery and coconut. Bengal has dudh puli, a festive rice dumpling soaked in kheer. The northeast celebrates momos in dozens of variations, and in Gujarat, muthias are hand-shaped and tempered with mustard seeds.

    Every culture, every corner, seems to have stumbled upon the same soul-soothing idea — dough cradling a filling, warm from the inside out. These fillings reflect geography, available ingredients, and cultural touchstones. After all, what makes dumplings so universal is what they hold — a snapshot of place and people.

     

     

    Call it what you will, the dumpling is less a recipe and more a shared instinct — an edible expression of care, survival, and joy. Legend tells us that Chinese boiled dumplings, jiaozi, were born 1,000 years ago to muscle through a harsh winter. Steaming hot parcels of dough, their bellies fattened by lamb, ginger and garlic, were fed by a Chinese physician named Zhang Zhongjing to people suffering from frostbite.

    The reason dumplings exist everywhere, even in sultry summers and torrid monsoons, probably had practical origins. Take a small amount of meat or vegetables, wrap it in dough, and suddenly you have a meal that stretches further, stays warm longer, and can be boiled, steamed, or fried depending on your resources. That’s why they’ve long been linked to moments of migration, hardship, and adaptation. But over time, they became symbols of family, celebration, and love.

    What’s fascinating is how these forms rarely clash. Instead, they create a kind of culinary constellation. Nobody argues whether the momo or pierogi came first — because they’re not copies, they’re cousins.

     

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    In the past decade, social media has given dumplings a fresh global stage. TikTok and Instagram are filled with videos of people folding momos with their grandmothers, or experimenting with gyoza shapes. Dumpling pop-ups in Brooklyn serve Tibetan, Japanese, and Nigerian versions side by side. In Darjeeling, you can now find curated momo trails for tourists eager to try every variety.

    There’s also something democratizing about dumplings online — they don’t require elite training or Michelin-starred kitchens. They invite hands-on making, often in groups, around kitchen tables. In that sense, they’re perfect for a generation craving tactile rituals in a digital world.

    So the next time you bite into a momo — or pierogi, or mandu — know that you’re tapping into a global language of care, one fold at a time.

  • Indie Idols

    Dogs found on the street are unsafe and harmful for the people they come in contact with.

    That’s an assumption that is now being refuted and dismantled in India. The fact that indigenous dogs can be rescued and adopted as pets is an idea whose time has come (some argue that the practice has been long-standing). 

    One can also trace this shift in the social sense. While adopting purebred dogs has long been associated with the unwritten rule of positioning oneself within the upper echelons of society, things might be changing. People are beginning to question the aspirational status attributed to adopting exotic, pedigreed dogs, while understanding the real harm of unethical puppy mills.

    Across the world too, rescuing is now considered a beneficial practice. Social media pages with a global presence, such as We Rate Dogs and The Dodo, with 6 million and 12.9 million followers respectively, regularly feature stories of rescued animals, including collaborations with celebrities. Matt Damon and Rita Ora are examples of celebrities who have adopted rescued animals. This distinction of being a renowned celebrity with affluence and yet choosing to rescue animals sends a strong message to those who look up to them. After all, it wouldn’t be too bad to do what Christopher Nolan’s Odysseus does! 

     

     

    Back in India, the famous Indian stand-up comic and actor Vir Das has been an important voice for these animals, as he uses his platform to remind people that indigenous dogs will provide more love and gratitude than one could ever imagine. Another outspoken and influential figure in the political fraternity is Maneka Gandhi. She is the founder of People for Animals, established in 1992, one of the largest animal welfare organizations in the country. 

    Similarly, organizations such as Welfare for Stray Dogs (WSD), the Rotary Club of Bombay, and the Knights of Cubbon Park in Bengaluru have been playing an active role in animal rescue. The Rotary Club of Bombay, for instance, has been making short films on the plight of stray dogs, organizing fundraisers to raise awareness regarding the same, and has undertaken the responsibility of feeding more than sixty dogs. Simultaneously, WSD vaccinates, sterilizes, and treats street dogs in Mumbai for free. 

    For dog lovers, none of this is particularly new. But in August 2025, something changed.

    Last year, the Supreme Court of India directed municipal authorities in Delhi and the National Capital Region to capture stray dogs and permanently relocate them to shelters or pounds. The order followed reports of increasing dog-bite cases, including the death of a six-year-old girl from rabies. It sought to empty the capital’s streets of animals that had long inhabited its neighbourhoods alongside human beings.

    The order provoked widespread opposition from animal-welfare organizations, caregivers and concerned citizens. Critics argued that permanently confining such a large population of dogs was both inhumane and practically impossible, given the shortage of suitable shelters. There was also fear and apprehension about the dogs being indiscriminately killed behind closed doors. Later that month, the original order was modified by the Supreme Court, allowing healthy dogs to be returned to the areas from which they had been taken after they had been sterilized, vaccinated and dewormed. Dogs infected with rabies or exhibiting aggressive behaviour were excluded from this provision. The Court also directed municipal authorities to establish designated feeding areas for community dogs.

     

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    The country’s native breeds have been shaped by different climates, landscapes and working relationships with local communities. Karnataka’s athletic Mudhol Hound, for instance, is well adapted to hot and arid terrain, while the thick-coated Bakharwal has traditionally guarded livestock in the Himalayan region.
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    The controversy prompted a larger conversation about humane methods of managing India’s free-ranging dog population. Alongside demands for sustained sterilization and vaccination programs, more voices began advocating the rescue and adoption of homeless animals. Protests against the order were held not only in New Delhi but also in cities across the country, such as Bengaluru and Mumbai, giving the question of adoption renewed urgency.

    The “adopt, don’t shop” campaign challenges the practice of purchasing pedigree animals from pet stores and unethical breeders when millions of dogs and cats are already in need of homes. Its message has gradually influenced the way some people choose companion animals. Yet adoption in India also requires us to think more carefully about the language used to describe the dogs living on the country’s streets.

    ‘Indie’ is commonly used as an umbrella term for Indian street and community dogs. However, many are mixed-ancestry dogs whose physical characteristics have developed over generations of living in particular environments. At the same time, India is home to numerous distinct native breeds whose individual histories are often obscured by the usage of broad labels.

     

     

    Just as India’s human population cannot be compressed into a single cultural or physical identity, its dogs cannot be adequately represented by one convenient category. The country’s native breeds have been shaped by different climates, landscapes and working relationships with local communities. Karnataka’s athletic Mudhol Hound, for instance, is well adapted to hot and arid terrain, while the thick-coated Bakharwal has traditionally guarded livestock in the Himalayan region. Tamil Nadu’s Rajapalayam and Chippiparai were bred for hunting and protection, while the rare Jonangi, associated with parts of India’s eastern coast, is known for its close relationship with fishing and agricultural communities.

    Many of these indigenous breeds are now endangered or routinely overshadowed by imported pedigree breeds. Educating ourselves about them is therefore not simply a matter of choosing Indian dogs as pets. It is also a way of recognizing that these animals have distinct histories,
    temperaments and relationships with their ecological surroundings, as well as an important place within India’s cultural heritage.

     

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    Street dogs are frequently portrayed either as dangerous animals that must be removed or as helpless creatures dependent entirely upon human charity.
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    In Kolkata, the founders of Sienna Café, Rewant Lokesh and Shuli Ghosh, have set an example by rescuing and adopting three dogs — Nimki (aged two), Nabi (four), and Noori (six). Lokesh describes the dogs as “smart, low-maintenance, easy to train and extremely loyal.” Ghosh observes that many people continue to seek pedigree dogs as pets. But not all hope is lost: she has also noticed more families adopting dogs from their neighborhoods and fostering puppies that have been abandoned or injured.

    Of course, adoption alone cannot resolve India’s ongoing struggle with animal homelessness, dog bites and rabies. It must be accompanied by well-funded sterilization drives, widespread vaccination, responsible waste disposal and accessible veterinary care. But while such challenges exist, every responsible adoption gives an existing animal the security of a home and stands up against a market that treats living beings as products. To adopt rather than shop is not merely the act of rejecting pedigree as a status symbol, as has been the case for so many affluent homes. The practice also helps cement the notion that companionship need not be manufactured when so many animals are already waiting to be chosen. Maybe they are waiting right outside your home!

  • The Multiple Faces Of Indian Cinema

    Everyone immediately recognizes a French film. But what does an Indian cinematic aesthetic look like? Now that answer is far too big, too plural, and too contradictory to fit one scheme.

    Let us first consider French film. That French film has its own distinctive palette is obvious, but it is not because France is culturally singular. Rather, it came about because of the French New Wave movement, a small, cohesive group of filmmakers and critics who first set out a shared theory of cinema: natural light, jump cuts, location shooting, a cool, desaturated urban look, philosophical dialogue instead of plot. The group, including Jean-Luc Godard, Alain Resnais, Agnès Varda, André Bazin, Jacques Demy, François Truffaut, Éric Rohmer, Claude Chabrol, Jacques Rivette, Chris Marker, was deeply influential. Even sixty years on, filmmakers from Claire Denis to Olivier Assayas to Céline Sciamma are still working within that grammar, either extending it or pushing back against it. That is not ‘French’ culture necessarily; it is the pull of one movement, kept alive because French film culture is small and centralized enough.

     

    Satyajit Ray favored rural landscapes and natural lighting. | in.pinterest.com

     

    India on the other hand, never had one defined canonical film movement. Even though Bollywood’s sweeping influence may suggest a homogenous Indian culture, it represents only a fraction of the totality of the country’s cinema. Instead, India has a series of regional and historical visual dialects — Mughal grandeur, Bengali lyricism, Tamil modernism, Deccan gothic, Bombay maximalism.

    You might think the simple explanation is the country’s immense geographical diversity. You would be right, but that is only one part of a much wider story. Each region has developed its own distinct film tradition — Bengali, Telugu, Malayali — complete with its own circle of critics, financiers and audiences. These traditions have evolved largely in parallel, shaped not only by language but also by distinct theatrical histories and cultural inheritances.

    Bollywood is kitschy and hyperbolic. For example, one of Hindi cinema’s greatest spectacles, Mughal-e-Azam draws its visual grammar from Mughal court painting. Its marble halls, jewel-toned costumes, and candlelit mirrors form an Indo-Persian dreamscape that defined cinematic opulence long before CGI. The film’s grandeur wasn’t just aesthetic; it was architectural, a world was built from the grammar of Mughal architecture itself: symmetry, excess, and devotion.

     

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    Mughal-e-Azam draws its visual grammar from Mughal court painting. Its marble halls, jewel-toned costumes, and candlelit mirrors form an Indo-Persian dreamscape that defined cinematic opulence long before CGI.
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    Malayalam cinema holds two temperaments at once — Adoor Gopalakrishnan’s slow, decaying feudal Kerala and Lijo Jose Pellissery’s swirling, operatic chaos — yet both speak the same visual language, rooted in ritual, water, and waiting.

    Tamil cinema’s aesthetic has always been more architectural than ornamental — geometry, light, and precision. Mani Ratnam (in films such as Alaipayuthey and Kaatru Veliyidai) made the modern South Indian city cinematic: trains, glass, rain, blue filters, and human intimacy against motion.

    Meanwhile, Bengal’s cinema has always looked like literature feels — rhythmic, intimate, poetic. In Charulata, Satyajit Ray turned Tagore’s 19th-century prose into light and shadow — embroidered curtains, quiet gestures, emotional precision.

    In Tumbbad, a film set in the Deccan region of Maharashtra, the monsoon itself becomes a character. Decaying Maharashtrian mansions collapse under greed; rain and myth mix until you can’t tell which is more alive. This is the Indian Gothic — where darkness is domestic, where horror seeps from architecture and inheritance. Western gothic lives in castles; Indian gothic lives in attics, temples, and forgotten wells.

     

    Mani Ratnam’s earthy tones | in.pinterest.com

     

    To understand Indian cinema visually is to understand that it has no single center. Mumbai glamour, Chennai modernism, Kolkata lyricism, Kerala austerity — each forms a language of image, rooted in geography, history, and art. If French cinema is color-coded precision, Indian cinema is painterly chaos with intent — every excess justified, every stillness loaded.

    For a global audience used to Indian cinema as ‘spectacle,’ the truth is richer: a cinema that moves between temple and nightclub, miniature painting and neon alley, myth and modernism — and somehow makes them all speak the same emotional tongue.

  • Delivering Care On Two Wheels

    Across India’s big and small cities, compact scooties carrying massive boxes, zooming on congested roads and through narrow alleys, are a common sight. A delicious cake is on its way in Benaras, ordered by a sibling or a son in the US, making up for their absence from thousands of miles away. 2 am medicine deliveries with a customized message — “please deliver and check if my parents are okay” — are commonplace on delivery app messages.

    As the little Scooty progresses towards the given address, the sender knows their love is being delivered soon. The delivery partners are the frontmen of our capitalist society’s love language. As personal care is outsourced, the ‘Swiggy lad’ braves heat, rain, cold, and extreme work conditions to deliver a product in about 15 to 20 minutes.

     

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    They play a big part in urban love stories too. “Sent this because you were upset this morning” or “Enjoy this, I’ll be late for dinner” have become routine acts of love in a fast-paced, pressed-for-time world that would rather send a text or a voice message than pick up the phone and call someone. It means a lot when someone takes the effort to browse the app, order your favourite meal, pay for it, and coordinate with the delivery agent.

    When app-based delivery services started, older Indians were their strongest critics. They ridiculed the idea of paying someone to do household errands. But Covid-19 changed that. People from their 20s to their 70s are now used to the convenience of quick, at-home deliveries. The Indian diaspora makes up a small part of the subscribers, marvelling at the availability of such low-cost delivery services in India and grateful for them, as they let them connect with their families even from miles away.

    What’s interesting is how these algorithm-backed apps, these mega digital operations, are still fronted by a basic human connection. It’s momentary — lasting just as long as the opening and closing of a door. But it’s there. The performance of care is outsourced, not the thought. And the delivery guys become the face of this new social dynamic.

     

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    The delivery partners are the frontmen of our capitalist society's love language. As personal care is outsourced, the "Swiggy ka ladka" braves heat, rain, cold, and extreme work conditions to deliver a product in about 15 to 20 minutes.
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    There was a time when the vegetable vendor, the ironing man, or the postman played similar roles. They would come in, bring fresh produce or a long-awaited money order, inquire about the family’s well-being, keep a spare key of the house for emergencies, and even water the plants while the family they sold their wares to, was away.

    But as gated communities and strict security checks keep itinerant vendors out, scooty-riding, app-approved delivery partners have replaced them — at the cost of a delivery fee (but no Diwali tip).

     

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    And it is a cost the delivery partners themselves bear the most. Their jobs are not easy. The pressure of on-time delivery is immense. Penalties for delayed delivery can be brutal, and the pay hardly compensates for the hours and effort they put in. Social media glorifies delivery agents for going over and above their call of duty — seeking medical help for someone injured, feeding street dogs, sometimes of their own accord and at times as part of the job. They are perceived and portrayed as care ambassadors. That’s proof they have become an integral part of our social system — and it’s why they get so many eyeballs, and so much interest, in the hard-to-crack, clickbait world too.

  • Spirited Away By Anime

    You notice it in small, familiar ways. You open Netflix for something mindless, and somehow the anime recommendations outnumber everything else. At the bookstore, the manga section has quietly ballooned into its own landscape. Even in everyday conversations, the references slip in: a coworker comparing their work ethic to a Naruto arc, a teenager at the café arguing about the emotional peak of Attack on Titan, a friend admitting that Your Name ruined them more than any live-action film this decade.

    Anime was something a handful of kids watched after school, tucked between Toonami slots and Pokémon reruns. Somewhere between then and now, those after-school curiosities became one of the world’s most widely shared emotional languages. What used to be niche fandom is now mainstream grammar — shaping taste, storytelling, humor, and even how global audiences understand heroism, grief, power, and love.

     

    Anime conventions are sprouting across Tier II and III cities in India. | in.pinterest.com

     

    The scale of that shift is staggering when you look closely. The anime market, valued at over $30 billion in 2023, is projected to climb toward $60 billion by 2030. More than half of that revenue already comes from outside Japan. Netflix says that more than half of its global subscribers, over 150 million households, watch anime. Suddenly it’s not that anime became big; it’s that it quietly became one of the biggest cultural forces in the world.

    And what’s interesting is how different this rise looks compared to the Western giants that defined global animation for decades. Disney’s empire was built on neat morality — fairytales with clear lines, emotional clarity, a formula polished into inevitability.

    Anime grew through a different philosophy entirely. It leans into tonal messiness: grief next to slapstick, 300-episode emotional arcs, worlds that break their own rules but somehow still make emotional sense. Veteran creators of long-running series like Dragon Ball and One Piece often point out that global audiences don’t mind unpredictability; they crave it. The twisty, chaotic anime logic isn’t a hurdle — it’s part of the pleasure.

    What anime understands, perhaps better than any other global form, is that modern audiences are living emotionally complex lives. Western entertainment still defaults to emotional tidiness; anime expects emotional contradiction. It lets its characters be absurd and profound in the same breath. It gives us villains with backstories so tragic they feel inevitable, and heroes who fail for years before they win anything. In an era defined by uncertainty, that elasticity feels truer than the comforting predictability of traditional Western arcs.

     

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    Nagpur has created its own cosplay convention while Jaipur, Bhubaneswar, Silchar, Guwahati and Vijayawada are thick with fan communities, perhaps more so than in the metros.
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    Japan recognized the power of this aesthetic early. The government’s ‘Cool Japan’ initiative treated anime, manga, and kawaii culture not as fringe entertainment, but as cultural exports worthy of national investment. After World War II, Japan rebuilt its identity, visually and economically, through soft power: cute mascots, charming anthropomorphism, approachable design, and eventually the global emotional worlds of anime.

    The shift from militaristic imagery to gentle iconography wasn’t accidental; it was a rebranding that worked. Kawaii aesthetics softened international perception, and anime gave the world an emotional language rooted in that gentleness.

    But anime’s rise isn’t just about cultural diplomacy — it’s about who is allowed to be a fan. Gender politics shape that conversation quietly. Western culture mocks “Disney adults,” a term almost always aimed at women, coded as childish or unserious. Meanwhile, adult men debating Naruto power levels or crying over One Piece are celebrated with a kind of ironic respect. The asymmetry is telling: women’s fandom is infantilized; men’s fandom is legitimized. Anime complicates that calculus. It offers emotional intensity without stigma, and action without machismo. Even with its own complicated gender tropes, anime bridges a cultural gap Western media has never fully reconciled.

    Then there’s the generational span. Few mediums manage to connect teenagers, millennials, and older fans with equal appeal. But anime does. A 14-year-old diving into Jujutsu Kaisen can bond with a 40-year-old who watched Cowboy Bebop in college. A parent and child can both love Spirited Away, for completely different reasons. Anime carries the rare ability to feel timeless and contemporary at once — often because its emotional logic isn’t age-bound. It speaks to longing, ambition, friendship, existential dread, and resilience in ways that stay relevant across decades.

    Nowhere is that more visible than in India which is now, rather astonishingly, the third-largest anime audience after Japan and USA. The signal isn’t confined to metro multiplexes: when Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle opened in September 2025, it outgrossed every prior anime release in the country within a day and pushed into tier-2 and tier-3 towns that had never booked an animated title before, some cinemas even running 5 a.m. shows once reserved for Bollywood tentpoles.

    This unprecedented crush of cinema-goers was primed by streaming platforms such as Netflix (of course) and Crunchyroll’s catalogue of 800-plus titles. Many of their shows are dubbed in regional languages, further easing accessibility into spaces that might have dismissed such shows earlier. In 2025, a viral wave of Ghibli-style AI art engulfed Indian social media, which didn’t hurt anime’s ambitions either.

     

    Anime merchandise is everywhere! This here is the Ocean Bomb Dragon Ball Super Vegito Apple Flavored Sparkling Water.

     

    Economically, anime has become an ecosystem: games, conventions, films, merchandise, soundtracks, collectibles, cosplays, cafés, streaming subcultures. Nowhere is that more evident than in Tier II and Tier III cities. Nagpur has created its own cosplay convention while Jaipur, Bhubaneswar, Silchar, Guwahati and Vijayawada are thick with fan communities, perhaps even more so than in the metros. Comic Con hosted its first-ever event at Guwahati in November 2025 and then went to Jaipur in January 2026.

    With over 118 million active viewers and a market projected to grow past 13% annually through 2030, India is shifting from consumer to collaborator, with domestic studios already pairing Indian mythology with Japanese animation craft to build homegrown IP for a global audience.

    And while the numbers may inspire surprise, the true marvel comes from the fact that a seemingly disparate narrative tradition has become the center of gravity of Indian cities and towns.

    Anime didn’t achieve that by softening itself for global appeal. It did the opposite. It stayed rooted in Japanese sensibilities — its pacing, its emotional velocity, its aesthetics while trusting that global viewers would meet it halfway. And they did.

  • Jugaad: I Know A Guy

    In Gregory David Roberts’s Shantaram, the relationship between Lindsay Ford and his local guide, Prabaker, is a way of understanding the everyday Indian practice of jugaad. Lindsay arrives in Bombay (present day Mumbai) using a false passport, intending the city to be merely a stopover on his journey from New Zealand to Germany. However, he decides to hire Prabaker to get around the city. Their relationship quickly develops into a friendship, with Prabaker affectionately renaming him “Linbaba” and later taking him to his native village, Sunder. Yet Prabaker’s importance extends beyond companionship: he represents the invaluable acquaintance who knows how to make things happen. He understands the city, speaks its social language and can connect Lindsay to the people, places and resources that would otherwise remain inaccessible to an outsider. In this sense, Prabaker embodies the familiar assurance, “I know a guy.” The phrase captures one dimension of jugaad: the ability to solve problems by drawing upon informal networks of friends, relatives, neighbours and acquaintances. 

    Imagine attempting to travel across India entirely on your own, as someone who is visiting for the first time. You book your hotels online, you look at locations on Google Maps, compare prices on travel websites and plan a meticulous itinerary. On paper, the journey appears quite manageable. Yet the moment you step outside the predictable world of airports, hotel chains and app-based taxi rides, another face of India starts to unravel. This is the India that cannot always be navigated through a screen. When formal systems are slow, expensive or difficult to navigate, knowing someone who can identify the correct person, arrange an introduction or find an unconventional solution turns into a form of social capital.

     

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    Such an acquaintance does not necessarily possess official authority; their usefulness comes from knowing whom to approach and how the system actually functions. Prabaker, in     Shantaram plays this role for Lindsay. He makes an overwhelming and unfamiliar metropolis navigable through his knowledge of its people and more importantly, unwritten rules. Jugaad, in a way, describes a method of getting things done, in which human connections compensate for limited access. 

    The phrase “I know a guy” is often used jokingly, but it underscores and reveals something fundamental about how India functions. The “guy” in question may be a driver who knows a mechanic, a tour guide who speaks three regional languages(or maybe even foreign languages such as Mandarin or Spanish), or a hotel employee whose cousin can arrange a last-minute journey to a remote village. Such people serve as bridges between formal systems and the vast informal economy that surrounds them. 

    Jugaad is now widely acknowledged as a distinctly South Asian concept (with its own Wikipedia article), even if similar practices exist in other parts of the world. Derived from Hindi and also used in Urdu and Punjabi, the term describes the ingenuity needed in order to solve a problem with limited resources, often through improvisation, the use of personal contacts and unconventional arrangements. It can refer to anything from a makeshift repair to an affordable transport solution, but it also captures the social resourcefulness behind the phrase “I know a guy.” In recent years, jugaad has acquired meanings beyond everyday speech and entered global discussions of management and “frugal innovation.” Yet within South Asia, it remains as an abstract business philosophy rather than a practical method of navigating daily life. 

     

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    A local driver would possess the knowledge of certain roads becoming unusable during the monsoon season, and a local fisherman would know when boats can safely cross a particular stretch of water. Their knowledge is rooted in their lived experiences, but is also frequently undervalued because it is not presented through an official institution.
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    India’s informal economy includes millions of workers and businesses operating outside (or partly outside) the structures associated with registered companies, fixed salaries, standardized contracts and prices that have been clearly advertised. Street vendors, domestic workers, small repair shops, guides, porters, drivers, craftspeople and countless family-run businesses make up this realm. Yet their work does not lie in the peripheries of Indian life; it is found at its very core. 

    In a shopping mall, every product carries a maximum retail price. But when one goes to a street market, the price may emerge only through a conversation with the vendors. After a brutal round of bargaining, the final amount asked of the customer might be dependent on the time of day, the quantity purchased, the buyer’s familiarity with local prices and, sometimes, their command of the language. Is the quoted price reasonable? Would bargaining be expected or insulting? How low is too low? This is where local knowledge becomes valuable. The guy that one knows, knows when a price is negotiable, when it is already fair and when a customer is being charged an exaggerated “tourist rate.”

    India has hundreds of languages and dialects, and even widely spoken languages change noticeably across regions. A person may know some formal ways of speaking Hindi and still struggle with a rapid conversation in a local market. Someone fluent in English may easily book a room in a city hotel but encounter difficulty whilst arranging for transportation in more unfamiliar terrain. India’s major routes and cities can be navigated through flights, trains and app-based cabs. However, reaching smaller towns or villages may require informal arrangements with local people. This includes a shared taxi with unknown strangers if one has to cut down on costs, an auto-rickshaw driver that has been recommended by a shopkeeper, or a private vehicle. The system can appear chaotic to an outsider, yet it often operates through dense networks of trust and reputation.

     

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    One might argue that information is available online, but the most useful information might not be displayed there. A local driver would possess the knowledge of certain roads becoming unusable during the monsoon season, and a local fisherman would know when boats can safely cross a particular stretch of water. Their knowledge is rooted in their lived experiences, but is also frequently undervalued because it is not presented through an official institution.

    The phrase “I know a guy” therefore, describes a networked society in which people rely on acquaintances to overcome uncertainty, and minimize risks. The “guy” possesses what might be termed as navigational capital: the ability to connect people, negotiate arrangements and make systems intelligible. To travel through India is to discover that the country does not run only through official institutions. It also runs through conversations, recommendations, introductions and small acts of mediation: all of which makes a person resourceful or jugaadu. A journey becomes easier when someone knows the language, understands the local rhythm and can identify the right person to call. One may begin with a detailed itinerary. But somewhere along the way, the map will fail, the advertised price will become negotiable, and the bus you expected will not arrive. Then someone will smile, take out their phone and say the sentence that keeps much of India moving: “Don’t worry. I know a guy.” That is what jugaad looks like.

  • Speed Racers

    In a world where most sports are rooted in home turf traditions — stadiums, hometown crowds, flags waving from local bleachers — Formula 1 is the outlier. It doesn’t belong to one city, or even one country. It moves across the world. Across 24 races and 21 countries every season, Formula 1 transforms global cities into race tracks. One week it’s the glittering harbour of Monaco. The next, the casinos of Las Vegas or the sands of Abu Dhabi. At one point, even Noida, the urban development on the outskirts of the National Capital Region of India.

    That geographic churn isn’t just a logistical feat — it’s the very reason F1 has gone from niche motorsport to mainstream spectacle. In fact, no other global sport matches this level of built-in mobility. Cricket may have the IPL, but its stage is largely South Asian. Football has the World Cup, but only once every four years. Tennis tours the globe, yes, but its real energy centres around four Grand Slams — Australia, France, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Formula 1, meanwhile, is a cultural roadshow that never stops moving. That’s what makes it both elusive and magnetic.

     

    Narain Karthikeyan is India’s first Formula 1 driver. | in.pinterest.com

     

    F1’s unique selling point isn’t just speed — it’s access by proximity. Even if you’ve never watched a race live, chances are you’ve seen clips of street circuits in Singapore or backdrops of European palaces flashing behind cars moving at 300 km/h. It makes you feel like you’re part of something global.

    For cities that host it, the payoff goes beyond tourism. It’s branding. Countries lobby hard to win hosting rights — not just for tourism, but because an F1 weekend places them on the global culture map.

    For a brief moment, the Buddh International Circuit outside Delhi put India on the F1 map. From 2011 to 2013, India hosted the Grand Prix. It was a spectacle — complete with red carpets, celebrity turnouts, and roaring engines slicing through Greater Noida. The logistics were imperfect. Ticket prices weren’t cheap. But the intrigue was undeniable.

    Then it vanished. Bureaucratic tussles over taxes and permissions shut down the race before it could gain traction. In the end, it wasn’t a lack of interest — it was the state’s inability to align policy with spectacle. Yet, the memory stuck. A whole generation of Indian fans got their first live taste of F1, and even today, there are growing fandoms, motorsport clubs, and homegrown racers building momentum in its wake.

     India’s 2028 Comeback Bid

    More than ten years after India’s much-vaunted fling with F1 at the Buddh International Circuit, the country is going hammer and tongs at it again. The government, recognizing that circuitous tax loops and regulatory hurdles stymied the holding of more races, is trying to resolve the problem. Sports Minister Mansukh Mandaviya has been in discussions with stakeholders (most prominently representatives from the powerful Adani Group) expected to take over the circuit, and officials from India’s motorsports federation, in order to deal with problems of taxation, regulation, and infrastructure. However, sweeping ministerial statements have been made often enough, and the timeline has already slid forward once, from 2027 to 2028. Meanwhile, F1 CEO Stefano Domenicali has cautioned that the perfect collaborations won’t be possible in the very short term. Therefore, we must wait and watch.

    The Kid Who Might Get There Before the Race Does

    Only two drivers from India have ever raced in a Formula One Grand Prix: Narain Karthikeyan and Karun Chandhok. But now there is Atiqa Mir.

    A young, female karting prodigy from Srinagar, Mir has become the first Indian and Asian female racer chosen for the Formula 1 Academy’s ‘Discover Your Drive’ development program (her father is Asif Mir, India’s first national karting champion). She’s since become the first Indian female driver to qualify for the finals of the Rotax Euro Trophy, and the first female racer to win at the Rotax Max Challenge International Trophy in Le Mans. The extraordinary thing is that despite not having a home race or domestic support, India already has an F1-worthy driver — and if Buddh reopens in 2028, Mir may be a face fans recognize before she ever races on home soil.

     

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    Fashion, too, has played a part. With race-day outfits going viral and luxury brands turning paddocks into runways, Formula 1 is now an aesthetic in itself.
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    So how did this hyper-niche European sport, once known for champagne and super yachts, become a fixture on Gen Z’s radar?

    The answer lies partly in storytelling. Netflix’s Drive to Survive did more than document the races — it rebranded F1 as a high-stakes human drama. Viewers who didn’t know DRS from a drag strip suddenly had favourite drivers, team rivalries, and opinions about tyre strategy. It made the inaccessible feel intimate.

    Fashion, too, has played a part. With race-day outfits going viral and luxury brands turning paddocks into runways, Formula 1 is now an aesthetic in itself. Lewis Hamilton is as much a fashion icon as he is a record-breaking driver. This sport even got Brad Pitt to make a movie about it.

     

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    What We’re Really Watching

    It’s about cities competing for global attention. It’s about countries using spectacle to announce their arrival. And it’s about fans — from Miami to Monaco to Mumbai — finding belonging in a sport that’s never in the same place twice. As the sport continues to expand, we’re watching soft power in motion. In that way, Formula 1 has become more than a sport. It’s a feeling. And it’s everywhere.

    As they say, “Lights out and away we go!”