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  • The Pleasure Principle

    There was a time, not so long ago, when a cousin, a friend, and a hushed conversation was all you had to learn about intimacy. The conversations were cryptic and awkward. But the internet and social media have changed all that. 

    Take, for instance, the term ‘AHgasm’. It is a curious piece of internet slang describing a moment when discomfort is misread as pleasure, highlighting how easily physical unease can be misunderstood. Sexual wellness influencer Seema Anand (@seemaanadstorytelling) discussed it with her 1.9 million followers on Instagram. Other content creators picked it too, and the term went viral.

    That’s unusual for a nation that hasn’t been vocal about sexual wellness and intimacy for most of its modern history.  Sex carried the baggage of morals and ‘purity’. There were few discussions about sexual compatibility, and expressing displeasure about pleasure was mostly unheard of.

     

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    Until recently. New Delhi hosted a sexual health expert’s lecture on intimacy and women’s pleasure at The Piano Man Jazz Club this month. Influencers are seen as sexuality educators. Movies such as Lust Stories, Janhit Mein Jaari and Helmet, (OTT releases), and Shubh Mangal Saavdhan, addressed the need for equal and consensual sexual pleasure. 

    Feminism has pushed the envelope too. Actors and stand-up comedians now normalize a woman’s desire and self-pleasure. OTT content targeting Gen Z, exemplified by the popularity of Off Campus, has helped make on-screen intimacy a more familiar part of youth-oriented storytelling. The show built an entire episode around consent, and making partners feel safe and secure while being physically vulnerable. 

     

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    These still remain bedroom conversations though. Sexual wellness brands promise discreet packaging; their language revolves around care and wellness.
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    Dating apps such as Tinder and Bumble have also helped. Phrases such as ‘here for a good time’, ‘casual vibes only’, ‘no strings attached’ pop up on a lot of people’s profiles, irrespective of their gender. It’s acceptable online behaviour, which has had a trickle-down offline effect as well. Migration too, for work or education and financial independence have given younger generations more autonomy to explore intimate relationships, experiment even.

    The bigger change, however, comes with sexual wellness brands such as MyMuse, Leezu’s, and The Sassy Thing. They use humor and classy aesthetics to push their products and educate people about how to use them. In turn, they have become advocacy platforms for indulging in care and desire. They have also made asking for ‘permission’ and ‘consent’ cool, and promoted the idea of travelling with intimacy aids for a pleasurable holiday. 

    Therapists and counsellors have also been stressing the importance of clearly communicating one’s expectations. “I urge my clients to take a vacation together before getting married,” says Shalini Singh, founder of Andwemet, a platform that helps singles find their right match for marriage. 

     

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    These still remain bedroom conversations though. Sexual wellness brands promise discreet packaging; their language revolves around care and wellness. Classy, yes, but also speaks volumes about how we continue to have reservations talking about these subjects. “Sexual intimacy is still tangled in self-imposed moral censorship,” says Neha Vyas, an intimacy director and coach. It’s like being in a complicated relationship. We are in it but can’t own it. 

    Vyas got a lot of hate for her reel discussing pleasure with her mother. People condemned her for making her mom uncomfortable. “But she wasn’t,” says Vyas. “People just assumed she was because they are.” (A 2021 survey from Adult Products India found that an increasing number of men and women above 65 are buying sex toys). According to her, the prolonged culture of silence about sexual wellness and health is to be blamed for it.

    It’s reassuring then to see how more women seem to be taking matters into their own hands. A 2024 study on sex toy usage in India showed that roughly 40.5% of surveyed adults aged 18–45 use intimacy aids, with cisgender women and queer individuals leading adoption rates. That is a remarkable shift in a nation where consensual, adult sexual relationships among people of the same sex was criminalized until 2018. The real win though would be when intimacy becomes public discourse, and when sex education is no longer a contested subject.

     

  • Who Feeds Your City?

    Picture this: you’re standing in a grocery store aisle in New York City, staring at $15 cereal and wondering how the prices soared so high. Or you’re at a local grocery store in Mumbai, where the shopkeeper sells everything from rice to shampoo sachets but only stocks what he can afford to shelve. In both cases, it’s the same question: why does something as basic as food feel so precarious?

    That question has found an unlikely answer in the USA. In 2025, the then-New York State Assembly member and now NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani proposed something that felt both radical and oddly logical at once: what if the city opened its own chain of grocery stores?

    The idea is simple. The city would establish publicly-owned grocery stores in areas underserved by private retailers, and particularly in food deserts where residents struggle to access affordable fresh produce. Mamdani has pledged to open five such shops, one in each borough. The first is slated to open in 2027 at The Peninsula, an affordable housing development in the Bronx. Another is planned for 2029 in La Marqueta in East Harlem.

    At a rally announcing the Bronx location, Mamdani described the project as evidence that the government can improve people’s daily lives. Supporters saw it as an innovative response to rising food costs and unequal access to groceries. Critics, meanwhile, question whether the city should enter the grocery business at all.

    Yet regardless of whether the stores ever succeed, the proposal has already achieved something significant: it has reframed the conversation about food. Instead of asking how consumers can better navigate an increasingly unaffordable system, it asks whether the system itself should work differently.

     

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    For decades, the modern supermarket was presented as one of capitalism's success stories: endless aisles, abundant choice, fresh produce year-round, and competition that supposedly kept prices low.
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    For decades, the modern supermarket was presented as one of capitalism’s success stories: endless aisles, abundant choice, fresh produce year-round, and competition that supposedly kept prices low. But even if that was ever the full reality, the situation has now changed. Food inflation has turned everyday necessities into financial burdens. Grocery chains have consolidated, closed stores, or retreated from lower-income neighbourhoods. Several communities now live in food deserts, dependent on fast food restaurants or convenience stores for quick access to food.

     

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    Much of the world would find the idea of government-run shops familiar. Long before New York began debating municipal supermarkets, governments and communities elsewhere had already trodden this path.

    Let us take India as an example. Rationing and ration shops were introduced during colonial rule just a few years before the eclipse of the British empire, then carried onwards to post-Independence India by the Indian National Congress, thanks to the crippling food insecurity colonization had introduced into India.

    For decades, rationing provided subsidized grain and other essentials to millions of households. During the pandemic, it became a crucial lifeline, helping families shoulder the stresses of lockdowns, unemployment and supply disruptions. In some ways, Mamdani’s proposal echoes the spirit of India’s rationing system. 

     

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    Rationing and ration shops were introduced during colonial rule just a few years before the eclipse of the British empire, then carried onwards to post-Independence India by the Indian National Congress, thanks to the crippling food insecurity colonization had introduced into India.
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    Not that the system is perfect. It has consistently been plagued by complaints about poor quality produce, bureaucratic hurdles, and inconsistent supplies. Yet despite its flaws, it stands tall as one of the world’s largest food-security programmes, built on a simple premise: access to food cannot be left entirely to market forces, especially with an economically-precarious citizenry.

    Other countries have arrived at similar conclusions through very different models. Cuba’s libreta system guarantees citizens a monthly basket of subsidized essentials through state-run distribution networks. Venezuela’s CLAP programme emerged as an emergency response to economic collapse, delivering food boxes directly to households. In Finland, consumer-owned cooperative supermarkets operate on a different principle altogether, prioritizing member ownership, price stability and community participation over shareholder returns.

     

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    Still, the proposal has sparked intense debate. In countries where public services are deeply embedded in everyday life, state involvement in food distribution may seem unremarkable. But the United States has long linked food access to free-market logic. Americans may accept publicly funded schools, libraries, parks and transit systems, yet many remain uneasy about government operating grocery stores.

    That discomfort has already surfaced. New York City Council Speaker Julie Menin has questioned how city-owned stores might affect bodegas and neighborhood supermarkets. Small-business groups and independent grocers argue that publicly-funded competitors could distort an industry where profit margins are already low.

    Others raise concerns about feasibility. Some critics point to a report by Community Food Advocates suggesting that five stores may be too small a network to meaningfully influence food prices across the city. According to the report, a program capable of significantly affecting affordability would require roughly 20 stores, nearly $400 million in startup costs and hundreds of millions of dollars in annual operating subsidies. Others argue that the city has yet to provide a detailed policy framework explaining how such costs would be justified or sustained.

    But perhaps the real significance of the debate lies in what it reveals about a changing relationship between citizens, markets and governments. Across the United States, cities are increasingly experimenting with new approaches to food access. Los Angeles has introduced free grocery shuttles for residents in underserved areas. San Francisco’s Food Empowerment Market offers discounted groceries to low-income households. Chicago has explored the possibility of municipally-owned grocery stores. 

    For much of the 20th C, Americans largely treated food as a market commodity. Much of the rest of the world treated it as a public responsibility. Mamdani’s proposal sits at the intersection of those two traditions.

    From Mumbai’s ration shops to New York’s proposed municipal supermarkets, we are seeing different versions of the same impulse: a recognition that food is too important to be treated as just another product on a shelf. The debate is no longer simply about groceries. It is about who bears responsibility for ensuring that people can afford to eat.

  • Timber Towns, Concrete Cities

    If you’ve ever been inside a breezy, wood-framed house in California or seen suburban homes in Arizona with timber skeletons, you might wonder — why don’t we build like that in India? After all, it’s hot there too. Yet most Indian homes are built with sturdy brick and concrete.

    Walk through an American suburb, and you’ll notice something — houses made almost entirely of wood. That didn’t just happen by chance. When early settlers arrived, they were surrounded by forests. Wood was everywhere, easy to work with, and quick to build with. Over time, it simply became the way homes were made. Timber was abundant and incredibly convenient — easy to harvest, transport, and shape into homes using basic tools. In climates ranging from New England’s chill to Florida’s heat, wood also proved to be a decent natural insulator.

     

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    And then there’s the maintenance — or lack thereof. In the US, wooden houses have shaped an entire way of living. Unlike their haunted-house image in pop culture, wooden homes are surprisingly practical. They’re easy to tweak, expand, and fix, which helped popularize weekend renovations and DIY culture. Over the years, everything from building codes to home improvement stores evolved to support this wooden home model.

    Now shift the lens to India, and the picture changes. With high temperatures for much of the year, Indian homes have to deal with heat differently. That’s why brick and concrete are everywhere — these materials stay cooler through the day, offering relief without needing constant air-conditioning. If you’ve ever walked into a cement-walled Indian home on a hot afternoon and felt that cool rush, you’ve experienced the science at work.

     

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    Brick and concrete withstand heavy rains, pests, and even the occasional festival-induced firecracker incident.
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    It’s not just about heat. Indian cities are built to endure. Brick and concrete withstand heavy rain, pests, and even the occasional festival-induced firecracker incident. For Indians, a solid ‘pakka’ home is associated with security, permanence, and status. Given that clay, sand, and cement are readily available materials, this construction style makes practical sense.

    But there is another, perhaps less salubrious reason too. Building concrete homes is generally harder and more time-consuming than building wooden ones. Concrete itself requires heavy machinery, specialized mixing and curing processes, and crucially, skilled masonry labor. Labor, of course, is abundant in India, and often undercompensated. 

     

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    Meanwhile, over in the USA, prefabricated timber frames can be erected quickly, often in a matter of weeks, leading to lower labor costs.  

    The next time you walk through an American suburb or fly up the elevator in an Indian apartment block, look beyond the paint and the floor plans. The walls around you, the floor beneath you, they’re all telling a story — about the landscapes people inherited, the economies they built, and the futures they imagined

  • The Indian Wedding Reimagined

    Specially designed matchboxes for the bar, tissue papers and coasters printed with a couple’s wedding logo, and hand-written letters from the bride for 350 guests at a sit-down lunch. Today’s Indian weddings look and feel nothing like what they did even five years ago.

    Late baraats, pheras during mahurat, never-ending guest lists and boring banquet halls are out of the picture. The Gen Z vibe is intimate, personalized and identity-driven. Important functions host no more than 300-500 guests (an enormous downsizing from traditional weddings that could stretch to 1,000 guests or even more). Some couples are whittling down the guest list even more, to 100 guests. The overall budget, though, has soared. An average spend on the wedding is ₹39.5 lakh, almost 8% above last year. The aim is to create a memorable experience for the guests.

     

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    Late baraats, pheras during mahurat, never-ending guest lists and boring banquet halls are out of the picture. The Gen Z vibe is intimate, personalized and identity-driven.
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    It’s interesting to see how familial power dynamics have changed too. Weddings are no longer a family’s project or even the parents’ playground. The couple leads the charge. “Mostly the bride. She is the main character. All others are supporting actors,” says wedding photographer Rajesh Satankar of Knotting Bells. There was a time when the groom’s family demanded a certain kind of wedding and the bride’s family nodded. Not anymore. The bride calls the shots now.

     

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    The celebrations are led by personal stories and experiences. The venue, décor, food, content and everything else must fit into the narrative. The decor is inspired by a place where the couple first met. The wedding stationery might feature sketches of their favourite movie characters. A Blue Tokai coffee counter sits next to a live pizza station where even the dough is kneaded on the spot. Quite natural, since the bride loves coffee and the groom digs pizza.

    “The food menus are crisper and experience-driven,” says food stylist and caterer Dipti Sawalka Modi of Gourmet Design Company. The buffet doesn’t have everything from dosas to chat and pasta and pizza, nor are there big, heavy plates. The focus is on conscious consumption and an elevated meal experience. Think imported cheeses, artisanal cocktails and gourmet ice creams, each embellished with the couple’s specially-designed wedding logo. 

     

     

    Scenic wedding destinations such as heritage hotels, hill stations, vineyards, even jungle resorts, are now preferred venues, says wedding planner Siddharth Bavishi of The Wedding Trunk. Couples are also choosing more unusual places such as Mahabalipuram and Rishikesh. It’s no longer just Goa, Udaipur and Jaipur.

    And of course, content plays a major role. “Going viral is the goal,” says Satankar. “It’s the new cultural currency, which gives people a sense of validation,” he adds. Last year, sunset pheras were big. It didn’t matter whether it was the right ‘mahurat’ or not, what mattered was beautiful photographs and videos in the perfect light. The priest does not decide the wedding schedule anymore, based on auspicious times and dates. A desired aesthetic for the content does.

     

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    But this also means that a lot more is squeezed in the shorter two to three-day celebrations. No one has the time for a week-long event. Every little thing is planned to the last detail and accounted for. The ‘getting dressed’ video from 10 to 10.30 am. the groom’s entry from 11 to 11.30, and fifteen minutes for the choreographed dance sequence for social media content. “Bride and grooms come armed with cue sheets, and hardly anything is ‘go with the flow’. It’s almost regimental,” says Satankar. 

    A wedding may still be about two people beginning a life together, but it is now also a story crafted for an audience far beyond the venue. In the age of reels and viral moments, the Indian wedding has evolved from a family celebration into perhaps the most elaborate piece of content a couple will ever create.

  • The Biggest Sport the World Forgot

    There is a version of this story that begins thousands of years ago, in the villages of Southern India, where young men squared off on bare patches of dirt with no ball, no bat, no net — only the chant ‘kabaddi kabaddi kabaddi’ and their nerve. One side sent a single raider across a line scratched into the earth. Their job was to tap as many opponents as they could and sprint home again, all on a single held breath. If his breath ran out before he did, he was out of the game. Some tellers of the old epics even find a version of it in the Mahabharata, where the warrior Abhimanyu (Lord Arjuna’s son) stands alone against a ring of enemies.

    For most of its long life, kabaddi was dismissed as a village game, a school child’s game, an evening pastime, not to be taken seriously in the way cricket was. It asked for no equipment and no money, which is precisely why it never accumulated any. Hockey had its Olympic gold medals; cricket, eventually, had everything else. Kabaddi had a patch of dirt. Baffling, since it was popular around Asia; known as hu-tu-tu in western India, ha-du-du in eastern India and Bangladesh (where it is the national sport), chedu-gudu in southern India, gudu in Sri Lanka, and theechub in Thailand.

     

    An outdoor kabaddi wrestling match.

     

    The first hint that the game might mean something bigger came via an exhibition bout at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, although it was looked upon as a mere curiosity. It took until 1950 for the sport to acquire even the skeleton of an institution, with the founding of the All India Kabaddi Federation, and another forty years before the Asian Games, in 1990, admitted it as a medal sport for men. For women, it took another twenty years. 

     

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    Within a few seasons the league had rocketed to become India's second most-watched sporting product, trailing only the IPL itself, drawing crowds that dwarfed anything hockey or Indian football had managed.
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    Then, in 2014, something changed with the birth of the Pro Kabaddi League. It borrowed its entire architecture from the Indian Premier League, cricket’s glittering, massively popular franchise. Out went the packed-dirt fields; in came air-conditioned arenas, ringed by disco lights and blaring film music. Out went matches that could stretch on indefinitely; in came forty-minute contests, sharpened by rules like the “do-or-die raid” and the “super tackle,” built for a television audience with no patience for slowness. The raider’s chant, the very thing that made the sport what it was, got replaced in the professional game by an overhead clock counting down thirty seconds — efficiency triumphing, as it usually does, over ritual.

    It worked. Within a few seasons the league had rocketed to become India’s second most-watched sporting product, trailing only the IPL itself, drawing crowds that dwarfed anything hockey or Indian football had managed. Steel magnates and Bollywood stars bought franchises; the actor Abhishek Bachchan took the Jaipur Pink Panthers, while his father, Bollywood icon Amitabh Bachchan, lent the whole enterprise his considerable shine. Players who might once have spent their careers in obscure local leagues were suddenly the subject of televized auctions, bid up into small fortunes.

     

    Pro Kabaddi: Patna Pirates defeat Bengal Warriors

     

    What is easy to miss, amid the sponsorship money and the strobe lighting, is that the league never quite let go of its origins even as it dressed them up for the cameras. Every franchise is required to carry foreign players — Iranians, mostly, since Iran has produced some of the sport’s finest defenders, but also Koreans, Japanese, Turkmen, even Britons. It is a small, almost bureaucratic requirement, but it has quietly managed to send the game abroad, player by player, franchise by franchise.

     

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    In the last couple of years, that quiet trickle has become a stream. A World Cup, staged for the first time outside Asia, unfolded across Birmingham, Coventry, Walsall, and Wolverhampton.
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    In the last couple of years, that quiet trickle has become a stream. A World Cup, staged for the first time outside Asia, unfolded across Birmingham, Coventry, Walsall, and Wolverhampton, with sixteen men’s teams and eight women’s, England taking on Cameroon, and Sri Lanka, China, and Egypt as well. Broadcasts on BBC iPlayer carried the whole affair to an audience that had never heard the raider’s chant. Officials speak hopefully, as officials do, of the Olympics one day — though India’s own record at the Asian Games, where it has recently finished behind both Iran and South Korea, suggests that global popularity and Indian dominance may not be the same prize.

    What began as a way for village boys to test their lungs and their courage has become, however improbably, a piece of glittering export. It is proof, if any were needed, that even the oldest and simplest games can be taught new tricks, and made to travel.

  • India’s Artisans are Going Viral

    The song playing in the background of the reel is Gujarati folk music. A man is hunched over a white cloth, meticulously sketching miniature figures onto it. And that’s it. This simple Instagram reel has 18.6 k likes, 259 forwards and multiple re-shares and comments.

    Who is the man? It is the artist Dilip Chitara in his home at Viramgam, in Gujarat, working on Mata Ni Pachedi, a 400-year-old textile art. His Instagram account has a total of 361 posts and reels. An unremarkable number, except that in 2020, Chitara, a fourth-generation artist was barely making Rs 2,00,000 a year, and today, he makes ten times the amount. His 27-year-old son Ajay, handles his father’s social media account, which has helped him get orders from the US, UK, as well as online and offline stores across India.

    There was a time when the Chitaras had no money to fix the leaking roof of their home. Today, they employ 25 women from their village. These women fill the colors in Chitara’s outlines. 

    “Who knew social media had so much power?” asks Ajay. “We didn’t either until Covid struck,” adds E Rajeshwari, ex-secretary of a craft NGO, The Crafts Council of India.

    Social media has helped traditional artisans, even from remote places in India, to connect directly with customers around the world. Instagram, YouTube, and even X have helped them share their work with the world, and educate viewers about their art forms. It’s given them autonomy, financial security, and cut out the middleman. “More importantly, it has helped revive dying arts and crafts, and motivated younger artists to continue their family’s legacy,” says Rajeshwari.

    Mata Ni Pachedi involves the meticulous painting of a cloth, a cloth that was once used as a mobile shrine by the indigenous Vaghri community. The Chitaras had practiced it for five generations. But Ajay had almost given up on it just before the Covid 19 pandemic. Instead, he took up a job as the salesman of a company that makes calculators. “I have been painting Mata Ni Pachedi since I was a baby, and never wanted to do anything else,” says the artist. “But it had gotten extremely challenging to sustain the family by just painting, which is why I was forced to take up the job.”

    But during the pandemic, when the roof of his house started leaking, Ajay fell back on his art to get funds for repair work. The NGO Kaarigar Clinic suggested that Ajay take pictures of his leaky roof and post them on Instagram alongside his father’s art. The NGO posted these on their social media platforms too. “Help poured in from everywhere,” recalls Ajay. Clients paid money in advance for commissioned pieces. “I realized that I can reach customers from around the world through social media,” says Ajay. He attended social media workshops conducted by NGOs. They taught him how to take good pictures, in good light, how to shoot good videos, make reels and post them.

     

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    When the pandemic disrupted traditional markets and left artisans struggling, NGOs began teaching craftspeople how to use social media as a sales tool. Among these efforts was a programme led by the Crafts Council of India, which, alongside partner NGOs, trained 5,000 artisans to build an online presence and connect with buyers directly. 

     

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    Social media has helped traditional artisans, even from remote places in India, to connect directly with customers around the world. Instagram, YouTube, and even X have helped them share their work with the world, and educate viewers about their art forms.
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    Through social media, Ajay learnt to innovate. He urged his father to create hand-made masks, saris and dupattas, with Mata Ni Pachedi motifs. These were then posted online. “I interact with my customers directly now, which has helped me understand what people like and don’t like, and how we must tweak our offerings accordingly.”

    In Rajasthan’s Bhilwara, 26-year-old Anuj Joshi also has a similar story. He comes from a family of phad painters. A phad is a hand-painted scroll that illustrates the life of Pabuji, a local Rajasthani deity. Anuj’s father Kalyan is a revered Phad painter, and among the last few remaining artists of the art. “It was under threat. No kids wanted to pursue it as it hardly made any money,” says Anu Sorabji of the artist collective, Paramparik Karigar. Anuj also didn’t. He was inclined towards digital art and worked as a freelance artist for a couple of years. But operating from a small city was not easy.

    So, when the Covid 19 slump hit, Anuj decided to help his father and 31-year-old sister Kritika (also a Phad artist). He started posting their work on social media, and orders from the US, UK, Singapore and Hong Kong started pouring in. Kalyan Joshi’s Instagram account now has 67.7 K followers with an average of four orders coming from the platform every month. 

     

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    The success has been contagious. Several kids from Bhilwara have signed up for Phad painting lessons from Kalyan. Anuj too has started painting again. “I realised that there are buyers for traditional arts too. One just needs to know how to reach them. Social media has been a great help,” he adds.

    Rajeshwari points to similar examples found throughout the country. India’s traditional arts and crafts—numbering an estimated 3,000 forms and ranging from bells and footwear to mats, sculptures, and saris — are now reaching a much wider audience. However, this visibility has a downside: it’s become easier for digital printing businesses to replicate artists’ original designs, then reproduce them on canvas and sell them at cheaper prices, as Anuj points out. There’s also a growing problem of repetitive imagery across different art forms. Sorabji notes that motifs like the ‘tree of life’ now appear everywhere, regardless of whether they originally belonged to that particular tradition. Similarly, Bollywood-themed posters rendered in traditional styles—be it Pattachitra or Phad — have become a common sight.

    Even so, the benefits clearly outweigh the drawbacks. Social media is opening a new chapter for how traditional arts are created and sold. At last, these art forms are moving with the times and receiving the recognition they deserve.

  • Desi by Design

    India invented yoga, but the biggest yoga attire brands aren’t Indian. Indian royalty were bedecked in jewels for millennia, yet Cartier came to define luxury jewelry. Banarasi silk, Kanjeevaram weaves, and Pashmina are centuries deep, but fashion’s power centers still sit in Milan, Paris, and New York.

    A new generation of Indian creatives is out to invert that pattern — not by imitating the West, and not by wrapping products in heritage as decoration, but by building a visual language that is unmistakably Indian and fluent on the world stage all at once.

     

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    From Service Provider to Source

    Indian luxury has hit a watershed moment. Designers showcasing craft-led, India-proud collections at London and New York fashion weeks are distilling heritage techniques and savoir-faire into pieces that speak globally while staying rooted — deconstructed silhouettes, handmade embellishments, playful tailoring, upcycled mill surplus, narratives built around human psychology. The ambition is structural: reposition India from a creative-services hub to the source of finished, globally credible goods that are still distinctly ‘Made in India’.

    Packaging and design is going through a parallel shift. Across beauty, food, spirits, and accessories, brands and studios are rethinking what ‘premium’ and ‘Indian’ look like  — a change in typography, color, and materials driven as much by consumer psychology and market economics as by taste. Underneath it is a broader cultural confidence: Indian brands building for India, from India, without asking anyone else’s permission.

    Consumer behavior backs this up. A growing share of Indian shoppers — 36%, against 23% who still favor imported brands — now say they prefer homegrown beauty products, reversing a decades-long assumption that foreign origin signaled quality. Shoppers are reading labels, expecting evidence behind claims, and choosing brands built at home — both design-conscious urban millennials and Gen Z.

     

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    The 35.4 million-strong global Indian diaspora—with $381 billion in buying power in the US alone is looking for contemporary Indian design coupled with Indian story-telling rather than milquetoast copies of Western style.
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    The more significant question these brands are answering isn’t simply about aesthetics; instead, it’s about identity and self-definition. In short, what makes us Indian without leaning on cliché?

     Bombay Sweet Shop and Subko are doing similarly inventive work in food and beverage: Bombay Sweet Shop reimagines traditional sweets through maximalist aesthetics inspired by Mumbai’s Art Deco buildings and green spaces. Meanwhile, Paper Boat built an entire food brand around the nostalgia of growing up in 1980s and 1990s India. And this extends beyond food brands — Nappa Dori‘s elegant leather-ware stems from distinctly Indian sensibilities but is equally at home in a boardroom in New York.

     

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    It would be easy to assume Indian brands are simply importing Western, white-space-heavy minimalism. Instead, Indian premium minimalism has developed its own dialect — bold typography, assertive color, restrained detail. Typography is doing much of the heavy lifting industry-wide. Bold, simple lettering and tight palettes deliver legibility and a sense of quality almost instantly. Subko layers Devanagari, English, and Urdu in a layout inspired by vintage Bollywood posters, reflecting the subcontinent’s linguistic range. Paper Boat’s hand-drawn lettering was an early signal of this approach. Mumbai beauty brand Project Qaafi, launched in 2024, takes its name from a phrase meaning ‘not too much, not too little, just enough’. Rather than dropping Devanagari script onto a label as a cultural flourish, it builds the geometry of Indian scripts into its own custom letterforms.

    But this is an opportunity that pushes past Indian borders. The 35.4 million-strong global Indian diaspora—with $381 billion in buying power in the US alone is looking for contemporary Indian design coupled with Indian story-telling rather than milquetoast copies of Western style. The proof? Indie sneaker brands Gully Labs and Thaely have drawn long queues in San Francisco and Dubai. The global South Asian diaspora’s love for homegrown brands like Comet stems from a craving for fresh, culturally resonant streetwear. 

     

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    Bombay Sweet Shop reimagines traditional sweets through maximalist branding drawn from Mumbai's Art Deco buildings and green spaces.
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    None of this is happening in isolation. It’s paired with a sustainability push and a technology layer — QR codes, NFC tags, and RFID increasingly built into labels to carry origin stories, loyalty programs, and authentication for higher-end goods.

    The design shift and the market shift are telling the same story from two angles: Indian brands no longer need to borrow someone else’s visual language to be taken seriously. They’re building their own — global in fluency, local in soul — and shoppers are responding.

  • Raising the Bar

    Back in the 2020s, Rahul Mehra was often met with disinterest when introducing his craft gin in an already-saturated UK market. But the minute he told bartenders and restaurant owners that it was made in India, with Indian botanicals, their ears would prick up. “There was always a follow-up question though. Are you sure this is made in India and not elsewhere?” remembers Mehra, co-founder of the Goa-based Third Eye Distillery. It’s the parent company of Stranger & Sons, a craft gin celebrated for blending juniper with nine Indian botanicals such as Gondhoraj lemons, black pepper, mace, and coriander. 

    Cut to 2026, Stranger & Sons is now available in about 20 international markets, including the UK, Australia, Italy, Singapore, UAE and Thailand. They also launched in the US three months ago, with their export revenue rising from 5% in 2020 to 25% of the total revenue today. 

    Other Indian craft gins such as Jaisalmer Indian Craft Gin, Hapusa Himalayan Dry Gin, Jin JiJi, among others, are also starting to find favor in global markets. Jigger & Pony, Atlas and The Bar Square in Singapore, bars at The Savoy and The Connaught luxury hotels in the UK, the Gin Run in Thailand all stock Indian craft gins. 

    What is driving their success? Indigenous botanicals, excellent craftsmanship, good storytelling and placement of the gin in discerning markets. 

     

    Anand Virmani, co-founder of Nao Spirits & Beverages. Credit – Nao Spirits & Beverages

     

    Even a decade ago, the gin market in India was lacklustre. Today, these craft gins have made a significant mark not just within India but also in the global market. “That’s quite commendable, especially because India was not known to produce quality liquor, with the exception of some whiskies,” says Rehan Guha, a chef and F&B entrepreneur who runs Oxymorons, a 30-seater craft cocktail bar in Hyderabad.

     

    “
    Even a decade ago, the gin market in India was lacklustre. Today, these craft gins have made a significant mark not just within India but also in the global market.
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    The greatest appeal of these gins comes from the local botanicals they are infused with i.e. cardamom, Palash flowers, Khasi mandarin and pine-smoked tea, for example. “The international appeal of these gins is largely driven by ‘brand India’, which is globally recognized for agriculture, spice trade and botanical diversity,” explains Mehra. 

    “The botanicals also lend the spirits their distinct flavour”, says Yangdup Lama. Lama is one of India’s finest mixologists, often travelling the world for his work. These gins (and the cocktails that use them) feel brighter, more aromatic and often more spice-forward than classic London Dry expressions, giving them a unique identity globally. 

    “For instance, in the United Kingdom, which is already crowded with similar-tasting gins from the country, it is the novelty of our craft gin that distinguishes us from the others,” says Anand Virmani, co-founder of Nao Spirits & Beverages, and widely regarded as making the first Indian craft gin in 2017. Their Hapusa, a sipping gin, has locally-foraged Himalayan juniper berries, Gondhoraj lime, turmeric, mango and ginger.

    These brewers, however, didn’t target the diaspora, conventionally thought of as an easy entry point, nor the supermarket shelf space. They went straight for premium cocktail bars, Michelin-starred restaurants, luxury hotels and specialist spirit retailers, adds Guha. 

    “Indian spirits are succeeding through advocacy,” he explains. At these bars and restaurants, bartenders play a crucial role in explaining what makes these spirits distinctive, encouraging customers to pay for a more elevated drinking experience.

     

    “
    At these bars and restaurants, bartenders play a crucial role in explaining what makes these spirits distinctive, encouraging customers to pay for a more elevated drinking experience.
    ”

     

    The gin houses also learnt crucial lessons from their predecessors. When Karan Bilimoria launched Cobra beer in the UK in 1989, he successfully chose curry houses for distributing his beer. “But he also became pigeonholed by that association. We didn’t want that,” explains Virmani. 

    Jin Jiji craft gin was first launched in the US in 2019. It was then launched in the UK, Australia, Singapore and 13 other foreign markets before coming to India in 2023. It’s distilled with foraged Himalayan juniper, Darjeeling tea and tulsi leaves in the small town of Kashipur in Uttarakhand.

     

     

     

    The spirit comes in a sleek, tall bottle that has the Devnagiri script and motifs inspired by Indian design. Superior packaging has also helped craft gins make a mark in the international market, says Guha. 

    Stranger & Sons has a jungle-inspired illustrated label that illustrates its nine botanicals. When consumers finish the bottle, the scene on the front is mirrored on the inside of the back label. Hapusa is made of blue-black glass with a squat taper neck, mimicking the snowline of the Himalayas.

    As the global gin market grows, the category may prove to be a pathfinder for other Indian alcohol. Rum, feni and vodka producers are already walking down the same path. If they succeed, India could become known not just as a producer of whisky, but as one of the world’s most distinctive sources of premium spirits.

  • The Scent of Home

  • Party of One

    One of life’s greatest pleasures? Going to a new restaurant, ordering a glass of Sauvignon Blanc, and a perfectly-poached, butter-fleshed fish cloaked with a citrus sauce. Maybe it comes with a crisp green salad studded with brash tomatoes, ripe with juice. After, perhaps, you order a lemon tart, fresh and bright and zingy. But the best part? The best part is enjoying the meal alone, giving it the attention it deserves, not sharing it, not muddying the meal with inane chit-chatter. 

    Yet for all its pleasures, dining alone remains a surprisingly radical act in much of the world, and perhaps nowhere more so than in India.

     

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    For a country built around the conviviality of the shared meal (think of the Bohri thaal, where families and friends eat out of the same thali), solo diners have long been seen as the exception rather than the norm.

    There was always a gendered dimension to this. A man eating alone at a restaurant was often seen as professional and independent. A woman dining by herself, meanwhile, was more likely to attract curiosity or suspicion. The assumption was that public leisure belonged to groups, couples, or families — not to a woman occupying a table alone.

    That assumption is slowly loosening its grip, and several forces are driving the change.

    Perhaps the biggest driving force is the rise of remote and freelance work. The pandemic knuckled people out of their offices and into cafés and co-working spaces — this helped normalize solo diners, busy with their laptops and phones and Airpods.  

    Social media has also helped reframe solo dining as a form of self-care and an intentional lifestyle choice rather than an awkward necessity. Instagram is filled with carefully-composed images of a lone wine glass beside a beautifully plated meal, turning solitude into something aspirational.

     

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    Instagram is filled with carefully-composed images of a lone wine glass beside a beautifully plated meal, turning solitude into something aspirational.
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    Layered on top of this is a broader cultural move towards individualism. Millennials and Gen Z are generally more comfortable prioritizing personal preference over group consensus than previous generations. For them, dining alone can be as empowering and relaxing as a yoga class or a slow walk in the park.

    Of course, working-class women in India never really needed permission to eat alone in public. Any railway platform, street-food stall, or bus depot tells that story. Women have long grabbed an omelette pao, a plate of pao bhaji, a quick snack before or after shifts. Solo dining itself is not new. What is changing is who gets to do it without attracting attention, and in what kinds of spaces.

     

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    India’s moment mirrors similar developments around the world. In the United States, solo dining reservations have risen steeply by nearly 30% over the past two years. The United Kingdom has recorded similar growth, particularly in cities such as London and Manchester. In Australia, solo reservations increased by 12% in the past year alone, with solo diners spending an average of AUD 94 per meal — roughly 36% more than diners eating in groups.

    Restaurants, however, have been somewhat slower to adapt. Most dining rooms in India are still organized around couples or larger groups. Tables for two dominate the floor plan, while the solo guest is often eyed askance; not unwelcome, simply an afterthought.

    That may be starting to change. Business owners are beginning to realize that solo diners are easier to accommodate, turn tables more quickly, and, according to certain industry surveys, often spend more per person than group diners. In response, some cafés and restaurants in India and abroad are experimenting with single-seat counters, bar seating, and communal tables that make dining alone feel less like an exception and more like a recognized and respected customer category.

    The real question is no longer whether solo diners will find a seat. It is whether the hospitality industry will evolve quickly enough to welcome them.

    Because solo dining is not a passing trend. For a growing number of Indians — and especially for women — eating alone is no longer a backup plan reserved for cancelled arrangements or busy schedules. It is a choice. And increasingly, it is the first one they make.