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  • Art in the Age of Algorithms

    They’re probably seven or eight, the two little girls who are running across the floor, bursting the mist-filled bubbles that descend slowly from a towering, aluminium tree. After a little while, their mothers join them, interacting with A.A. Murakami’s (Azusa Murakami and Alexander Groves) artwork New Spring. The work perfectly recreates the fleeting beauty of cherry blossoms with the help of digital-tech.

    Nine such works of art are featured in Second Nature, an exhibition that explores humanity’s relationship with the environment. Housed at Mumbai’s Nita Mukesh Ambani Cultural Centre (NMACC) for six months, it is powered by motion sensors, responsive lights and sound, as well as digital printers. Naturally, it’s gone viral on Instagram and YouTube. 

    From Qatar to Singapore, Tokyo to Zurich, digital and AI art exhibitions are fast gaining popularity among tourists and locals. While digital art is enabled by tech, AI art is created by artificial intelligence with prompts from the artists. 

    And both are criticized for creating a spectacle that overshadows the purpose of art itself. It’s gimmicky, simulative, and meant to please social media. Some have even gone as far as calling it slop. Also, like anything AI, the art is condemned for copying or borrowing from copyrighted works, without giving their creators any credit or compensation.

    Yet, both artists and viewers are drawn to it. Artist Refik Anadol and wife Efsun Erkiliç opened Dataland in Los Angeles, the world’s first permanent AI museum. Dubai has announced one too. Japan-based teamLab, famed for its immersive digital light installations (also showing at NMACC), is building its second permanent space in Singapore soon.

    Digital and AI art have democratized both art making and art viewing. Anyone with a great idea can create art now. Besides, “viewers are drawn in with its easy access, and because it responds to them,” says Mollie Dent-Brocklehurst, curator of Second Nature and the co-founder of Miami-based Superblue, a 50,000-sq-ft space of immersive art. In a country like India, where the art-viewing or museum-going culture is still negligible, the spectacle of AI art becomes a big motivating factor for people to get out of their houses and into art galleries.

     

    teamLab’s interactive installation Resonating Microcosms – Solidified Light is a room full of pod-like structures that shine and emit a sound when viewers touch them | Picture credit – teamLab

     

    Outside of the few public museums and a handful of private museums, art viewing in the country has largely been an intimidating experience. The jargon-heavy wall texts, the exclusive, invite-only wine-and-cheese openings, the posh, Anglophile art world, and frequent references to Western art theories, have made it inaccessible for the majority.

     

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    In a country like India, where the art-viewing or museum-going culture is still negligible, the spectacle of AI art becomes a big motivating factor for people to get out of their houses and into art galleries.
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    Even today, if you visit a private gallery on weekdays, most times, you’ll be on your own. There won’t be anyone to walk you through the work or hand you reading material. It’s hard then to feel connected with that static painting on the wall. Whereas the immersive digital and AI works don’t alienate you. They don’t make you feel small or foolish, even if you haven’t studied art history. Instead, they respond to you, literally — Random International’s Presence and Erasure at Second Nature prints the images of onlookers on a photochromatic surface. 

    Plus, such art offers a different experience each time you view it. Artists and curators Jiten Thukral and Samir Tagra invited Zambian artist and writer Bwanga Kapumpa to showcase his AI art project Dr Bwanga at Goa’s Serendipity Arts Festival last year. Kampupa trained an AI chatbot to counsel viewers based on his research on Zambia’s traditional healers. A viewer would enter a traditional telephone booth, voice their anxiety or ask a question and the chatbot would answer. Because the algorithm was trained to push machine learning, many participants found the responses eerily accurate and therapeutic. So, they would try it over and over again. 

    These works are pushing the boundaries of how we experience art. At Dataland, viewers are given a box of chocolate that give you the taste and smell of different parts of a rain forest. Created in collaboration with Valerie Confections, these chocolates are physically shaped by data.

     

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    The immersive digital and AI works don’t alienate you. They don’t make you feel small or foolish, even if you haven’t studied art history. Instead, they respond to you.
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    The textures, geometric patterns, and molds of the chocolates represent visual data maps generated directly by machine intelligence. Each comes with a distinct smell and taste that is intended for the viewer to touch and taste different parts of a rainforest, not just see and hear it. 

     

    teamLab’s installation Flowers and People, cannot be Controlled but Live Together, at Second Nature, an immersive and interactive art exhibition. | Picture credit – teamLab

     

    “AI art is here to stay whether you like it or not,” says Dent-Brocklehurst. After all, it has enabled artists to realise some of the most ambitious projects that would otherwise just remain in their imagination. Perhaps then the measure of these works is not whether they satisfy critics, but whether they spark curiosity. Judging by the two little girls chasing bubbles through New Spring—and the adults who eventually joined them—they already have.

  • A Seat at the Table

    In today’s world of Uber Eats and algorithm-driven dining, the idea of a slow-cooked meal shared with strangers, feels quietly radical. Across Indian cities, a new kind of dinner table is emerging. And it’s not in a restaurant.

    Imagine this. You ring the doorbell of a stranger’s home. The door opens. The dining table is full, the room warm with chatter and the occasional clang of serving spoons. You sit down with people you don’t know yet; a few faces you’ll forget, maybe one or two you won’t. The air is thick with the aroma of coconut-sluiced curries, fluffy Basmati rice, perhaps a drizzle of locally sourced olive oil over fresh salad greens. There’s no maître d’, no laminated menu, only a handwritten note at your place setting, telling you what you’re about to eat, and a host who treats you less like a customer and more like family.

    This is the new face of fine dining in India. And yet, it feels remarkably familiar.

     

    A Culture Remembered And Reimagined

    While the world might call it a supper club, in India, the idea of communal dining isn’t new. From sprawling wedding daawats to community feasts where plates are shared and hierarchy dissolves, the act of breaking bread together has always held cultural weight. What’s changing today is the form: more curated, more intimate, more narratively driven. Supper clubs in India are experiences — and they’re quietly redefining what it means to dine well.

    Globally, supper clubs have long been a rebuttal to the stiffness and formality of fine-dining restaurants — think Eleven98 in London, the Mumba Milano in Milan, The Gathering Table in New York or Roti Mami in Berlin — where strangers meet for a home-cooked meal and conversation. In India, the idea is finding fertile ground, not as a rebellion against fine dining, but as an evolution of it.

    Today’s Indian supper clubs focus on intimacy over grandeur. They unfold in private, invite-only settings — a sunlit studio, a tucked-away terrace, a chef’s own apartment — often hosting no more than a dozen guests. The person welcoming you is also the one who cooked the meal — walking you through where each ingredient came from. Maybe it’s millets their grandmother made in Karnataka, or tomatoes grown in someone’s rooftop garden in Mumbai. There’s a story behind every bite.

    The food is often hyper-local, seasonally driven, and deeply personal. It’s an extension of the larger global moment towards farm-to-table and slow food, but with Indian accents: indigenous grains, old community recipes, hyper-regional techniques. From Má Là Kitchen in Bengaluru (a Sichuan supper club) to The LOST Table in Gurgaon (run by husband-and-wife duo Natasha and Archit Agarwal), bring together excellent cooking with new social connections.

     

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    In Kolkata, Bengal Soiree is a community supper-club collective that brings people together for curated Bengali meals in intimate settings, offering a contemporary yet nostalgic take on the region’s rich culinary legacy. 

     

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    From sprawling wedding daawats to community feasts where plates are shared and hierarchy dissolves, the act of breaking bread together has always held cultural weight.
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    A Cultural Continuum

    At a deeper level, supper clubs tap into something inherently Indian: the act of hosting. And increasingly, that hospitality is rooted in the local. Across the country, there’s a growing pull toward ingredients grown nearby, recipes passed down through generations, and flavours tied to a single neighborhood or farm. Hosts and chefs are plucking basil leaves from their tiny balcony garden, painstakingly making their own ghee — like it’s always been done.

    Because in many parts of India, food is more than what’s on the plate. It’s how you’re welcomed. Bohri Muslim families eat together from one big thaal, a gesture of kinship and communion. In the South, elaborate meals are served on banana leaves. Sikh gurdwaras have long embodied the spirit of community meals through the langar. And in Parsi homes, hospitality is almost theatrical: steaming curry and rice arrives with tangy onion kachumber, washed down with raspberry soda, and finished with a nut-studded baked custard. 

    Supper clubs are simply reinterpreting these traditions for an urban, globally aware audience that craves connection as much as they crave flavor. In an era of Zomato and Swiggy, sitting down for a slow, home-cooked, shared meal feels radical. It feeds the human desire for stories, for slowness.

     

     

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    The Rise of the Hyper-Local Plate

    In a globalized world, the new marker of sophistication isn’t internationalism — it’s specificity. Knowing which village your saffron came from, which grandmother perfected that chutney. Supper clubs allow for that kind of detail, that kind of intimacy. What they’re really offering isn’t just food — it’s belonging. A way to feel rooted in a world that often feels too fast, too polished, too transactional.

     

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    Across the country, there’s a growing pull toward ingredients grown nearby, recipes passed down through generations, and flavours tied to a single neighbourhood or farm.
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    And clearly diners are craving more than just convenience. A 2024 Zomato survey found that nearly two-thirds of diners in cities like Delhi, Mumbai, and Bengaluru said they preferred ‘intimate, offline dining experiences’ over traditional restaurants or delivery apps. The Godrej Food Trends Report echoes this shift, predicting a rise in ‘intentional eating’ and ‘micro-community meals’ across Indian metros. But this doesn’t mean India’s love for convenience is fading — quite the opposite. The food delivery market is still booming, expected to double from $6.3 billion in 2023 to $13.5 billion by 2029. What’s changing is this: curated, offline meals and algorithmic convenience are no longer opposites. They’re coexisting — two sides of how we now want to eat. 

    Of course, there are downsides. Menus are not always affordable — a reflection of curation, but also a potential barrier to inclusivity. 

    Yet, in stepping into a stranger’s home, breaking bread together, and sharing stories over seasonal, soulful dishes, we’re participating in a tradition as old as India itself — one that reminds us that eating together has always been about more than just satisfying hunger. It’s about satiating the spirit.

  • Niacinamide and Neem: India’s New Beauty Mashup

    In the age of 10-minute deliveries, beauty is never more than a swipe away. A hit of dewy serum or a glitter lip oil can now land at your doorstep faster than your chai. It’s addictive — a kind of self-care roulette powered by dopamine and good design. Quick commerce has turned beauty into a high-speed pursuit, where the line between indulgence and impulse is increasingly hard to trace.

    But while the shelves of Blinkit and Instamart reload in real-time, something quieter is unfolding beneath the scroll. Among India’s Gen Z, there’s a growing sense that beauty — like everything else — might be moving too fast. There is a buzz to being on trend — but there is also, more recently, a feeling of fatigue. 

    And so a counter-movement is slowly taking shape. Skin-first, not glam-first. Efficacy over aesthetic. Welcome to the era of ‘quiet luxury’: think barrier-repair creams, stripped-back routines, muted packaging, and a shift toward simple ingredients that actually work without promising the universe.

     

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    The shift is visible across India’s beauty landscape. Brands such as Dot & Key, Minimalist, The Derma Co. and Foxtale have built loyal followings by prioritizing ingredients like niacinamide, ceramides and salicylic acid over aspirational, unattainable glamour. Their success suggests that younger consumers increasingly want products that clearly explain what the ingredients do, rather than merely promise magical transformations. 

     

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    There’s no tug-of-war between East and West here — Gen Z moves between niacinamide and neem with ease.
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    In India, what we’re seeing is products tie into our community’s beauty memories. Ayurveda, which once lived in handwritten notes, home kitchens, and half-remembered instructions from elders, is slowly being translated for a younger demographic. Brands like Fable & Mane are taking what many grew up with, like hair oiling before school or on Sunday afternoons, and giving it a new kind of visibility. It’s the same practice, but now with sleeker packaging in fancy stores.

    The shift is visible across the Indian beauty landscape. Brands such as Forest Essentials, Kama Ayurveda and Indē Wild have built audiences by pairing traditional ingredients like saffron, ashwagandha and bhringraj with contemporary branding and ingredient transparency. What once felt old-fashioned is increasingly being reframed as aspirational. 

    We’re watching a remix in real time: where retinol can sit comfortably beside tulsi, and glass-skin routines make room for ghee-infused balms. There’s no tug-of-war between East and West here — Gen Z moves between niacinamide and neem with ease. They might add a snail mucin essence to the cart in the same breath they search for a kumkumadi oil. For them, beauty isn’t about loyalty to one system. They’re not following a single rulebook. One day it’s a retinol serum discovered through a friend’s story; the next, it’s a haldi-and-honey mask passed down from a grandmother. For Gen Z, routines aren’t rigid — they’re a bit of a collage. YouTube one minute, family kitchen the next.

     

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    A typical routine might include a Korean snail-mucin essence from COSRX, a niacinamide serum recommended by a dermatologist on Instagram, and a homemade hair-oiling ritual involving coconut oil and curry leaves. The combination may appear eclectic, but for many consumers it feels entirely natural.

     

    “
    Ayurveda, which once lived in handwritten notes, home kitchens, and half-remembered instructions from elders, is slowly being translated for a younger demographic.
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    It’s less about keeping up and more about feeling out what actually works — for their skin, their budget, their timeline. Some of it’s instinct, some of it’s habit. There’s no master plan — just small choices, layered over time, that somehow start to feel like their own version of care.

  • Dating Apps and India’s Divided Hearts

    On any given night in India’s metros, you’ll meet two kinds of people who use dating apps. There’s the first group — swiping late into the night, looking for something light and fleeting. These are the people for whom a date might mean drinks, a long walk, or just another chat on the app itself. Then there’s a second, very different group — families and individuals browsing Shaadi.com or Bharat Matrimony, sorting profiles by caste, profession, or income bracket. Both groups are active, both are growing. But between them is… almost nothing.

    This stark split explains why some of the world’s biggest dating apps — Hinge, Bumble, Grindr, Tinder, have recently scaled back or exited India altogether. Their promise of a single ‘catch-all’ platform for romance never fit comfortably with the social realities of Indian love and marriage.

    India’s digital dating scene is not small – the online dating app market was projected to reach USD 1.42 billion by 2030. But most of the engagement sits at two extremes. Apps like Tinder and Bumble thrive among users seeking casual connections. As one 27-year-old Mumbai user put it, “Everyone knows these apps are for hooking up first, and maybe something more if it works out.”

    On the other hand, matrimonial platforms like Shaadi.com, Bharat Matrimony, and Jeevansathi, segment users by caste, religion, profession, and even salary. Shaadi.com, for example, offers filters for ‘business families’, ‘defence officers’, or ‘income above ₹1 crore’. Some newer services go further, asking for offer letters or salary slips as proof of social standing. Here, the expectation is explicit: serious, marriage-oriented matchmaking shaped by long-standing social hierarchies.

    The result? If you want casual fun, you know which apps to open. If you want marriage, you know which portals to join. The middle ground — slow dating, open-ended relationships, or simply ‘seeing where it goes’ — is still culturally thin.

     

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    Dating apps like Hinge were built on the idea of self-directed romantic discovery: you browse profiles, chat, and meet without family oversight. In the U.S. or Europe, where dating outside family mediation has decades of precedent, this works. In India, where marriage remains closely tied to family, caste, and community networks, swiping can feel unserious if your goal is long-term partnership.

    That tension plays out in subtle ways. Even well-educated, urban Indians often feel pressure to justify relationships in traditional terms once they turn serious. Parents are still gatekeepers for many marriages. Without a cultural bridge from casual dating to family-approved commitment, global apps struggle to retain users beyond a certain age or stage of life.

     

     

    India’s marriage market is famously granular. There are apps and services for specific castes, for alumni of elite colleges, for high-income professionals, and for non-resident Indians seeking partners abroad. Each is a carefully carved niche that understands its users’ expectations.

    Global dating apps, by contrast, try to be universal. Their swipe-left, swipe-right interface flattens difference into personal choice, assuming that chemistry and conversation are enough. But in India, choice is only part of the equation. Family approval, social compatibility, and community expectations remain powerful forces, making a single “everything app” feel mismatched.

    This cultural reality has business consequences. User engagement on casual-dating apps can be intense — heavy swiping and short bursts of activity — but often lacks the long-term monetization that subscription-based matrimonial sites enjoy. Families often maintain paid profiles on Shaadi.com or Bharat Matrimony for months or even years, which gives those services a steady stream of subscription income. Dating apps run on a thinner margin. Most rely on advertising or small monthly fees from users who can swipe intensely for a few weeks and then disappear, leaving their revenue far less predictable.

     

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    Safety concerns add to the strain. Even with photo verification or ‘women-first’ messaging, many women say they face unwanted messages, or harassment. That discourages them from staying on the platform and limits growth.

    Some Indian startups are trying to bridge the gap. Apps like Aisle and TrulyMadly market themselves as spaces for ‘serious dating’, offering detailed profiles, curated communities, and a slower pace that suggests commitment without moving straight to arranged marriage. Others like HiHi use invitations and background checks to create curated networks. But these are still niche players, and none yet match the scale of either Tinder’s casual dominance or Shaadi.com’s matrimonial reach.

     

     

    This landscape suggests that success in India requires specificity — whether it’s a platform for tech people in Bengaluru, working professionals in Mumbai, or a particular linguistic or caste group. The lesson may be that in India, romance is too diverse, too structured, and too negotiated for a single global template.

    Dating apps aren’t slowing their flow in India because people aren’t dating. They faltered because Indian society already offers strong, culturally specific digital ecosystems for both ends of the romantic spectrum — casual flings and family-approved matches. Until an app can bridge that structural and cultural gap, the space between will remain stubbornly narrow.

  • A Level Playing Field

    Women’s sports have seen a surge in viewership over the past few years, reopening the conversation on gender equality in sports — namely, what real equality would look like. The upcoming Los Angeles Olympics (LA28) is a case in point: 26 mixed-gender events are on the medal roster, up from 20 at Paris 2024 and 18 at Tokyo 2020. For the first time, LA28 will feature mixed-gender competition in golf, gymnastics, and the 4x100m relay. 

    Mixed-gender team sports aren’t new. Tennis has had mixed doubles at the Grand Slam level since 1892 — India’s own Sania Mirza built much of her career around it, winning majors alongside partners like Mahesh Bhupathi and Rohan Bopanna. Badminton had introduced Olympic mixed doubles by 1996. Shooting, gymnastics, equestrian sports, and rally car racing have featured direct men vs women competitions almost since their inception.

    And so we ask — are the barriers to mixed-gender play in other sports systemic, physiological, or ideological? 

    Mixed gender sports or co-ed sports have long been a part of the school sports landscape. However, for sports like baseball, football, or even cricket, they tend to be curtailed around puberty, or before players can reach the under-16 or under-18 levels.

    Yet, an instructive 2018 review in Sport, Education and Society found that well-structured mixed environments can reduce gender stereotyping and build mutual respect. Other studies suggest girls in mixed settings take on leadership roles more readily and report greater confidence than peers in segregated ones. A mixed environment is instructive in other ways too, perhaps revealing that merit in sports is not gender-based.

     

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    Safety is the other major deterrent, especially in contact sports. Inequality doesn’t stay outside the game — the attitudes boys absorb growing up come with them onto the field. And, combat sports like wrestling or kabaddi, where winning involves physically overpowering an opponent, can easily be warped to reinforce harmful stereotypes about masculine dominance and control. 

     

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    Tennis has had mixed doubles at the Grand Slam level since 1892 — India's own Sania Mirza built much of her career around it, winning majors alongside partners like Mahesh Bhupathi and Rohan Bopanna.
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    In India, this strategy has been put to the test already. The Mixed Gender Football League (2023–24) in Chennai and Madhya Pradesh’s Samaveshi Cup, built leadership and strategy among young girls while boosting their confidence to push back against the idea that sports aren’t a ‘natural’ hobby for them. Traditional Indian mallakhamb and kho-kho exhibitions have also experimented with mixed teams at the grassroots.

    Ultimate frisbee has long operated as a mixed contact sport without major issues. The mixed 4x400m relay, introduced at the 2019 World Championships and later the Olympics, quickly became one of track and field’s most tactically interesting events, since teams must strategize the order of male and female runners — a wrinkle absent from traditional relays.

     

    India’s 4x400m mixed relay team won gold at the Jakarta Asian Games 2018 / in.pinterest.com

     

    Of course we know that mixed-gender sports will face resistance rooted in deep social conditioning. Selection resentment is one flashpoint — if an Indian cricket team’s 12 male roster spots dropped to 6 to make room for women, that could strain team cohesion. Fan acceptance may be slow too: hostility toward female fans and reporters is well documented, from F1 to the IPL. That hostility could hit sponsorships and ticket sales before mixed teams earn real buy-in.

    There is a case to be made for merit-based lineups in mixed-gender sports, provided that both men and women players of that sport start on a level playing field, with similar facilities and resources to bring them up to the point of competing side-by-side. Given the lopsided growth of women’s sports in certain areas, like cricket, basketball or even hockey (Hello Chak De! India), there might also be a need to establish mandates of the ratio of male-to-female players on the field, until true equality can be achieved on merit alone. 

     

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    In India, this strategy has been put to the test already. The Mixed Gender Football League (2023–24) in Chennai and Madhya Pradesh’s Samaveshi Cup, built leadership and strategy among young girls while boosting their confidence to push back against the idea that sports aren't a ‘natural’ hobby for them.
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    For much of the mainstream sporting world, such competitions remain an experiment. But their value does not lie in claiming a moral victory for gender equality. Instead, it lies in creating space for curiosity and asking a simple question: what happens when we play together rather than apart?

    No meaningful pursuit of gender equality can be achieved through symbolic gestures alone. Yet mixed-gender sport can serve as a promising starting point. By bringing men and women onto the same team, it challenges long-held assumptions about ability and performance. In doing so, it offers a powerful reminder that success in sport is shaped by skill, strategy, teamwork and intent far more than by gender. If perceptions are ever to shift, mixed-gender competition may be one of the most effective ways to demonstrate that ability cannot be reduced to a binary.

  • The Sound of Something New

    We’ve all felt it lately — whether you’re humming along to Karan Aujla in the car or stumbling upon a trending Tamil audio buried among a sea of recycled Instagram reels, something’s shifted. Amid the digital sameness, a not-so-quiet movement is taking hold. Indian languages — once dismissed as too local, too niche — are becoming mainstream. And not just in India.

    Across the world, creators are adding subtitles in Tamil or Malayalam even if they don’t speak the language. Punjabi songs are dominating Spotify, not just in Surrey or Southall, but in Stockholm and Sydney. These aren’t one-off anomalies — it’s part of a bigger shift in how culture works online. Karan Aujla’s album P-Pop Culture was amongst Canada’s highest-streamed artists of 2025, with Aujla rubbing shoulders with the likes of Justin Beiber and Tate McRae. Meanwhile, Diljit Dosanjh will be headlining London’s Wembley Stadium (and already performed at Coachella in 2023).

    You can hear it in the way a song lyric lands — even if you don’t speak the language, the emotion cuts through. There’s something raw and familiar in the rhythm, the sound, the feeling of these words. They stick with you — sometimes even before your brain knows what they mean. Indian languages are no longer background noise. They’re the headliners. 

    And it’s not just in music. You can see it in what people wear — Tamil script printed boldly across streetwear, for example. A Kannada meme page you followed for laughs now goes viral in Toronto. This isn’t just platitudinous aesthetics; hoodies striped with Devanagari script have reportedly sold out within hours, proof of a real appetite for something rooted in home rather than a copy of a foreign label. Tamil-specific labels built entirely around Tamil cultural identity — like urban streetwear brand Angi Clothing — now ship internationally, carried by a growing diaspora market. Angi’s motto? ‘Identity is Everything’. 

     

     

    Karan Aujla Spotify Playlist / in.pinterest.com

     

    So why now?

    Because we’re in a moment where the global internet is craving specificity. The age of mass culture — where everything looked and sounded the same — is fraying. People want their content (and their identities) unfiltered, unpolished, and rooted in something real. And Indian languages —  rhythmic, emotionally charged — offer exactly that.  The resurgence of local culture has surprised those who expected globalization to sandpaper away local differences, leaving the world listening to, watching, and playing the same things.

    When a Tamil phrase shows up in a beauty influencer’s caption, or a Marathi gaana plays in the background of a cooking reel from NYC, it tells you something: our languages are shaping what culture looks and sounds like today. For Indian audiences, this moment feels quietly radical. Many of us were taught to soften our mother tongues, to code-switch, to avoid being ‘too vernacular.’ That milquetoast word ‘vernacular’ was once used slightingly by Anglophile circles – ‘vern’ was an insult.

    Naturally, algorithms are catching on (and even perhaps helping to shape this shift). Platforms are hyper-personalized now, allowing cultural nuance to reach new audiences without losing itself in translation. 

     

     

    “
    When a Tamil phrase shows up in a beauty influencer’s caption, or a Marathi gaana plays in the background of a cooking reel from NYC, it tells you something: our languages are shaping what culture looks and sounds like today.
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    And for readers halfway across the world, this story is about more than India. It reflects a wider shift happening everywhere: from Korean in K-pop to Swahili in Afrobeats, the cultural gatekeepers are changing. Between 2017 and 2022, Afrobeats streams on Spotify grew by roughly 550%, and the genre now has its own category on the Billboard Hot 100. Identity, media, and influence are evolving — and the future of ‘cool’ might just have Indian subtitles.

    This is a global rebalancing of who gets to be heard. And this time, the voices sound a little more like home.

  • Imaginary Homelands

    Walking around artist Sumakshi Singh’s life-size, embroidered fabric architecture is like being inside a surreal dream. It’s hard to take your eyes off the white, translucent spiral staircase, the intricate patterns on the walls, the double gate, the windows. I notice other viewers walking around, eyes wide with wonder, peering up and down to closely examine the panels, and resisting the urge to touch the fragile work.

    But once you walk out of the work, you see the bigger picture, the cohesive structure of a house. There is something haunting about this work, a replica of Singh’s grandparents’ Delhi home that was built soon after the India-Pakistan Partition. It’s where Singh held some of her most cherished memories, but it was taken down a couple of years ago.

    At the 2026 Venice Biennale, the India Pavilion’s theme – Geographies of Distance: Remembering Home – address the concept of a physical home and question what happens when that home no longer exists,  you’re far away from it, or even when that physical home is no longer your real emotional home, explains curator Amin Jaffer.

    Jaffer’s prompts for the Venice Biennale project were his lived experience as part of the South Asian diaspora, and a rapidly developing and changing India. He was born in Rwanda, Africa, and has lived in Britain, Canada, the USA, Portugal, Italy, the Bahamas and India. His work has taken him around the globe, from Japan, China and Russia to the Gulf, Africa and the Americas. “The preoccupation with home is a reflection of my own circumstances, as someone of Gujarati origin, born in a former Belgian colony, raised with multiple Indian and European languages and value systems,” he says.

    Geographies of Distance: Remembering Home is also a response to the demographic, economic and technological boom in India, and the increased movement of Indians. “We are more mobile than ever before, within the country and across the world,” says Jaffer. “This turned my thoughts to notions of home and especially a home that is far away, either ggeographically or because the physical space has changed,” he adds.

     

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    Is a Home a Physical Space?

    Established Indian artists Zarina Hashmi, Krishen Khanna and Satish Gujral have mourned the loss of their homes, family and friends during the 1947 Partition. The desire to return, to feel a sense of belonging in a place left behind, has long been evident in their art.

    But for a younger generation of artists who have lived and worked in different countries, the idea of home is not bound to a physical space, perhaps because that physical space is constantly changing. Indian cities are dotted with redevelopment projects. Old structures are rebuilt as sky-rises. Difficult-to-maintain, sprawling bungalows are being erased for a mall or even a parking lot while the family moves to an apartment. The physical space is lost but the emotional space stays. Carry that with you wherever you go, and that, perhaps, becomes your home.

     

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    But for a younger generation of artists who have lived and worked in different countries, the idea of home is not bound to a physical space, perhaps because that physical space is constantly changing too.
    ”

     

    Singh, who has worked and lived in eleven countries, felt the most ‘belonged’ in her grandparents’ Delhi home. It’s where her family gathered, where festivals and important events were celebrated. But when that home was being demolished, she recreated it at the Biennale, with a delicate embroidered panel. The delicacy of the work gestures to the impermanence of a brick-and-mortar building. But the memory of it stays, and that, for Singh becomes her emotional home.

    Living across borders and straddling multiple cultures has inspired works of other international artists too. South Korea’s Do Ho Suh creates life-sized replicas of the homes he has lived in across Seoul, New York and London, with translucent fabrics, exploring how memory, personal identity and space intertwine to shape one’s residence. Nigerian artist Akunyili Crosby, based in the United States, creates paintings that feature interiors and domestic scenes of a transnational home and the complexities of inhabiting two different cultures simultaneously.

     

    The Climate Crisis 

    But even those who continue living in the same place they were born and raised in are questioning the idea of home. For Skarma Sonam Tashi, one of the five artists showing at the Indian Pavilion, home is closely related to his homeland Ladakh’s traditional architecture. His work, a block of traditional Ladakhi homes made with papier-mâché and clay from his homelands, becomes a commentary on how brick and mortar houses are replacing these structures. “It mourns the loss of traditional home-making skills and artistry to climate change,” says Tashi. The region, a traditionally dry one, has seen a recent swell of rainfall thanks to the climate crisis. The old houses were not built to protect from rain. That’s one of the reasons people are building brick-and-mortar buildings. “But those aren’t any good for our ecology either,” he laments.

     

    Sumakshi Singh’s ethereal art work | Credit – Riddhi Doshi

     

    A Home Lost to Violence

    Palestinian-UK artist Mona Hatoum creates household furniture using items such as electric wires and mesh steel, treating the house not as a safe space, but as a site of political confinement and displacement. 

    Ghana’s Ibrahim Mahama places objects from his nation’s colonial past, such as train seats, defunct aeroplanes, locomotive engines and hospital beds in global art institutions,​ such as Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna, White Cube, London, and University of Michigan Museum of Art. By doing so, he prompts a discussion about how history has shaped what we call home. But it begs the question – can an exploitative past make a home?

     

    “
    The physical space is lost but the emotional space stays. You carry that with you wherever you go, and that, perhaps, becomes your home.
    ”

     

    In India, for instance, the concept of furniture as permanent space holders such as the dining table or a bed was introduced by the British. Our traditional style of dwelling facilitated movement. A charpoi could be carried to a terrace on a pleasant day or to the aangan for guests. But these furniture pieces would become an integral part of our houses. Our houses’ geographies were dictated by these items, and we forgot how our old houses were always minimal. In that sense, what we have inherited is a borrowed idea of a home. So, does that make it ours?

  • Candy Crush

    Twenty years ago, chocolate was synonymous with Cadbury’s dairy milk bars. 

    Oh, how the times have changed! 

    Walk into a good bakery or a boutique grocer in any major Indian city today and there’s a new kind of chocolate on the shelf — slender bars wrapped in textured paper, stamped with words like ‘single origin’, ‘70% Kerala’, or ‘tree-to-bar’.   

    India is at an interesting inflection point right now. The country’s chocolate market is growing quickly (valued at US$ 2.9 billion in 2025) and is expanding every year. But as India grows more adventurous, the craft corner of that market is growing even faster. Auroville’s Mason & Co is often credited as an early catalyst, and brands like Naviluna in Mysuru, Pascati in Mumbai (one of the few certified organic brands in India), and Soklet in Coimbatore, Subko Cacao and many more have adopted the same philosophy.

    The rise of craft chocolate in India didn’t happen overnight. It began quietly with small producers who wanted to work with Indian cacao rather than imported beans. In states like Kerala and Tamil Nadu, cacao has been grown for decades, mostly sold to large manufacturers. But in the last few years, independent makers have not only embraced a bean-to-bar approach, they’ve stepped it up to tree-to-bar. “We have complete control over the process, right from the harvest stage, which is why we call it tree-to-bar, not-bean-to-bar”, explains Akhil Grandhi of Bon Fiction chocolate.

     

    “
    I believe that moment of reckoning is here and we can no longer stereotype ourselves. We have the perfect storm of upwardly-mobile, aspirational, well-traveled consumers (at least in tier one urban Indian cities.
    ”

     

    These chocolates are made in small batches. The process isn’t just technical; it’s personal. Makers are involved in growing, picking, roasting, tasting, and tweaking. It’s slower and far more expensive than mass market chocolate, which is why artisanal bars often cost more. But the promise is different: flavour with context. And the flavors are often Indian. Take for instance, Paul & Mike’s Pistachio and Idukki Cardamom chocolate, or their Thandai chocolate. Or take Soklet’s Desi Rabdi or Bhut Jolokia Chile bars. Or even take Bombay Sweet Shop’s kaju katli and dark chocolate ganache? All whimsical, singular confections that could only be created in India.

    A further sign of the times is that this tiny corner of the chocolate world has also absorbed larger wellness trends. And so you’ll find organic, vegan and sugar free concoctions on the shelf as well. “Post Covid, a tremendous shift started taking place,” says Krishna Prasad S, founder of Soothy’s Chocolate, “People started reading labels and becoming more aware of what they eat.” Soothy’s is about to launch a brand new sugar-free chocolate, sweetened with a protein element sourced from Africa. 

    “Everybody is now moving away from refined sugar,” echoes Rukshin Anklesaria at Ambriona. “Nowadays, my bestseller online is my 90% dark chocolate.” Certainly an unusual choice for a country with an insatiable sweet tooth.

     

     

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    What makes this movement culturally important is that it repositions chocolate from a foreign luxury to a distinctly local craft. For decades, India’s idea of premium chocolate came from Europe – Swiss or Belgian usually. To many consumers, ‘good chocolate’ meant foreign chocolate. Artisanal makers are inverting that. “This has been our focus, trying to build an association around Indian cacao, in the same way that we associate chocolate with Switzerland or Belgium,” says Chaitanya Muppala of Manam Chocolate, another pioneering craft chocolate house. “We also want to remind people that cacao doesn’t grow in Europe, it grows here, and we can make world class global standard specialty craft chocolate from India.” 

    Krishna Prasad S agrees. “The next big thing will come from here,” he says. Soothy’s itself is poised to launch in the USA next month, ready with its range of milk and dark chocolates.

    “We need to embrace our complexity and not reduce ourselves to the usual outside-in view of elephants and palaces,” says Muppala. “I believe that moment of reckoning is here and we can no longer stereotype ourselves. We have the perfect storm of upwardly-mobile, aspirational, well-traveled consumers (at least in tier one urban Indian cities).”

    Muppala would know. Manam has opened a slew of spaces across India, from The Chocolate Karkhana and Chocolate Beverage Bar in Hyderabad, to a Chocolate Experience space in New Delhi, a pop up at Mumbai’s Galeries Lafayette, and a beverage bar in New Delhi along the way. Similarly, Subko Cacao has opened The Cacao Mill in Mumbai, an experiential chocolate factory. The time for fine flavor cacao is clearly now.

     

    “
    To many consumers, ‘good chocolate’ meant foreign chocolate. Artisanal makers are inverting that.
    ”

     

    And although all specialty chocolatiers are well-versed in the frou frou talk of ‘sustainable’ and ‘community centric’, not everyone walks the talk. “We were always very clear that we wanted to build something sustainable and meaningful,” says Muppala. “This is not about a photo op, going to a village and taking pictures. For it to be sustainable, everybody in the value chain has to make money. Global profit pooling in cacao is alarmingly skewed. About 80% goes to the manufacturer and retailer, about 8% to the trader and only about 6% to farmer.” 

    At the consumer level, the change is tied to something much broader: India’s growing curiosity about food. The same audience that embraced specialty coffee, sourdough, and regional cheeses is now paying attention to cacao, so much that India even held its own Cacao and Craft Chocolate Festival. No small feat for a country that once used the word ‘chocolate’ interchangeably with ‘Cadbury’. 

    Still, the movement has its challenges. India’s heat makes chocolate notoriously hard to produce, store, and ship. Small makers spend more on climate control, packaging, and quality checks than big brands ever need to. Pricing remains a barrier: an artisanal bar can cost five or six times more than a mass-market one. And the market, however swiftly it is growing, is still nascent. 

     

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    But despite these hurdles, the arc is clear. India is developing a chocolate culture of its own — one that values skill, local agriculture, and flavour that’s not afraid to be complex. The real story isn’t that India now makes good artisanal chocolate. It’s that consumers can finally taste the difference — and care enough to choose it. As food cultures mature, people start looking beyond sweetness and convenience. They look for origin, ethics, craft, connection. And that’s when an everyday product becomes something more than a treat. It becomes a reflection of how a country eats, pays attention, and grows.

  • Hitting the Sweet Spot

    Dummy

  • Moving Pictures

    If you live in India, you’ve definitely spent a moment (or many) stuck behind a truck on the highway and you’ve likely noticed its vividly-colored back — hand-painted with instructions like “Horn OK Please” or “Use Dipper at Night”, often framed by floral vines, rising suns, peacocks, tigers, gods, or movie stars. Some trucks are adorned with beaded tassels dangling from side mirrors, fringed mud flaps, reflective stickers, even hand-scrawled poetry. It’s loud, layered, and alive.

    This is truck art, one of India’s most under-celebrated forms of public folk expression. Truck art is not just paint on metal; it is identity, memory, pride, and protection — all in motion.

     

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    The tradition began to bloom in the mid-20th century. These trucks first drove onto Indian roads during World War II, pressed into service as military vehicles. Naturally, in the way of all military vehicles, they were drab camouflage-colored creations. But after the Second World War, these trucks were released to the public and refashioned for civilian purposes. Canny local artists immediately spotted an opportunity, transforming the trucks’ formidable look into the vibrant creations that we see today.

    Today, many drivers and owners spend months on the road, far from home. Adorning their vehicles became a way to carry a piece of that home with them — a protective charm, a source of joy, even a declaration of identity. A driver might honour a deity for safe passage, or paint his children’s names on the bumper. Political slogans, shayari, religious symbols — all share space. The truck becomes a canvas, a shrine, a mobile memory-keeper.

     

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    These artworks are typically crafted by self-taught artists working out of roadside studios near truck stands or dhabas. In places like Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Maharashtra, small communities of painters keep the tradition alive using enamel paints, stencils, and sheer muscle memory. The work is fast but detailed and often done overnight while the truck is parked, ready to hit the road again by morning.

    Across the country, the art shifts with region and road. In Punjab and Rajasthan, you’ll see camels and similar desert motifs. In Bengal, lotuses and expressive eyes. In the South, mythological figures share space with cinema stars. In Maharashtra, floral borders and geometric symmetry abound. And nearly everywhere, you’ll see the iconic warning: “Buri Nazar Wale Tera Muh Kala” (“May the evil-eyed one be shamed.”) 

    It isn’t just visual. These trucks are multisensory: the jingle of mirror tassels, the scent of agarbatti from a dashboard altar, the glow of string lights flickering during nighttime drives. 

     

    “
    In places like Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Maharashtra, small communities of painters keep the tradition alive using enamel paints, stencils, and sheer muscle memory. The work is fast but detailed and often done overnight while the truck is parked, ready to hit the road again by morning.
    ”

     

    But this folk art is fading. As fleets become corporatized and brand-conscious, hand-painted trucks are giving way to mass-produced decals that are easy to stick on. Uniformity is prized. Artistry is optional. And the roadside painters, once vital artisans, now struggle to find work.

    Still, echoes remain. A lone peacock feather curling under a bumper. A faded ‘India is Great’ half-covered by a sponsor’s logo. These fragments remind us that art doesn’t need white walls or spotlights. Sometimes, it speeds past you on the highway — gritty, bright, and definitely alive.

    To preserve truck art is to honour the creativity of the everyday — art born not in galleries, but in grease-streaked garages and under open skies. Art that reflects how people live, move, and believe.