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  • The Lost Art of Being Bored

    Somewhere between the fourth “Are you still watching?” prompt and the fifth scroll break, we forgot how to be bored. Not the existential kind — the quiet, idle kind that once filled train rides, queues, or the gap between one thought and another.

    Now, boredom feels like a glitch. A pause we’re desperate to fix.

    If you’ve ever checked your phone during a ten-minute Uber ride or scrolled through three apps while waiting for your coffee, you know what this looks like. The modern condition isn’t loneliness or distraction, it’s the refusal to ever feel under-stimulated.

    A recent study found that the average person spends 88 days a year on their phone. That’s nearly a quarter of our waking lives convincing ourselves we’re doing something even when nothing much is happening. And maybe that’s the point. The scroll gives us the illusion of momentum. Before phones, people carried books. Before that, newspapers. Before that, probably conversation. Humans have always found ways to fill silence. But something about this era feels different. It’s not that we’re avoiding people. It’s that we’re avoiding the dull hum of our own thoughts.

     

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    There’s now an entire micro-economy built around saving us from ourselves. Time-limiting apps, mindfulness podcasts, IRL ‘digital detox’ retreats — all promising to help us get off our phones, while marketing themselves on our phones. It’s a bit like buying more stuff to cure overconsumption: a paradox so obvious it barely qualifies as irony. What’s fascinating is how universal this has become. Across cities: New York, Mumbai, London, Seoul — the gestures are the same: the downward gaze, the thumb twitch, the half-attentive conversation. Even boredom has been globalized. 

    But here’s the twist: boredom isn’t the enemy we’ve made it out to be. It’s the unsung architect of human creativity. Studies show that when we’re bored, the brain’s ‘default mode network’ switches on — the part responsible for imagination, reflection, and problem-solving. It’s why people get their best ideas in the shower or on a long walk. Those unstructured moments of nothingness let thoughts collide in ways they never could during constant stimulation.

    And yet, stillness now feels almost transgressive. The act of doing nothing has become culturally suspicious. As if sitting quietly signals inefficiency. Productivity has become the closest thing to virtue we have. Even rest needs to be aestheticised — #selfcare, #slowmorning, #digitaldetox.

    We’ve turned being offline into its own form of performance. That’s not necessarily bad, but it’s telling.

     

    “
    There’s now an entire micro-economy built around saving us from ourselves. Time-limiting apps, mindfulness podcasts, IRL 'digital detox' retreats — all promising to help us get off our phones, while marketing themselves on our phones. It’s a bit like buying more stuff to cure overconsumption
    ”

     

    The truth is, no one really wants to quit their phone. They want to quit the feeling of being constantly behind — the mental lag that comes from living in 12 tabs at once. But we can’t ‘fix’ attention by downloading another app. We can only re-learn what to do with the space we’ve been avoiding.

    Because when you stop filling every gap, good things start to happen. You actually notice the small stuff again — the sound of your neighbour’s playlist, a conversation between strangers, the way the afternoon light moves across the wall. It’s not life-changing. It’s just life, seen without interruption.

    That’s the part no app can sell you: the quiet texture of noticing.

     

    www.pexels.com

     

    Of course, none of this means boredom is glamorous. It’s deeply uncomfortable at first. The twitch to check, refresh, or scroll doesn’t go away overnight. But that discomfort is also data — a reminder of how overstimulated our attention has become.

    Reclaiming boredom feels so radical now because in a world designed to monetize our attention, choosing to be unproductive — to stare, to think, to drift — is its own kind of rebellion.

    So here’s a modest proposal: don’t delete your apps. Don’t toss your phone in a river. Just let yourself get bored once in a while. Let a moment hang in mid-air before you rush to fill it.

    Because if there’s one thing our phones can’t simulate, it’s the pleasure of being fully, beautifully present in the mess of ordinary life.

    And if that feels boring, that’s probably a good sign.

  • Scents and Sensibility

    Have you ever caught a whiff of a smell and been instantly transported to a memory, a place, a feeling? Chances are, that note came from jasmine. And chances are, that jasmine came from India.

    Walk through the perfume counters at Saks or Sephora, and you’ll see French and Italian names perched behind glass. Each bottle, priced upward of $300, promises opulence in a spray. But behind that luxury is a fact that is often forgotten: over 80% of the world’s jasmine used in perfumery comes from India, especially the sun-soaked fields of Tamil Nadu. Before it became the heart note in J’adore or Glossier’s You, jasmine was picked — by hand, at dawn by Indian women paid only a sliver of what the final product earns. 

    India is, quite literally, the nose behind some of the world’s most iconic scents. Yet, when it comes to branding, ownership, and prestige, the country barely gets a footnote.

     

    India supplies much of the raw material for the world’s luxury perfumery. / www.pexels.com

     

    Perfumery didn’t begin in Paris. It began in the smoke of Indian temples, in attars distilled in Kannauj, in rose petals, khus, vetiver, and sandalwood soaked for days. This knowledge was passed down, generation to generation, by master perfumers, over hundreds of years. After all, fragrance is rooted in its culture, its customs and religious practices. India isn’t just a supplier — it’s the source. In fact, a study by the OEC in 2024 revealed that a large part of the world’s essential oils come from India.

    Yet, global luxury has long romanticized the final product, not its origins. Fragrance is marketed as French seduction or Italian elegance, erasing the cultural and agricultural labor that makes it possible. 

    It mirrors a broader pattern: global brands profit from Indian ingredients — think turmeric in wellness, khadi in fashion, or even yoga. But Indian creators rarely control the narrative, let alone the margins. 

    That tide, however, is beginning to turn. A new wave of Indian fragrance houses — including brands like ISAK, Bombay Perfumery, and All Good Scents (amongst many, many others) — are starting to reframe Indian perfumery as not just heritage, but luxury. They’re using locally sourced ingredients such as mango (yes!) and age-old techniques, but with modern, global packaging and storytelling. In fact, the Singapore-based Rahasya Fragrances, (launched by a trio of diaspora Indians) just launched their Indian-inspired scents at Selfridges, purportedly the first niche Indian perfume brand to do so.

    And perhaps most importantly, they’re formulating perfumes that actually work for Indian climates. These perfumes are longer-lasting in for humid climates, bolder to match the sensory palette of Indian wearers, less alcohol-forward. The cold-weather compositions of Paris don’t always hold up in Mumbai’s summer. Manan Gandhi, the founder of Bombay Perfumery, tells us that they do construct fragrances keeping in mind the ambient environment in India. “We use higher dosages of naturals, new natural extract technology like Co2-extracted citrus and spice oils that don’t dissipate as quickly, making the top note longer lasting and interesting,” he explains.

    These brands aren’t just creating products. They’re staking a claim. They’re saying: we don’t need validation from Europe to know jasmine is sacred. Or that rose, saffron, oud, and vetiver are luxury. They always have been.

     

    “
    Perfumery didn’t begin in Paris. It began in the smoke of Indian temples, in attars distilled in Kannauj, in rose petals, khus, vetiver, and sandalwood soaked for days.
    ”

     

    The global fragrance industry is been projected to reach $88 billion, with the U.S. taking the biggest slice of the pie. But India’s own fragrance market is growing — and fast. 

    Unfortunately, what’s missing though is a cultural ecosystem, and the kind of infrastructure — fragrance critics, mainstream endorsements, or influencer-led discovery platforms — that push a perfume into cult status. 

    What exists instead is legacy — an unbroken thread from temple offerings to wedding garlands to quiet rituals of self-adornment. And increasingly, a generation that wants their luxury to mean something — not just in scent, but in story.

    We’re in a time when consumers are finally asking: Where did this come from? Who made it? At what cost? After all, the world already smells like India. It’s time the credit — and the profits — followed suit.

  • Eyes Up Here

    It begins with a notification. Your food has arrived and the guard approves your visitor. Your domestic worker has checked in at the main gate and a package has been collected on your behalf. Someone has entered the building and someone else has just left.

    There was a time when this would have all felt odd or otherworldly. But none of this feels remarkable anymore, which is precisely the point.

    Across urban India, millions of people now move through apartment complexes, workplaces, and neighborhoods mediated by apps. Visitors are logged, deliveries are tracked, staff attendance is recorded, and CCTV feeds stream directly to smartphones. Every movement generates data. Most of the people generating it do not think of what is happening as surveillance. They think of it as convenience, and that distinction, small as it seems, may explain one of the most consequential shifts in how Indian cities now function. Surveillance has not arrived as an imposition. It has arrived as a service.

    The platforms behind this shift are not household names in the West, but their scale is significant. MyGate, founded in Bengaluru in 2016, now serves over 25,000 apartment complexes across India and has raised more than $80 million from investors including Tiger Global and Tencent. NoBrokerHood, whose parent company NoBroker has taken in over $200 million in funding including backing from Google, operates across tens of thousands more. Together, the two platforms are active in over 40,000 urban residential complexes. A loose American analogue might be Amazon’s Ring combined with an HOA management app, but these platforms go further in scope and deeper into daily life.

     

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    The pitch is straightforward enough. Cities are larger than they were a generation ago. Apartment complexes house thousands of residents who may never learn each other’s names. Families are geographically dispersed. Elderly parents increasingly live alone in buildings where their children can check in on them from another city. The ability to know, in real time, who is at the gate and when the domestic staff arrives offers genuine reassurance to people whose lives are structured around exactly these anxieties.

    In that sense, these systems solve real problems. The question is what else they do.

    Here is something the platforms do not advertise. When a resident checks whether the driver has left or whether the grocery delivery has been collected, they are not simply receiving information. They are also producing it. The timestamp of that check, the frequency of those queries, the pattern of who you approve and how quickly you respond, all of it accumulates into a behavioral record whose uses are not defined by you, and not fully disclosed to you either. The resident monitoring the delivery is also being monitored. The gate, as it turns out, watches both ways.

    This is where the experience diverges depending on where you stand. For residents, the app is a dashboard. You can see who arrived and when they left, approve or deny entry with a tap, and operate, in the language of the platform, from a position of control. For the people being logged on the other side of that dashboard, the experience is something else entirely. Domestic workers, drivers, cooks, and delivery staff are photographed, timed, and rated as a routine function of building operations, often without meaningful consent and often without any real understanding of what is being collected or where it goes.

     

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    The gate, as it turns out, watches both ways.
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    “I just press my thumb every day and go,” says Shanta, a domestic worker in Gurgaon. She is referring to the biometric attendance system used to register workers entering the society. “They told us a few years ago that without police registration and putting my thumb impression, I could not work in any of the societies.”

    A 2023 investigation found that 14 domestic workers interviewed across complexes using these apps did not fully understand the features being applied to them. MyGate’s platform includes a rating mechanism through which residents can score workers on punctuality, attitude, and quality of service, but workers cannot see their own ratings and have no equivalent ability to rate their employers. MyGate’s co-founder compared this to employees using ID cards at corporate offices, though office employees generally know what is being tracked, have HR protections, and work within legal frameworks that domestic workers in India largely do not.

    Workers, in this system, are not its least important participants. They are its most visible ones, the part of the data economy that has been made fully legible while having the least say in the terms. But to stop the analysis there is to miss the larger transformation. The workers are the sharpest illustration of an asymmetry that runs through the whole system. Residents are also inside it. They have simply been given a more comfortable position from which to experience that fact.

    “People don’t think of it as surveillance,” says Udbhav M, a digital rights advocate. “They think of it as safety, as modern living. But convenience and control often travel together.”

     

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    The Internet Freedom Foundation, a Delhi-based digital rights organization, has flagged excessive data collection, inadequate transparency, and poor consent protocols across residential management platforms. In several documented cases, apps stored location histories and facial recognition scans of workers who had no knowledge this was happening and no mechanism to access, correct, or delete the records. There are no unions negotiating data rights for domestic workers and no sector-specific regulation governing how a housing app may use a cook’s biometric information. The legal frameworks that might create accountability simply do not yet exist at the scale the technology has already reached.

    What makes this more than a story about labor rights or data privacy is the question of how it happened so smoothly. Nobody announced a new surveillance regime for urban India. There was no public debate, no moment when residents collectively decided this was the kind of city they wanted to live in. The technology arrived packaged as a lifestyle upgrade and was adopted accordingly.

    Part of the answer is speed. The platforms grew faster than any regulatory conversation could keep pace with. Part of it is framing, given that these are security apps rather than surveillance apps, and the distinction matters psychologically even if it is technically thin. And part of it is something more fundamental about what happened to trust.

    A generation ago, trust between a resident and a domestic worker was, at least in theory, interpersonal. You knew the person who cleaned your house. They knew you. The relationship had texture even when it was unequal. Today that trust is increasingly outsourced to infrastructure, to the timestamp, the notification, the platform, and the record it keeps on everyone’s behalf.

     

     

    That substitution has happened quietly and largely without examination, not just in how residents relate to workers but in how everyone inside these systems relates to everyone else. So, the neighbor you have never met, the delivery worker you will never see, and the guard whose name you do not know, all of them are now mediated by an app that turns presence into data and data into a sense of control.

    “I like knowing who’s coming in,” says Rakesh, a resident of a high-rise in Pune. “It gives me peace of mind.” He pauses. “But yeah, we never really asked the workers if they were okay with it.”

    That admission is more telling than it might seem. The failure to ask is not an oversight so much as a structural assumption built into these platforms, that some people are the users of the system and others are simply what the system runs on. The more interesting question, the one the platforms have no incentive to raise, is whether that distinction is as stable as it appears, and whether the residents who feel like they are watching have fully reckoned with how much they are also being seen.

    The cameras at the gate are not going anywhere. MyGate alone processes over a billion check-in events annually. The infrastructure is being built at a pace that makes after-the-fact regulation very difficult, while the cultural habits forming around it are more durable still.

    What lingers is the habit of trading the right to not be seen for safety. A whole architecture of trust has been rebuilt around the premise that knowing is the same as understanding, that the record is the relationship.

    The gate watches. It logs and timestamps and notifies. What it cannot do is ask whether any of this was what anyone actually wanted. And who knows what the answer to that question would have been.

  • Swipe Right for Stress

    There was a time when therapy was a hushed topic, discussed in whispers and hidden behind closed doors. Now, the stigma is beginning to fade. Gen Z grew up in an era where conversations about anxiety, depression, and burnout became normalized. Therapy is now digital intimacy. It has moved from the couch to the screen, and in some cases, your therapist isn’t even human. 

    A lot of people are turning to AI-driven chatbots for emotional support. Available 24/7, judgment-free, and infinitely patient, these digital therapists fill a gap in traditional mental health care. Support is now easier than ever to access with tools such as cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), crisis intervention, and mindfulness training at your fingertips.

    Mental health care is overloaded, therapy is expensive, and waiting lists are long. With that reality in mind, AI treatment provides instant relief from lunchtime anxiety and midnight worries. But can an algorithm offer the kind of support that people need?

     

    AI-powered therapy apps are all the rage. / www.pexels.com

     

    Malvika Fernandes, a Dubai-based psychotherapist in private practise offers a trenchant rebuttal. “A chatbot can never replace a qualified therapist. This is a very complex field with professionals spending decades studying the mind, behaviour, attitudes and cultural contexts that affect clients’ mental health. A chatbot may give overtly positive, soothing responses that may help you feel in control. AI usually gives solution-oriented suggestions. But they won’t be able to offer the nuanced processing work that is required.” 

    Fernandes goes on to suggest that “You can use ChatGPT or Claude as your first aid when there is no other way out, but it cannot be your first option; however, it can certainly give generic, additional support. Hopefully your first option is a human connection – a friend, a family member, a colleague, a neighbor, a therapist, your pet, even journaling or just sitting with your own thoughts. It can even be somatic practises like dance or pottery or swimming. Only if we don’t have those options available, then yes, we can look to a chatbot for help.” 

    Is AI able to understand human emotions, or can it just mimic empathy? Even as access to AI therapy grows, there remain risks. Is it possible for chatbots to determine if a user is in a crisis? What happens if they are wrong? After all, AI can never truly respond; it can merely pull from a database of responses.

     

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    What happens when an app, trained on Western cultural mores that skew towards individualism rather than collective family dynamics, offers mental health advice to a user from the Global South?
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    “Can it help by challenging certain thoughts? Certainly, in small ways as tertiary support, it offers very soothing responses,” explains Fernandes. As someone who has tested these chatbots out, she believes that AI will tell you what you want to hear, not what you need to hear. A Stanford study reports how chatbots can cause ‘delusional spirals’ by validating flawed human beliefs.

    Equally importantly, what happens when an app, trained on Western cultural mores that skew towards individualism rather than collective family dynamics, offers mental health advice to a user from the Global South? Context is crucial when it comes to mental health.

    But perhaps the biggest question of all is why. Why do we need to turn to chatbots at all? We know that unfettered capitalism pushes populations towards productivity and individualistic success, without interrogating the mental health costs. Meaningful human interaction has plummeted, with a strong individualistic social media taking its place. 

    Simultaneously, in the Global South, as in the Western world, there is a tremendous push towards online and digital spaces. The irony here is that we are turning towards digital solutions that have likely exacerbated the problems in the first place.

     

    Can a phone ever really replace a human psychiatrist? / unsplash.com

     

    In India, certainly, there is a shortage of trained professionals equipped to handle mental health crises – the data reveals that there is 1 therapist for 10 lakh people in the country. And even when accessible, therapy is expensive, and in some areas, dogged by a strong stigma.

    Given these circumstances, chatbots may work as a trial ground for certain digital mental health solutions. There are now niche therapy apps tailored for LGBTQ+ individuals and students, making mental health support more inclusive.

    All this is to say of course that AI shouldn’t replace human therapists, although it can certainly play a supporting role. But it is impossible to ignore how it will reshape the ways in which we seek emotional support, ways which we once thought impossible.

  • The Mahjong Moment

    Laid out in a neat grid, they resemble miniature art: delicate green bamboo, crimson characters, blue circles, and compass-like winds carved into smooth rectangles of ivory, bone, or plastic. You’ve probably seen them before — scattered across your grandmother’s dining table or trending now on TikTok as a satisfying ASMR clack.

    Mahjong isn’t new. Its history is long and layered. Believed to have originated in the mid-1800s in China, the game was once the preserve of Qing officials and scholars before it spread across social classes and borders. In 1920s America, it surged in popularity thanks to an export boom and was a status symbol among white upper-middle-class women, complete with their own ‘exotic’ tile sets and rulebooks – that love for Mahjong continues to this day. Meanwhile, in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Japan (and elsewhere), the game evolved into its own regional variants and became a staple of family life.

    Today, Mahjong is back — loudly, proudly, and globally. In New York, Asian-American communities are reclaiming it as part of their own cultural inheritances. In London, hidden Mahjong clubs have emerged in basement speakeasies. In Hong Kong, competitive Mahjong tournaments are being live-streamed with fashionably dressed players and full sponsorships.

     

    Image Courtesy: Sangeeta Kewalramani, House of Mahjong

     

    Unsurprisingly, India is having its very own Mahjong moment too.

    In Mumbai, a group of young professionals started The Mahjong Network via WhatsApp. Within months, it had grown into a full-blown movement, with rotating hosts, mentorship sessions, and tournament-style gatherings. Aditi Dugar, restaurateur at Masque, Masque Lab, TwentySeven Bake House, and Paradox has Instagrammed her love of the game. Stars of the Netflix show The Fabulous Lives of Bollywood Wives, Maheep Kapoor and Bhavana Panday are similarly obsessed. In Delhi, casual brunch cafés now offer Mahjong-themed mornings. In Bengaluru, a Parsi restaurant offers daily Mahjong classes; in Mumbai, an (unrelated) Parsi cafe offers the same thing. On Urbanaut, a ticketing platform, a plethora of Mahjong events rub shoulders with jazz performances and guided museum tours. Schools and colleges are hosting tequila and Mahjong alumni events. Indian jewellery brands such as Nishkara are even crafting jewelry and bag charms inspired by Mahjong tiles. Across India, brunches, birthdays and tea parties are being designed around Mahjong tables. 

    There is nothing new about Mahjong in India though. The Times of India of the 1920s is dotted with mentions of Mahjong-playing ladies, an elite British craze sparked by the colonial ties between China and India. Lacquered scarves with dragon designs and imported bone-and-bamboo Mahjong sets were all the rage with the ladies who lunch stepping to their colonial club of choice for their weekly game fix. Colonial-era Chinese restaurants, opened by immigrants from China, likely also operated as Mahjong clubs, possibly helping to pull new fans to the game.

     

    “
    Today, Mahjong is back — loudly, proudly, and globally. In New York, Asian-American communities are reclaiming it as part of their own cultural inheritances. In London, hidden Mahjong clubs have emerged in basement speakeasies. In Hong Kong, competitive Mahjong tournaments are being live-streamed with fashionably dressed players and full sponsorships.
    ”

     

    Even after Independence, the game never really disappeared. It sat quietly in Parsi homes, where aunties would gather around the card table in the afternoon, and in Indian military circles, passed between postings as a refined time-pass. 

    It’s no wonder then that India, a largely family and community-driven country, has taken to the game so thoroughly. Everyone from nostalgic Gen X-ers who remember watching their parents play, mid-career women looking for a new social scene, and Gen Zs are embracing Mahjong as an exercise of both mind and memory.

    Sangeeta Kewalramani, Mahjong teacher and founder of Mumbai’s House of Mahjong echoes this. “Socially, it brings people together across generations, I’ve even taught grandparents and grandkids together,” she explains. “I think why it has a renewed appeal is because of its versatility. For example you can host a Mahjong lunch party with the girls and also compete formally at a tournament. You have older women who’ve been playing rummy or bridge for years and are now loving the novelty of Mahjong. But more and more I see women in their 20s and 30s getting hooked.”  

    In some ways, the appeal of this Chinese game in India mirrors the global moment. It taps into the longing for connection and community in offline spaces, and a quiet rebellion against endless productivity.

    Part of its comeback lies in the aesthetics: the tactile satisfaction of the tiles, the visual charm of the sets, even perhaps the gifting culture that is intrinsic to the nature of the game. “It’s no longer just about the tiles; it’s about the lifestyle, the hosting, and the gifting traditions that surround the game – giveaways and prizes are an integral part of the whole culture. Mahjong is its very own subculture now,” explains a representative from Nishkara.

     

    “
    In Mumbai, a group of young professionals started The Mahjong Network via WhatsApp. Within months, it had grown into a full-blown movement, with rotating hosts, mentorship sessions, and tournament-style gatherings.
    ”

     

    Another reason? Everyone agrees that in a world defined by hyper-speed and endless screen time, Mahjong offers a kind of analog elegance. It demands attention, invites conversation, and unfolds in real time — four people, one table, no scrolling.

    But there’s also something deeper at play. The pandemic left many of us starved for community and craving rituals that feel grounding. Mahjong delivers both. It’s strategic, communal, and meditative, a rare combination in modern life.

     

    sangeetakewalramani / Instagram

     

    But this is where we differ from the rest of the world. Mahjong players in India largely belong to a specific social class with the privilege to access gated and membership-only spaces such as the Willingdon Club in Mumbai. Mahjong sets, although easily available, are expensive, and access to Mahjong classes is often paid. 

    We’re living in an age not of invention, but of re-invention. From vinyl to zines, from Indian pickles to Mahjong tiles, there’s a wider cultural pull toward revisiting what once was: toward reclaiming forms of slowness, tactility, and togetherness that got lost in the churn of modernity. 

    Mahjong isn’t just back. It never left. We’re the ones circling back, clicking tiles like rosary beads, finding comfort in repetition, connection in tradition, and clarity in the clatter.

  • Mango Mania

    We’ve all grown up eagerly awaiting the monsoon season — not just for the joy of sipping chai and indulging in hot pakoras, but for the arrival of the undisputed king of fruits: the mango. For many of us, mangoes are wrapped in memory: grandmothers and mothers lovingly slicing them after a meal, their fragrance filling the air. Succulent, fresh, and impossibly tender, the mango has been a ritual, a nostalgia trip, a slice of summer on a plate. India’s love for mangoes goes far beyond summer indulgence — it’s a centuries-old obsession deeply embedded in the country’s culture, diplomacy, and history.

    Every sun-charred summer, people scramble to buy them by the dozen, and visitors to India often leave with brimming crates, as souvenirs. Airports, during mango season, are dotted with cartons of the fruit, ready to cross borders — a happy consequence of modern-day globalization.

    And yet, there is nothing new about globalization. If we jigsaw together fragments of Indian history, we would see that centuries before the first European ship crossed a storm-tossed ocean to India, the mango was already trotting across the globe. Born in the foothills of what is now Meghalaya, India’s beloved Mangifera indica had been cultivated for at least four thousand years before a Westerner ever tasted it. Sanskrit texts praised it. The Buddha is said to have meditated in a mango grove.

     

     

    India’s favorite fruit. Nuff said. / unsplash.com

     

    In fact, our first hint at the sweep of the rambling Indian trade and pilgrimage routes comes via Buddhism — it was ancient Buddhist monks, on pilgrimage to Indian Buddhist sites, who funneled the fruit into South East Asia, from where it trundled into China. By the tenth century, it had made its way to East Africa, through Persia.

    The Maratha rulers, too, are said to have planted the tree everywhere they went, resulting in even further dissemination of the fruit. These were a few amongst the seeds of a fruity network that began in 1575, eventually arrowing into Agra in 1580, where Emperor Akbar, fascinated by a fruit unrivalled in color, smell, and taste grew his own mango orchards and even took to pouring milk and treacle at the base of the trees to enhance their taste.

    It was the Columbian Exchange that finally sailed mango seeds across the ocean to Europe in the 15th century, and later to Brazil. In every place it arrived, the mango was adopted, transformed, and made local. In Mexico, it became the bedrock of the mangonada and of street snacks dusted with chili and lime. In the Caribbean, it fermented into rum punches and stewed into chutneys. From there, it was a hop, skip, and jump to North America.
    Even the colonizing British, who tilted their sturdy noses up at many Indian fruits and vegetables, could not resist the mango. As early as 1883, they were shipping Christmas hampers of mango chutney, jam and jelly from Mumbai to family and friends in the UK.

     

    “
    India’s love for mangoes goes far beyond a simple summer indulgence — it’s a centuries-old obsession deeply embedded in the country’s culture, diplomacy, and history.
    ”

     

    In 1838, the fruit itself found itself an immigrant in London, thanks to the eccentric agriculturist Framji Cowasji Banaji who shipped a hermetically sealed basket of his choicest produce to the queen of England for a spot of diplomacy. It is not known in what state the mangoes reached England. What we do know is it would take until the early 1900s for the British in India to successfully send a large batch to the UK in good condition.

    The globetrotting continued after India won its independence from the British. Back in 1955, Prime Minister Nehru sent a few mango saplings to China — a small gesture, but it said a lot. It wasn’t just about fruit; it was a way of saying, “Here’s something we love — and maybe you will too.”

    Decades later, the mango in 2006, when US President George Bush visited New Delhi, Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh, offered mangoes to the US President, effectively ending a two-decade ban on the fruit in America.

    In such a way, the mango crossed borders and bridges, linking a network of commerce whose threads stitch together millions as far away as Mexico and China, thus begging the question — how old really is globalization itself?

  • Is Beauty Tourism the New Healthcare Frontier?

    There’s a culture building around a form of tourism that we don’t see much in advertisements. If your hairline needs a boost, you’re likely to head to Turkey. If you want glowing glass skin, you find yourself in South Korea. If you’re hoping to perfect your smile, you’ll probably find yourself in Albania. And if you’re looking to shave the rough edges off your nose, you’ll likely be flying to India. Welcome to the world of medical tourism for aesthetic procedures. 

    There’s nothing really new about medical tourism itself. What has changed though are people’s perceptions of it; patients are now far more open about flying around the globe just for an elective aesthetic procedure that might have drawn frowns earlier. 

    But what does this mean for the healthcare profession? And how does this impact the healthcare of those who are residents of these medical tourism hubs — are they getting left behind?

     

    Medical tourism’s new face – beauty. / www.pexels.com

     

    Roll out the red carpet

    Governments have always welcomed medical tourists, with countries opening up their borders, and private hospitals opening up premium suites. Profits soar when patients from around the world pay their bills in foreign currencies. The medical aesthetics market was estimated to stand at 82 billion USD in 2024, and is projected to double in size to 143 billion USD by 2030. 

    And yet, for most people the world over, even basic healthcare is expensive. For cosmetic procedures, those costs escalate further. A hair transplant costs, on average, $13,000 in the US. In contrast, a trip to Turkey, including the flights, accommodation, and the procedure itself, could cost as little as $3,400, with a reputable clinic involved. That cost driver alone can be lucrative enough for people to consider it a viable option, regardless of the risks involved. 

    But this isn’t a story just about Turkey. Malaysia, South Korea, Thailand, Colombia, Mexico and India are well positioned as destination countries for aesthetic medical tourists. India, for example, is doubling down on the opportunity, with e-medical visas for medical tourists in place for nearly 170 countries, and a possibility of visas on arrival in the offing. 

    India’s edge in medical tourism lies of course in its affordability for international travelers, including those of Indian origin residing in the US, UK and Canada — treatments typically run 60–80% less than in the US or Europe — combined with over 57 JCI-accredited hospitals. The other enormous advantage is India’s facility with English; medical staff fluent in the language are an enormous draw for Westerners, and help ease the language barrier. It’s important to note that India caters to a swathe of visitors; around 88% of arrivals are from neighbouring South Asia especially Bangladesh, the Middle East, Africa, and Central Asia.

     

    “
    The country is already uniquely positioned as an aesthetic wellness destination through traditional Ayurveda and yoga retreats — Kerala, for instance, is internationally-known for its serene retreats offering holistic healing.
    ”

     

    The country is already uniquely positioned as an aesthetic wellness destination through traditional Ayurveda and yoga retreats — Kerala, for instance, is internationally-known for its serene retreats offering holistic healing. Perhaps it’s no wonder then that a 2023 survey found that India is ranked second and third in rhinoplasty and liposuction procedures, and is well on its way to dominate in the fields of liposuction, rhinoplasty, Botox, fillers and semi-permanent makeup.

     This is further strengthened by the government’s Heal in India initiative which emphasizes the country as a premier destination for integrated and holistic healthcare, for both complex medical procedures as well as aesthetic ones. As a result, India’s aesthetic healthcare market is estimated to reach approximately US$ 3.02 billion by 2030.

     

    A new hierarchy 

    The low-cost-high-convenience model to achieve a certain set of beauty standards is attractive enough for people the world over to give it at least one go, especially since this was once available only to the super rich or the celebrities. With packages and services that can manage the end-to-end coordination for a medical tourist, that level of privilege is now available to anyone who can afford it. And affording it is simply getting easier, with time. 

    The tide is shifting even in countries like India, where there is now a surge in aesthetic procedures away from the big metros. Tier 2 cities are slowly increasing their access to quality aesthetic health care. Perhaps there will soon come a time when international visitors will fly into Patna for its specialized liposuction services! 

    Sure, this is a boon for visitors, but there’s a growing concern for the residents of these destination countries and how this medical tourism boon is reshaping the face of domestic healthcare, particularly for developing countries.

     

    The promise of affordable plastic surgery draws patients halfway around the world. / www.pexels.com

     

    Since most of the medical tourism for aesthetic procedures is centered around private healthcare, the boost in the sector becomes lopsided, with public healthcare lagging. 

    Public healthcare tends to rural and urban populations at a highly subsidized rate, but is largely underfunded and as a result, suffers from overcrowding and large wait times, owing to the quantity of the population it has to service. 

    In Malaysia, for example, private healthcare is now reserved for the wealthy and for the tourists, while local populations must rely on underfunded public healthcare. Thailand is seeing an active brain drain from the public sector to the private sector, as doctors choose lucrative financial options over the rigor of public healthcare systems. Yes, healthcare is noble work, but privilege now dictates the quality of it. 

    While India’s policy push for medical tourism does emphasize on the need to safeguard domestic healthcare first, there is already a yawning economic divide when it comes to access to top-tier healthcare. Aesthetic medical tourism would be simply unthinkable for most of the population.

     

    “
    The medical aesthetics market was estimated to stand at 82 billion USD in 2024, and is projected to double in size to 143 billion USD by 2030.
    ”

     

    Taking a Stand

    Healthcare has always been a service industry. But it has also always been distinguished as a calling, or an honorable career, because of what healthcare professionals do: they heal. Much like teaching, the ‘for profit’ consideration is culturally expected to be secondary to the actual act of service they provide through their skills. 

    However, when profits are booming from treating patients with only vanity concerns, it begs the question – what about those without these privileges? And perhaps this is the biggest unwanted cultural shift for destination countries in medical tourism i.e. an even greater gulf between the haves and have-nots. 

    More people than ever before are choosing to have these aesthetic procedures. And certainly their growing accessibility is reducing the gap between the haves and have-nots in the aesthetics department. But maybe it’s time we asked if the only ones benefiting from any growing healthcare system are those who access it on-demand and not on-necessity.

  • Is the Label Lying?

    It’s everywhere — in your Instagram feed, in shopping apps, on tags sewn into dresses and denim jackets. Sustainable. Ethical. Eco-friendly. These words are fast becoming fashion’s favourite accessories. 

    But behind the buzzwords, something doesn’t add up.

    What does it really mean for a brand to be ‘sustainable’? Who decides that a shirt is ‘ethical’? And in an industry worth over $1.5 trillion globally — built on speed, volume, and low margins — how much of this heartwarming language can we actually trust?

     

     

    As the world grows more climate-conscious, fashion has scrambled to clean up its image. Consumers are pivoting away from fast, cheap fashion, towards more homegrown, slow-stitched brands. But instead of fixing how their clothes are actually made, many brands have just changed how they talk about them. Words like ‘sustainable’ or ‘conscious’ get thrown around, but it’s often just clever marketing with little behind it. As shoppers, we’re left guessing — trying to make better choices, but unsure what any of it really means. 

    It’s time to ask: do we really know what we’re wearing? 

    At its core, sustainable fashion refers to clothing that’s designed, produced, and distributed in a way that minimizes harm to people and the planet. That might include everything from using organic cotton and low-impact dyes to ensuring workers are paid fair wages in safe conditions. 

    But there is no global rulebook, no clear-cut definition of what the term means. It’s all a bit… fuzzy. And that fuzziness? It’s exactly what allows brands to get away with saying a lot without actually doing much. They throw around feel-good words but rarely back them up. The result? A lot of bold claims — and not nearly enough proof.

    This is greenwashing: when companies mislead consumers about the environmental benefits of a product or practice.

     

    “
    Look for specificity — a truly transparent brand will tell you exactly what makes that shirt or dress sustainable whether it’s organic cotton, low water usage, fair wages, or all of the above.
    ”

     

    And it works — because we want to believe it. Consumers want a pat on the back for their choices, for choosing the $80 ‘organic bamboo’ shirt over the $10 fast fashion top from a high-street brand.

    In India, with its complex, layered textile traditions, sustainability might lead to further flattening. After all, who decides what is sustainable and for whom? The tailor bent over his bandhini work, the sun-hunched cotton farmer in his fields, often have no say in what makes a garment sustainable. This division of labor and capital becomes more complicated when you glance at India’s colonial history, where tailors were often shunted into marginalized positions.  

    So, as someone trying to shop a little more consciously — where do you even start?

    Here are a few suggestions. Avoid shopping entirely, or choose pre-loved clothing. But if you have an unbearable hankering for that cute cotton dress from that planet ’forward’ brand check for the following things.

     

     

    Look for specificity — a transparent brand will tell you exactly what makes that shirt or dress sustainable whether it’s organic cotton, low water usage, fair wages, or all of the above. Look for details: what is the fabric? Who made it and are they being paid fairly? How was the material grown? How much water or energy did it consume? Are brands using leftover material effectively, or are they contributing to the enormous fashion waste problem? Are they producing vast volumes of clothes that are then discarded rather than recycled? Sometimes, there are other hard choices to be made. Cotton, for instance, is a thirsty crop, leeching water from the soil, but on the other hand, polyester is a synthetic, non-biodegradable material. 

    Certifications help, but even they’re complicated. Some widely-recognised ones include GOTS (Global Organic Textile Standard), OEKO-TEX, and Fair Trade. But not all certifications are equal — and some are run by industry bodies themselves. 

    Transparency over perfection, always. Truly sustainable brands will be honest about what they’re doing and what they’re still working on. A glossy marketing video is not the same as a breakdown of supply chains and emissions — endless aesthetically-shot reels of tailors hunched over their sewing do not automatically translate to fair wages. Sometimes, it is simply clever marketing. It helps to write to individual brands and demand accountability.

     

    “
    Until we have clearer regulations, global standards, and third-party checks that are genuinely independent, ‘sustainable fashion’ will remain a murky promise — one that can either mean everything or absolutely nothing.
    ”

     

    Touch, feel, observe. While it’s not always possible to judge quality or authenticity with the naked eye, there’s some truth to the idea that if a garment feels cheap or synthetic, it probably didn’t come from a clean, slow process. 

    Unfortunately, in India and globally, there’s no unified parameters for sustainable fashion. In most countries, brands can slap the word ‘sustainable’ on a tag without proving anything; regulations remain sparse. The EU has begun cracking down on misleading claims and greenwashing, although enforcement is still new and patchy. However, this is set to change come 2028, with the EU mandating a standardized digital identifier under its Digital Product Passport initiative. This is a QR code of sorts that clarifies all the details of any garment sold in the EU, and thoroughly tracks its carbon footprint. This will squarely affect the Indian manufacturing industry that supplies $7.6 billion worth of textiles to Europe. How exactly this modifies an industry often reliant on informal tailoring workshops and unregulated middlemen, remains to be seen.

    But until that is set in place more fully, that means the burden falls squarely on the consumer. And frankly, that’s not fair.

    Even with the best intentions, conscious shopping isn’t enough to fix a broken system. It’s not just fast fashion that’s the problem — it’s fast information, too. We live in a system where we are constantly bombarded by trends; they are far easier to push than facts, and far more profitable.

     

     

    So maybe the real question isn’t “Which brand is truly sustainable?” but something deeper: Why is it so hard to know for sure? Who gets to decide what’s ethical — and who is holding them accountable?

    Until we have clearer regulations, global standards, and third-party checks that are genuinely independent, ‘sustainable fashion’ will remain a murky promise — one that can either mean everything or absolutely nothing. 

    We live in an age where we know where our food is from, how many steps we’ve taken today, even the carbon footprint of our flights. But when it comes to the clothes we wear — the fabrics that sit against our skin every day — we’re often in the dark. That needs to change.

    If we’re going to talk about sustainability, let’s demand clarity. Let’s ask harder questions. Let’s treat ‘sustainable fashion’ not as a trend, but as a responsibility — one that belongs as much to lawmakers and corporations as it does to shoppers. Let’s bring light to the label.

  • The Internet Age(ing)

    Your aunt sends you a devotional Reel every morning, your father has strong opinions about which YouTube finance channel to trust, and your grandfather joins Zoom calls without being asked (but he just refuses to mute himself). For years, these felt like stories from the edges of internet life. Increasingly, they are internet life.

    We talk about the internet as though it belongs to the young. Every few months there is a new generation to decode, a new platform to panic about, a new slang term requiring a glossary. Brands chase Gen Z and startups chase Gen Alpha. Entire industries are built around predicting what younger users will do next.

    Meanwhile, some of the most consistent growth in India’s internet user base is happening among people over fifty.

    The numbers tell a partial story. India crossed 950 million active internet users in 2025, according to the Internet and Mobile Association of India, with rural adoption growing at roughly twice the pace of urban areas. Age-disaggregated data is harder to come by, but the direction seems to be clear. The share of internet users aged 35 and above has been rising steadily since 2019, and demographic projections suggest that trend will continue as India’s population ages and smartphone access deepens in smaller cities and towns. The next wave of first-time internet users in India will not look like the last one. What is less discussed is what happens to a platform’s culture when so many new people arrive on it. A demographic that is older, often more patient, and frequently more purposeful about why they are there.

     

     

    In India, a new kind of everyday ritual is taking root. Mornings begin with bhajans on YouTube. Then come WhatsApp family groups, a regional-language news video, or maybe a stock market explainer from a creator who uses analogies that are relatable. A Facebook birthday message for an old colleague, followed by a quick check of a government portal that someone figured out how to navigate and then screenshot for everyone else. The routine is structured, habitual, and deeply social. It is also as sticky, in its own way, as any Gen Z screen schedule.

    But the motivations are different. For many older users, the internet is not primarily a place for self-expression or personal branding or keeping up with the cultural conversation. It is a tool for maintaining relationships, staying connected to family, managing practical life, and participating in communities that matter to them.

    This shows up in how they behave once they are online. Older WhatsApp users, as anyone in a family group can confirm, do not just forward; they annotate. A news article usually arrives with commentary, a health tip comes with a personal observation, and good-morning messages, with their small festivals of flowers and folded hands and heart emojis, are not just broadcast content. These have quickly become a daily form of contact. Communication stays relational rather than algorithmic, and in an era when younger users often describe social media as exhausting and isolating, that is not nothing.

     

    “
    The next wave of first-time internet users in India will not look like the last one.
    ”

     

    The effect is subtle but significant. Spaces that platforms often imagine as channels for content become, in practice, places for conversation. It’s not uncommon to see a comment section turn into a reunion or a devotional livestream become a community gathering.

    Part of what is driving older Indians online is a structural shift that does not get talked about enough in digital culture conversations. The family has changed shape and technology has moved in to fill some of the gap.

    Joint households have given way, across much of urban and semi-urban India, to smaller nuclear arrangements. Adult children have moved to other cities, or other countries. The Indian diaspora is large and still growing. There are over 32 million people of Indian origin living outside India, among the largest overseas communities in the world. For many of them, daily contact with parents and grandparents happens through a screen.

    This creates an understated yet practical imperative. Parents and grandparents who want to stay close to children abroad need to be online. Video calls, WhatsApp updates, shared Reels, and Facebook posts that let you feel like you witnessed something have become how families stay emotionally present across distance.

     

     

    Research on the lived experience of older Indians left behind by emigrating children describes something that rings true. Digital communication genuinely mitigates loneliness, but it also reveals its own limits. A five-minute call can hide a difficult day. Warmth can come through, context often cannot. Still, the alternative, sporadic phone calls across time zones, is worse. And so older adults learn the platforms, figure out video calling, join the family group, and gradually become more comfortable in digital spaces than anyone expected.

    For NRI families, this is not a small thing. The grandmother who can now send a voice note and receive a photo from a birthday party on the other side of the world within minutes of it being taken is not marginal to the internet. The internet came to her. 

    As more older Indians come online, a small but growing ecosystem has emerged around them. Companies like Seniority, Emoha, and Goodfellows are building services specifically for this demographic, from ergonomic products and elder companionship to curated digital experiences for seniors. Healthcare platforms are also increasingly offering simplified digital flows.

    Content creators are also a part of this shift. Retired teachers run YouTube channels explaining Sanskrit texts, with production values modest enough to feel trustworthy. Grandmothers share recipes with audiences spread across multiple countries. Regional-language creators discuss gardening, spirituality, personal finance, and everyday health for viewers who rarely see themselves reflected anywhere else online. Utkarsh, a Delhi-based banker told us, “I gifted my father a podcast mic for his retirement. He wants to start an educational channel to talk about finance for older people. He worked for the government for decades and wants to share his knowledge. He even has 5k followers!”

     

    “
    Communication stays relational rather than algorithmic, and in an era when younger users often describe social media as exhausting and isolating, that is not nothing.
    ”

     

    These are not niche curiosities. Devotional content on YouTube has grown into one of the platform’s most reliably streamed categories in India. The audience for that content is not primarily young.

    But there’s another side to the story as older Indians log in more. None of this is uncomplicated. They are also more vulnerable to misinformation, digital scams, and phishing attempts. They are more likely to be scammed than younger users. On top of that, platforms were not designed with their threat models in mind. Multiple studies across different countries find that older adults are also more likely to share misinformation online, often not from carelessness but from a different sense of what sharing means. 

    This has produced a recognizable intergenerational dynamic in a lot of Indian households. The adult child explaining privacy settings, gently questioning that viral health claim, showing a parent how to spot a suspicious link, while that same parent is sending online registration links for government schemes they figured out how to navigate, or passing along stock tips, or knowing exactly which government portal has the right form for a particular bureaucratic task. Everyone teaches and everyone gets taught. Everyone is also at least slightly exasperated.

    Most Indian platforms still behave as though their user is young and digitally fluent in the way that demographic usually is. User interfaces assume a certain comfort with gesture and navigation that many older first-time users do not have. Marketing and product decisions continue to treat new users as synonymous with young users. Voice search, larger text options, simpler checkout flows, these are still exceptions rather than defaults.

     

     

    The numbers suggest this will have to change. How people pay looks different in this demographic. They use less UPI, more cash on delivery, more comfort with phone-based rather than app-based transactions. How they search looks different, they tend to use more voice commands, more full questions phrased in regional languages, and less comfort with truncated keyword logic. How they decide what to trust looks different too. Platform reputation and community validation matter more than influencer endorsement.

    Some companies have noticed and begun adapting. Quick commerce and delivery platforms have begun targeting older demographics with campaigns that acknowledge, rather than ignore, the learning curve. Uber’s guest-ride feature allows users to book rides for someone else. Blinkit has experimented with collaborative shopping tools that recognize that purchases are often made collectively rather than individually. These may seem like small product decisions, but they reflect a larger reality. Still, it is early and the gap between where the user base is going and where product design currently sits is wide.

    India’s internet is older than it was five years ago, and it will be older still in five more. That does not mean the memes disappear or the youth platforms empty out. It means the internet becomes more genuinely intergenerational, more varied in its purposes, its languages, its habits, and its assumptions about what being online is even for.

    So that aunt sending the devotional reel every morning is not a straggler arriving late to someone else’s party. She is part of one of the most significant shifts happening in Indian digital life right now, and the rest of the internet is still catching up to what that means.

  • Setting the Stage

    In 2024, an enormous crowd sways to Prateek Kuhad’s dulcet tones under a cerulean March sky. In 2025, Jasleen Royal belted her heart out at the D Y Patil Stadium, in a soft Mumbai gloaming. In 2026, on a cool Bengaluru night, Neyhal sang soft serenades on a stage in Phoenix Market City. The connection between all three? They all opened for international superstars – Ed Sheeran, Coldplay and Michael Learns to Rock.

    India’s contribution to global music for a long time was to provide a fleeting taste of its diverse soundscape before the main event took center stage. However, that function has changed in recent years, slowly transforming into something far more significant. For many Indian artists, opening for international superstars isn’t just a gig — it’s a test of talent, of taste, and, perhaps unfairly, of legitimacy.

     

    Prateek Kuhad is one of India’s best-known singers / Wikimedia Commons

     

    These moments are framed by the media as breakthroughs for the Indian musicians, as an indication that Indian music is at last breaking onto the international scene. Are these musical introductions more about looks than potential, though?

    Theoretically, opening acts are an opportunity for audiences to discover local talent and a nod to local importance. In practice, they’re often a litmus test for whether an artist can carry the weight of audience expectation before a stadium erupts for someone else. Can they impress an impatient crowd that’s mostly there for the headliner?

    It’s not just about being good — all the performers are good, perhaps even better than the headlining act. It’s about being palatable and accessible. Global enough to fit — yet distinct enough to represent something ‘authentically Indian’. That tension is both the promise and the peril of opening for international names in India. You’re seen, but are you really heard?

     

    “
    Theoretically, opening acts are an opportunity for audiences to discover local talent and a nod to local importance. In practice, they’re often a litmus test: can this artist carry the weight of audience expectation before a stadium erupts for someone else?
    ”

     

    But where are they now? Let’s track their trajectories. Divine’s pre-Post Malone slot felt like a full-circle moment — the homegrown rapper whose music once echoed in Mumbai’s gullies now centre stage at a mega gig. But Divine was already a star. Did opening for Post change anything? Probably not.

    Similarly, when Anuv Jain opened for Ed Sheeran, it sparked chatter — was his mellow, acoustic vibe a safe choice? Did it widen his base or simply reaffirm what his fans already knew?

    But Divine and Anuv were already stars in India. Lesser-known performers frequently return to local circuits, their international prominence swiftly forgotten. For them, the slot turns into a line in their biography; it’s remarkable, sure, but it’s not always revolutionary.

    Similarly, when Anuv Jain opened for Ed Sheeran, it sparked chatter — was his mellow, acoustic vibe a safe choice? Did it widen his base or simply reaffirm what his fans already knew?

    But Divine and Anuv were already stars in India. Lesser-known performers frequently return to local circuits, their international prominence swiftly forgotten. For them, the slot turns into a line in their biography; it’s remarkable, sure, but it’s not always revolutionary.

    Opening for a global name means infrastructure, press, a larger-than-usual audience. It’s a fast pass into a moment that might take years to build otherwise. But it also reveals a deeper anxiety: that Indian artists are still waiting to be validated from the outside. That recognition must come with a stamp — global, Western, verified.

     

     

    The irony? India’s music culture has never been more expansive. From Tamil hip-hop to Punjabi pop, indie electronica to regional folk revivals — the real sonic revolutions aren’t happening in stadiums. They’re happening in private rooms, on YouTube, at intimate gigs where language and geography matter less than vibe.

    Still, the question remains. In the end, do opening acts matter?

    Yes, of course they do. But their evolving status is a mixed blessing. They don’t promise longevity; instead, they offer visibility. And whether that moment becomes a movement depends less on who you open for, and even more on the artist’s next step.

    In a country as culturally dense and musically diverse as India, perhaps the real test isn’t opening for the world — it’s opening up the world to us. On our own terms.