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  • The New International Indian Degree

    There is a marked shift iunderway in India’s higher education sector. Foreign universities are thronging to set up campuses in various parts of the country.
    The government has been quick to endorse the move, viewing it as a way to put an international stamp on Indian academia, give students access to degrees with global standing and, not least, keep them from having to go abroad for their studies.But the onrush of these institutions gives rise to a question: will they act as a real game changer?  Or will they simply be a premium offering for those who can afford an international name?
    What we are seeing in cities like Mumbai, Bengaluru and Gurugram comes down to the regulatory environment put in place following the 2020 National Education Policy. The University Grants Commission drew up the rules permitting  qualified foreign universities to run independent operations here and dispense degrees under their own systems, all within the bounds of Indian law. Deakin, the University of Wollongong and the University of Southampton are among those already in business. Others are in the process of putting down roots.

    Image courtesy: Trust Katsande / Unsplash

     

    One of the strongest arguments in favor of these institutions is accessibility. Studying in countries such as the UK, US or Australia can involve enormous expenses once tuition, accommodation, travel, insurance and other living costs are considered. Foreign campuses in India can reduce several of these expenses while allowing students to earn degrees carrying the name of established international universities.

    For families who cannot comfortably finance four years overseas or bypass sticky visa requirements, this can be an attractive compromise. Students may also benefit from international curricula, visiting faculty, exchange opportunities and connections with the universities’ overseas campuses. Most of the courses offered though stick within the realm of areas such as artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, data science, financial technology and business analytics, which are increasingly important in the Indian employment market.

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    One of the strongest arguments in favour of these institutions is accessibility. Studying in countries such as the UK, US or Australia can involve enormous expenses once tuition, accommodation, travel, insurance and other living costs are considered.
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    Simultaneously, these universities have announced substantial scholarship programs, in order to give an early fillip to admissions. This could help equalize the field for students from marginalized backgrounds, for whom these doors might have remained closed otherwise.

    There is also a broader economic argument. India sends hundreds of thousands of students abroad every year, resulting in substantial foreign-exchange outflows. If some of these students choose to study at international campuses within India, part of that expenditure could remain in the domestic economy. The campuses could also generate employment, encourage international academic partnerships and create opportunities for research and industry collaboration.

    Their presence may also force certain laggardly Indian universities to up their game, updating outdated curricula and teaching methods. International universities could introduce different teaching methods, stronger industry engagement and greater emphasis on research and practical learning.

     

    The University of New South Wales (pictured here) opened its first international campus in Bengaluru in August 2026.

    And yet, critics are wary.

    They point out that simply carrying the name of an international university doesn’t automatically guarantee an equal quality of education. A large part of overseas education includes access to a very particular international mixture of students on campus, a wide range of extracurricular activities, possibly larger libraries, and a wider range of subjects taught. Besides, dare we say it, an international campus comes with its own freedoms. Laboratories, libraries, student societies, sports, cultural activities, international peers, alumni networks and research communities all come together to mould a student’s education.

    This is especially true for fees. Some foreign-campus programmes from Indian institutes can cost tens of lakhs of rupees. While they can sometimes offer a better value proposition than studying abroad, they can still work out to be significantly more expensive than comparable programmes at home. Students will have to weigh the value of the global brand against the premium fees, and many may drop out altogether.

    A career outlook is equally pertinent. While a foreign degree may look good on paper, in practice it’s the skills, internships, experience and performance that matter most to recruiters. The new campus does not have an established alumni network or domestic placement track-record, resulting in promising students left by the wayside.

     

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    For India to attract students from other countries, its campuses must provide strong research, infrastructure, academic freedom, safety, affordable living conditions and an environment that encourages intellectual exchange.
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    Besides, most of the universities offer subjects that stick to safe, commercially attractive fields such as management, computing, finance and technology. In India, these subjects are naturally in high demand, but the true test of education comes when the student has the option of choosing from the sciences, commercial fields as well as the arts.

    The government also hopes that foreign universities will help make India an international education hub. Still, for a country to become an international education destination it needs to offer infrastructure,Mayes, but also academic freedom, safety, value and an environment conducive to intellectual exchange. Just plonking down a foreign flag in India does not automatically make it a global education hub.

    Ultimately, foreign universities in India are an opportunity and an experiment. They allow cheaper access to overseas education, offer different pedagogical models, strengthen industry ties and provide competition. However, their ultimate success will not be measured in the mere number of campuses or degrees granted. It will be measured in whether students receive an education comparable the international reputation of the university, if its graduates find jobs in India, if research flourishes at these campuses, and if they provide accessibility and value to a country used to elitism when it comes to higher education.

    India does not need more foreign university brand names in its education system. It needs superior education, research and academic opportunity. If the new institutions enrich Indian higher education and act as catalysts for improvement in domestic universities, their arrival could prove to be an important moment for India. But if they represent merely expensive outposts offering little in the way of genuine academic experience or career advancement opportunities, then the excitement around them may fade quickly.

  • One Country, Many Cuisines

    For decades, Indian food in the United States meant a familiar but monolithic roster: butter chicken, tikka masala, a biryani perhaps and a basket of naan. An entire country was condensed into a sort of greatest hits menu that was replicated over and over again. Change came on the backs of restaurants such as Semma and Bungalow NYC, restlessly cosmopolitan, cleaving to familiar Indian ingredients and styles while infusing them with a touch of whimsy.

    And now, another wave is gathering strength.

    Diners, as well as chefs, are beginning to understand that there is no such thing as Indian food: the cuisine is vast, nuanced and complex, hewing to geography, climate and community. Take the souring agent, for instance. Depending on where in India you travel to, your dish may get its mouth-puckering tang from tomato, kokum fruit, a squeeze of lime, a large lemon, or tamarind. Or take the coconut; whether it is freshly grated, milked, ground into a paste, dry roasted or transformed into oil tells you what part of the country you are in.

     

    At Chatti New York, Chef Regi Mathew has brought the micro-cuisine of Kerala’s toddy shops to New York | Cover image and image (above) courtesy: Alex Staniloff, Chatti New York

     

    This is an understanding that comes from those who are well-traveled and curious about food. Equally, that curiosity is being built thanks to the ubiquity of social media; TikTok and Instagram are spreading the knowledge of regional cuisines with far greater ease than before. And for the diaspora, perhaps there is a deeper interest in their own communities’ foods, and pride in flaunting them. And as India’s cultural influence has ballooned in the United States, the American gastro-scape has shifted with it. As a result, a wave of relatively new restaurants offer menus that narrow their focus to one region, state or community rather than ‘Indian food’ as a whole.

    “What’s driving this new growth is a generation of chefs that have stopped asking for permission; now we’re really cooking,” says Roni Mazumdar, CEO of Unapologetic Foods. “We’re cooking the food of our grandmothers’ kitchens, from specific villages, states and communities, and diners can taste that conviction; it isn’t a diaspora thing.”

    “Today’s young chefs from various regions of India are deeply inspired to represent their heritage,” echoes Eric McCarthy, the multiple Michelin star-winning Executive Chef and owner of Malvan NYC and Indian Table NYC. “This movement benefits everyone, as it allows people around the world to experience unique, authentic flavors they may have never heard of or tried, all without having to travel to India.”

    In many ways, the multicultural mosaic of New York is the perfect setting for the gastro-curious. Although, “New York might be where it caught fire first, because this city rewards risk, but it’s not staying here”, explains Mazumdar. “You can see it trickling out in Chicago, Houston, the Bay Area, and even smaller cities, like Philadelphia. Regional Indian food isn’t a trend, it’s a long overdue correction.”

     

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    In many ways, the multicultural mosaic of New York is the perfect setting for the gastro-curious. And as India's cultural influence has ballooned in the United States, the American gastro-scape has shifted with it.
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    At Chatti, for instance, Chef Regi Mathew (Founder Partner at NYC’s Chatti, and Culinary Director and Partner of the massively popular Kappa Chakka Kandhari in Bengaluru and Chennai) has brought the micro-cuisine of Kerala’s toddy shops: basic, unshowy eateries serving spice-sluiced Kerala cooking to be drunk with local palm toddy (to put out the fire of the dishes). The menu embraces meat and seafood alike, serving Malayali favorites such as beef fry, the chile-garlic calamari and jackfruit cutlets armored with coconut. The popular Prawn Pouch, prawns steamed in banana leaf with coconut masala and tamarind, is his mother’s recipe.

    In Brooklyn, Indian Table NYC took an equally specific approach to Goa. Chef McCarthy, Goan born and bred, sought to sustain the state’s culinary cultures with his chicken cafreal, ros omelette, pork sorpotel, fish curry and crab cutlets.

    The prolific Chef McCarthy next turned his attention to the charms of the Konkan coast.

    “Coming from Goa, one of India’s most vibrant coastal regions, I wanted to introduce authentic Goan cuisine, with its distinct food culture and way of life, to NYC,” says the chef. “After establishing Indian Table as the first successful Goan restaurant in Brooklyn, I moved on to my next project, Malvan. Malvani (Maharashtrian) cuisine is the food I grew up eating, and its rich history and culture inspired me to elevate and showcase it on a higher level.”

     

    Chef Eric McCarthy’s Malvan NYC showcases a variety of dishes from the western Malvan coast of Maharashtra | Image courtesy: Malvan NYC

     

    A typical Malvani dish uses tart kokum fruit to cut the richness of the coconut and tame the heat of the spices; from this marriage are born dishes such as Crab Curry, or Khekdyache Kalwan, a traditional crab curry, a nuanced blend of toasted coconut paste, coastal masala, tamarind, and kokum syrup.

    At Vatan, meanwhile, a bevy of vegetarian dishes come together in an all-you-can-eat thali. Its Gujarat-inspired décor helps turn the meal into an encounter with a particular food culture and its accompanying aesthetic world.

    At Biryani Bol, the focus is entirely on biryanis – chicken, goat and vegetable. And kebabs are the marquee item, tenting the menu at Kebabwala, a restaurant that draws inspiration from Mumbai’s Bademiya and the informal, late-night culture of roadside kebab stalls.

     

    “
    In Brooklyn, Indian Table took an equally specific approach to Goa. Chef McCarthy, Goan born and bred, sought to sustain the state's culinary cultures with his chicken cafreal, ros omelette, pork sorpotel, fish curry and crab cutlets.
    ”

     

    These are a mere smattering of a far larger subset of Indian restaurants. And taken together, they speak to something particular: that the country’s food no longer needs to cater only to the diaspora (or homesick Indian travelers) nor be translated to a Western audience.

    “At Chatti, our intention from the beginning was to appeal to a much broader audience,” explains Chef Mathew. “Someone who has never been to Kerala may not have any personal nostalgia for a toddy shop, but they can understand the idea of coming together over good food, drinks and conversation. That is why we chose toddy shop culture as the lens through which to present Kerala. It gives people who are unfamiliar with the cuisine a way into it.”

    One of Chatti’s most compelling ideas is its focus on ‘touchings’, the small, flavor-packed dishes traditionally served along with toddy. After all, Chef Mathew asks, if Spanish tapas can become an international culinary language, why can’t Kerala’s touchings achieve the same recognition?

  • People In Glass Houses

    Every so often, a post goes viral on X. It’s usually some variation of “No, this is not New York! Can you believe this is Secunderabad / Ajmer / insert name of smaller city in India.” The post is always accompanied by a photograph or video of sweeping glass-fronted skyscrapers (usually a mall or office building), meant as a marker of progress and confidence in a flourishing contemporary India, an India that has risen in power and splendor on the global stage.

    Such towers certainly seem to be in fashion now. Across India, commercial builders are erecting 30-40-floor buildings fronted with sheets of glass, with names like Utopia, World Towers, Bellissimo and Royale. The tall, cloud-kissing structures, together with their exotic names, are telling. They gesture at luxury and a sort of utopian Western ideal that stands at odds with the chaotic city streets.

     

     

    It makes sense that the style was first adopted by big-city corporations aiming to project power, confidence, and wealth. Glass-swathed structures appealed to businesses trying to evoke the dynamism and grand ambitions of technology-forward futurists, perhaps appropriate for a country that has laid tremendous emphasis on scientific development since the Nehruvian era. Large panes of flawless glass were also once extremely expensive to make and insulate, so a glass-fronted home or storefront signalled (and still signals) wealth, sophistication, and access to premium views.

    Yet, for a country with a long tradition of local architecture, why do we still copy-paste this global template? Its suitability in sun-drenched cities is questionable. Glass acts as a greenhouse, baking in the sun’s heat and forcing air conditioning to work harder and harder. The UK’s High-Rise Buildings: Energy and Density project analyzed energy consumption data from hundreds of buildings. It found that electricity use soars by two and a half per cent, and that, on average, carbon emissions from air-conditioned offices are 60% higher than from those that are not. These are steep numbers, especially for a country wracked with heatwaves, and economic and climate instability.

     

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    Across India, commercial builders are erecting 30-40-floor buildings fronted with sheets of glass, with names like Utopia, World Towers, Bellissimo and Royale.
    ”

     

    Meanwhile, traditional Indian architecture, locally appropriate and climate-resilient, languishes on the margins. For instance, deep overhangs cut out the harshness of the sun’s rays. Jaalis, netted screens, reduce the sun’s glare while allowing for cross-ventilation.

    Yet all is not lost. The fully glazed facade, once corporate India’s shorthand for progress, is slowly being seen as a liability, with a swathe of Indian architects marrying modern structural engineering with ancient Indian architectural wisdom.

    The jaali, in particular, is staging quite the comeback. Most famously, Microsoft’s Noida office uses latticed screens and arches, reminiscent of the Taj Mahal. Sanjay Puri Architects designed a Jaipur office tower that blends jaali walls with glass frontage to rethink the aesthetics of a modern office. Similarly, the headquarters of Punjab Kesari newspaper in New Delhi fuses a distinct jaali design with contemporary office aesthetics.

     

     

    None of this implies in any way that glass must be banished from Indian architecture. The problem comes when the effects of glass frontages are not mitigated in environment-friendly ways.

    The deeper issue is cultural. India’s construction industry sits at a crossroads, torn between conspicuous consumption and the demands of energy-efficiency rules. Resolving that tension means reconsidering what we consider prestigious. A building that stays cool through intelligent design is far more sophisticated than one that stays cool only because an air conditioner is working at its limits.

    For decades we assumed that looking forward meant looking outward. The better path may be to look back, at our own climate and architectural inheritance. The jaali, the courtyard and the deep verandah were never primitive. They were solutions, refined over centuries by people who couldn’t simply turn up the air conditioning. Our cities deserve buildings that are as smart as that.

  • From Trash To Treasure

    Anyone who has grown up in India knows the scrap dealer, India’s OG recycler. Every neighbourhood depended upon his small store to offload their old newspapers, malfunctioning appliances, used plastic and glass bottles, old vessels and torn clothes. In return, customers got a small fee, while their discarded items were sent ahead to be repurposed and resold. The dealer enabled the circular economy well before it became a global buzzword for environmental protection.

    According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency, the point of a circular economy is to keep materials and products in circulation for as long as possible. “A circular economy reduces material use, redesigns materials and products to be less resource intensive, and recaptures ‘waste’, or material that was previously considered to be a waste, as a resource that can serve (as feedstock) to manufacture new materials and products”.

    In many ways, this is how an older India functioned. Clothes that children outgrew were handed down to cousins, knives were sharpened (a loudly-hawking knife sharpener would cycle round once a week), faded brass and copper vessels were polished by the kalaiwala, the cobbler sewed up the torn sole, and everybody ‘knew a guy‘ who would fix the leaky fridge, the creaking fan. The tail end of this cycle was, of course, the scrap dealer, who would gather items at the end of their lives and set them up for another life cycle.

     

     

    In doing so, he performed a crucial role. Urban India generates over 150,000 tons of waste each day, and the formal garbage collection and disposal systems are simply not equipped to manage it fully. The scrap dealer serves as the initial point in the recycling chain, alongside ragpickers operating within the same ecosystem. He gathers waste from households and commercial establishments, often in areas inaccessible to municipal collection vehicles, and sorts materials such as paper, plastic, metal, and glass before selling them onward to recyclers who transform them into new goods.

    The informal waste sector provides employment to more than 2 million individuals, many of whom belong to marginalized communities, and is valued at approximately $13 billion annually. According to a study by the Centre for Science and Environment, scrap dealers are responsible for recycling over 40 per cent of Delhi’s plastic waste. This sector reduces municipal expenditure on waste disposal, prevents materials from reaching landfills, and lowers pollution and emissions associated with producing goods from raw materials.

     

    “
    Clothes that children outgrew were handed down to cousins, knives were sharpened (a knife sharpener would cycle round once a week, loudly hawking his talents), faded brass and copper vessels were polished by the kalaiwala, the cobbler sewed up the torn sole, and everybody 'knew a guy' who would fix the leaky fridge, the creaking fan.
    ”

     

    But as society grows ever more prosperous, fast fashion enters our style lexicon, and delivery apps make ordering more and more things smooth as silk, India’s traditional economy has tilted to become a throwaway economy instead. People consume far more nowadays, while the use of plastic in everything, even clothes, has grown proportionately, and landfills grow ever taller and more toxic. In the modern-day hustle-and-bustle of urban living, with office-going nuclear families, the connection with the scrap dealer is slowly being severed.

    Thankfully, a generation of entrepreneurs has stepped in to help.

    ScrapUncle, which was featured on Shark Tank India, provides doorstep collection services at pre-established rates; the company has raised ₹22 crore to develop a structured, technology-enabled logistics network. The Kabadiwala, born in Bhopal and now in 15 Indian cities, has digitized the traditional scrap network through app-based bookings and tracking systems. Maharashtra’s ScrapJi is a far cry from fulfilling its mission to make India trash-free by 2030, but the initiative is laudable. Its AI-driven pricing intelligence folds in local scrap dealers, with the aim of transforming them into organized operators rather than replacing them entirely.

    Behind these consumer-facing applications lies a broader infrastructure layer. Kabadiwala Connect, based in Chennai, maps the urban informal waste ecosystem. Using ICT and IoT based technology, the organization integrates informal actors into the formal waste management system.

    And in Ambikapur, Chhattisgarh, at the Garbage Café, you can pay for your meals with garbage. One kilogram of plastic earns a full lunch or dinner, while 500 grams is exchanged for breakfast. “More the waste, better the taste” is their slogan. The program, financed by the municipality, looks to provide food to those in need while simultaneously removing plastic from public spaces.

     

     

     

    Yet, we must strike a cautionary note here. If digital platforms were to simply bypass the traditional waste dealer and the scrap-picker, it would lead to the evisceration of jobs of an already marginalized group. However, if they succeed in integrating them through fair pricing, digital payments, safer working conditions, and a formal role within the supply chain, it could represent one of the more quietly inclusive technological developments in the country.

    Early signs are encouraging. Many of these initiatives are designed to formalize and empower existing collectors rather than replace them. The scale of the raddiwala may now be accompanied by a digital interface, but the fundamental role remains unchanged: turning waste to wealth.

  • (Un)Discovered Places (2)

    When did it begin this popularity?
    The chronology online appears simple enough.

    In 2017, a travel account calls Laitlum a “road less travelled”, a quiet detour discovered through a local tour planner. By 2018 a Tripoto account describes it as relatively pristine but that it had “just started getting mass popularity” after a song sequence from Bollywood’s Rock On 2 was filmed there. Another 2018 account says that despite its gradually increasing popularity, few people had heard of it.
    In this time, Instagram happened.

    In the late 2000s, when we first went to Laitlum, it was still a relatively small, urban social network in India. Then came cheap, ubiquitous mobile data, the great expansion of smartphone internet, and, in 2020, Reels. Instagram became one of the principal ways Indians encountered the world in images and short video. Meta’s advertising data put its Indian audience at 481 million by end 2025, making India its largest national market. So it’s hardly surprising that when we jump forward to 2026 in our Laitlum story, we find numerous travel sites explicitly listing it as one of Meghalaya’s “top Instagrammable spots”. Some complete with “pro-tips” on where to click photos with the most dramatic backdrop. Like with other “Instagrammable” spots, Nong Jrong for instance, now famed for its sunrise views, it might have started with one geo-tagged video that went viral. The Laitlum Reels on Instagram, on Youtube, number in the hundreds, if not thousands. Image after image not simply recording the destination but helping to produce it.
    How strange to think of it: the hills and canyons were always there. What changed was that they became a sight — something marked out, named, passed from one person to another as worth seeing.

     

    Image courtesy: Janice Pariat

     

    The image of Laitlum, I imagine, travels far ahead of Laitlum itself.

    Meghalaya Tourism still describes it as a “secluded hilltop destination” but this is no longer true. “Two hundred cars a day,” Edison Nongspung, resident of Shnong Laitlum, tells us. “When it’s off-season.”

    So, what happens to a place when it is discovered?

    For Edison and his father, Bah Phillip Mylliem Ngap, Laitlum’s Rangbah Shnong, village headman, the changes have been dramatic. “Laitlum was very poor,” Bah Phillip told us. We are in his home. Outside, much activity as the shnong readies for a synod meet over the weekend at the Presbyterian church next door.

    Bah Phillip is an old-timer, impeccably dressed in coat, pressed trousers, polished shoes. When he became headman in 2003, there was nothing, he says, no work, no schools. “I went from one government department to the next, pleading for funds.”
    We learn from them also that Laitlum is named not so much for being where the hills are set free, but where, for someone climbing up from the villages in the canyon, it was the place where one was free of the hills.

    This makes perfect sense because Rasong, the village by the Umsong River flowing through the canyon, is “tynrai”, root. Laitlum, though over a hundred years old, is the place where people from Rasong, on their way to Smit, to its large historical market, to sell bananas and broom grass, would rest and spend the night. This is how Shnong Laitlum became a shnong.
    “Here, there was nothing,” Bah Phillip explains. “Too dry, too wet, too barren. Nothing but stone underneath us… ki kynjat ki maw…as though the stone from the cliffs skirting the village had kicked up into the village itself. Nothing would grow. No crops. No trees. Everything turned to wind.”
    With tourism, people found hope.
    “Or at least,” he adds, “that’s what everyone is now going after.”

    The shnong though has little to do with the viewpoint or its earnings, since the ‘park’ land is shi met — “single-bodied”, privately owned rather than community owned — belonging to families within the larger, most prominent clan in the area, the Nongspungs.
    “So, what does the village get?” I ask quickly.
    Donations, say father and son.
    “Even now?”
    Edison, quiet, ever courteous, replies, “Let’s say that’s the case.”

     

    Image courtesy: Janice Pariat

     

    Later, Sam and I sip tea and munch on banana cake in the parking lot.
    We chat with Kong Ïahunlang Mylliem, Kong Thei, from Shnong Laitlum. She has been selling tea here for almost five years. The viewpoint was managed by the shnong, she tells us, at least to begin with, then not so long ago, the Nongspung families who owned these lands chose to privatize. “Multiple Nongspung families,” she adds. We realise now why we pay separate parking and park entry fees. Why there are tall fences running along the pathways, not for safety but for demarcation.
    My heart sinks at this; even though all might be amiable between the clan members, it’s impossible to ignore how divided the tableland appears.

    The Laitlum phenomenon has been good to Kong Thei, though; she is able to support her family, her eldest children have found jobs as security personnel here. Even though at night they attend computer classes, she tells us. “Because it’s important.”
    “What do you wish for Laitlum?” we ask.
    “That more and more people come,” she responds, smiling. “And have a good time.”

    I realise it’s easy, from the outside, to imagine tourism as something that happens to a place. But Kong Thei’s answer complicates that. There is money here, work, possibility, even hope. The people who live around Laitlum are not simply preserving a place for us to look at; they’re making a living from the fact that we are here.

    We wander to the edge of the parking lot. It’s a Friday, and before us, a crowd of families, young couples, groups of friends. Many who are, as people here would say, “na shabar”, from outside. The cars parked behind us mostly carry Assam number plates, a few from UP, one from Gujarat, a handful with Meghalaya’s ML. We tap on the window of a local black-and-yellow taxi. Bah Meban Pyrthuh has reclined his seat and is scrolling on his phone, but he kindly steps out to have a word with us.
    He’s come here today after picking up passengers from the Inter State Bus Terminal (ISBT). “Tang ar ngut,” he tells us. Just two, a young couple from UP. It’s a lucky day, for it isn’t always easy to find passengers. Tourism has its whims and fancies. Its fickleness.
    Especially at the hint of any “trouble” at the state border. But also, because visitors coming to Laitlum travel up from Assam, from Guwahati mostly, where the airport and railway station are, in Assam cabs. “I’m part of the union,” he says, and they’ve made demands on the government many times to come to an arrangement — like in Sikkim — to only allow local tourist taxis to operate within the state. “We drop people off at their ISBT, and they drop passengers off at ours. It’s only fair, isn’t it?” Otherwise, he says, tourists book package deals that can cost ₹1,500 for a trip to Laitlum, while a local cab might charge ₹2,000.
    While we talk, Bah Meban’s passengers return. We thank him and move away.

     

    Image courtesy: Janice Pariat

     

    The fog has lifted but a little.
    We strain to catch a glimpse of the view. Someone complains that this is not how it looks on Instagram. “For that,” I whisper, “you must come in winter.”
    How easily tourists forget that places are seasonal.
    People ebb and flow. The ponies stand motionless, flicking their tails, reins held by young men in cowboy hats.
    Somewhere behind us begins Kaho naa pyar hain.
    We follow the music. A crowd has gathered around Bah Tren Mylliem Ngap as he sings, clapping, cheering when he’s done. He’s clearly beloved. Many hands push generous tips into his red plastic collection container. He recognizes us from earlier and grins.
    We grin back. “Bah Tren,” we say, “please sing us a Khasi song.”
    He has been longing to, he says, but his karaoke app doesn’t include any Khasi music.
    Bah Tren has been singing here about a year; he comes up from Rasong. He never imagined he’d get a chance to make a living doing this. Someone walks up with a request, and Bah Tren busies himself again.

    We walk towards the entrance to Sipro Park but carry on to the edge, past a signboard that declares this a ‘SELFIE DANGER ZONE’. Sam and I pause at the top of the steep descent; 3,000 steps down to Rasong, a little less to Shnong Rangphlang Rasong, halfway down. From here, the canyon is once again a view — river, hills, long blue-green distances — something to look at, compose, photograph. I think of how easily we begin to wonder what lies beyond the frame. Perhaps that’s part of the strange business of tourism: the search for the place that feels less discovered can simply lead us to another place to ‘discover’.

    As we leave, driving past the village and B&Bs, the restaurants serving Indian and Chinese, on the road back to Shillong, a car stops us.
    The driver, burly, bushy-eyebrowed, rolls down his window.
    “Kahan hain ye Laitloom? Jo YouTube pe dekha.”

  • Get The Party Started

    For a while, it seemed as if the house party had gone the way of the landline. The hedonistic house parties enshrined in pop videos felt like throwbacks from another age. And now it seems like the club is following in their footsteps. One recent NTIA survey found that approximately 60% of 18-to-30-year-olds were partying less and less.

    But Gen Z didn’t give up partying. It simply changed its address.

    But how did it all come about? The pandemic naturally shuttered all parties, house or club. Then as economies struggled to recover, living costs soared and going to a club became quite the indulgence. There were other reasons younger people seemed to be peeling away from clubbing, the biggest amongst them being the ubiquity of smartphones and the worry of having a room full of cameras recording your worst moves. NME’s 2025 survey found that over 50% of clubbers feel smartphones are hurting the club experience. This isn’t just about killing the vibe. Equally, it points to the very real fear of someone uploading your drunken moments onto TikTok and your employer chancing upon them. And for women and queer people, personal safety issues loom large.

    The answer now appears to be a throwback to the house party. Nothing new for a millennial or a Gen X-er, but apparently unusual for Gen Z. House parties meant no steep entry fees, affordable only by the deep-pocketed; a bottle of wine is enough. Camera phones won’t go away of course, but at least at a friend’s house, they can be monitored to some extent. And the music is better too, according to a survey of 2,500 people across UK, Spain and France.

    Nowhere is this more evident than in India, which faces all the same complications that Europe and North America face i.e. high costs, lack of privacy, and safety concerns. But there is another layer: across many cities, clubs shut down by midnight or 1 am, just as the night gets going. A living room has no last call. Food is a quick app-swipe away. And an added bonus? Unlike at a bar, children are welcome.

    “
    There were other reasons younger people seemed to be peeling away from clubbing, the biggest amongst them being the ubiquity of smartphones and the worry of having a room full of cameras recording your worst moves.
    ”

    The format is also being professionalised. Event Flo, an Indian platform that lists such gatherings, lists verified social communities across the country, including the house party. A recent ticketed party set up in Mumbai included the following information – “Expect 15+ people in the party”, while the homeowner maintains “at least a 60:40 Male:Female ratio.” Guests are verified via their Aadhaar or PAN identity cards before their RSVP is approved, and addresses are shared only hours ahead.

    The intimate house party seems to be the way to go: curated guest lists, friends doubling as DJs, a safe space for women. Twenty engaged guests are apparently better than a hundred strangers.

    A long plane ride away, Jamie Hazeel and Kamran Dehdashti have taken the concept a step further with their pop-up, The Little Yellow Door. The company began as an attempt to create the perfect house party. The owners took over flatshares across London, swagging them up as stylish party homes suited to their neighborhoods: a swinging-Sixties home in Carnaby, for instance. And although they are staffed by trained personnel, you wouldn’t have an inkling of it. Staff wear no uniforms and greet you as if you’d arrived at their home. You might dance in one room, play board games or Nintendo in another and eat in a third.

    Ultimately then, the future of nightlife isn’t about bigger clubs, louder music or expensive cocktails. It is about making a night out feel, once again, like being invited in.

  • (Un)Discovered Places

    We didn’t know it then. Andrew, Apdor, Lal, and I. That this would be the last summer of having the place to ourselves. We’d head out of Shillong, possibly on a Tuesday afternoon — this was the late 2000s, we were at that age of being done with college, not quite settled into jobs, and had a tremendous amount of free time on our hands.
    We’d go on bikes. Me riding pillion. It never seemed to take long to leave town behind, on NH 6, past Laitkor, still only sparsely built up, onwards to ancient Smit, through Thangsning, and onto a road that opened up on the right to a view of sudden steep hills whose slopes were knuckled by tumbling boulders.
    All these years later, this view at least, remains the same.
    From here it wasn’t far, the place where we’d stop, beside a hedge, no gate, no signpost, and slip through into what felt like a secret world.
    I remember they didn’t tell me where we were going, the first time.
    It remained unrevealed until we got there.
    “What is this place?” I’d whispered.
    Laitlum. Where the hills are set free.

     

     

    Image courtesy: Janice Pariat

     

    When I left Shillong for postgraduate study abroad, I didn’t realise I’d carried Laitlum with me until I found myself working on my first book. Boats on Land includes a story called Laitlum, in which a young narrator, housebound for weeks because of curfew and “trouble” on the streets, is offered brief respite and freedom, when she accompanies her older sister whose biker friends take them to — you guessed it — Laitlum.

    I was writing this far away from home.
    But it wasn’t at all difficult to conjure place and image with precision:

    We were standing on a field at the head of a valley, flanked by rows of jagged mountains that seemed to multiply themselves, growing higher and more distant, layering each other in shades of deep blue and green. The sight stretched far and endless, as though beyond lay mountains and nothing more of the world.

    I could place myself right there. Wind on my face. Dampness on my skin.
    To our right, the only structure, a rickety sem lum, a hill shed.
    On many days, we’d glimpse the view only through the fog. Rolling up from the valley, thick and close to the ground. We didn’t mind. We’d find our favourite spot at the edge and wait for brief clearings. Sometimes, a farmer would walk up from the villages below — they understandably never looked pleased to see us. A bunch of kids probably up to no good. And even though there was never more than a joint passed around on occasion, who could blame them?

    When I returned briefly to Shillong in 2010, our little friend’s group was not quite as intact as it used to be — some had jobs or were pursuing PhDs, some had left Shillong. Andrew was still around but he said he didn’t go to Laitlum anymore.
    “Why not?” I asked, startled.

    He laughed. “If you go, you’ll see.”

     

    Image courtesy: Janice Pariat

     

    That didn’t happen until December 2018, when friends were visiting over Christmas.
    We had to pay an entry fee, which I thought was fine especially if the money went towards Shnong Laitlum, the village, for upkeep. We parked in a dusty parking lot, and wandered out over the slopes, the grass crisp and winter yellow, the canyon the color of a deep ocean. We sat at the edge, we took photographs. A man stood on the rock I think we’d sat on all those years ago.

    When I returned in 2020, after a harrowing pandemic year of not being able to travel home from Delhi, my parents and I made a visit to Laitlum on Christmas Eve. The entry fee remained the same, though the parking lot had widened by miles, filled with buses, and around the edge of the slope, a huge and impossible-to-ignore fencing.
    “What’s happened?” we wondered in bewilderment.
    But at the time there were no answers. Only tea and cake from a Khasi kong, who carted around a kettle and a basket of snacks. Khasi kongs selling tea would become a fixture here — and it seemed like this was as far as the changes would go at Laitlum.

    Except not.
    When we visit this year, Laitlum is business through and through.

    And it begins long before we get to the viewpoint. Along the way, numerous B&Bs and restaurants serving Indian and Chinese, even a Desi Tadka Dhaba, and a pop-up cart that promises ‘no pork’, ‘no beef’. When we arrive, the enhanced parking fee allows us entry into a paved lot that’s taken over most of the hill. There are ponies. Shops and restaurants under construction. And parks. Two parks. One beyond the parking lot, ‘Sarian Laitlum Viewpoint’, separately ticketed, paved and flower-bedded, paths encircling a giant “I ❤️LAITLUM”, and leading to a bridge and walkway at the edge of the slope. To the right, a long, fenced pathway to the other park, lined with shops selling momos, orchids, local spices. There’s an ‘End of Hills Maggi Point’; nearby, a ‘Traditional Dress’ rental shop.

    My husband Sam and I are both shocked and awed.

    Before we can react, we are further stunned by strains of Pehla Nasha rising into the air — coming from a baseball-hatted man on the side of the path; a group of older women, tourists, dancing before him.
    We walk on to the gated counter of ‘Sipro Park: Laitlum Canyon View Point’ and discover this too is separately ticketed. We pay again. And come face to face with a large signboard carrying a list of ‘Jingmaham’ or ‘Warnings’. No drinking or gambling. No bad language. No engaging in bad deeds. No defacing property. No crossing over fences.
    Beyond this, trampolines.
    A children’s play area with swings, slides, see-saws.
    A bandstand under construction, and beyond the fencing, also under construction, a concrete walkway that will take visitors along the edge of the canyon.

     

    Image courtesy: Janice Pariat

     

    “Isn’t it odd,” I tell Sam, “that what people come here for is also what all this is slowly changing.” The feeling that nothing has been arranged. No gate, no signpost, nowhere to sit, nothing to do but stand at the edge and look. The more people arrive looking for that “undiscovered” feeling, the more the place is organised and orchestrated to receive them.

    Is there a point, I wonder, at which a place can still accommodate us but no longer feel like the place we came to see?

    Three busloads of schoolchildren from Brookside Adventist Higher Secondary School are wildly careening about the place, some have taken to the trampolines. Some are singing a Taylor Swift song. “Are you here on a school trip?” I ask a group of girls.
    They giggle, nod. A geography lesson. They’re meant to ask the locals questions.
    “About?”
    “The environment and stuff.”

    It has been raining so we walk around gingerly.
    The grass is thinned out; in some places the ground is mere mud.
    The day is heavy with fog.
    The sky, the world, blanketed in grey.

  • The Store Is Becoming The New Social Hangout

    Everybody knows what an IKEA store contains, right? Wrong. On Sunday, September 27, 2026, the Swedish chain opened the doors of its Worli outlet to a design and culture festival that brought together live music by artists like Ankur and the Ghalat family, TV personalities, interactive design workshops, and a plethora of food. The events were free, but cannily enough, anyone attending was required to sign up as an ‘IKEA Family’ member.

    IKEA has cottoned on to a trend that is slowly growing in select retail circles i.e., privileging the building of a community space over more overt attempts at traditional sales. This is a deliberate shift happening across India’s premium retail landscape, and it mirrors a global trend flagged in The State of Fashion 2026 report. As consumers tire of attention-grabbing content, they are drawn to brands that reflect their shifting identities and offer emotional connections. Fashion brands are responding by entering well-being-adjacent third spaces.

     

    Photo credits: @ikea.india / Instagram

     

    Ray Oldenburg, the sociologist who coined the term ‘third place,’ meant it as an in-between spot, neither home nor work. Cafés, community centers, and neighborhood addas have always played this role in Indian cities. The difference now is that retail brands are deliberately inking this into their business plans.

    The reason is simple. Online shopping has captured much of the traditional market: this report states that by the end of the decade, more than one in ten retail dollars and one in four non-grocery retail dollars are expected to be spent online. Knowledgeable consumers are also shying away from fast fashion, and trying economic times are elbowing them to re-evaluate their spending habits.

    Building an offline community, rather than a black-and-white transactional space, helps consumers see brands as more than just a store. Such a community is built on storytelling, rather than discounting or volume. People are suspicious of manufactured virality, turning instead to authenticity. A space you’ve spent time in, met people in, and formed a memory around is far harder to forget, and far easier to promise your loyalty to.

     

     

    IKEA’s event may be a one-off one, but Indian brands have long been inching toward the same idea. Nicobar, for instance, hosts everything from wine and cheese events to creative visualisation workshops, as part of their Voyager membership program that curates small, intimate, special events, both virtual and in-person. Good Earth hosts wellness sessions, festive suppers, and regional craft pop-ups across its stores. Blue Tokai isn’t just an artisanal coffee shop; it brings people together for coffee tasting workshops, art therapy, even runs. And Subculture by Subko is a dedicated cultural arm of the cafe, that collaborates with visual artists, designers, musicians, and social changemakers through workshops, live sessions, and merchandise, in an attempt to cultivate the cultural ‘underground’ of the subcontinent.

    Brands are not altruistic. Such communities also act as feedback channels for them, helping companies learn what customers want and, in some cases, even co-create new designs, an approach LEGO pioneered with its Ideas platform. Marketing is easier, since potential customers are already baked in. And when economies dip, a trusting community will be far more likely to pledge loyalty to those brands.

    This playbook isn’t for everyone. Fast fashion players and high-volume everyday retail brands don’t have the margins or brand equity to justify converting square footage, or budget, into lounge space and community events. It works specifically for brands built on storytelling, design, and premium positioning, where the story itself is worth showing up for.

    So the real question for Indian brand-builders isn’t whether to have a store. It’s whether that store, or that pop-up in someone else’s space, gives someone a reason to stay even after they’ve decided not to buy.

  • Mud And Muscle: India’s Wrestling Mania

    Are you ready to rumble? At 7 feet 1 inch and 347 pounds, The Great Khali certainly was. Born Dalip Singh Rana on August 27, 1972, one of eight siblings, he became the first Indian to win the World Heavyweight Championship in 2007, muscling out 20 wrestlers in a Battle Royale. And this in a field that included Dave Bautista (the Marvel film star), as well as the massively popular wrestler, Kane.

    But India’s love for wrestling wasn’t born with Khali. It had ancient Indian roots that scrolled all the way back to the sacred Hindu epics. In the Mahabharata for instance, Lord Bhima, the second brother of the Pandavas, was the strongest man in the epic, and an accomplished and beloved wrestler. Right from the fifth century, royalty would stage smackdowns for entertainment, and over the centuries the sport spun many new names, ensconcing itself comfortably into the country’s culture: dangal, pehlwani, kushti.

    Wrestlers grappled with each other, not Western-style in the ring, but in the mud of the akhara. And yet, this is no ancient, forgotten sport. It has persisted into the 21st century and akhadas dot across the country, with Pune’s Chinchechi Talim, established in 1783, being India’s oldest surviving one.

    One of the country’s oldest heroes was Gama Pehlwan, who rose to fame in 1895 by grappling for hours with Raheem Baksh Sultaniwala, a far taller wrestler. In fact, he was so small that he was turned away from London’s 1910 John Bull championship because of his small stature. In response, he issued a public challenge to anyone who wished to face him beyond the walls of the tournament. World champion Stanislaus Zbyszko answered and after two and a half hours of hard slog, could only manage a draw. It is said that Gama never lost a match, not once, in his fifty years of wrestling.

    Following in his footsteps, KD Jadhav of Maharashtra would win bronze at the 1952 Helsinki Olympics, and Sushil Kumar ended a 56-year Olympic medal drought with bronze in Beijing in 2008, then became India’s first world champion in 2010.

    “
    By 2011 it had zeroed in on Jinder Mahal, a Canada-born wrestler of Indian origin, first pairing him with Khali, even having him slap the giant on screen. When the two split, WWE kept backing Mahal.
    ”

    Perhaps as a natural progression, India has always been fascinated with that pro-wrestling entertainment behemoth, WWE; the country holds its largest fanbase outside the United States. (WWE has long dominated the pro-wrestling scene in America, earning revenues of up to $1.4bn.) Far before John Cena and Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson found fame in Hollywood, they were enormous wrestling stars, and some of their most vocal fans came from India. And while the thrill of the regular wrestling match came from in-person attendance, somehow the experience of a WWE tournament seemed equally pulsing through the medium of a television screen. Testament to its desi popularity is the fact that it now airs in various regional languages -Hindi, Tamil and Telugu and English, and its WWE Now India is a digital weekly series that covers WWE content with a local Indian twist.

    The WWE of course, is largely scripted, although its ‘actors’ continually deny it (the term ‘kayfabe’ points to how everybody, wrestlers and viewers alike, knows the action is fake but suspends their belief anyway). And perhaps this is part of its Indian appeal: the Bollywood-esque sense of drama and excitement, the larger-than-life heroes, the almost unbelievable physical antics of some rather charismatic wrestlers. That drama has often translated well to the big screen with Khali himself scoring roles in The Longest Yard, Get Smart, MacGruber, Kushti and Ramaa: The Saviour.

    Enthralled by the attention Khali got, the company kept fueling this interest by hiring more desi talent, but with uneven degrees of success. There was Jinder Mahal, of Canadian-Indian origin. Then there was Dilsher Shanky from Haryana, Veer Mahan (Rinku Singh Rajput) from Uttar Pradesh, Sanga (Saurav Gurjar) from Madhya Pradesh, and Guru Raaj. Women were not left behind either, with Kavitha Devi even wrestling in a salwar kameez.

    Now the sport is sprouting its own indigenous roots. Pro Wrestling Rebellion, founded by former WWE wrestler Jeet Rama, is bricking a homegrown tournament, starting with free shows in towns and villages including Baghru and Ludhiana. Its first flagship event, Kranti, at Delhi’s Talkatora Indoor Stadium, made sure it was accessible to everyone, with the best seats costing under ₹500. They sold out in a few hours.

    The crowds may be contemporary, but the pull is ancient. From Bhima’s akhara to Khali’s championship to a ₹99 ticket in Delhi, India’s love of the ring was never borrowed. It was always its own.

  • The Boson, The Brainstem and the Brainy Indian

    Time and again, scientists from India have made news on the global stage, shaping our understanding of how the world functions with groundbreaking scientific discoveries and theories.

    C.V Raman discovered an effect that was named after him: the Raman Effect, which is a discovery of the phenomenon that light changes color and wavelength when scattered by a transparent material. Satyendranath Bose was renowned for his research in quantum mechanics, even working with the legendary Albert Einstein. Homi J. Bhaba was revolutionary in the field of nuclear physics, and is widely regarded as the Father of India’s nuclear program. 

    Their legacy is now being carried forward by a new generation of academics, researchers, and forward-thinking Indians who are trying to grapple with the challenges most concerning humankind in this century.

    Two Indian scientists, Roxy Mathew Koll and Neelima Satyam have earned major international recognition as awardees of the American Geophysical Union in 2026. This association celebrates research and innovation in advanced earth and space sciences. Another scientist of Indian origin, Anima Anandkumar earned a place for herself on TIME magazine’s 100 AI List in 2026 for her pioneering work which sits at the intersection of artificial intelligence and science; she aims to accelerate simulation and understanding of the physical world. Her work covers several crucial domains, including weather forecasting, nuclear fusion, medical technology and quantum chemistry. 

     

    Homi Bhabha, widely credited as the Father of India’s nuclear program | Image courtesy: in.pinterest.com / Sreeram Jaiswal.

     

    Atanu Nath, won the Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics, often referred to as the ‘Oscars of Science’. He shared this honor with 376 scientists, including eleven from his own country. Nath, along with his peers, was recognized for collaborative work on the groundbreaking Muon g-2 experiment, conducted across several research institutions of international repute such as CERN, Fermilab and Brookhaven National Laboratory. 

    Theoretical physicist Professor Deepak Dhar was awarded the 2026 Dirac Medal by the International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) for his contributions to statistical mechanics and complex systems. This award was established in 1985 to celebrate achievements in the field of physics, and Dhar was only the second scientist working in India to become a recipient. Dhar, an INSA Distinguished Professor at the International Centre for Theoretical Sciences in Bengaluru, shares this honor with other scientists such as Bernard Derrida, Marc Mézard, and Haim Sompolinsky. He is famously recognized for his work on the ‘sandpile model’, which advanced understanding of large-scale phenomena such as traffic gridlocks, neural networks and earthquakes. In the past, Dhar has also won the Boltzmann Medal and highlighted the expanding interdisciplinary impact of his research on optimization, neuroscience, and artificial intelligence.

     

    “
    Another scientist of Indian origin, Anima Anandkumar earned a place for herself on the TIME Magazine’s 100 AI List in 2026 for her pioneering work which sits at the intersection of artificial intelligence and science.
    ”

     

    At the Sudha Gopalakrishnan Brain Centre in IIT Madras (Chennai), researchers have achieved a crucial breakthrough in neuroscience with the development of ANCHOR (Atlas of Neurochemical Characterisation of the Human Brainstem with 3D Reconstruction). This has been recognized as the world’s most detailed three-dimensional atlas of the human brainstem. It was constructed over a period of 18-months, by a multidisciplinary team applying their minds to this project. This technology spans several versions of medical imaging and serves as an invaluable diagnostic tool for understanding complex neurological conditions. This includes Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease, as well as strokes. After coming up with this technology, IIT Madras made it freely accessible online to scientists and professionals throughout the world, thereby signifying bolstering international efforts to decipher the complexities of the human brain and also ensure neurological treatments are meted out more efficiently to patients. 

    India was among the first countries to adopt the principle of ‘scientific temper’ in its constitution; the 42nd Amendment in 1976, declared that it shall be the duty of every citizen to develop a scientific temper, humanism and the spirit of inquiry and reform. Yet, according to a report dated 2023, India spent merely 0.66% of its GDP on science and technology – which is the lowest among all the BRICS nations. However, scientists of Indian origin continue to thrive in their fields and win major scientific accolades, giving us plenty of reason for optimism about the future of the country’s scientific temperament.