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  • Where Did All Our Third Places Go?

    Consider Shivaji Park. Every evening, elderly men walked its perimeter. Teenagers practised cricket with taped tennis balls. Women sat on the grass and talked. No tickets. No programming. No expectation that anyone needed to be doing something productive.

    Similar scenes existed elsewhere. In New York, urban activist Jane Jacobs wrote about Washington Square Park in the 1950s and 60s as a place people passed through, paused in, argued in, lingered in. In Seoul, neighbourhood parks and local jjimjilbangs functioned as everyday social infrastructure well before the city’s current emphasis on speed, efficiency, and twenty four-hour productivity. These spaces were not neutral or perfect, but they shared a defining feature: anyone could be there without explanation.

    That has become increasingly rare.

     

    Image Credit: Sami TÜRK on Pexels

     

    In 1989, American sociologist Ray Oldenburg gave these environments a name in The Great Good Place. He called them ‘third places’: informal, low-cost spaces outside home and work where people could gather without obligation. Oldenburg’s argument was not sentimental. What made third places work was not charm or design, but accessibility. They encouraged idleness. They allowed regulars without requiring paid memberships. They made room for people whose only reason for showing up was time.

    What has changed since then is not simply taste. It is structure.

    Most third places did not disappear overnight. They were slowly made inhospitable. In Mumbai, Irani cafés like Café Military and Café Ideal once functioned as all-day linger spaces, especially for people who had nowhere else to go between shifts or errands. Rising rents, shrinking margins, and redevelopment pressures have since pushed cafés toward faster turnover. Sitting too long now carries an implicit cost.

    In New York, public seating has been systematically reduced or redesigned. Benches are removed, divided, or made deliberately uncomfortable. Parks that once absorbed unstructured social life are increasingly surveilled, policed, or programmed. The goal is not gathering, but control. Space that does not circulate people efficiently or generate revenue is treated as a problem to be managed.

    This is not accidental. Cities over the last three decades have been redesigned around transit, productivity, and risk mitigation. Loitering becomes a security concern. Lingering becomes inefficiency. Free time, once an ordinary and necessary part of life, starts to read as indulgence.

     

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    So the question is not whether third places mattered. They did. The harder question is why we have become so comfortable designing cities that no longer tolerate them.
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    The language follows the logic. ‘Third place’ now appears in real estate decks and brand strategy documents, used to describe co-working cafés, members’ clubs, or lifestyle lounges. These spaces promise community, but only through access. You can belong, but briefly. You can stay, but not for free. Presence is permitted only when it can be justified, monetized, or optimized.

    Functionally, this changes how social life feels.

    When cafés double as offices, sitting without a laptop becomes suspect. When libraries close or shrink, quiet public refuge disappears. When promenades are designed as backdrops for events and content, stillness feels out of place. The value of doing nothing together erodes, replaced by the expectation that time in public must produce something: work, networking, fitness.

    The pandemic accelerated this shift, but it did not invent it. Lockdowns disrupted social reflexes, and the return to public life came with new rules. Interaction felt safer when it was structured: a class, a workshop, a ticketed gathering. 

    What gets lost in this transition is difficult to measure, which is why it is easy to dismiss. It is not just space, but familiarity. The quiet recognition of seeing the same strangers every week. The trust that forms without conversation. These are social capacities that emerge slowly, and only in places where people are allowed to exist without performing usefulness.

     

    Image Credit: CHUTTERSNAP on Unsplash

     

    People sense this loss, even if they do not name it. That is why new, improvised versions keep appearing. Community fridges on street corners. Zine fairs in half-empty malls. Chai circles in parking lots. Skate crews occupying forgotten patches of city. These are not nostalgic recreations. They are workarounds, evidence that the desire for unstructured public life persists even as the conditions that once supported it are withdrawn.

    So the question is not whether third places mattered. They did. The harder question is why we have become so comfortable designing cities that no longer tolerate them.

    Not everything needs to be activated. Not every gathering needs a theme. Sometimes what is missing is not innovation, but permission: a place where you can sit, take up space, and not be asked what you are doing there.

  • The Cool Roof Revolution: How Cities Are Rediscovering Indigenous Methods to Combat Heat

    Step outside in most cities today and you’ll feel it immediately. The kind of heat that clings to walls, radiates from pavements, and turns your own home into an oven by noon. An urban summer is no longer just inconvenient, for most citizens it is unbearable. In many places, it’s becoming a structural problem, one that modern architecture and infrastructure were never designed to handle.

    As temperatures rise, cities have been looking for solutions. Air conditioning helps, but only if you can afford it, power it, and keep the grid from collapsing. So urban planners, architects and governments are being forced to ask a bigger question — what if the problem isn’t that we lack technology, but that we forgot how to build for heat in the first place?

    That question has led many of them back to the roof.

     

    A view of buildings in Yazd, Iran | Image Credit: Dad hotel on Unsplash

     

    In New York City, more than a million square feet of rooftops have been coated with reflective paint in recent years. The idea is simple. Lighter surfaces absorb less heat, which keeps buildings cooler and reduces the need for energy-intensive air conditioning. For residents without reliable cooling, that difference can be the line between discomfort and danger.

    But what’s most striking is how old this idea is.

    Long before ‘cool roofs’ entered climate policy documents, communities living with extreme heat had already figured out how to manage it. In parts of Rajasthan, lime-coated roofs reflected sunlight, keeping homes habitable through brutal summers. Across the Mediterranean, whitewashed buildings served the same function. These choices were practical responses to climate; only much later did we start viewing them as stylistic ones. Mud-brick construction in countries like Yemen and Mali insulates against extreme temperatures. Mashrabiya screens in Cairo filter sunlight while allowing ventilation. Stilted homes in parts of Southeast Asia lift living spaces above heat-trapping ground. None of these were designed with climate models in mind. They emerged from lived experience.

    This was the kind of design knowledge that was sidelined for decades. Contemporary construction favored speed, uniform materials, glass frontage, and darker surfaces that tended to trap heat. Cooling became something external machinery was expected to solve.

    Now, as those machines strain under rising temperatures, the older community logic is resurfacing. 

    Only recently has modern research begun to catch up. Studies now show that widespread use of reflective materials can lower ambient urban temperatures by up to two degrees Celsius, reduce cooling loads, and lessen health risks during heatwaves. What was once treated as informal knowledge is being validated in technical terms.

    In Tamil Nadu, state-led cool roof programmes have moved beyond small pilots. Hundreds of government schools have been retrofitted with heat-reflective coatings, not as an experiment, but as policy. In earlier pilots in Chennai and Perumbakkam, indoor temperatures dropped by as much as 3 to 8 degrees Celsius. Classrooms became bearable again, without additional electricity demand.

    In Ahmedabad, experimental cool roof projects in informal settlements have painted tin roofs with reflective coatings. The results are modest but meaningful, indoor temperatures fall, residents sleep better, and electricity use drops. No futuristic materials. No massive infrastructure overhaul.

    Just paint, applied with intent.

     

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    Studies now show that widespread use of reflective materials can lower ambient urban temperatures by up to two degrees Celsius, reduce cooling loads, and lessen health risks during heatwaves. What was once treated as informal knowledge is being validated in technical terms.
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    The significance of this isn’t just technical. It marks a shift in which solutions are being valued. Instead of chasing expensive, high-tech fixes, governments are beginning to recognise that low-cost, passive interventions can make a measurable difference at scale.

    These old-school climate solutions are now gaining traction in some countries. In Tokyo, the resurfacing of uchimizu, sprinkling water on streets during peak heat, reflects a similar impulse to cool cities. In Mexico City, community-led lime washing programmes reduced heat absorption in dense neighbourhoods. In parts of the American Southwest, urban design guidelines are starting to acknowledge principles long embedded in Indigenous desert architecture including shade, reflectivity, and airflow matter.

    These approaches share a common trait. They work with the climate rather than against it.

     

     

    Cool roofs are also a feature of architecture in Santorini, Greece | Image Credit: iSAW Company on Unsplash

     

    There is an uncomfortable irony here. Many of these methods come from regions that were historically dismissed as ‘backward’ or ‘underdeveloped’. Their building practices were ignored in favour of globalized design norms, often from countries with colder climates, that assumed energy would always be cheap and plentiful.

    As that assumption collapses, cities are being forced to reconsider.

    These are not new ideas. They are responses shaped by necessity, refined over generations, and set aside too quickly. The solutions have been here all along. What’s changing is how we are looking at them.

  • Cricket as Diplomacy: The Indian Premier League’s Global Power

    It starts with a toss but ends with a cultural takeover. The Indian Premier League, now in its seventeenth year, is more than just a sporting phenomenon. Over time, it’s become India’s most potent soft power tool. What began as a domestic T20 tournament has evolved into a slick, high-gloss spectacle that shapes how the world sees India: fast, chaotic, competitive, and endlessly entertaining.

    At a time when national identity is increasingly built through pop culture and media, the IPL operates as a shorthand for modern India. It’s not just the cricket that draws global attention — it’s the Bollywood-backed team ownerships, international player rosters, drone-shot stadium cinematics, and theme music that sounds like it belongs in an action film trailer. For millions abroad, this is India at its most visible — a nation where entertainment and ambition collide in dazzling colour.

    The numbers reflect that reach. The IPL is one of the most-watched sporting leagues in the world, with streaming deals stretching across continents. For international brands — from Saudi tourism boards to global soft drink giants — IPL sponsorships are a way to tap into India’s massive consumer base while aligning with the league’s aspirational sheen.

     

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    If Hollywood was America’s soft power in the 20th century, the IPL may be India’s in the 21st. It packages sport, celebrity, nationalism, and commerce into a single, irresistible export.
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    But the IPL’s soft power isn’t just external. It also reflects India’s self-image. In the league’s aesthetic, we see a country willing to negotiate tradition and hypermodernity — cricket whites have been replaced with neon kits, devotional chants have been repurposed as crowd anthems, and local dialects have been woven into high-production promos. The IPL champions hustle culture, regional pride, and pan-Indian unity — all on a three-hour broadcast.

    That said, this cultural diplomacy comes with contradictions. The tournament’s embrace of spectacle can overshadow deeper conversations around labour rights, gender parity in sport, and access to resources. And while Indian players are front and centre, the tournament is still often run with a corporate logic that flattens regional nuance into easily marketable archetypes.

     

    Image Credit: Raunaq Sachdev on Pexels

     

    Still, if Hollywood was America’s soft power in the 20th century, the IPL may be India’s in the 21st. It packages sport, celebrity, nationalism, and commerce into a single, irresistible export. And whether you’re watching from Chennai or Chicago, one thing’s clear — this isn’t just about cricket anymore. It’s about image. And India knows exactly how to play the game.

  • The Body Is the Score

    It’s 7am and the gym is full. The sound of dumbbells clanking against racks and the whir of treadmills fill the lavender-diffuser-scented air. This place, one would imagine, would be riddled with athletes this early in the morning. But it’s not. It’s full of consultants, founders, and analysts lifting in silence before work. Later, these same people will appear in office corridors, on LinkedIn profile photos, and in business coverage, where fitness is increasingly framed as a marker of a way of life.

    Over the past year, a particular image has begun to circulate with unusual consistency. Coverage of toned arms and strength training now appears not only in lifestyle writing but in business reporting, fashion analysis, and workplace commentary. Fitness is increasingly framed as seriousness rather than hobby, discussed less as something you do and more as a way of structuring adult life. The shift shows up in where these bodies appear and how they are described. They are less about taste and more about what they seem to prove.

     

    Image credit: mileycyrus/Instagram

     

    People have always read bodies through the conditions around them. In societies where food was unreliable and physical labor constant, softness signals access to rest and resources rather than excess. So, in old portraits, bigger bodies lounging signaled social class and hierarchy. 

    In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, physical fitness became tied to productivity, particularly in industrial economies and nationalist projects that linked strong bodies to efficiency, readiness, and strength. With time, consumption became easier and restraint more visible, so thinner frames came to be associated with self-control and moral discipline. Think about it, when you watch an old film, or even most cinema from the 90s, how many times did you see washboard abs? The way we perceive wellness and bodies is closely tied to economies and access. 

    That ideal has since shifted. The dominant language is no longer thinness, but strength.

    What feels distinct now is not that one body type dominates, but how directly fitness operates as a legible signal across social and professional life, particularly in environments like knowledge work where output is harder to measure and visible discipline becomes a proxy for reliability, a shift reinforced by the expansion of the fitness and wellness industry and the evolution of body ideals documented in historical timelines.

     

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    Fitness is increasingly framed as seriousness rather than hobby, discussed less as something you do and more as a way of structuring adult life.
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    In 2026, fitness globally reads less as something personal and more as something public. Maintaining it depends on having time that can be rearranged and money that can be spent regularly. Strength training, supplements, recovery routines, wearables, and gym access all signal the same thing. It indicates that someone can afford to organize their life in this way. The body becomes a commodity.  

    This shift has accelerated alongside the expansion of digital work and social media. As professional identity becomes harder to measure through output alone, visible signals, like the body, become proxies for discipline, consistency, and control. A fit body has to be maintained and gaps show quickly. When routines slip or access disappears, the signal fades. What remains visible is not effort, but interruption.

    The structure of the market reflects this logic. The global fitness and wellness economy is now estimated at over 1.8 trillion dollars, built largely on subscriptions to gyms, fitness apps, coaching programs, and recurring purchases like supplements and equipment. Gyms, classes, supplements, training plans, and tracking tools all rely on the assumption that improvement is ongoing and that the work is never finished. There is always another metric to improve, another phase to begin, another version of the body to work toward. Goals move just enough to remain achievable, but never final. So, the incompleteness is not a failure of the system, it is what keeps people engaged. 

     

     

    This logic shows up in how these systems are designed. Progress is tracked, but never completed. Which is perhaps why body dysmorphia is not incidental to this economy. Bodies that fall outside the ideal are framed as unmanaged or lacking discipline, often without being named directly. These judgements move quietly through hiring decisions, dating preferences, media representation, and workplace norms, often without being acknowledged. Research on attractiveness bias has repeatedly shown that people perceived as fitter or more conventionally attractive are often assumed to be more competent, disciplined, and reliable, even in professional settings where those qualities have not actually been demonstrated. A body that signals control is read as reliability. A body that does not, can be read as risk. Stigma introduces that risk, and risk encourages continued spending.

    The costs show up elsewhere. Healthcare systems in the US deal with eating disorders, overtraining injuries, hormonal disruption, and long-term dissatisfaction. Mental health strain follows when bodies are constantly assessed and compared. These consequences are shared socially, while profit remains private. What individuals spend to maintain the signal is counted. What societies spend managing the fallout is not.

    The language surrounding fitness increasingly borrows from care and wellbeing. Rest is scheduled, recovery is tracked, and softness is acceptable only when it is intentional and temporary. The body starts to feel less like something you live in and more like something you oversee. Discomfort becomes something to be corrected or optimized. Rarely is it treated as an opportunity that prompts reflection on where these feelings are coming from.

     

    “
    Fitness is increasingly framed as seriousness rather than hobby, discussed less as something you do and more as a way of structuring adult life.
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    None of this requires fitness itself to be harmful. Physical training offers strength, health, and community. What has changed is how thoroughly these practices have been absorbed into economic logic and repurposed as measures of worth. 

    Economics helps here because it helps this behavior make sense. In a moment marked by unstable work and fragile status, the body becomes one of the few things that can still be made to look consistent. It is visible, cumulative, and hard to maintain without resources. Which is perhaps why what can often read as discipline is a reflection of the pressure to appear reliable, controlled, and worth backing.

    This does not mean that only those with resources have strong or capable bodies. Manual laborers often have greater physical endurance and strength. What is being rewarded here is not strength itself, but a particular kind of managed, aestheticised fitness that signals control within a certain class context.

    Seen this way, fitness is less a measure of health than a language of value. It translates time, money, and control into something instantly visible and often unmissable. The question is not whether bodies should be cared for, but why this particular form of care has become so legible, and so rewarded. And once we know that better, it’s easy to see why this particular signal has become so useful now

  • ID, Please: Are We Moving Towards an Adults-Only Social Media?

    When Facebook first launched in 2004, it started as a social media platform for college students only. If your email ID had a .edu suffix, it won you eligibility. By the time Facebook went global in 2006, it allowed anyone over the age of 13 with a valid email address to access the platform.

    Two decades later, as many countries debate bans on social media access for children under the age of 16, the question that arises is this: do these bans mean social media is an adults-only space now? And if it is, what implications does that have on today’s internet culture? 

    The bans reveal deeper truths about how we define adulthood. We self-censor when we see children around us, hoping to not make a negative impression on a young person still feeling their way around the world. Will a child-free social media then impact censorship and self-censorship? In 2024, X (formerly Twitter) amended its policy to allow users to post ‘consensually produced’ mature content, including nudity and pornography. That might have opened the door to Grok being asked to digitally undress people. While women are perhaps the greatest victims of this, children too became targets. Will an adult-only platform then further empower users to make such problematic requests? (In India perhaps, this is now a moot point, since all adult content has been banned by the Indian government from March 2026.)

     

     

    If social media needs to be governed by age restrictions, we must also then question all content about or featuring children that is posted on these platforms. 

    After all, the core reason for most bans is to keep children safe from being exposed to harmful content and abuse online. The other reason is to place limits on their screen times, which have been on the up and up. But does that line of decision-making then impinge on the rights of children below 16? The bans seem to gesture at that age-old parenting position: only we know what’s best for you.

    The other concerns are practical. If the only security measure to verify age online is to enter your birth date, that’s an easy step for children to manipulate; it’s no different than using fake IDs and hoping to get into a bar. Reportedly, kids in the UK and Australia have admitted to entering fake birth years and drawing fake moustaches to make accounts on the sly. This sort of cheating will likely have a negative influence on children who are still learning socio-cultural concepts of trust and honesty.

     

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    If social media needs to be governed by age restrictions, we must also then question all content about or featuring children that is posted on these platforms.
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    This restriction takes an interesting turn in patriarchal societies. In India, for instance, girls still face much greater social and cultural restrictions than boys. For many young girls, social media is the one democratized space where they can interact unrestricted with people who live outside of the social mores of their milieu. When such bans are enacted in India, it further empowers restrictive setups to keep girls and women off the internet altogether, all under the garb of doing it for ‘their safety’. Statistically, only 33.3% of women have ever reported using the internet in India, as opposed to 57.1% of men. With a large gender divide between urban and non-urban centers yet to be bridged, the ban may have more negatives than positives.

    On the other hand, shows like Adolescence very effectively depict the negative impact of children being influenced by the internet, especially in spaces that their parents are not actively monitoring. The show also touches on concepts of ‘the manosphere’, where adult men are the primary drivers of problematic content about being alpha males. While such content is harmful for children, these bans don’t quite consider the impact on other adults who might be equally malleable. Recent studies have shown that the adolescent phase of the brain lasts from the age of 9 to 32, which means that those even beyond the age of 16 might be susceptible to such harmful messaging. And so, while these bans imply trust in adult discernment, they also send out another message about adulthood to children: not all adults know better, but we’re the ones looking out for you.

     

     

    Yes, the world is watching with bated breath how these bans play out within the countries that have taken the first step, Australia being patient zero, in many ways. But when the onus continues to fall on the habits of users, rather than the growing ambit of the platforms and the need for them to take accountability on making the internet a safer place for all, it does bring into question who these bans are intended to serve.

    What they ultimately reveal is not just how we think about children online, but how much we overestimate adulthood itself.

  • The New Loneliness Market

    Open any major platform and a pattern appears. A stranger studies quietly on TikTok Live, a creator walks through a supermarket with viewers trailing behind, meditation apps offer modes that resemble shared presence, and AI companions send morning greetings. Productivity tools now include virtual coworkers. These features look like entertainment or efficiency hacks, yet they are built to give people the sense that someone is nearby.

    A decade ago, loneliness felt like an interior mood. Now it shapes product decisions across the tech industry. Companies have realised that users return more reliably when something feels companionable. The numbers reflect this shift. Low-interaction livestreams on TikTok have grown steadily over the past two years, AI companion apps have pulled in tens of millions of users around the world, and long, quiet study videos on YouTube continue to draw consistent viewing. The engagement holds even when very little is happening.

    The reasons stretch beyond technology. Remote work reduced daily contact, and many shared spaces either changed or disappeared. Cafés raised prices, libraries shortened hours, and neighbourhood spots became harder to maintain. A global survey in 2024 by Meta and Gallup reported that around one in five adults experiences frequent loneliness. It tracks with what people describe in their own lives. As familiar rhythms faded, they began looking for softer forms of connection that could slip into unpredictable days.

     

    Image Credit: Libby Penner on Unsplash

     

    AI accelerated the trend. Companion apps offer a feeling of steadiness without the weight of social performance. Conversations take place at a pace people can manage, which often makes them easier than real ones. The appeal here is quiet. Many users are not searching for romance or fantasy. They want acknowledgement that fits into the edges of a scattered routine.

    Livestreams and shared-task videos serve a different purpose. Someone’s presence, even through a screen, can create a backdrop that softens the day. Walking streams, cooking sessions, and silent study rooms are simple formats, yet they mimic the comfort of being around others who are also going about their lives. These spaces carry no pressure, which explains their endurance.

     

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    Many people are not seeking grand emotional narratives or deep conversation. They want a softer kind of company that can sit beside work, chores, or study, and the world does not offer that easily anymore.
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    The behaviour is most visible among younger users, yet it crosses age groups. Many people feel stretched by erratic schedules, high expectations, and social environments that sometimes feel too demanding. A low-demand connection can feel reliable in a way traditional social life often does not. A livestream does not ask you to keep up. A digital companion stays even when you step away.

    Companies respond to what they see. Some now measure engagement in terms of presence rather than taps or clicks. A few creators who hold attention simply by showing up regularly. The idea is straightforward. People trust spaces that feel steady, and steadiness keeps them returning.

    Of course there are concerns about how these habits develop. Platforms gain when users stay inside their ecosystems, so these environments can expand quietly. Hours drift by. A stream that starts as background company sometimes takes up a larger share of the day than expected. Comfort and habit can merge without much notice.

     

    Image Credit: Amanda Vick on Unsplash

     

    Even with the risks though, it is clear that these tools fill a gap. Many people are not seeking grand emotional narratives or deep conversation. They want a softer kind of company that can sit beside work, chores, or study, and the world does not offer that easily anymore. Technology stepped into the space left behind by changes in work, housing, mobility, and community life.

    The loneliness market is less a verdict on people and more a reflection of the current moment. It shows how individuals are rearranging their emotional routines when older forms of connection no longer appear without effort. Digital companionship, even when light, offers a sense of continuity that is hard to find elsewhere. The behaviour will shift as the world changes, yet the need that drives it feels durable. People want to move through their day with some feeling of closeness, even when that closeness takes a different shape from what they expected.

  • When Books Became the Last Un-curated Object

    On a weekday morning in New York, a man pulls a paperback from his tote bag and props it against his knee. In a subway car full of phones, the gesture feels almost declarative. Across the aisle, someone glances over, not out of curiosity, but recognition.

    Scenes like this are becoming more noticeable. In London, on the Overground, in Seoul, in study cafés that fill by noon, and even in Bengaluru, in library-cafés where people come as much to sit with a book as to escape the heat. Reading in public isn’t new. What’s new is how visible it feels.

    Part of that visibility comes from contrast. Nearly everything else we consume now arrives pre-filtered. The shows we watch, the music we hear, the news we encounter, even the jokes that find us are shaped by recommendation systems designed to anticipate our preferences. The book, oddly enough, still resists that logic. It doesn’t auto-play. It doesn’t refresh. It doesn’t quietly optimize itself to keep you engaged.

     

    We now have library-cafes in Bengaluru where people read, and escape the heat | Image Credit: Vika Glitter on Pexels

     

    That resistance has started to matter. Despite years of predictions about the death of print, physical books remain dominant. In the United States, print accounted for close to three-quarters of publishing revenue as recently as 2022. Surveys also suggest that print remains the most widely used format across age groups, even as younger readers increasingly move between print, e-books, and audiobooks.

    E-books haven’t disappeared, but they haven’t replaced print either. Digital reading has grown steadily, especially in genres like romance, where speed and volume matter. What’s emerging instead is a split. Screens for convenience and paper for presence. The choice feels less about format and more about how people want their attention handled. In markets like India, where access to e-readers, stable connectivity, and digital payment systems is uneven, print remains the default rather than a preference.

    That distinction becomes clearer in public. In Tokyo, dedicated reading spaces and silent cafés have emerged as environments designed for sustained focus. In Seoul, book cafés offer multi-hour seating for readers who want to stay in. In India, informal reading communities like SGNP Reads and South Bombay Reads have begun organizing public reading sessions, turning parks and promenades into shared quiet spaces. In New York, the subway has always had readers, but the sight of a paperback now stands out against endless scrolling.

     

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    Many younger readers move fluidly between print, audiobooks, fan fiction, and online communities. The book offers texture where the screen offers flow.
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    Part of the appeal is physical. A book takes up space. It occupies both hands. It sets a pace you can’t speed up without effort. In a life where work, leisure, and socializing all collapse onto the same glowing rectangle, the book reintroduces a boundary, albeit a modest one.

    Yet, that boundary is increasingly rare. Work messages arrive on the same screen as entertainment. News alerts interrupt conversations. Even leisure is measured, tracked, and optimized. The book doesn’t participate in that economy. It doesn’t ask who you are or adjust itself based on past behavior. In a culture obsessed with personalization, the book remains curiously indifferent.

    Of course, books are not untouched by algorithms. Covers are tested, titles are optimized, and BookTok can turn a novel into a bestseller overnight. But the act of reading, especially reading in public, still resists total mediation. Once the book is open, the feed stops.

    Books offer a rare encounter with something that doesn’t choose you back | Image Credit: Element5 Digital on Pexels

    That is perhaps why books have become visual objects again with bold covers. Publishers seem to have leaned into this visibility with spine-forward design becoming more common. Special editions of books like Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros, with sprayed edges and highly stylised covers, have been designed as much for display as for reading, particularly within BookTok-driven genres.

    Is this nostalgia, or is it compensation? Historically, reading has always moved in cycles. Moments of rapid technological change often produce counter-movements toward slower forms of media.

    This shift isn’t exactly a revival. Print never disappeared. What’s changed is how visible and intentional it now feels. Many younger readers move fluidly between print, audiobooks, fan fiction, and online communities. The book offers texture where the screen offers flow. This helps explain why independent bookstores are opening again. In the United States, their numbers have grown by roughly 70 percent since 2020, with more than 400 new stores opening in 2025 alone.

    It would be easy to frame this as a romantic shift. But something more pragmatic seems to be underway. In a world where nearly everything is curated in advance, the book remains one of the few experiences that unfolds without anticipating you. It doesn’t adapt, optimize, or respond. It simply demands attention. And increasingly, that seems to be the point.

  • How India’s App Economy Learned to Read You

    Turn on a phone in India and it is easy to miss how little effort is involved. Dinner appears on Swiggy before your hunger has even fully registered. Groceries arrive speedily from Zepto, timed neatly between meetings. CRED nudges you with a reward that feels oddly well placed. Nothing breaks, nothing asks too many questions, and largely, the system works for its users.

    What disappears under that smoothness is how much machine learning hides under it. Over the last decade, India’s app economy has become exceptionally good at recognising behavioural patterns, not just what users do, but when they do it, how often, and in what sequence. The most successful platforms no longer compete primarily on features or price. They compete on prediction. 

    How did the country get here? Between 2016 and 2020, the Indian government pushed for large-scale digital expansion across the country. In 2025, approximately 85% of Indian households had at least one family member with a smartphone, according to the Government of India’s Press Information Bureau. It is amongst the world’s largest markets for smartphones and surveys reveal that it has amongst the world’s highest social media users. Millions of users came online in a compressed window of time, often mobile-first and app-first. 

    That scale changed the economics of apps almost overnight. Food delivery, quick commerce, and fintech became winner-take-most markets. By 2022, India’s food delivery market was dominated by two platforms controlling the vast majority of orders (even while battling critiques of exploited labor). Simultaneously, leading fintech apps reported that repeat users generated a disproportionate share of revenue. Margins were thin, competition was intense, and customer acquisition costs rose quickly. Retention mattered more than novelty. Engagement mattered more than differentiation. Behaviour became the most reliable signal platforms had. 

     

    Image Credit: Erik Mclean on Pexels

     

    So apps began to observe closely. Not in the cinematic sense of surveillance, but in the infrastructural sense of logging patterns. When people open an app, how long they linger, which offers they ignore, which ones they redeem late at night after a long day. Late-evening discount nudges on food delivery apps, for instance, are often timed to coincide with historically higher order completion rates, especially among repeat users. Over time, these traces form behavioural profiles that are less about identity and more about rhythm. Hunger has a schedule, spending has a mood, and attention has a curve.

    The country is overwhelmingly an Android market, which means lower-cost devices, faster adoption, and looser default permission settings. Android accounts for over 95 percent of smartphones in active use in India, a sharp contrast with the United States, where iOS takes the lead. Digital literacy varies widely, and privacy controls are often abstract problems for users, compared to the immediate payoff of convenience. In this environment, behavioural data is easier to capture than explicit intent, and far easier to monetize. Industry studies consistently show that personalized, behavior-timed notifications convert at significantly higher rates than generic promotions, making prediction more valuable than stated preference.

    The result is a different relationship between user and platform. The app does not need to ask what you want. It waits, infers, and nudges. Rewards systems, flash offers, and personalised notifications are calibrated around timing rather than persuasion. The aim is not to change behaviour, but to meet it at its most predictable moment.

    This is why many Indian apps feel intuitive. They are not responding to conscious choice. They are responding to repetition.

     

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    But consent is not often taken seriously enough, and not always understood. In return for speed, convenience, and small moments of pleasure, users offer up parts of their daily life.
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    There is also a cultural dimension to this dynamic. In a country shaped by inequality and aspiration, everyday behaviour becomes a resource. Fintech apps learn when users feel optimistic enough to spend. Delivery platforms learn when exhaustion overrides frugality. Patterns drawn (mostly) from urban and semi-urban users are packaged into predictions and fed back as ease. 

    None of this is illegal. Much of it is disclosed, technically, through consent screens and privacy policies. But consent is not often taken seriously enough, and not always understood. In return for speed, convenience, and small moments of pleasure, users offer up parts of their daily life.

    This is not a uniquely Indian story. American platforms pioneered many of these techniques. But India is where the model sharpens. Cheap data, dense competition, and a massive, heterogeneous user base make behavioural optimization unusually valuable. The app economy does not need to persuade users to behave differently. It simply learns how they already behave. Over time, this changes what products are built for. The most valuable users are not the most satisfied ones, but the most predictable ones. Behaviour becomes capital.

    Seen this way, India’s app boom is not just a story of innovation or convenience. It is a story about how everyday life is being translated into signals, and how those signals now sit at the centre of consumer capitalism. The system works because it feels frictionless. But that frictionlessness has a cost. It makes the trade invisible. And that may be the most consequential shift of all.

  • The Narrowing of Theatrical Cinema

    There is a particular kind of film that feels almost impossible to describe now. It was not ‘art house’ and it was not a ‘blockbuster’. It did not need a festival premiere to be taken seriously, and it did not need a spectacular budget to fill seats.

    Basu Chatterjee made films like that. Rajnigandha, Chitchor, Baton Baton Mein — these films were rooted in the textures of ordinary middle-class life. They were not parallel cinema in the way that Mrinal Sen or Ritwik Ghatak were parallel cinema. But they were not mainstream in the way the masala film was mainstream either. They occupied the space between, which in the 1970s and early 1980s was a genuine middle space, with an audience that already existed for it. Chatterjee did not have to manufacture that audience or explain himself to it. The audience was simply there, because cinema was one of the few shared cultural spaces that existed, and people came from all directions, including viewers who might otherwise have separated into distinct tastes. And this was true for cinema across the board.

    This middle cinema was global. The Godfather was not a compromise between art and commerce. It was both, simultaneously. Annie Hall, which won the Academy Award for Best Picture and was also widely seen. In the UK, films like Four Weddings and a Funeral was both moved just as easily between critical acclaim and mass popularity. Good Will Hunting moved between critical conversation and mass viewership without anyone treating that as a paradox. These were not lucky accidents. They were products of a particular moment in which cinema held enough cultural authority that critics and audiences were still, broadly, addressing the same films.

    That moment seems to have passed. What replaced it is structurally different in ways that have made this middle cinema almost impossible to sustain.

     

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    A film that wins at Sundance and a film that opens at number one globally may be reviewed by entirely different sets of writers, discussed in entirely different corners of the internet, and watched by audiences with almost no overlap.
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    The first thing that changed was television. The original expansion of television pulled casual viewers away from cinemas. People who had gone to see whatever was showing, out of habit and for want of choice, now had an alternative. What remained in cinema audiences was more self-selected, which pushed studios toward films that justified the trip. Essentially, films that were events and spectacles became reasons to leave the house. This is the beginning of the blockbuster, the lesson studios drew from Jaws and Star Wars, which is that cinema should be an experience unavailable at home.

    That has only intensified as home entertainment evolved and grew. The case for going to a cinema is now almost entirely the case for immersive scale. You’re going for the big screen, the sound, and most importantly, the shared physical event.

    However, what this sensibility didn’t accommodate was the mid-sized film, the film that is absorbing and well-made and emotionally honest, but does not require a particular kind of screen or scale to be itself. That film, in the recent past, has been quietly reclassified. It is now a platform film, a streaming film, and an awards-season film. It is a film you watch, but not quite a film you go to the cinema to see.

    The second thing that changed was fragmentation. When there were three television channels, a major broadcast, like a Sunday evening film or a national event, was genuinely shared across households. In the UK, this was visible even at the level of infrastructure, the ‘kettle surge,’ when electricity demand would spike as millions of viewers put the kettle on during the same commercial break. Shows like Eastenders and Coronation Street regularly drew audiences in the tens of millions, cutting across class and taste. Broadcasters even coordinated with power utilities to anticipate these surges.

    When there were a handful of major studios and a finite number of cinema screens, films competed for the same audiences in a way that required them to speak across differences. The masala film and the Chatterjee film and the parallel film were all fishing in the same pond. Their audiences overlapped because their audiences had to overlap; there were only so many ponds.

     

     

    In this sense, the streaming era has not expanded cinema, it has subdivided it. There are now effectively separate cinemas running in parallel — the theatrical blockbuster, the prestige platform drama, the festival film, and the genre film with its devoted communities, and the international film available to anyone with a subscription. Each of these has its own critics, its own awards circuits, and its own conversations. The conversations almost never meet. A film that wins at Sundance and a film that opens at number one globally may be reviewed by entirely different sets of writers, discussed in entirely different corners of the internet, and watched by audiences with almost no overlap. It is precisely this overlap that middle cinema depended on, and what fragmentation has removed.

    This is not censorship and it is not a decline in quality. It is the structural consequence of abundance. When everything is available, curation replaces the shared default. People move toward what already fits their sense of themselves, and the algorithm confirms that movement. The middle film, which depends on crossing those preferences, is less likely to be encountered at all. It does not disappear because no one wants it. It disappears because there is no longer a common space in which it can stand, where different kinds of audiences encounter the same film.

    The third thing that changed was how cultural prestige is produced and distributed. A film that won the approval of major critics in major newspapers was, by that fact, legible to a general audience as something worth seeing. The review was a form of translation, it moved a film from the space of professional evaluation into the space of ordinary decision-making. A Pauline Kael review or a Khalid Mohamed review was read by people who were not themselves critics, and it shaped what they chose to see, which meant that critical approval and popular viewership were directly connected.

     

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    The bridge is smaller partly because fewer people believe it should exist.
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    That transmission has broken down. Critical discourse now circulates largely within communities of people already oriented toward cinema as a serious pursuit. The general audience making decisions about what to watch is not reading reviews in the same way, if it is reading reviews at all. It is looking at aggregator scores, at social media responses, at what the people it follows are talking about. These are not the same inputs. A film can score excellently with critics and generate no momentum in the broader culture. A film can generate enormous social media energy and be treated with contempt by critics. The two systems of evaluation have separated, and without the transmission between them, the bridge has no foundations.

    For middle cinema, which depended on that transmission to move between critical approval and popular viewership, this separation is decisive. Its audiences still exist, but they are no longer encountering the same films together.

    What this means practically is that films occupying the middle have no natural amplifier. The blockbuster does not need critics; its marketing budget and its franchise recognition do the work. The art house film does not rely on mass audiences in the same way; its festival circuit and platform deals often sustain it. But the film that is genuinely good and genuinely accessible, the film that wants to reach a broad audience on the strength of its quality, has no structural support. It must either position itself as an event or position itself as prestige, and neither positioning quite fits it.

    It is worth being precise about what is lost. What is lost is not the films themselves. Films of the kind Chatterjee made are still created. The Holdovers, Past Lives, C’mon C’mon, and many more are films of human scale, rooted in feeling rather than franchise, legible to any attentive viewer. The loss is not their existence but their circulation. They do not move through the culture the way Rajnigandha moved through Indian culture in 1974.

     

     

    What is also lost is a certain kind of shared point of reference. The film that crossed between critical and popular spaces was a cultural object that different kinds of people could talk about together. It did not require specialist knowledge to engage with, but it rewarded attention. It gave people with different orientations toward cinema a common point of reference. That point of reference is increasingly rare, which means that conversations about cinema are increasingly conversations within already-formed communities rather than across them.

    And what is perhaps most subtly lost is the implicit argument that quality and accessibility are not opposites. The current arrangement makes that opposition feel structural. Films that are taken seriously seem to require effort to find. Films that are easy to find seem not to be taken seriously. This is not a law of nature. It is a consequence of how distribution, criticism, and audience formation happen to be organized right now. But when it becomes the background assumption, it shapes what filmmakers attempt, what studios fund, what audiences expect, and what critics attend to. The bridge is smaller partly because fewer people believe it should exist.

    The question of whether it can be rebuilt is not really a question about cinema. It is a question about whether shared cultural spaces can exist inside systems designed around personalization.

  • Pulp Friction

    There is growing concern in some markets that reading for leisure is declining, even as other forms of reading continue to grow. Articles and studies show that even with the rise of BookTok and online reading communities, reading for pleasure, meaning reading done for enjoyment rather than for work or school, appears to be declining in some markets. A recent US-based study found a nearly 40% decline in daily reading for leisure over the past two decades in the country. In India, the picture is less clear, with growth in some segments of publishing alongside concerns about declining leisure reading habits in others.

    For decades, A H Wheeler stalls at railway stations made books and newspapers visible and affordable to millions of travelers. Founded in 1877, the chain became one of the most recognizable features of Indian railway travel. But that visibility is now shrinking. Indian Railways has begun phasing out many traditional Wheeler stalls, replacing them with multipurpose kiosks and retail formats better aligned with current commuter habits. 

     

    But, there was a time when you would find yourself at a railway station and your eyes would not have been able to miss the sight of a book stand, stacked with newspapers, and bright, often evocative covers of pulp fiction novels — some retailing as low as Rs 30, but maybe no higher than Rs 150 — that would have been snatched up by travelers of all ages and classes. These newspapers and books were not always in English; you’d mostly see titles in Hindi, or in Tamil if you’re traveling down South, or in Gujarati in the Western regions, and so forth. 

    Pulp fiction made reading accessible across regional languages and price points. To negate pulp fiction from the considerations of literature is to negate a sizable and often undercounted readership that never quite stopped reading for pleasure and entertainment, even in the face of technological advancement. Writers and critics of Hindi pulp have repeatedly argued that these novels created generations of habitual readers across North India, particularly in small towns where inexpensive, serialized fiction was often more accessible than literary publishing.

    In Hindi pulp fiction, in particular, there are recurring themes of detective fiction and family drama. The stories are often fast-paced, sensational, or melodramatic, and the material is often racy and provocative, making for a great quick read in transit (hence the prevalence of sale at railway stations and bus stands), or for a light escape from the daily drudge. Much of this readership exists in regional languages, where pulp continues to be widely produced and consumed, even as English-language pulp has declined.

     

     

    Some of the most prolific figures in Indian pulp fiction built vast readerships that continue to circulate today; case in point, Rajesh Kumar, who has written 1,500 titles in novels and short stories, including serialized fiction. One of the biggest names in the Hindi language is Surender Mohan Pathak, with 250 novels to his name. Their works have been printed and re-printed for decades now, and they are even paid handsomely enough for them to have quit their day jobs to write full-time. They are invited to literary panels. Some of their works have been adapted for the screen, like Ved Prakash Sharma’s adaptations, including projects based on Dahej Mein Revolver and Qatil Ho To Aisa. Earlier generations of Hindi pulp also fed directly into mainstream cinema, with writers like Gulshan Nanda inspiring films such as Kati Patang and Daag.

    In the face of these facts, it is hard not to see a class bias in what is considered literature, and which languages receive greater legitimacy. In India, pulp fiction often serves as accessible reading material for commuters and working-class readers. When reading material is made accessible financially and physically, it is likely to allow for greater adoption. Price remains one of the biggest reasons publishers continue investing in pulp fiction, and readers continue returning to it. Reportedly, the profit margins for a pulp fiction novel once stood at 100%, since they would fly off the shelves. With the advent of television and soap operas, the sales for pulp fiction fell by 80% and so did profit margins, down to roughly 15% in comparison. Yet, loyal readers continue to gravitate towards the novels, and casual readers don’t mind making the investment since the opportunity cost is relatively low. So despite a taxation of 5% on pulp, the cost factor has not shifted so as not to alienate the readers, helping sustain the market year after year.

    It might be interesting, then, to see the impact of price on the adoption of other literature, and see how it may have impacted readership, if at all. For one thing, fast fiction like the kind penned by Chetan Bhagat, Durjoy Dutta, and Nikita Singh, among others, also retails at a low price between Rs 150 and Rs 300, which makes these English language novels with mass-market titles accessible to those who may be first-time readers, or who have shied away from picking up reading for pleasure, making it more similar to pulp than not, but in a more contemporary and aspirational English-language form. 

     

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    To negate pulp fiction from the considerations of literature is to negate a sizable and often undercounted readership that never quite stopped reading for pleasure and entertainment, even in the face of technological advancement. 
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    Interestingly, despite the widespread readership, figures for the distribution and sale of pulp fiction are sparse. With some books, the authors might know the number of copies that were sold, or the reprints. Pathak’s 65 Lakh Ki Dakaiti (the 65 Lakh Robbery) reportedly sold 50,000 copies on its first run, and has cumulatively sold 2.5 million copies since its first print. However, many pulp fiction novels are published through small regional presses with limited distribution tracking. Like many inexpensive mass-market books, they also circulate informally between readers, particularly during long train and bus journeys, making their actual readership harder to measure through sales figures alone. 

    In the last decade or so, there have been moves that have brought some additional legitimacy to where pulp stands in literary terms in India. Audible India launched Thriller Factory in 2019, a ten-episode show that dramatized the works of Ved Prakash Sharma for an audio format. The Blaft Anthology for Tamil and Gujarati pulp fiction also brought Tamil and Gujarati pulp fiction into translation to make them available to readers who don’t read in scripts other than English in 2008. 

    At a moment when anxieties about readership continue to grow, pulp fiction remains a reminder that accessibility and habit may matter just as much as literary prestige in sustaining reading cultures.