Silent Contraction

A copper container of water sits by the doorway of my mother's flat in Kolkata, a small ritual against the dust of the city. When we speak on the phone, she mentions how the quiet has settled into the neighborhood because there are very few children and too many homebound old people, a silence that mirrors the statistical shifts now tracking across the subcontinent. Twenty years ago, that copper pot and her tray of fresh floating in water, which also sits near the door would have been like magnets to little children running up and down the staris. Today there is no chance that anyone will touch them even if they are gone for days. She misses that energy in her surroundings. My parents chose to live in this community because people of all ages live here. 

The newest data reveals that India has crossed a threshold many thought impossible during the anxieties of the twentieth century, with its total fertility rate dropping to 1.9, well below the replacement level of 2.1. While the overall population of 1.45 billion will continue to rise temporarily as the current generation of youth reaches adulthood, a significant contraction is on the horizon, with urban centers like Delhi already seeing rates as low as 1.2.

This shift challenges decades of demographic assumptions that linked population decline exclusively to Western wealth or East Asian corporate cultures. In India, the contraction is occurring at a much lower per-capita income level, driven not by women delaying marriage for careers, but by a profound transformation in parental aspirations across all economic strata. The traditional expectation of large families has given way to what economists call the quantity-quality trade-off. Parents are choosing to have a single child to concentrate limited resources on private schooling and tutoring, a trend visible even in poorer northern states like Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. The rapid transition from multi-generational households to nuclear families has further increased the daily burden of childcare, while the spread of digital media and smartphones has quickly normalized the cultural ideal of the small, urban family.

The domestic consequences of this transition will reshape the social and political fabric of the country long before it achieves widespread prosperity. Southern states like Tamil Nadu and Kerala are aging rapidly, with shrinking school enrollments and an expanding elderly population that lacks a comprehensive state pension system or the traditional safety net of extended family care. This regional imbalance is accelerating internal migration, drawing young workers from the north and east to fill labor shortages in southern factories and care facilities, a movement that complicates regional politics and strains local identities. Politicians have begun offering financial incentives to encourage larger families, yet global precedents suggest these measures rarely reverse deep-seated cultural shifts. The country faces an altered future, leaving open the question of how a society built on the momentum of youth will manage the quiet approach of its own contraction.

Self Loathing

It's been a while since I read an essay this length with attention and interest. There is a lot here that I agree with but some arguments do not hold as much water. That said, the central thesis is spot on:

Rather than viewing India in terms of (Western) Left versus Right, it’s better to understand India’s political struggle as gravitational – between centripetal forces that pull India towards a civilizational core versus centrifugal forces that push India towards its diverse and sometimes isolated expressions.

The centripetal side believes India’s unity rests on Dharma – the ancient, elastic idea that has bound its many peoples for millennia. The centrifugal side comprises those who either shrink into parochial identities of caste and language or look outward to ideologies imported from elsewhere, whether from the Middle East or the West. One side emphasizes the whole; the other, the parts.

The centrifugal section of this tension then produces an intelligentsia that grows nauseous of the ideas of Hinduism and even India itself. Instead, this block attaches primacy to things like caste, (non-Hindu) religion, linguistic identity, or superfluous class markers such as how one speaks English, what shows one prefers on Netflix, or who can produce the least catastrophic Indian variant of pasta (no doubt still overcooked and over-sauced). They curse fate for birthing them as an Indian.

It was towards the end of my high school years that Hindutva became a thing to talk about in casual conversation. Such was the political climate of the times. Mild mannered folks started to have strong and often uncomfortable opinions. Previously they might have kept their thoughts to themselves but it was now open season. It was around the same time the contingent of self-loathers started to grow. Nature seeks balance and so it stands to reason that no one side has a had decisive win so far.

Lively Business

The dead ancestors are always with us in spirit. It's customary to invoke their blessings during religious ceremonies that mark important life events. So its no surprise that they are making their presence know via deepfakes in ways that are deemed quite acceptable.This story talks about how AI used used to bridge the gap between the living and the dead. While much of the global conversation around deepfakes focuses on political misinformation or digital scams, a growing number of Indian families are turning to grief tech to find closure. Local creators and small-town entrepreneurs are using open-source AI models to resurrect deceased relatives for significant family milestones, such as weddings and birth celebrations. These digital recreations allow the departed to appear on screen, offer blessings, and interact with their loved ones, providing a sense of presence that many find deeply healing during times of intense absence.

The process of creating these digital avatars is often a labor-intensive collaboration between technology and memory. Creators like Akhil Vinayak and Divyendra Singh Jadoun work closely with grieving families, studying old photographs, voice recordings, and home videos to capture the specific mannerisms and personality of the deceased. The goal is to create a hyper-realistic version of the person that feels authentic to those who knew them best. This isn't just about technical proficiency; it requires a level of emotional intelligence to ensure the AI-generated persona resonates with the family’s grief. For many, paying a few thousand rupees for a minute of digital time with a lost parent or spouse is a small price for the emotional catharsis it provides.

Despite the comfort these videos offer, the rise of the lively business of the deceased brings ethical and psychological questions. Critics and even some creators worry about the long-term impact on the grieving process. There is a fine line between a beautiful tribute and a digital haunting that prevents survivors from moving on. Because these AI avatars can now speak, text, and even video-chat in real-time, there is a risk that people may become overly attached to a simulation, potentially leading to deeper depression or an inability to accept the reality of their loss. Creators often find themselves acting as amateur counselors, warning clients that these projections, however realistic, are not the people they lost.

As this industry continues to expand in India, it reflects a broader cultural shift in how we handle death in the digital age. The technology has democratized a service that once felt like science fiction, making it accessible to garment traders and middle-class families in smaller cities. While the legal and ethical frameworks around the right to be forgotten or the consent of the deceased remain murky, the demand continues to surge. For now, in the vibrant landscape of Indian celebrations, AI is proving that even if someone is gone, they can still be invited back for one last dance or a final blessing, changing the way we remember and interact with the past forever.

Delayed Trajectories

Reading about Charles Correa and the life he and Monika built around continuity and practice brought back a memory I had not revisited in years. In the early years of my career, I knew someone whose work stood completely apart from her peers. She had been offered an opportunity to work closely with a leading architect, the kind of opening that can shape an entire career. Taking that job would mean that she live and work independently in a different city. Her family insisted on different order of operations ostensibly out of concern for her safety. Marriage had to come first and then everything else would follow. She could not take that once in a lifetime opportunity.

At the time, it felt like a delay. But careers in fields like architecture don’t respond well to interruption as we saw in her case. The early years are when you build taste, networks, and a body of work that leads to the next commission, the next collaboration, the next idea worth pursuing. Miss that window, and the loss become non-linear because that one missed apprenticeship cascases to ten missed projects. For her that one deferred move turned into a life that never quite regained its original trajectory.

Reading about Correa got me thinking about the scale of his work and its continuity, the ability to return to ideas over decades and let them evolve. That kind of practice depends on uninterrupted time and self-direction. When those conditions are unevenly distributed, talent alone cannot compensate. We often talk about opportunity as if it were a discrete event, something you either take or don’t. But opportunity is also timing, and timing is shaped by who is allowed to begin, and when. Our friend was not allowed to begin.

Dosa Rising

I am far from an expert masala dosa maker but can do a decent job. Even at that level, the production has never failed to impress the unitiated. It's great to see it making it up the pancake lederboard.

The best masala dosa of my youth was made by a street vendor who had perfected both taste and execution. It was crispy, fermented, filled with spiced potato, and now offically one of the greatest pancakes on earth. TasteAtlas has ranked masala dosa sixth on its May 2026 list of the top 100 pancakes worldwide, awarding the dish a 4.3-star rating. The travel and food guide, which bases its rankings on a blend of user ratings and expert reviews, has essentially confirmed what millions of South Indians have known for generations. Once a South Indian breakfast staple, the masala dosa is now rubbing shoulders with the world's finest. Though, it had made its way to the rest of India long before being ranked among the world's best pancakes. I've had very decent masala dosa in Kolkata which would have been unthinkable and impossible when I was growing up.

The humble foundation of dosa has spawned an entire family of variations. They range from Mysore masala dosa and rava dosa to paper dosa and even an avocado dosa for the Gen Z crowd.  The last one I have some trouble accepting but then I am not the target. The dosa's crisp texture, tangy fermented flavor, and versatility have won fans well beyond India, and the TasteAtlas ranking makes that global reach official. Notably, the dosa family dominated the list: regular dosa came in at No. 15, while the ultra-thin paper dosa landed at No. 35. I've always liked the plain dosa better than all variants but most people in my family prefer the ultra-thin paper dosa. 

Indian chefs are taking the recognition as a cultural milestone, not just a culinary one. Chef Hiten Puri described the ranking as a clear sign of the rise of India's soft power, where food becomes a cultural ambassador. Chef Chetna Chopra, who introduced avocado dosa to Delhi, went further, calling the dosa "the most intelligent pancake" and noting that it represents one of India's oldest expressions of fermentation, something that was part of everyday cooking long before it became a global wellness trend. For her, the irony is that the world is only now discovering something Indians have eaten their whole lives.

The ranking also arrives at a moment when dosa has been making headlines for less flattering reasons. A recent social media post went viral after author Ana Huang wrote about dosa in her book King of Gluttony with a character ordering it with eggs, strawberries, and cake, a somewhat bizarre combination that sparked widespread mockery online, with one commenter joking they'd never seen those words in a sentence together before. It's a funny reminder that as Indian food gains global prestige, it still has some explaining to do. On the global leaderboard, the masala dosa sits behind favorites like Latvia's kartupeļu pankūkas, China's jianbing, and France's crêpes, but given the trajectory, it may not stay at sixth for long.

Saree Longing

I can’t recall how I first stumbled upon this Facebook page where a woman talks about handloom sarees, but it’s become one of my favorite places to stop after a long day, when I need something that takes my mind off things. I have no memory of buying a saree for myself since I left India. I received my fair share of gifts, of course, but none that I would consider a family heirloom. I love sarees, and if it were up to me, that’s what I would wear every time I stepped out of the house. There are hopes and dreams, and then there is reality, in which I wear a saree maybe once in a decade. Perhaps that’s why the dreams feel so oddly disproportionate.

This woman fills that aching void between who I want to be, in terms of how I dress, and the limitations of real life that dictate what I can actually wear on a regular basis. Listening to her explain how to spot a real Jamdani from a fake one feels deeply satisfying — as if knowing those details might somehow make up for the fact that I own neither real nor fake versions of any of the sarees she talks about. When I got married in my twenties, I received the de rigueur set of Banarasi, Dhakai, and Baluchari sarees from my parents and parents-in-law. The rest were handloom silks and cottons gifted by relatives. They were too numerous to bring to America, so I left them with my mother and never really had an occasion to get them back.

With separation and divorce in a foreign country came the loss of Indian friends who had known us both and were unwilling to choose one of us over the other. They chose instead to part ways entirely. The same fate befell many bonds with relatives who felt I had acted unwisely and in haste. While all of that is water under the bridge now, it meant I no longer had a place for sarees in my life — no use for an article of clothing that had been my most favored since I became an adult.

I wore sarees regularly from my teens onward, an oddity among peers who saw them as a proxy for the loss of freedom and youth. I never did. To me, the saree was always the most dramatic, versatile, and dynamic thing a woman could wear. It allowed her to express herself in infinite ways. To me, it was a garment of power and possibility. I mourn that loss to this day, which is perhaps why I love listening to someone speak with such obvious love and intimacy about it.

Job Paradox

I've had experience working with companies that are all-in on AI and want every last person to skill up. There is ample support and opportunity to reinvent one's job, be recognized and rewarded for it. Sadly, their offshore teams in India were the most resistant to change and continued to follow their old ways of working unless forced to comply. There is a pervasive fear of job loss due to AI so folks refuse to use it and consequently do not develop the skills they need to survive it. So reading this story about how India will magically adapt and win with AI felt out of sync with reality on the ground.

The "AI job paradox" sounds like a nice solution to a messy problem. The theory is simple: as machines take over routine tasks, they free up humans to focus on high-level work—empathy, judgment, and complex strategy. It’s a comforting vision for India’s workforce, but it ignores several hard realities.
Automation doesn't just change tasks; it deletes them at scale. Much of the process drag in organizations are a result of needing many people cross functions to work in co-ordination to get something one. This is mostly a relic of the past. One person managing an AI tool can often produce what twenty workers used to. Even if "higher-value" roles appear, they won't appear in the millions. For a country that needs to create a million jobs every month just to keep pace with its population, a net-loss in total roles is a crisis, not a "shift."

Then there is the reskilling myth. The idea that a data-entry clerk can simply pivot into an "ethical judgment officer" is optimistic at best and delusional at worst. These high-value skills—like nuanced decision-making—are usually the result of elite education and many years of experience. We aren't looking at a workforce moving up; we are looking at a workforce being hollowed out. The top 5% will thrive as AI orchestrators, while the rest are pushed into low-wage manual labor that remains too cheap to automate.

The article claims humans are indispensable because AI makes mistakes. A lot of people cling to this idea very passionately and refuse to entertain any other possibilities. But history shows that companies often accept "good enough" results if they save money. We’ve already seen this in customer service and content moderation. Instead of being empowered "orchestrators," many workers will likely become "rubber-stampers," clicking "approve" on machine-generated work for lower pay. I've had tenured engineers tell me that catastrophe will follow if we use AI to build and mantain API inegerations for example. They have chosen not to understand why infact this is one for the ideal use cases for AI; the so called spec-driven autonomous loop. It would be nice to see it attempted instead of declaring code red at the very thought of it. 

I was chatting with an offshore engineering manager recently ans he shared how difficult its been for him to bring his team along because they code manually and do not want to let go of their ways of working because it effaces their professional identity. He is trying to motivate them by saying they have the choice of falling in line or being replaced with one senior dev in America who runs a team of agents the same size of the current team in India. The compensation math would work out. His team has understably pushed back saying what is to prevent that from happening already. These are real issues and there are no good answers. He has been able to bring half of his team along to the new ways of working so far. 

AI moves at the speed of light. Indian education and corporate training move at the speed of a glacier. By the time our training programs catch up to the "skills of the future," the technology will have moved again. The paradox is that the more "human" a job becomes, the more exclusive it becomes. Unless we address the massive disparity in training and the raw loss of volume, the AI wave won't lift all boats—it will just widen the gap between the shore and the ship.

Performative Empowerment

I am not sure how I feel about the "reverse baraat." The road to hell is paved with good intentions, and while meant as a radical act of love that rises above social stigma, using the specific rites of marriage to celebrate its dissolution is a misguided approach that oversimplifies complex trauma. A wedding is a sacred ritual signifying union; applying those same celebratory markers to a divorce—the collapse of that very unit—feels like a mockery of the original sanctity of the vows. As someone who was divorced long ago and felt the full force of social shunning in India, I am certain something like this would have ill-served me. Deploying public pomp and circumstance risks turning a painful family transition into a performative spectacle that prioritizes optics over the meaningful support a woman actually needs.

Notwithstanding the pretension of being modern and liberated, a ceremony like this consolidates the daughter’s status as a "ward" whose identity is defined by her relationship to her father. He gets to give her away or take her back at his discretion, making a huge show of both. Sadly, everything remains focused on the father’s role as the protector and the daughter as the recipient of his public approval—the last thing a divorced woman needs after such a life event.

There is also an undeniable emotional toll to such a "show." Divorce involves complex, confusing emotions that must be experienced and expiated. Forcing a festive atmosphere onto someone who has just endured a grueling legal battle creates an environment of toxic positivity, where the woman feels pressured to appear happy and empowered for the sake of her father’s public stand. While well-intentioned, the family may unintentionally be trapping her in the same cycle of performance and social approval she was trying to escape, rather than allowing her the space to redefine herself on her own terms.

Culinary Friction

The shift in India state banquet menus from a standard North Indian template toward a more diverse Bharat identity is a fascinating evolution that has sparked a complex debate regarding authenticity. While the inclusion of regional staples like millets and jackfruit is a step toward inclusivity, critics argue that this high-end reimagining often strips traditional dishes of their soul. By applying Western techniques like foams and emulsions to heritage recipes, the kitchen risks appearing as though it is seeking foreign validation rather than celebrating the food in its purest form. As someone with a deep and soulful connection to this cuisine, I find myself siding with the critics because there is something inherently jarring about a Westernized reimagination of the flavors I love.

A significant point of contention lies in the perceived elitism of these theatrical presentations. For many, transforming humble staples into minimalist and plated courses feels like a sterilized version of a vibrant food culture. When a traditional salad is served as a deconstructed appetizer with charred pineapple and yogurt foam, the visceral connection to the original dish is lost. This brand of culinary soft power can come across as pretentious, catering more to a global fine-dining aesthetic than to the actual traditions of the people it claims to represent.

The  narrow focus of these menus also raises questions about regional exclusion. The recent preference for strictly vegetarian menus at high-profile diplomatic events feels like an attempt to redefine Indian identity through a singular and specific lens. This approach overlooks the vast non-vegetarian heritage of the Malabar coast, the Northeast, and the Islamic traditions of the subcontinent. Being Bengali, a meal that excludes fish feels like a major and irredeemable omission that simply does not align with my cultural heritage. A truly representative national menu should embrace the full spectrum of the Indian diet rather than adhering to a sanitized narrative and essentially generating alternative facts and relaties. 

The debate over Shrikhand Creme Brulee reflects a deeper tension in the transition from India to Bharat. To some, this branding feels like an exercise in Sanskritization that prioritizes certain cultural aesthetics over others. While the goal is to project a confident and modern nation, the backlash suggests a preference for a more grounded approach. It would be far bolder to lead with authentic and state-specific dishes that stand on their own merit. There is such a wealth of culinary diversity to choose from that it should be possible to build a star-studded lineup representing every part of India without resorting to the culinary gymnastics of foaming yogurts and French techniques.

Garage Crown

There's a version of the Nooyi story that gets told as an immigrant success narrative: the Yale degree, the corner office, the Forbes lists, a woman from Chennai running one of the most recognised consumer brands in the world. In a recent interview, she says she would never have been CEO of a comparable company in India. She took a risk saying that, because it can read as a slight against Indian women who have built remarkable things inside India.

Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw built Biocon in Bangalore starting in 1978, the same year Nooyi was arriving at Yale with $50 and a suitcase. Mazumdar-Shaw was 25, in an industry that barely existed in India, turned away by multiple banks, building in a city that had no template for what she was trying to do. That Biocon became what it is says something both about who she is and what Indian institutional culture can accommodate given persistence.

Falguni Nayar left Kotak Mahindra at 49 to found Nykaa, then took it public at a $7 billion valuation in 2021, at an age when most people at her level might have contemplated retirement, in a market with no obvious precedent for what she was building. None of these are small accomplishments, and India played its part in making them possible.

That said, Nooyi at PepsiCo is a specific thing. She ran a Fortune 50 company for twelve years, pivoted its entire product portfolio toward health and nutrition against serious shareholder resistance, grew revenue from $35 billion to $63 billion, and did all of it as a woman who kept her Indian name, her accent, wore a sari to meet the President, and didn't sand down anything visible about where she came from. The question isn't whether Indian women are capable of this because clearly they are. The question is which institutional conditions allow that capability to reach that particular scale, with that particular latitude.

India's most successful women tend to operate in one of two situations: they built the space themselves and aren't climbing someone else's hierarchy, or they're in a field where gender is largely orthogonal to the product. Biocon is biotech. Nykaa is a market Nayar invented. The number of women who have run large, established Indian corporations with boards they didn't control and shareholders they had to manage is short. Not because the calibre isn't there, but because the pathway to the top of those companies still routes through a kind of seniority, a kind of network, and in some cases family connection, that doesn't travel across gender with equal ease.

This isn't unique to India. Boardrooms of large established corporations in most countries have versions of the same problem, arguably worse in some. What's specific to the Nooyi case is that America's institutional machinery, when she moved through it, worked in her direction enough of the time that she got there.

She describes her mentors at PepsiCo as white men, many of them ex-military, who evaluated performance without much investment in where she came from. She found this disorienting at first, having expected to manage assumptions about her background continuously. Instead, people seemed mainly interested in whether she was right. That's an institutional culture, not a national character. Yale School of Management in 1978 admitted her, gave her work-study, let her waitress in a sari to cover living expenses. That is a financial product and an admissions decision, not a myth about opportunity.

She also names, more than once, what she calls immigrant fear. The awareness that there is no safety net, that the family she came from is in Chennai and the credential she's building here is the only thing between her and starting over, that failure in this context doesn't carry the cushion that failure at home might. That fear, she says, never fully switched off. She was still running on it decades into the job. Immigrant fear can be productive, though it requires the host country to be structured such that the fear channels into work rather than into the daily management of exposure to risk. America, for Nooyi, at the moments that mattered, was that kind of country.

Thirty-something years into living here, after twelve years as CEO of one of its most iconic companies, she still calls herself a guest. The immigrant's condition is to hold two places simultaneously while belonging fully to neither, and Nooyi is remarkably candid about it. There's the story she tells about her mother handing her a grocery list at the door when she came home one evening from work. Leave your crown in the garage. Nooyi goes to buy milk.

The story is probably about both staying grounded and the dual register of the immigrant at the top. She can leave the crown in the garage because the garage is in America, and the crown was made available by institutions she moved through here. But the person who walks inside and goes to the store is still the person from Chennai who arrived with $50 and wasn't sure she'd made the right call.

Whether that split is a burden or just a condition is not really a question with an answer. People make what they can with it. What America gave Nooyi was the culture, the mentors, and an institutional meritocracy that allowed the person carrying that split to get to the top of something large enough to matter. She acknowledged it without making it mythology. The machinery worked when it mattered.
Mazumdar-Shaw and Nayar built their own machines. In some respects that's the harder thing. Nooyi ran someone else's, a very large and very old one, changed its direction, and did it as an immigrant and a woman.

Longevity Gap

Just about any time I call my mother, I hear about the ailments and hospitalizations of people in her surroundings. Some her age group but many closer to mine. Everyone from India that I know here has parents back home that have a variety of health issues keeping them worried. It is a miracle to have a elderly folks there that are in reasonably good health. This article from Mint hit a nerve for me.

It cites a new nationwide survey released around World Health Day highlights a troubling paradox: people are living longer, but not necessarily healthier lives. In India, rising life expectancy is being accompanied by an increase in years spent dealing with illness, disability, or chronic conditions. The gap between lifespan and “healthspan” is becoming more visible and more concerning. This is what I've been seeing for years now.

The findings suggest that modern lifestyles are a major driver of this trend. Sedentary habits, poor diets, stress, and environmental factors are contributing to a surge in non-communicable diseases such as diabetes, heart disease, and obesity. As a result, many individuals are extending their years without improving the quality of those years, creating a growing burden on both individuals and healthcare systems. The caregivers are the worst impacted because they are often not in much better health than those that are meant to care for. I have several family members of my generation who are not in the best health and are also having to care for parents who teeter from one medical emergency to the next. The physical and emotional toll on these caregivers is enormous.

There is also a noticeable shift in mindset. A segment of the population, younger and urban consumers, is beginning to focus on “slow ageing,” emphasizing prevention, wellness, and longevity with quality of life. This includes increased interest in fitness, nutrition, mental health, and proactive healthcare, signaling a cultural pivot toward healthier living rather than just longer living. This segment of the population to me is reminiscent of green grass growing in a ruin and delapidation. 

Leading Edge

A Reddit post from a software architect in Bangalore made news: after a four-day sprint where Claude overhauled a multi-app login system, work that normally took two months, he was ordered to lay off 45 people. That was 90% of the tech team. The three remaining architects would absorb the entire workload.

Whether the math holds perfectly matters less than what the thread reveals about a crumbling foundation. India’s rise into the global middle class ran substantially through one channel: performing tech labor more cheaply and competently than wealthier nations could do it at home. The entire mythology of the Indian engineering college being the the gateway to work for the likes of TCS, Infosys, and Wipro, depended on the cost gap between Bangalore and Boston. That wage arbitrage was the moat. India didn't need to be the absolute best, just reliably good and signficantly cheaper.

But AI changes the game by arbitraging labor itself, not just its cost. As one commenter noted, a 3 times increase in AI productivity can either mean doing three times more work, or firing two-thirds of the staff. The architect's company chose the latter, and they aren't alone. Other commenters chimed in with identical stories: a mutual fund startup founder who axed his dev team to pivot to an "AI-native" model, and another firm keeping teams at half-strength by forcing survivors to bridge the gap with AI tools. None of this requires AI to be flawless; it just has to be good enough and cheaper that the headcount it replaces.

Arbitrage historically assumed that hiring in rich countries would always remain the pricier alternative. AI breaks this formula entirely. A model requires no salary and no visa, competing with both sides of the old equation simultaneously. What replaces India's economic moat remains an open question. The thread offered no answers, only gallows humor, advice to upskill, and a grim prediction from a 20-year veteran: "order-taking" developers who merely implement assigned tasks are the first to go. Whether that is a isolated corporate consolidation or the leading edge of a global collapse is something no one in the comments, least of all the architect who just left the meeting, could say with any confidence.

Fading Rituals

If I call my mother between 7-10 pm her time, I always see her in a nice but not an overly fancy sari. Her hair is neatly combed and she is wearing a bindi. This is an expectation I have of her appearnce since early childhood and it feels comfortable to see her this way. It also serves as a reminder of the transition from the meticulous household rhythms of our grandmothers to the frantic pace of the modern professional Indian woman. For generations, the domestic routine was built on waking up early, cooking all meals from scratch and a communal open-door policy. Our mothers inherited these expectations, often successfully balancing them within an evolving social order than was post-Independence India. However, as the daughters of that generation who have moved from home into global corporate spaces and high-pressure careers, this blueprint is rapidly disintegrating under the weight of a world that no longer supports its foundation.

The traditional support system that once made it possible does not exist anymore. Our grandmothers operated within a village or a joint family structure where labor was distributed among multiple women and domestic help was abundant. Today, the professional woman in a city like London or Mumbai often lives in a nuclear setup where she is the sole manager of every household detail. Without a sister-in-law or a neighborhood network to share the load, the expectation to maintain a multi-step traditional routine becomes an impossible burden rather than a source of cultural pride. The domestic help is available in India or abroad based on how much one is willing to spend on it but the level of integration with the family is a very far cry from our grandmother's day.


I love that my mother and women of her generation are still holding onto what is now a dying tradition.

Feeling Gloom

I was chatting with my friend A about the recent layoffs at Block as she works for the India office of a company affliated with it and was curious to learn her perspective and what she sees in the local media about AI driven job losses. According to A, the reporting in India is indeed present, but it often requires reading between the lines of jargon and corporate double-speak. Major outlets like The Times of India and The Economic Times have recently published data showing that the "Big Three" IT giants (TCS, Infosys, and Wipro) are seeing a historic decoupling of revenue and headcount. While their profits remain steady or even grow, their total workforce is shrinking for the first time in decades. For example, TCS reported a net reduction of over 11,000 employees in the last quarter alone, a trend driven by an "AI-first transformation" that replaces thousands of middle-management and maintenance roles with automated agents.

In the startup ecosystem, the reporting is more blunt but framed as a necessary "pivot to profitability." Business news segments have recently covered layoffs at companies like Livspace, which let go of nearly 1,000 workers specifically citing AI-driven cost rationalization. The narrative in these reports usually focuses on "leaner operations" and "investor pressure," which masks the human reality of job loss under the guise of technological progress. Analysts are even pointing to a 20% drop in real estate stocks in tech hubs like Bengaluru and Hyderabad, explicitly linking the slump to a permanent slowdown in white-collar hiring caused by automation. But these stories don't bubble up in more mainstream sources that people out the tech industry are consuming.

The mainstream media is dominated by government-led AI summits and the promise of India becoming a "Global AI Hub." This creates a dangerous information gap where the structural rot of the service sector is reported in the business pages while the main headlines remain celebratory. For the individual worker, the reality is a "silent layoff" where they are coached into voluntary exits that never officially count as job losses in the national statistics. This ensures that while the economy technically stays afloat, the individual safety of the Indian IT professional has never been more fragile. Sadly the people most impacted are coping with all of this in relative isolation. The world around them is oblivious.

A talked about a younger guy in who was being coaxed out by voluntary separation while under pressure from his parents to get married. For the parents AI was the thing that was used to create the silly deepfakes they fowarded around on WhatsApp. They have no idea that it poses an existential crisis to folks like their son.

Red Floor

 A few of my relatives in Kolkata still have red oxide floors in their homes. Visiting them is like time travel because those floors are such a rarity these days. They generally have the teak and mahogany furniture along with a lot of brass and copper utensils in the kitchen. I love that they have not allowed themselves to modernize and turn pedestrian.

Somewhere along the way, red oxide floors slipped quietly out of fashion. Mosaic, marble, vitrified tiles took over. Oxide floors came to be seen as old-fashioned, even embarrassing, a sign that a house hadn’t “kept up.” The irony, of course, is that what was dismissed as dated turns out to be remarkably aligned with contemporary obsessions: eco-friendly materials, low maintenance, longevity, and a tactile sense of place. What we once abandoned in the name of progress now looks classy and signs of the home-owner's pride in their heritage.

The Hindu article traces how oxide flooring still survives in pockets of India carried forward by a shrinking pool of skilled workers and architects willing to insist on it. It’s not staging a comeback so much as refusing to die. The barriers are practical: the process is slow, it’s done in situ, and it demands craft. There’s no shortcut, no factory finish to hide mistakes. In a world optimized for speed and standardization, not many will go the extra mile for this kind of nostalgia. My parents did not even give it a passing consideration when they build their home in Kolkata. To them it was just impractical.

I've always loved how beautifully these floors age. Unlike tiles that chip or marble that stains, oxide floors mellow. They grow smoother with time, acquiring a soft sheen that makes the home feel warm, cozy and lived in. They give a sense of permannce and stability that I always valued in my world. 

New Concierge

The real reason why the high value shift is a lie (that is being told and repeated in India), is that there are no signs that we out there creating a nation of AI architects. Thus far, the focus has been on creating a nation of managed labor. For decades, the tech industry in India was built on execution. You took a task, basic Java, QA testing, something mind-numbingly routine, and you did it faster than a guy in a cubicle in Dayton. AI ended that. If you’re a 22 year old graduate looking for a starter desk job, you’re competing with an AI that costs less than the average person's monthly Chinese takeout budget and does not sleep. But the jobs haven't vanished into the ether. They just moved back to the physical world where machines can’t reach yet. Snabbit crossed a million jobs by focusing on cooks and house help. They realized that while an AI can write a legal brief, it can't scrub a bathroom floor. 

We just need to look at where the capital is actually flowing to separate fact from fiction. It’s not just Snabbit. There is Krutrim, Ola’s pet unicorn, trying to build the full stack of cloud and models, and Sarvam AI chasing the multilingual dream. These companies are building the brains, but the bodies they manage are the next million jobs. None of them look like the up-leveled jobs that the political and technology leadership in India are touting. Then there is M, the new startup from the Dunzo co-founder. It’s a concierge platform designed to automate household tasks through software coordination. These founders aren't building for the software engineer in Bangalore. They’re building for the physical service provider who is safe from automation because a robot that can fold laundry costs more than a house in the Mission District.

The shift is in introducing AI-driven surveillance of the work that was already being done. Snabbit uses Kavach, an AI that tracks voice decibels and phone patterns to protect workers. This is high-tech intrusion rebranded as a safety shield. The high value role here belongs to the platform owners, not the people on the ground. The AI does the scheduling, the quality control, and the monitoring. The human provides the muscle. It’s a million jobs, sure.

The big risk for major GCCs in Bangalore is the senior only trap. These firms want experts to audit the AI. They don't want to hire juniors because AI is now the junior. If you don't hire 20 year olds to do the boring work now, you won't have 30 year old experts in a decade. The career ladder is being hollowed out. You're either a member of the elite 5 percent orchestrating the machines, or you're working for an app in the physical service sector. The middle is evaporating and it seems like the best bet is to focus on physical complexity. Trust is the only thing that hasn't been commoditized. If a job requires a physical presence and a high degree of in-person human trust, it’s safe for now. Since AI can't go to jail, compliance and auditing roles are growing because a human still has to sign their name at the bottom. The trick is to get into this space, leverage it well and not turn into a gig worker for the likes of Snabbit.

Rental Aburdity

I’d rented a couple of times in Bangalore a few decades ago. The first landlord was a total nightmare, and I remember being extremely stressed about how to get out of there and into something more tolerable. At the time, that felt like a traumatic renting experience. But that was then, and this is now and the stories coming out today make my old ones feel quaint.

This news story about someone having an unusual experience while searching for a rental apartment. According to a Reddit post that became the source of the article, what should have been a routine flat viewing turned into a moment of disbelief when the person was asked to pay one month’s rent upfront just to see the apartment. The request came from a security guard who said the payment was required before the flat would be shown, a condition that hadn’t been mentioned at any earlier point in the conversation.

That incident struck a nerve because it captures how stressful and unpredictable house-hunting has become in competitive urban rental markets. J has had her fair share of apartment-renting drama in big cities. I’ve heard plenty of horror stories from her over the years, but being asked to pay a month’s rent just to view a property feels like an entirely new level of intolerable.

What made this story feel less like an outlier and more like a pattern is that it isn’t even the strangest rental anecdote in the news lately. Not long ago, another story made the rounds about landlords advertising flats with rules barring certain professions, marital statuses, or even working hours, some listings explicitly stating who shouldn’t even bother applying. In the rental market, the power seems to have become wildly asymmetric and basic decency is increasingly optional.

Bath Water

Reading anything by Shashi Tharoor is always a mixed bag for me. In this article, he argues that India should reject the colonial “Macaulay mindset” but retain English as a powerful tool, positioning the language as an Indian asset rather than a foreign imposition. He contrasts Thomas Macaulay’s original goal, creating English‑educated intermediaries loyal to empire, with the way Indians later turned English into a medium of resistance, global communication, and social mobility. For Tharoor, the real problem is not English itself, but a lingering hierarchy that treats Western knowledge as superior and Indian traditions as secondary.​

The column highlights how English‑medium education long privileged Shakespeare, Greece and Rome while sidelining Kalidasa, the Mahabharata, the Ramayana, and other Indian texts, even though these are accessible in English too. Tharoor insists that India must dethrone English from its pedestal as the sole marker of intellect and status, without discarding the language’s practical benefits in IT, diplomacy, academia, and law. He supports the National Education Policy’s push for mother‑tongue instruction, citing countries like Japan, China, and South Korea as examples of nations that modernized without abandoning their own languages.​

A central strength of his argument, is the way it foregrounds the aspirations of ordinary Indians. Tharoor notes that while some politicians rail against English as a colonial residue, many working‑class families sacrifice to send their children to “English‑medium” schools because they see the language as a bridge to better jobs at home and abroad. He frames English as both a tool of global access and a language that Indians have domesticated—now used to tell Indian stories, litigate Indian cases, and shape Indian public life. The conclusion is clear: English is no longer foreign; the danger lies in using it to validate ourselves while forgetting our own intellectual and cultural inheritance.​

At the same time, there are gaps and tensions in Tharoor’s reasoning that a critical reader should note. First, he underestimates how deeply access to English itself reproduces inequality: if elite schools monopolize high‑quality English education while the poor get low‑quality “English‑medium” instruction, the language doesn’t just liberate, it also hardens class lines. Saying “reject the mindset, keep the language” risks sounding too neat when, in practice, English in India is often inseparable from gatekeeping in jobs, exams, and higher education. The essay acknowledges aspiration but doesn’t fully grapple with how policy would equalize quality of English and mother‑tongue education across social strata. It must be noted that people are judged on how cleanly they speak English. You don't want to have a thick regional accent but instead aspire for neutral one like Tharoor's himself.​

Second, his ardent call to teach Kalidasa alongside Shakespeare and the Upanishads alongside Plato is compelling in principle, but operationally vague and improbable. Curriculum time is finite, teacher capacity is uneven, and many state systems already struggle to teach even one canon well; the piece doesn’t confront the trade‑offs or the institutional reforms needed to make this “both/and” vision real beyond elite schools. There is also limited engagement with non‑Sanskritic, regional and Dalit–Bahujan literatures, which risks recentering a pan‑Hindu high culture under the banner of “Indian civilization. He does not offer a proposal for home the Indian literary cannon would be made suitable for easy consumption in an average school setting.​

Third, the article largely treats “Macaulay mindset” as a psychological hangover rather than a set of live structural incentives, which may underplay how state, corporate, and global systems actively reward English dominance today. Exams, corporate hiring, scientific publishing, and even many government processes remain heavily English‑centric; without concrete proposals to rebalance these structures, calls to “dethrone” English can remain symbolic. Finally, while Tharoor is persuasive that English has become an Indian language in practice, he doesn’t fully address the risk that celebrating this “Indianness” of English can itself crowd out serious investment in the status, corpus, and domains of Indian languages.​

Concept Drift

While chatting with a couple of friends over dinner, the conversation drifted to the caste system in India and its attendant woes. It got me thinking about how frameworks (philosophical, social, or cultural)  evolve over time, and how drift inevitably occurs in complex systems. Concepts that start as fluid, flexible, and functional can, over centuries, ossify into rigid structures that bear only a shadow of their original intent.

 In its earliest form, the Varna system was intended as a classification based on inner nature, aptitude, and merit. Roles such as Brahmana, Kshatriya, Vaishya, and Shudra were assigned according to character and capability rather than birth. I remember learning about this as a young person and feeling a sense of pride at how egalitarian it was, a framework where effort and merit mattered. Over time, however, social and political forces, including the institutionalization of the priesthood and settled agrarian economies, hardened Varna into a hereditary hierarchy. Spiritual and ethical flexibility gave way to status-seeking and exclusion, justified through ritualized interpretations of Karma and Dharma.

Similarly, Dharma, originally understood as the universal law of cosmic order, emphasized an internalized sense of righteousness and harmony. Gradually, it became an externalized, codified system of social obligations and ritualistic morality, shaped by legalistic texts and the demands of complex societies. As Dharma turned into a mechanism to enforce social rules, it intertwined with the rigid Varna hierarchy, reinforcing the idea that deviation from one’s assigned role disrupted both the cosmic and social order. Karma underwent a similar transformation, evolving from selfless action meant to purify the mind into a mechanistic system of retributive justice that justified social hierarchies and framed birth and circumstance as earned outcomes.

Yoga provides a contemporary example of this same drift which has continued unabated. Originally a rigorous discipline for self-realization, it has largely been reduced to exercise routines or wellness trends in the modern West. Commercialization drives a multibillion-dollar industry of apparel, apps, and certifications, but the ethical and meditative components are often a remote afterthought. Many practitioners engage primarily for fitness, as they would a Pilates or Barre class. Yoga today illustrates vividly how far a foundational concept can drift over time, moving from profound spiritual practice to commodified, superficial engagement. Like Varna, this a cautionary tale of devolution in action.

Broadcasting Icon

I was saddened to read about the passing of Sarla Maheshwari, a sentiment I know I share with many of my generation. As this article correctly points out, the sense of loss isn't necessarily about knowing her personally. There was never any gossip or drama surrounding her. She was simply classy and exceptional at her craft, a consummate professional.

Her demise marks the end of a bygone era in Indian broadcasting. For nearly three decades, she was the steady, dignified presence that millions of Indians welcomed into their homes via Doordarshan. Back then, it was our primary window to the world, and she informed us of its happenings in her inimitable style. Maheshwari was a symbol of trust and sophistication, navigating the transition from black-and-white to color television with an effortless poise that defined news delivery for a generation. Now, when I visit my parents in Kolkata, I see firsthand what Indian broadcasting has devolved into.

Television has regressed from a public service mission into a profit-driven theater of aggression and commercial repetition. In the era my generation grew up in, the focus remained on nation-building, social issues, and high-caliber cultural content like Hum Log and Malgudi Days. In contrast, modern broadcasting is fueled by extreme sensationalism, communal rhetoric, and "kangaroo court" news debates that prioritize TRPs over factual reporting. This is to say nothing of news anchors becoming cults of personality, where the storyteller often eclipses the story itself.

What truly set Sarla apart was her mastery of language and the "Gold Standard" of her presentation. In an age before the convenience of modern teleprompters, she relied on an impeccable command of Hindi and a calm, authoritative voice to deliver complex narratives. Her style was the total antithesis of today’s high-decibel news cycles. She believed in a restrained, mature approach where the information was the star, not the presenter. It was good to reminisce about those times, and I am glad to have known them.