Author: Swati Chandra
How quick commerce has rewired the consumer mind? India has stumbled into a new grammar of consumption. Quick commerce has not merely hastened shopping, it has quietly rewritten the way Indians think about time and convenience. The monthly provisions that were once a fixed point in household life have dissolved into a scatter of tiny acts. There is no stocking up, no sense of closure. The cart is no longer a plan, it is a mood. A decade ago, I attended a lecture by a management guru who gave the example of his wife as a great planner. In their…
In a dimly lit subway corner in Hangzhou, a young woman clutches a stranger tightly. They do not speak. A timer ticks away five minutes. When it ends, they gently part ways. She hands him 30 yuan—about ₹350—and walks off. In China’s bustling cities, this is no longer an oddity. It’s a growing phenomenon known as ‘Man Mum’, and it’s quietly reshaping how we understand emotional survival. Here, women are paying men—not for dates or flirtation, but for maternal-style hugs. These are emotionally neutral, physically comforting embraces—offered on street corners, in malls, or discreet public spaces. It’s intimate, but not…
At exactly 6:45pm, Shalini Banerjee’s phone buzzed with a familiar message: “On the way, stuck in traffic.” She looked around the table, still the only person seated at her own birthday dinner, and sighed. Her guests had been invited for 6:30 — which, in Indian social arithmetic, usually means 7:15, possibly 7:45, or never. This wasn’t the first time Shalini, a Mumbai-based architect educated in the UK, had run into the phenomenon Indians often joke about but seldom dissect: our national allergy to punctuality. Welcome to Indian Stretchable Time (IST)—a cultural chronotype, a social ritual, and arguably, a philosophical stance…
