Author: Swati Chandra
Swati Chandra
(The author is an assistant professor of English at South Asian University, Delhi. She is also an author and poet)
“Fulauri bina chutney kaise bani?” now trending across social media and Insta Reels, through the Dhamaal 4 song, is a remarkable example of the migratory soul of Indian music. Completing a 150-year full circle, the Bhojpuri wedding folk song travelled to the Caribbean with indentured labourers, acquired local rhythms and became “Chutney Music” before emerging as a hit pop number in 1969. It has now returned home through a Bollywood remix in 2026. Music transcends borders and migrates across empires and epochs, carrying joy, memory, and resistance. Long before passports and digital streaming, music was already travelling: in the chants…
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…
