Author: Deshwale Editorial Desk

India’s loneliness crisis did not begin with Instagram. It began the day we closed our front doors and built walls between ourselves. There is a line that has stayed with me ever since I first read it. Rohit Shringare, a photographer whose family moved out of a South Mumbai chawl in the 1980s, was describing what life was like before they left. He said it simply, without drama. “We never closed our doors.” Four words. An entire world. If you grew up in India before the apartment era, you already know what he means. The chawl that was a long…

 paid friendship loneliness IndiaThe rent-a-friend economy is real, it is growing, and it is asking us a question we are not comfortable answering. I want to be honest with you about something. The first time I came across the idea of paying ₹699 an hour to have someone sit across from you at a café and simply talk, my instinct was to laugh. It felt like a punchline, the loneliest possible end point of an app economy that has already turned everything from car rides to home-cooked meals into a tap-and-order transaction. Then I stopped laughing. Because the more I…

Look at the global list of the oldest verified living people and a pattern jumps out immediately. Japan appears over and over again with dozens of names, decade after decade. Brazil punches dramatically above its weight, with three of the world’s longest-lived validated men and women appearing more frequently in the top 15 than citizens of far wealthier nations. France holds steady with multiple entries across generations. And then there is India, the world’s most populous country, with 1.4 billion people, ancient wellness traditions, and a civilization older than almost any on earth. Zero entries. Not one verified name. The…

By the time many Indian Gen Zers print their first business card, they have already survived a decade of competitive war. There is a story India has been telling itself for decades. It goes something like this: study hard, get into a good college, land a stable job, and life will reward you. For Generation Z those born between 1997 and 2012 this story started earlier, ran harder, and asked for far more than any generation before it. And what nobody is talking about enough is what that story cost them before they ever clocked into their first job. The…

The Click, the Fizz, and the Instant Mood Lift That Gen Z Is Actually Addicted To You open the fridge. You grab a cold can. You pull the tab click and then comes that signature pssshhh of fizz escaping. You take one long, cold sip. And for a second, everything feels better. But here’s the thing: it was never really about the cola. The ritual Is the rush Gen Z has grown up in a world of constant noise deadlines, doom-scrolling, notifications, and the quiet pressure of figuring out life on a screen. And somewhere in the middle of all…

You wake up in the morning, reach for your phone, and before you’ve even said good morning to your partner, you’re already scrolling. A notification pops up. Your partner liked someone’s photo at midnight. Your stomach drops. Sound familiar? Welcome to modern love where a single tap can start a war. Social media has changed the way we communicate, connect, and unfortunately, the way we love. What was built to bring people together is quietly tearing couples apart one notification at a time. The numbers don’t lie The damage is real and the data backs it up. 23% of partnered…

Gen Z turned sobriety into an aesthetic. Now they’re ordering rounds. There was a moment roughly somewhere between 2021 and 2024 when refusing a drink at a party felt like a power move. You didn’t need alcohol. You had discipline. You had a lifestyle. You whipped out a canned adaptogen soda, raised it like a trophy, and let the room draw its own conclusions. Sobriety, or at least the performance of it, had become the ultimate Gen Z status symbol. That moment, it appears, has quietly passed. The generation that built an entire aesthetic around not drinking is now reaching…

There’s a story we love to tell ourselves. It goes something like this: once upon a time, we all got along just fine. Then came Facebook. Then came Twitter. Then came the comment sections, the viral outrage, the algorithm-fuelled rabbit holes and suddenly, a perfectly decent society was torn in two. It’s a clean story. It’s also mostly wrong. The Mirror, Not the Crack Social media is many things addictive, manipulative, occasionally brilliant. But to call it the cause of societal division is to confuse the mirror for the face looking into it. The divisions were always there. The racism,…

The cafes are closing. The libraries are underfunded. The parks are empty. And somehow, we’re surprised we’re lonely. Think about the last time you had a conversation with a stranger that wasn’t transactional. Not “thanks, keep the change” or “sorry, is this seat taken?” but an actual, unplanned, unhurried conversation with someone you didn’t already know. A real one. If you’re struggling to remember, you’re not alone. And that’s exactly the problem. There’s a concept in sociology called the “third place.” Your first place is home. Your second place is work. Your third place is everything in between the neighbourhood…

Walk into any bookshop right now and something will strike you immediately. The shelves are not full of stories about the future. They are full of stories about the very distant past. Gods and monsters. Tragic heroes. Doomed love on the Yorkshire moors. Epic journeys across cursed seas. Stories that were first told hundreds in some cases, thousands of years ago are suddenly, urgently, everywhere. This is not a coincidence. And it is not simply a publishing trend. Something deeper is happening, and it is worth understanding. What is actually going on? The evidence of this cultural moment is all…