Bans, borders, and big arenas
This week's community feature is political!❣️
Hello DoorDesi,
Did you know, you make me wake up at 7AM on a Sunday?
I do my news discovery during the week, shortlisting news from the ones I read, and bookmarking suggestions I get from DoorDesis. I love getting those suggestions so please keep them coming. Anyway, so the sourcing, shortlisting, bookmarking is done by Friday night. But then I get lazy. I tell myself I have the entire weekend so I can start writing later. However, sharp at 6:45AM on Saturday my brain goes into military attention mode. So I wake up, make myself a glass of ice cold matcha latte at home and by 7AM, every Saturday I am down with my laptop tiptapping away while my cat looks at me like… hullo, the weekend just started.
But my laziness does not end there. Instead of tying the bow around it on Saturday I leave the last part, this part, until Sunday morning. So again, I wake up at 7AM on Sunday and sit down with this part. Why? Because it feels honest. I feel like I am finishing up a letter for a friend. Most weeks, I have no idea what the introduction is going to be about till I start writing it early in the morning on Sunday. And that is on purpose. I want to share with you my honest thoughts about the world, about the homeland, and life away from home.
So now you know… :D This week’s issue has a lot of personal anecdotes. Again, I did not plan it as such but I think the authenticity of this newsletter and the DoorDesi community lies in our authentic experiences as much as it lies in my sourcing of reliable news for the week for you.
I hope you enjoy it. Here is a picture of my cat napping in front of me, as I write this.
Have a great week ahead! Thank you for tuning in.
Just the gist
💌This story is coming to you courtesy of one of the DoorDesis who asked some really good questions about it.
India has a habit: let a new market run wild, tax it hard, and then strangle it when it gets messy. The new Online Gaming Bill fits neatly into that pattern. Instead of regulating poker, rummy, and prediction markets with income caps, bet limits, or safety nets, the government is going for the kill - just as it once did with commodity futures, crypto, and forex. For a while states kept fighting for turf, companies kept chasing money, and vulnerable players kept getting exploitated. Now, thousands of jobs, investments, and a potential global Real Money Gaming hub are collateral damage. Of course regulating these spaces is necessary but banning them? When has a ban ever done any good? The new policy feels a little John Wick-ey - blowing up everything.
➡️ The reader who shared this for the newsletter asked - is a government mandated to pass blanket laws based on what it deems responsible/irresponsible? At what point does a person lose control on what they consume based on their value system in a democracy?
I am going to take the easy way out and educate myself further on this before answering the question but if you have thoughts or responses for him, drop them in the comments below!
🔗Women’s safety on the spectrum in the land of Goddesses
India’s 2025 Women’s Safety Index has crowned Kohima, Visakhapatnam, Bhubaneswar, Aizawl, Gangtok, Itanagar and Mumbai as the safest cities for women, while Patna, Jaipur, Faridabad, Delhi, Kolkata, Srinagar and Ranchi languish at the bottom. Interestingly enough, only a few days ago, I saw an Instagram reel that I cannot find since of a female solo traveller who was sharing her experience of travelling alone and indeed, some of the safest and unsafe cities she mentioned coincide with the list above.
The survey of 12,770 women found a national safety score of 65%: decent by daylight, shaky after dark. Schools felt safe (86%), but public transport and neighbourhoods remained harassment hotspots. Only a third of victims reported incidents, and just a quarter trusted authorities to act. The report stresses that safety is about more than crime stats. It shapes women’s freedom, work, health, and India’s development itself.
➡️ Many Indian women I know who live abroad have said that they would be back in India for work in a heartbeat if it weren’t for the state of women’s safety in the country. At first, my patriotism kept me from seeing the truth in it. But over the years, I have found myself walking home at night with my headphones still on, no keys in my hands. I have stopped crossing the road when I see a man walking in my direction at night. I don’t call friends at 1AM in the night just so someone knows where I am if something happens. It has taken 7 years to unlearn these habits and now that I am unlearning them, now that I know what it is like to not have to be vigilant at all times just because I am a woman, I get that sentiment. I get it more than I get my patriotism.
India’s electronics boom is leaving behind a mountain of junk and a parallel economy to deal with it. Places like Delhi’s Khatta are hubs where broken Nokias (I thought those were invincible), dead fridges, and fried laptops get dismantled by hand, often for just a few dollars a day. The industry is massive — $1.5 billion by one estimate — but 95% of it is informal, run by families, who practically own the local e-waste economy. New rules are trying to push recycling into formal, regulated channels, but shutting down hubs like Khatta doesn’t end the trade. The waste always finds another alley (also literally). The irony is that this is a recycling economy that comes with human rights and environmental costs. Best (read worst) out of waste, I guess?
➡️ The fascinating yet disturbing thing about India is its jugaad culture. Where there is a shred of anything, there is an opportunity. Of course, in the informal sector, that opportunity comes at the cost of lives and well-being of the communities. The first time I ever heard of such as thing as garbage mafia was my in my first week of the Teach for India fellowship (I taught at a school in Kurla, Mumbai) when while searching for the school I was posted to I got lost in one part of the slum and ended up in front of a mountain of garbage 10 times my height. I stood there, staring at it, while kids played around it and some dug through it. Soon after I learnt about garbage turfs, exploitation of children in the ‘industry’, and connections to the underworld. Holy hell!
🔗It’s an on again, off again relationship
After seven years of frosty silence and sharp words, PM Modi is taking his 65474326th flight, this time to Tianjin on August 31 for his first China visit since Galwan. Tourist visas for Chinese travellers have recently resumed, a belated attempt to tap into the $255 billion jackpot of outbound Chinese tourism, though years of chest-thumping boycotts and suspicion may have scared off more than a few. The Modi–Xi handshake will likely smooth over patrol mechanics and border chatter, but the deeper damage — to media ties, think-tanks, and people-to-people trust — is likely to have left a scar. Without rebuilding those, the relationship risks being all photo-ops, no substance. What happens when the there is a border issue in Arunachal or Ladakh again? What happens when China gets more vocal and fiscal about its support for Pakistan?
What India-China need is a strategic approach that is not this ‘he loves me, he loves me not’ relationship that Indian foreign policy towards China has been of late.
➡️ India is finding itself in a very difficult position having alienated almost all of its neighbours. There is Pakistan, and I need to say nothing more for people to know how our relationship is on that front. There is the new regime in Bangladesh that does not like us, there is Nepal that feels India acts too much like a big brother, there is Myanmar where we are fostering anti-regime groups while also maintaining a relationship with the junta, and then Sri Lanka where we are okay but China is great! So, making enemies or mild acquaintances instead of friends out of everyone who surrounds us is not a masterstroke by a mile.
Keeping up with the internet
🔗If ‘oops I did it again’ was an entire industry
Are you guys enjoying watching an army of Malayali content creators taking oh so much offence to the trailer of the upcoming film, Param Sundary?
Bollywood has done it again: invented a Malayali name that no Malayali has ever heard of. Janhvi Kapoor plays Thekkappetta Sundari (literally “Dumped Beauty”) in Param Sundari, instantly triggering everyone with one extra brain cell than the ones you need to do basic functions. From mispronouncing “Malayalam” as “Malyalam” to throwing around random words, the trailer is a comedy of errors. Add the usual Kerala postcard shots — backwaters, boat races, Kalarippayattu — and you have a film (or the trailer at least) that feels written after a few too many drinks with your internally mysoginistic and extenally feminist friends.
The sad thing is the trailer is reminiscent of early 2010s comedies, which were okay at the time, but have not aged well at all. I miss the era of 00s era of romance that gave us eye rolls but also genuinely nuanced storylines. That is not to say we ever got the portrayal of other cultures within our country right.
➡️ For some palette cleansing let me suggest Karwaan (2018). Also shot extensively in Kerala, a dramedy that is actually refreshing, well-written, well-acted, and just a genuine fun watch.
Desi culture
🔗 The rise and rise of a comedian
Zakir Khan has been all the rage recently and rightly so. He just pulled off what once sounded impossible — a full Hindi comedy show at Madison Square Garden, New York, to a roaring crowd of 15,000. Zakir’s rise to fame has been in front of most of us. We have been laughing with him since the All India Bakchod days. At least I have. From Indore’s lanes to MSG’s stage, the “sakht launda” reminded us, yet again, that dreams are not bound by geography or language. You can fill one of the world’s biggest arenas even if you’re cracking jokes in your mother tongue.
➡️ Zakir’s MSG moment is a reminder that we do not need to trade in our language, our quirks, or our cultural shorthand to belong anywhere. It is a reminder that Hindi, Tamil, Punjabi, Bengali, or any mother tongue can hold its own alongside English when the story resonates. For many of us in the diaspora, who often juggle accents or code-switch to fit in, Zakir’s success is a quiet permission slip to take our roots with us, loudly and proudly.
💌 Community feature
Every week, one of you sends a little postcard from your DoorDesi life — a snapshot, a story, a moment worth sharing. Think of it as our way of waving hello across cities, countries, and dosa queues.
🌎This week’s postcard is coming from Ashwini, straight from the U.S. Ashwini lives in Washington D.C. where our girl is a Research Analyst.
Hi, Ashwini!
To share your own postcard with the rest of us, drop us an email or drop me a message!
With love on behalf of two women who cringe at the mention of chai tea latte,
Sudeshna
Co-Founder, DoorDesi 💃
Housekeeping
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