From Diwali lights to protest lines
A week of soaring metals, sinking currencies, and stubborn optimism.
Hello DoorDesi,
The world felt a little heavier this week. Between following the course of the Global Freedom Flotilla and reading about the detention of Sonam Wanchuk something broke in me. Being away from home during the festive season is never easy, but it feels especially hard when so much of the world you dreamt of enjoying as a adult feels broken, rotting at its core.
Wow, Sudeshna, Debbie Downer much? Sorry! But my friends are out marching at the Red Line protest in Amsterdam as I scramble to finish writing this week’s edition. I am feeling both guilty and glad. Guilty because I couldn’t make it owing to my procrastination and glad because I know people who did, people who stand for justice.
Back home, that same spirit runs through everything from Kolkata’s defiant Puja pandals to Sonam Wangchuk’s quiet resistance in Ladakh. And it’s there, too, in all of us who are still watching, worrying, trying to make sense of what’s happening from afar.
So yes, the world feels heavy. But I guess the only way to carry it is together — even if that just means reading, caring, and not looking away.
Just the gist
Diwali is almost upon us which means as is the gold rush. The yellow metal has skyrocketed over 47% this year, breaching ₹1.18 lakh per 10 grams, with silver following suit at ₹1.44 lakh per kilo (up 52%). This is fuelled by festive demand, a weak rupee, and global jitters. By Diwali, gold could be flirt with ₹1.22 lakh and silver might sparkle past ₹1.50 lakh — unless the tides shift big time, which, by the way the world is looking right now, seems veeerryyy unlikely.
➡️ So this maybe the best time to purchase a gold coin (or a few) as an investment.
🔗 One’s loss is another’s gain
Trump’s $100,000 H-1B visa fee has sent countries scrambling to roll out the red carpet for Indian techies. Germany, the UK, Canada, China, and South Korea are all wooing India’s STEM talent with promises of easier visas, fewer fees, and actual job opportunities (imagine that!).
Germany wants 288,000 skilled migrants a year and already has 130,000 Indians working there. Canada may revive its old H-1B transfer scheme, the UK is mulling zero visa fees for top talent, China’s new K visa skips the need for an employer, and South Korea is making a tech push of its own.
➡️ So, don’t sweat it. Yes, it sucks to have to move countries when you don’t want to but this just shows that you if needed to, you could.
After Trump’s 50% tariff tantrum on Indian goods, exporters are gasping for air. The Commerce and Finance ministries have held multiple meetings with industry reps from textiles, gems, and other sectors that are hit the hardest, but little has materialised beyond sympathetic nods.
The government is split between quick relief through schemes playing the long game through “reforms, not rescue.” Meanwhile, exporters have warned that U.S. buyers are turning to Vietnam and Bangladesh and job losses loom large.
Some hope lies in plans to boost e-commerce exports and ease small-exporter compliance.
➡️ For diaspora investors, volatility in India’s export earnings could mean a weaker rupee which is good for remittances but bad for market returns.
A week after Sonam Wangchuk’s arrest under the National Security Act (NSA), his wife, Gitanjali J. Angmo, has filed a habeas corpus petition in the Supreme Court seeking his release which is a way to ask the court: “Show us the person and explain why they’re being held”.
Wangchuk was detained on September 26 after protests in Leh demanding Ladakh’s statehood turned violent, leaving four dead (from police violence, by the way) and 50 injured. He is accused by the authorities of instigating the unrest. The NSA allows preventive detention — meaning one can be held before committing an act deemed harmful — a legal grey zone that’s long been criticised for its sweeping powers. Do they have anything on him? Nope. So the largest democracy in the world is holding another political prisoner.
➡️ For a lot of us he is the epitome of innovation, of India’s jugaad culture, of a man who dedicated his life to solving problems.
Trending on the internet
Neeraj Ghaywan’s Homebound is India’s official pick for the Oscars. It opens where 12th Fail ends, with exhaustion. The journey of two boys chasing government jobs that promise safety more than power. For them, the uniform is a shield against a world that humiliates them for who they are — Dalit, Muslim, poor.
Where 12th Fail celebrates breaking through, Homebound questions whether there’s even a door left to knock on. Ghaywan peels back the myth of merit to reveal what actually fuels “hard work”: caste, class, and gender privilege. The film lingers in the lives of those left behind — mothers, sisters, fathers who still believe dreaming itself is rebellion.
➡️ Many of us in the diaspora have built lives abroad believing in meritocracy — work hard, get ahead. Homebound is a reminder to us that merit isn’t evenly distributed.
🔗 Another year, another Pujo, another statement
Barely a week after floods drowned the city, Kolkata has rose on art and defiance. The pandals were buzzing with themes that cut deeper than ever: from the harassment of Bengali migrant workers to the horrors of famine and war in Palestine.
The Behala Friends’ Puja, already hailed as the year’s best, swapped divine weapons for human vulnerability — Durga as the face of hunger and resistance. Meanwhile, Dumdum’s Jayasree Sangha houses actual migrant workers inside its pandal, forcing visitors to confront the discrimination they face.
➡️ Year on year, Durga Puja pandals around Kolkata and elsewhere keep the tradition of mixing celebration with social justice and solidarity alive.
With love on behalf of two women who cringe at the mention of chai tea latte,
Sudeshna
Co-Founder, DoorDesi 💃
Housekeeping
If this was forwarded to you, subscribe here.
Help us hit our goal of 1000 subs by August 15, would you forward it to a friend?
If you can’t find the newsletter, check your spam folder. And please mark this address as ‘not spam.’ If the newsletter isn’t in your spam folder, either, you should look in the Promotions tab.
