Welcome to DoorDesi

If you've found your way here, chances are that you are an Indian living outside India and know that particular ache. The one that hits when you're scrolling through news from India at 2 AM in a foreign timezone. The one that comes when someone mispronounces your name for the hundredth time, or when you find yourself explaining why there are cows on our streets at yet another dinner party.

You know the feeling of being India's unofficial cultural ambassador wherever you are, while simultaneously being labeled an "NRI" when in India. The exhaustion of existing in the hyphen between Indian-(insert country of residence here). The pain of neither being fully here nor there.

We've been there. We are there.

We (Sudeshna and Mili) grew up in India, until one day just like many of you we packed our stuff and stories in a suitcase that never quite feels like it has enough space.

Together, we've lived the peculiar experience of loving India fiercely while choosing to build lives elsewhere. Of defending our homeland to strangers while critiquing it among friends. Of carrying traditions that sometimes feel heavy, and sometimes feel like the only thing keeping us grounded.

And we realized: there's no space for people like us.

No community that gets why you can feel homesick and angry in the same breath. No place where you can celebrate Diwali in your tiny foreign apartment and also talk about why you can't/won’t move back. No corner of the internet where 32 million Indians living abroad can stop feeling scattered and start feeling seen.

And then there is all the noise. Indian news channels screaming something into the void, international news website saying the exact opposite. And we are stuck in between, never sure what really is going on in our home country. You call your family, and their lives seem just like yours - normal. And yet, the media about it is so confusing and overwhelming. There is no place for us to come to if we just want to know what we need to know and that’s all.

So we're building one.

DoorDesi is a community of Indians living abroad who care deeply about what’s happening in India, want to stay informed, build (and maintain) a stronger connection with our maiden home.

Here, you'll find:

• Stories that matter: Not just what's happening in India, but what it means for us living outside it.
• Community that gets it: Conversations with people who are floating in the same in-between-ness.
• Connection without guilt: Ways to stay rooted without feeling obligated to explain your ‘plans’.
• Celebration of complexity: We are quite multinational and now we will never fully go back to being the same way again.

You are a DoorDesi if:

• You've ever felt like you need to justify your life choices to relatives during video calls;
• You're tired of being the only Indian in the room, but also tired of being "just" another NRI;
• You are the one explaining rule of cricket to a room full of people who have no idea why it is a sport;
• You want to stay informed about and connected to India just because.

This is our home.

Every week, we'll explore what it means to be Indian in a global world. We'll dig into the news that shapes the India we love and left. We also want to share stories, resources and issues from our community of DoorDesis that we are building and hopefully together we will feel a little less alone, a lot more connected to our native lands and way more confident about our place in the world.

With love,
Sudeshna & Mili

P.S. If you have a minute, tell us a little bit about yourself so we know how to build this into a valuable space for you?