REIT moves
Easier bank finance with guardrails, way forward
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has done well to liberalise lending to Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs). Now, banks can lend to REITs directly, instead of going through special purpose vehicles. With bank lending rates moving lower, REITs can access more funds at lower cost to scale their operations. Banks too can grow their loan books through this segment.
The five listed REITs hold assets worth ₹2.5 lakh crore and enjoy market capitalisation of about ₹1.12 lakh crore in India. Indian REITs industry has not achieved the scale seen in other countries. It forms a small part of the overall Indian real estate market. REITs can play an important intermediation role in channelising institutional and retail funds into the market. The stock market regulator has been making a series of changes in this segment to make it more attractive to investor demand and awareness. These include classifying REITs as equity and encouraging mutual funds and insurers to invest in them, allowing REITs to be included in equity indices and expanding the scope of strategic investors in these vehicles to include some more players.
But given the cyclicality in real estate prices, banks face higher credit risk. To this end, the RBI has proposed some guardrails to ensure that banks do not increase their stressed assets:
- The overall bank credit taken by a REIT and its SPVs is being capped at 49 per cent of its assets.
- REITs would also have to follow more traditional modes of funding such as the bond market.
- The RBI has disallowed bullet and balloon repayment structures, which can increase risk posed by cyclical swings. Under such arrangements, the initial instalments are small and the bulk of it is paid towards the end of the loan tenure.
- Restricting bank lending to publicly listed REITs is also a good move as these are subject to more scrutiny and are more transparent in their operations.
- Other stipulations include: the assets of the vehicle should not be in the form of a work-in-progress; it should be well established, with three years of operations and distributable cash flows in the two preceding financial years; second, the sponsors/directors should not be in financial distress or under regulatory action for any misconduct; third, banks cannot provide finance for acquiring new or refinance existing loans; and finally, loans should be fully secured through mortgage of the underlying assets.
The central bank can however review the rule that lending to REITs can be up to 49 per cent of the value of its assets. This figure appears too high given the size of the REIT segment in the economy. The RBI will also have to be extra vigilant in the initial years to monitor the end use of funds lent to REITs. The caution should be exercised past a history of defalcation in this sector by large developers. The Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act, 2016 has worked to an extent in tightening processes. In sum, the sector should be liberalised, but with an element of circumspection given the intrinsic risks.
Why the concern over capital flows?
UNDER PRESSURE. Developed markets too becoming a draw for investors, the outlook on currency looks slightly uncertain
By Madan Sabnavis
The RBI’s new regulation on ECBs (external commercial borrowings) can be read along with the message given in the Economic Survey on the rupee being under pressure in the year. This is notwithstanding an otherwise remarkable performance of the economy.
The current account deficit is very much in control even though the exports sector faced challenging times. It is the capital account that has been transformed, putting pressure on the currency. The measures announced by the RBI on the amount and tenure of borrowings would enable companies to raise more money in this market and improve the supply of dollars.
Historically the capital account was dominated by net FDI which have become more fragile. While often it is argued that we need to be more open to FDI, the current list of sectors is quite comprehensive, and it does not look like that much more can really be done. FDI can flow into almost all sectors with limits being increased over time. The challenge is to have investors interested in the India story. It is the pull factor rather than push which matters here.
THE PULL FACTORS
There are two main issues here. The first is that globally there is a much smaller corpus of investible funds to be shared by all emerging markets. With quantitative easing of central banks giving way to tightening, there is less easy money available. The other factor is that the avenues for investment have widened over time. What was earlier ‘mainly emerging markets’ has now broadened to cover developed countries too which are working hard to push up their growth. The US, UK, Japan and the EU are also active destinations for FDI. It will always be a challenge to get a higher slice of this fund at this end.
Data on FDI show some interesting trends. The first is that gross FDI has been high in the last five years ending FY25, averaging over $70 billion per annum which is impressive. However, the repatriation of equity has been rising quite prodigiously from $27 billion in FY24 to $40 billion in FY25, which lowered the net inflows substantially. Clearly, companies are using these funds to pay dividends to their investors or are taking back the equity.
Second, the net FDI by Indian companies overseas has increased from $14.8 billion in FY21 to $27 billion in FY25, which is often interpreted as a part of the global diversification of Indian firms. This is what has brought down the net FDI to the $21-27 billion range, which is what affects the capital account and hence the currency. Interestingly, during the first eight months of the current year, net FDI was $27.7 billion.
THE FPI PICTURE
The picture on FPI is also interesting. Earlier, it was common to think that there could be $30-40 billion flowing in every year with the inclusion of Indian bonds in global indices providing a booster. However, this has not happened. The net flow for FPI which was high at $36 billion in FY24 fell to $6.1 billion in FY25 and in FY26 a negative $7.8 billion for the first eight months.
Now, equity flows have tended to be negative for two reasons. The first is that Indian stocks are seemingly overvalued. While this argument is debatable, the high P-E ratios in some sectors have buttressed this argument that the upside remains limited unless earnings grow at sharp rates, which is not happening. Growth in corporate profits (denoted by net profits) has been quite subdued post-Covid which probably does not justify high valuations in some sectors where the P-E ratio was in the range of 30-40 like FMCG, consumer durables, healthcare, and realty.
The other factor is that the developed countries, including the US, UK, Japan, France and Germany, are doing very well making other markets attractive. Hence portfolio reallocation has been faster towards these markets where the P-E ratios are relatively lower, at least for now, giving a higher better upside.
There is hence a lot of ambiguity when it comes to capital flows. Any firm direction of net inflows would be hard to conjecture. These are decisions taken by overseas players, and policy reforms within the country have only a limited bearing on these outcomes. FDI was assumed to increase exponentially and numbers of $100 billion on an annual basis were taken for granted.
Public sector investors have been taking back their profits which has affected the net inflows. Further, Indian companies are looking to diversify their businesses outside the country which has made FDI fragile. FPIs were always considered to be ‘hot money’ given their nature. While this has not quite affected the stock market significantly as domestic institutional investors like mutual funds and LIC have been putting money in the market, the currency market has been under pressure. All this makes the capital account uncertain, given their volatile nature.
Hence, it will be important to keep the current account balance under control and the big hope for us is the IT sector that has potential to counter the deficit on the trade account. The focus on domestic production will help to an extent to lower demand for imports. However, all the PLI schemes and fragmented landholdings limit the expansion as our exports make deeper inroads into other countries. This suggests that a stable path for the rupee cannot be taken as a given.
The author is Chief Economist, Bank of Baroda. Views are personal.
AI and the data centre backlash
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
President Trump sought to mollify a growing public backlash against AI data centres Tuesday by proposing to require that companies build their own power plants. It’s a good idea that could help accelerate innovation and ease electric rates, though it will require AI companies to sacrifice their green posturing.
“Many people are concerned about the increased power demand from AI data centres could unfairly drive up their electric utility bills,” Mr Trump said. “We’re telling the tech companies that if they want the power, they have to provide for their own power needs”. This may soon become a political and business necessity.
(New York - February 24)
Improving GDP accuracy
Adoption of new GVA series to use 600 items to represent the economy is a welcome step. The full adoption of the double deflation method will improve the measurement of real growth. This method adjusts the growth of goods and services materials separately across sectors. This way the effect of inflation is measured more accurately.
Earlier, a single price method was used. It mainly adjusted only output prices. It could not accurately account for it. Greater use of survey and GST data will better capture the informal economy, including small businesses. More accurate GDP data will support better policy and investment decisions.
S Balasubramanian Villupuram, TN
Based on the sources, the following is the reproduction of the cover story "Taking the slow lane in Mysuru" by Tara Das, as it appears across pages 8 and 9 of the "Lounge" section:
Taking the slow lane in Mysuru
Mysuru’s pace is drawing those seeking to escape the rush of large cities, and its conscious café culture reflects the space it gives people to pour themselves into a slow and creative life
By Tara Das
Amaresh Subramaniam, 41, founder of Vui Coffee Roasters, jots the temperature of a batch of coffee beans every half a minute for 13 minutes in a small notebook. “Great coffee is high attention work,” he says. Prathvi Agarwal, 32, in his solo-run bakery, Khameeri Sourdough Microbakery, says you must knead sourdough until “you become one with the dough”. Prathiksha Prahallad, 27, of Leaven café is deeply influenced by the Kannada recipes from a baking certification her grandmother acquired over six decades ago. Getting it right matters so much, she’s even eaten scraps off a plate that a customer hadn’t finished to test if something was wrong with it.
In the post covid-19 pandemic years, Mysuru has seen a new bakes and brews culture, brought about by patissiers, baristas, chefs, and roastmasters for whom the process is individualistic, creative and skill-based. It is also deeply personal. As the world speeds up and scales up, Mysuru is slowing it all down and doing it by hand. Whether it’s coffee, cocoa or bread, slow process skills have value here.
Mysuru is a uniquely multi-cultural microcosm. Yoga centres attract a multi-cultural foreign crowd, who along with the visiting Indians from other cities keep the market for a variety of food vibrant. The Bengaluru tech brewery-hopping crowd comes to Mysuru, three hours away by the new expressway, to café-hop. From Madikeri come coffee planters, Tibetans, and tourists dropping into the nearest city. This floating population is not always loyal, but Mysuru has always been a retirement-friendly city. Dina Weber, 31, founder of bakery SAPA, points out that many of her initial customers included repatriates from overseas who missed good breads. Thus, here, the local anchors the culture as opposed to a Goan or Himachali hot spot, which is about the romance of influx and transience.
As in R.K. Narayan’s books, the Mysurean is a character whose quirks are known intimately, not fleetingly. Mysuru becomes a crucible for the kind of knowing that takes care and attention. Indira Chandrasekhar, author and editor of Out of Print journal, grew up in the Mysuru of the 1960s and 1970s, when her father was a professor. “Culturally, one didn’t eat out. The idea of getting into a car and going to the centre of Mysuru to eat a meal didn’t enter my parents’ psychology,” she says. There was Champakali, a sweet shop run by Dasaprakash hotel on Sayyaji Rao Road, which passed for a café.
Mysuru has always been a dreamy locale for film-makers, given its lush greenery and the royal back-drops of seven palaces, including the current residence of the erstwhile Wodeyar royal family, Amba Vilas Palace, the accompanying landscaped gardens and not to mention the Indo-Saracenic and Art Deco architectural features of the city’s quaint neighbourhoods. Legendary Kannada actor Rajkumar was the last to shoot inside the Amba Vilas palace for Mayura in the 1970s. However, a palace floor tile was cracked in the shoot and all subsequent filming was stopped by the palace board. Rajinikanth, whose 1990s hits Padayappa (1999) and Muthu (1995) were shot in Mysuru, has long considered the city lucky for him and drew crowds while shooting here for Jailer-2 in 2025. Mysurean director S.V. Rajendra Singh Babu (best known for the National-award winning Bandhana, 1984) has called the city “200 different locations within 20km”.
Yet, abhorrent of hang-out culture, and small enough for everyone to know everyone, the close-knit circles are now contending with an evolving social landscape. “Mysuru has always had an intellectual drift thanks to the patronage of the palace, a steady integrity to it,” Chandrasekhar says. Visibility is not generally prized here; quietude and an immersive practice is. Thus, engagement tends to be more conversational, learning-oriented, and serious, which inspires drop-ins and meetings at a talk, or at each other’s houses.
[...The article continues describing cafés in areas like] tikoppal and Yadavgiri. They are non-intimidating. You sit outdoors, alone or hang out, read, work, think. They have the floor space to accommodate more tables, but as Qinwan Ali, 41, co-founder of Sihi, a café set in an Art Deco bungalow, explains, they keep it free to retain a sense of expansiveness and allow children to run around. “It’s not that Mysuru has changed,” says Nikhilesh M.M., 37, founder of Aane café, who also says he will not add more tables though he has the space. “It is that Mysuru has not and will not”.
Geographically, Mysuru is green, has minimal pollution, is surrounded by dense wildlife reserves, is a planned town with parks in each block, and wide walkable avenues. It is also centrally accessible to several coffee and cacao-growing regions such as Kodagu (Coorg), Chikkamagaluru, Saklesh-pur and Bababudangiri in Karnataka, Wayanad and Idukki in Kerala, and the Nilgiris in Tamil Nadu, which makes good supply easy. Estate coffee and craft chocolate festivals are on the rise.
[The article mentions a contributor who] apprenticed with the three-Michelin starred L’Auberge de l’Ile Barbe in Alsace, France, in early 2019 and sought out Naviluna café in Mysuru to work as a chocolate maker in late 2019. He left in 2021 and set up Loco, a chocolate microfactory, in 2022, operating out of a rented garage in Gokulam. He now supplies to and consults with food start-ups and businesses. While each café may source from a different vendor, the rise of an exploratory and experimental food culture has also matured Mysuru’s palate. “Mysuru is a discerning market, people know what good coffee and chocolate tastes like, can distinguish [only open from Thursday to Sunday, and invariably sells out].
Originally from Delhi, he says he could get higher footfall in a larger city, but the overheads would be higher. “In Mysuru people want to know the process, the ingredients, how organic everything is, ask questions and savour the product knowledgeably,” says Sujay Shivapooja, who is married to Prahallad and handles the brews at the one-year-old Leaven. “They’re not picking up a bite on the way to some-where else. They’re savouring the bite. This translates to a willingness to pay higher prices for better products”. Their third partner, Kedar Ram, 31, is a...
Mysuru has always had a culture of great connection, but is seemingly hesitant to locate it in an accessible space. Mysuru is cherished deeply by locals who tend to close ranks. In his 1939 travelogue Mysore, Narayan writes, “As in ancient Athens, people settle many matters of philosophy, politics and personal affairs, while promenading around the statue or strolling down Sayyaji Rao Road. But this creates certain traffic problems, as such discussions, by preference, are held on road junctions, rather than on the very broad footpaths (which, for mysterious reasons, are detested and avoided by one and all)”. Narayan lived here and wrote several of its residents, his friends, into his books, for over 50 years.
“The café scene belongs to an evolving generation that requires a different kind of money, engagement, that is stepping away from corporate madness in search of meaning,” Chandrasekhar notes. “One doesn’t want to live in nostalgia, but one has to rec-ognise the transitions that are happening because something integral is being eroded”. In a flowering to inclusiveness, these new cafes become accommodating spaces where the past and the present, the old and the new Mysuru may sit at a table and mingle. Mysuru is one of the last bastions of the slow life and as it evolves, it is holding on to a unique essence of itself.
It is [common now] to see young creators set up a small stall on popular street corners or outside a park or lake entrance to sell homemade cupcakes, cheesecakes, breads, cookies, unique brews, or fermented beverages. This becomes a test ground for many small food businesses that then go on to set up brick and mortar establishments. Naviluna, a craft chocolaterie, was set up by David Belo from South Africa in 2012. In 2016, Weber, a German national, began to bake from home for friends and built a growing client base by 2019. By 2020, she had moved into a tiny counter room-only space on Kalidasa Road. She was self-trained but found Mysuru to be a supportive space in which to begin. “I was greatly inspired by Minimal (Coffee Roasters), which began with low infrastructure investments in a small space,” she says.
Minimal Coffee Roasters, set up by Ashwin Shetty in 2019, still operates from a standing room-only shop in Gokulam. It was the first in the brewed coffee space. Shetty, 37, used to work in the coffee busi- [Yercaud and other estates]. Both SAPA and Minimal seemed a bit foreign to prevailing local taste. Weber worked hard to cultivate the market. She even set up a stall in the local sari market and held bake sales every Thursday and Saturday. She never explained her food, she says, not wanting to come off as condescending, but held a line between catering to tastes and cultivating it to one’s vision for the food. “Starting slow and small in a city where your rent is low, the rents of your employees are low, and of your customers are low, gives room for experimentation,” she says.
That’s Mysuru’s advantage over tier-1 cities, where you’ve got to either be wealthy or have bank or venture capital money to begin, which puts pressure on you to start showing profits and you tend to lean towards making what sells. “It’s okay to have a bad month here,” she says. That allows for organic growth in which consumer tastes grow with you. “When we began, consumers were addicted to milky, sugary coffee. They’d get offended when we [on them that an older generation, until then filter coffee sticklers, started trooping in, Shetty says]. Today, Minimal has a cult following.
Nikhilesh says when he wanted to open his café, he picked up the phone and called Shetty out of respect for his paving the way. There is a solidarity to the lineage of what is being built. Minimal has expanded to the Southern Star, a five-star venue, and now hosts “coffee raves”, that Gautam Bhaskar, who runs Ritual in the tiny space in which SAPA once began on Kalidasa Road, calls the “respectable man’s rave”. Leaven held their first collaborative sun-downer in January with a mix of mocktails and alcoholic beverages at 3pm on a Saturday.
The new ventures are broader and hold the middle ground for the average joe with money but not much exposure—one who can’t pronounce “croissant” and doesn’t know what a sourdough or a medium roast is. Akin to the first-time flyer when new airports in small towns came up, these non-intimidating spaces allow one to get into the culture and mindset of a chiffon cake, a Berliner, a Korean cream cheese bun, and a tres leches. There is more openness to knowing now. “People come to the counter and tell us, we don’t know what to order, so you tell us what this is,” Shivapooja says. The cafés create a symbiosis of relying on the community as much as the community relies on them.
The muted colours and minimalist decor at Leaven were chosen so that the bakes speak without interruption. Most cafés rotate the menus weekly to afford experimentation. Khameeri maintains an inconsistent periodicity that The Local Friendly Bakery (TLFB) run by Raquel Cohanim also embraced, announcing menus only for part of the week when ready to sell, with menu and pre-orders via Instagram and WhatsApp in its early days. The sparse functionality of decor and low budget spaces convey simplicity and humility. Being slow to scale up or staff up, and being frequented by community anchors these aspects of approachability, innovation, and effort on both sides of taking the market forward.
VIBE CODED BY GEN Z
The whole front of the house team of Leaven, all in their 20s, has just returned from a day out at the Sakleshpur estate, from where their café sources beans. Among them, some are learning to serve, others are taking a break after their graduation while they figure out their direction. Chaman Naik, one of the two engineers who work as baristas here, travels to Bengaluru once a week to audition and hopes to make it in theatre and modelling. On Sundays and Wednesdays, the staff get to run their own trials, invent drinks and experiment with additions to the menu. At Vui and TLFB, a young barista service team puts out unembellished reels on Instagram, inviting customers with a vibe that has no need for script or artifice. It’s a joyous, relaxed, and self-proud vibe.
Many of these café founders have worked in the corporate world before deciding to pursue the slow life. While the rise in barista-patissier-roasting roles is a reaction against the corporate work culture, it’s not about shirking responsibility. The Mysurean café, chocolaterie and patisserie arose neither by impulse nor fantasy. Subramaniam is a mechanical engineer from Chennai who sourced coffee in Vietnam for seven years and came to Mysuru in 2017 in search of sustainability (and began roasting in 2018). Agarwal, a CFA by qualification, worked in investment banking in Mumbai, and came to Mysuru in 2021 for Ashtanga yoga, expecting to be here initially for six months, but gained his teacher certification four years in before the sourdough passion took him. Ali, an electrical engineer, was holding down his family business in Dubai and retrained at Cordon Bleu, Bangkok at age 30. He interned with The Oberoi, Bengaluru, studied patisserie at Lavonne Academy of Baking Science and Pastry Arts, Bengaluru, where he met and collaborated with his co-founder Pooja Shridhar, 33, who has passed her civil services exam. While Prahallad trained at Lavonne too, husband Sujay did his article traineeship at PriceWaterHouse Coopers, went on to do his MBA, and worked with an angel network funding startup for two years before quitting to focus on speciality coffees. Prahallad had made cupcakes and specialised in desserts like budino and tres leches from home for many years. Both Mysureans, they’d get bakes from SAPA and coffee from Minimal when they went on dates and noticed a lacuna in the market—a space in which the two were sold together.
Versha Verma, 31 and her husband Ashwani Karoriwal, who co-run Hideaway, are both computer science engineers from Haryana. He worked with Meta in London, UK. Influenced by the annual London Coffee Festival, Verma apprenticed at local coffee shops there to train as a barista. They returned after three-and-a-half years in London in 2024 to set [in a café while he continued to work remotely but the founder bailed out in 2022, and Bhaskar had to take it over unexpectedly]. They’ve also each invested in training themselves. Samyuktha Alwar, 26, manning her chessboard-tiled kitchen-cafe (that she set up from her savings for less than ₹2 lakh) solo at Chiffon, will be specialising in tiered wedding cakes to cater to the increasing trend of people choosing to get married in scenic Mysuru. Shivapooja wants to improve barista certifications and Prahallad is aiming for a gelataria training in Italy. Running a business is exhausting, they each find: there are no days off, no personal life, and constant staffing issues, customers are demanding, and food requires maintaining consistency and freshness in quality. So it’s not quite a shirking of the slog of corporate life, more an embracing of a personalised work ethic instead.
“This kind of work requires long attention spans and focus which are rare today. Gone are the days when young people just want any job they can get. I recruit for personality, skill I can teach,” Subramaniam says. “Gen Z is effecting a decommodification of the role, and is bringing dignity to it, by extracting identity from the skill. They’ve found a creative space to pour their identities into,” he explains. It is a process of individualisation, which perhaps is lost in the tube-lit cabins of corporate giants. Further, working with one’s hands brings a rare point of connection in a chronically online world.
Alwar says the difference between the cafés that last and those that open and shut overnight is training and discipline, which gives consistency. If it wasn’t for the pandemic, she might have migrated into a job after her patissier training. “Security doesn’t exist anywhere anymore. So a personal risk doesn’t feel like a big deal,” she adds. Verma feels the pandemic-induced mass layoffs put the uncertainty of even corporate life on display and conveyed to employees their hard work doesn’t matter. There is no such thing as a steady job anymore, just the illusion of one for a while. Agarwal points out that often techies and those with the highest salaries work untenable hours and get into a debt trap, where they buy high-cost homes, and have to take loans for which they need to keep making high salaries to pay off. “The trade-off is just not adding up and my generation sees that wealth, growth and a sense of purpose is not going to come from a salary anymore,” he says.
Koppera saw his father work hard all his life and have nothing substantial to call his own after retirement. While he was hesitant about Koppera’s career choice, he has come around now. Bhaskar says post-pandemic, people started using their savings to experience life and live well and taking risks they earlier might not have. “The world is so unstable today. What’s the worst that can happen?” asks Verma.
OLD CITY, NEW CITY
Brunda Ganesh, 43, architect and mother of two young girls, grew up in Mysuru and has since relocated to Bengaluru. “It was in the doldrums. If you had to do or experience something ‘different’, you’d have to leave Mysuru,” she says. At best you had the Iyengar Bakery and the bhajji-bonda-chur-murri guy in Gokulam and a place called Tootsie in Yadavgiri for burgers and pizzas that came with a lot of mayonnaise. She sees the change as social media driven.
“We never went to sit in a café because we didn’t need to. We pooled whatever little cash we had and bought stuff like peanuts or popcorn off handcarts and biked, walked, went to a local park or the terrace of one of our houses. Whether you were from a wealthy family or not, you didn’t need money, planning, or documentation to hang out,” she says. The gentrification of Mysuru is a reflection of the changing utility of public spaces, Ganesh notes. Mysuru’s parks are well-kept, well-lit, and safe. The transition from single homes with gardens and terraces to apartments with tiny balconies is also indicative of how homes are changing. “Homes are getting smaller and people are in each other’s spaces”.
Most cafés claim to have broken even a few months in. Business is good and expansion offers come in, but most don’t want to scale in a hurry. “We don’t want footfalls, we want regulars,” Verma says. Nikhilesh finds that no one wants to sit in a cafe that is filled with noise and chatter. That is not the Mysuru way. You want space and chill. So mindless upscaling goes against the vibe these cafes are working towards. He does have plans for Aane, named for the iconic elephants in the Dassara parade, though. Nikhilesh is considering merchandising and expansion, hoping to make the brand instantly recognisable at airports, and believes Mysuru has the potential to be a café-hopping hub.
Leaven seeks to expand too in considered outlets that meet a niche demand, like a gelataria and a second outlet. Bhaskar is concerned that it’s too many people doing more of the same thing and the market will get saturated; he’d like to see them col-...Based on the sources, the following is the text of the article "A new voice emerges in Tamil cinema" by Aditya Shrikrishna, as it appears on page 3:
A new voice emerges in Tamil cinema
R. Gowtham’s debut Tamil feature, Members of the Problematic Family, premiered at the 76th Berlin International Film Festival last week in the Forum section. Everything about this film—a raw, unflinching portrait of a family rationing grief and despair—is distinct yet unfamiliar, beginning with its title, writes Aditya Shrikrishna.
It invites you not to witness a few days in the life of irascible characters but just human beings who, as fate would have it, need to function as a society sanctioned order. The word “dysfunctional” doesn’t do justice, nor is it accurate for a group of people who are simply trying to get by amidst unusual turmoil.
Based on the sources, the following is the reproduction of the article "Build your own village by showing up" by Nisha Susan, as it appears on pages 10 and 11:
Build your own village by showing up
Asking people for help and getting it can rekindle your sense of optimism.
By Nisha Susan
For years and years, I have heard the phrase “it takes a village”. I knew former US secretary of state Hillary Clinton had popularised the line when she named her book after the proverb, in the context of raising children. For most of those years that I heard the proverb, I had no children and I lived in a metaphorical village where all my friends knew my business and I knew theirs.
When I did have children, the earliest years were a combination of well-paid nannies, covid-induced isolation and a covid-induced move close to my family. During the pandemic, my immediate family and I saw each other more often than we had in my teens. A good indication of how things went in those years was my father remarking, “Your neighbours must be wondering why they can hear people singing Happy Birthday every week.” We celebrated everybody’s birthday and ate every last crumb of every festival. Then alas, we had to leave the temporary village and take off our masks.
When we were newly far from home, everyone assured me, “You will find your village.” And the first principles of that involved asking people for help. People meant it less in the context of childcare and more in the context of “you will find your kind of friends”.
As I was about to find out, I hated asking people for help. And I didn’t want to discuss my children with strangers. I did both. I talked about my kids with people—with the understanding that I might have to someday swallow my pride and ask for help. And when that rare, annoying colleague made snide remarks about my being 5 minutes late two days in a row because of child-related duties, I also surprised myself with an explosive Mount Etna-like performance. Who knew I still had it in me?
Asking people for help and getting it, like I did, can rekindle your sense of optimism, if that sense has recently been feeling less like Etna and more like Mount Fuji. But did it give me the village? Not quite. I was still in search of that old cosy, nosy feeling where everyone was all up in my business and I was up in theirs. And then recently I saw someone say, “if you want a village, you have to be ready to be a villager.” I was so taken by this idea. I had been going about it all wrong!
I had been smiling inanely and trying to be as little trouble as possible and asking for help through gritted teeth. I hadn’t actually been trying to join anything. If anyone asked me for help, I had been ready to turn up. But there were obviously other ways to turn up, other ways to be a villager, other than being braced to save the day.
I gave myself the assignment of going to things I didn’t really need to go to, to see people I didn’t know too well and definitely see people I knew well. This is not easy because most of the people I know have two-and-a-half adults/children/animals they are responsible for and have three-and-a-half jobs to pay the bills.
After giving myself the assignment, I have gone to a talk by the translator of an Italian poet who died young and whose name I can’t remember, had coffee with a much younger, very funny acquaintance, took a walk with a deadpan and surprisingly bossy other acquaintance and even wandered into a catered office lunch. Each of these activities definitely took me away from the all-holy and ever proliferating to-do lists. Occasionally during an otherwise engrossing conversation, I would start feeling breathless because of visions of the white board jungle that lives on top of my desk and every task on it. But I got back on the assignment of being a mindful villager and everyone survived.
This week, a neighbour invited me to come over on a Saturday afternoon. A bunch of women were getting together to cook big quantities of freezer-friendly food to help a neighbour who is expecting a baby in a few days. The pregnant neighbour brought over the ingredients. It was a quick and cheerful two hours. I chopped a lot of onions.
Afterwards, I was happy to have gone. But before going? I dragged my feet and said several times to my family, “I may not go.” They all grunted. I needed to get dressed. I needed to fold clothes. I needed to clear my desk. I needed to buy groceries. And I hadn’t bought anything for the pregnant lady. “I may not go,” I said for the 10th time. Eventually the resounding, cheesy echo of “be the villager you want to be” drove me to put on kajal and leave the house. In the same mood as the chicken crossing the road to get to the Other Side, I went next door.
Next door was a bustle of chips and efficiency. I was reminded again of the reasons for the renewed post-pandemic success of Priya Parker’s 2018 book The Art of Gathering. My neighbour is the master of the low-pressure gathering that can leave you feeling nourished. I have heard via Parker devotees of gatherings where women have met just to wear an outfit that they love but are never going to wear Outside. Or others where people have met to just do paperwork chores they have been procrastinating over. Parker’s book, like my neighbour’s baby prep party, was meeting a heartfelt need. The Outside is intimidating. (I am intrigued and entertained to hear that her newest book is called The Art of Fighting.)
One neighbour made fun of me for frantically doubling the fractions in the recipes in my head. Another reminded me how I had tried to run away with someone’s cute baby the last time we met. Then she cut her finger while chopping capsicums and ran about explaining that she hadn’t done it on purpose to get out of cooking. And while I was standing at the stove, waiting for half a kilo of vegetables to cook down, I thought to myself that next February a new baby could be trying to walk around here when I tease my neighbour about cutting her finger to get out of cooking. And in the thinnest of onion layers, this February, I might be building a new village.
Nisha Susan is the author of The Women Who Forgot to Invent Facebook and Other Stories.
Based on the sources, the following is the reproduction of the article "Paramount-Warner deal set to reshape Indian cinema" by Lata Jha, as it appears on page 15:
Paramount-Warner deal set to reshape Indian cinema
By Lata Jha NEW DELHI
With Netflix backing away from its proposal to buy Warner Bros Discovery, paving the way for Paramount Skydance to take over the legacy studio, the merged Hollywood giant may be set to dominate the Indian theatrical space and reshape distribution strategies. In the English-language streaming ecosystem in India, there will be less disruption but heightened competition.
“The merged entity would command considerable distribution clout in India, given their significantly enlarged slate, enabling it to command a larger share of the Hollywood box office pie,” said Rahul Puri, managing director of Mukta Arts and Mukta A2 Cinemas.
Warner Bros owns franchises such as The Conjuring, Harry Potter and Godzilla, which, coupled with Paramount titles Mission: Impossible and Transformers, give the merged entity better bargaining power with exhibitors. However, according to Raheel Patel, a partner at Gandhi Law Associates, if Paramount Global takes over Warner Bros. Discovery, there will be stronger studio consolidation in India, not market domination. The combined entity would control major Hollywood IP, giving it sharper bargaining power with exhibitors like PVR Inox.
“Theatres may face tougher revenue-share negotiations, but tentpole supply would remain stable because Paramount is still a studio-first player,” Patel said. “A Netflix takeover would have been more disruptive, likely accelerating direct-to-OTT (over-the-top) releases and weakening theatrical windows faster”. Earlier, the Multiplex Association of India (MAI) had expressed concern over Netflix’s $82.7 billion acquisition bid for Warner Bros, which it said could disrupt the studio’s supply of Hollywood films to theatres.
A combination between Paramount and Warner Bros Discovery would primarily operate at the level of upstream content ownership and global distribution strategy, according to Tushar Kumar, a Supreme Court of India advocate. Paramount has been historically aligned with the conventional studio model and has institutional incentives to preserve theatrical exclusivity windows in order to maximize box-office recovery.
“This approach is comparatively less disruptive to Indian exhibitors and existing OTT licensees,” Kumar said. He pointed out that a hypothetical acquisition by Netflix would have raised apprehensions of accelerated direct-to-digital migration and internalization of marquee content within a single dominant platform, weakening competitive parity in premium English-language content acquisition.
Some experts said this transaction does not raise significant competition concerns in India. Neither Paramount nor Warner Bros operates a consumer-facing OTT platform in the country, although their content is available on JioHotstar and Amazon via licensing deals. Furthermore, according to Mihir Rale, partner at Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas, other studios like Disney, Universal, Amazon MGM, Sony and Netflix hold a meaningful presence in the theatrical space.
It would be interesting to see if licensed Warner content is pulled off platforms such as Netflix, though many of these agreements could take three to five years to end, said Uday Sodhi, senior partner at Kurate Digital Consulting.
“The transaction does not, in a strict doctrinal sense, create a monopoly in India. The SVoD (subscription video-on-demand) market remains structurally oligopolistic,” said Shravanth Shanker, managing partner at B. Shanker Advocates LLP. The market is currently shared by:
- JioHotstar and Amazon Prime Video: roughly 23-25% each.
- Netflix: about 19%.
- Apple TV+: around 14-15%.
However, the concern is one of increased concentration. The merger aggregates a significant share of premium Hollywood IP under one entity, enhancing its bargaining leverage in licensing negotiations with Indian platforms.
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