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It’s become a bit of a cultural cliché to shit on the year that’s passed. It’s not without good reason. Things are objectively getting worse. Whether it’s the global rise of authoritarianism, stark economic and class disparities that are only getting worse or rumours of a brand new Colplay album, there’s not a lot that inspires optimism.
But I’m choosing, perhaps at my own peril, to look at the slivers of light that have shone through the gathering darkness: the calm of a bright summer's morning; the warmth and safety of waking up to the face of the person you love, the laughter of your family sharing a moment amidst the chaos of the day; the small seemingly insignificant moments that’s we’re all guilty of taking for granted. It’s things we don’t really appreciate till they’re gone. Despite all that’s going wrong, these small glimmers of light and love and hope still persevere, and that itself is something worth celebrating.
If I learned one thing this year, it’s that often love itself is an act of ultimate delusion. It’s believing in a person, a place, or an idea, even though all rational thought tells you it's ultimately doomed or futile. It’s putting your faith in the notion that in spite of the odds, it’ll all work out.
I’m going into my fourth year as an editor at Homegrown, and it is without question that everything we’ve done as a collective has been born out of that very same love for the cultures, communities, and creators that create meaning out of a the strife and uncertaint and who are all able to shut out the noise and give us art that resonates and binds us together.
Last year, our small but tenacious team of troubadours had just taken the first steps towards transforming the way we bring compelling pieces of cultural storytelling straight to your hearts, homes, and minds. We realised that we had all gotten a little set in our ways; a little complacent; a little too comfortable going through the gears we were familiar with. We had to do more, and we did, with all-new IPs, new formats, in-depth prestige profiles and features and a more diverse spotlight on the length and breadth of the creative economy across the country.
If 2024 was about evolution, this year was about keeping that momentum going; about not slipping into old habits; about rallying together and pushing the envelope and upholding the foundations of what cultural journalism in 2025 needs to become. Our work doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Across our varied geographies, the team navigated both success and personal challenges alike: kinship, joy, beauty, emotional turmoil, sickness, love and everything else that makes us human. They drew on their lives and injected their essence into every story, every interview, every newsletter that spun across your screen as we hurtled through space and time.
Whether it was Drishya’s signature measured, gravitas and depth, Disha’s razor-sharp edge and tongue-in-cheek sardonicism and self-referential flair, Anahita’s curiosity and willingness to consistently pull us out of our comfort zones, or Avani’s wise-beyond-her-years ability to learn fast, improvise, and inject new ideas into a team that can sometimes be stubborn and set in their ways, I am indescribably proud of how consistently this team shows up for one another. None of us is perfect, but we push each other forward and inspire each other to consistently raise the bar.
When I started out at Homegrown four years ago, I could not have asked for a better team, and I am both honoured and grateful that I get to work with what I, without question, believe is one of the most talented groups of writers in this country.
I can’t wait to see what they do in 2026, but in the meantime, here are our favourite stories from the year that’s passed:
‘Paws’ Is Shourya Malhotra’s Ode To The Canine Companions That Change Our Lives
Mikhail Khan - Associate Editor
My family are an eccentric bunch, and I love them all to bits, but like with most families, there are certain things that we’re all always going to disagree with each other about. Despite that, there are also some fundamental principles and ideals that bind us together as a unit and a love for animals and all living things is unquestionably at the top of that list.
Animals and, more specifically, dogs, have been embedded in the fabric of my family’s lineage for generations. Dogs have been our friends, companions, security guards, and our closest confidants all at once. My grandmother, the kindest person I have ever known, took it upon herself to raise 7 dogs inside a single home, and all of them added life, verve and energy to a household that already had this in spades. I daresay if we had a family crest, it would be a dog (although my ma would probably also want it to be an owl).
Drishya’s interpretation of Shourya Malhotra’s latest single, drew on what was an incredibly complicated time in his life to illustrate the unbreakable bond that exists between man and canine; how even in times of strife or hardship, for little more than a little love and a few square meals (and some treats of course), dogs can be the bedrock of stability and support that all of us crave. It’s warm, bittersweet, melancholy and yet is buoyed by a solemn hope and optimism that only the animals in our lives can inspire. Through their earnest eyes, for a few moments of every day across the crazy, tipsy topsy lives we lead, we can pause, put things in perspective, and focus on cuddling the shit out of them and bringing them the joy that we perhaps lack in that moment.
Drishya’s writing is always incredibly narrative in nature, and I’m always instantly transported to the worlds he builds, but this piece stood out in the way that it underlined what I often find myself taking for granted. It made me remember the generations of dogs that have come and gone and brought life to the lives of my family and me, even when things seemed heavy or dark. Here’s to all the animals in our lives, courtesy Drishya and Shourya.
The Secret Lives Of Indian Girlfriends
Avani Adiga - Editorial Intern
Dating in this country can be exhausting — especially as a woman. The constant hiding, second-guessing, and the fear: of getting caught, of choosing wrong, of misreading every tiny sign. Anahita’s piece captured all of that with striking clarity. She weaves in every nuance that shapes modern dating in urban India — the glossy social media personas and the curated intimacy. It’s deliberate, sharp, and painfully relatable.
I remember the first time I told my mum I had a boyfriend. I was 19, and her first question — “How serious are you?” — said everything. And when it eventually ended, I know she let out a long, relieved sigh, because socially, he wasn’t the kind of person she saw me being with in the long run. To avoid the judgement, questions, and nagging, I kept my relationships off social media. It felt freeing, like shedding the pressure of presenting my partner — and what that representation said about me.
Anahita’s piece doesn’t hesitate or shy away the way we often do when talking about our relationships. It reveals how our culture still works overtime to police us, searching for any bit of dirt, and how we as women do everything we can to evade that gaze. Because, as Anahita put it, “In India, love is a full-contact sport, a public performance, and occasionally, a communal crisis.”
In Defence of the ‘Mango Diaspora’: Why Diasporic Writers Succumb To South Asian Clichés
Drishya - Staff Writer
Pari’s 'In Defence of the ‘Mango Diaspora’: Why Diasporic Writers Succumb To South Asian Clichés’ excels at blending cultural critique with compassion. Instead of dismissing diaspora writing as lazy or unserious, Pari sees it as an emotional language shaped by longing, displacement, and uneven access to shared cultural memory. This refusal to moralise gives her essay both intellectual credibility and emotional depth.
What I truly admire about Pari’s writing is her broad cultural fluency without seeming insular. She moves from literary discourse on Salman Rushdie and Edward Said to memes, reels, and lived diasporic experiences — showing how South Asian identity is shaped across different, overlapping publics. By recognising her own participation in these tropes as part of the diaspora, she adds emotional honesty to her essay and avoids making it sound detached or condescending. Even as she addresses these clichéd cultural shorthands, her voice remains balanced and thoughtful, ultimately emphasising that the problem isn’t the presence of tropical fruits in diasporic literature, but the limits on how fully diasporic lives can be imagined.
The Rise & Fall Of Every Version Of You: When The Internet Becomes A Prison Of Identity
Disha Bijolia - Staff Writer
I’ve been chronically online since I was a teenager. The internet is my home. Its trends, subcultures, niche communities — the way a meme evolves over time and becomes a Russian doll of a reference within a reference — I love all of that. That feeling of “no unique experiences” — the comfort of knowing that what you’re going through is shared and ordinary — there’s something genuinely lovely about that. Or there was, until I noticed how difficult it is to be present on the internet without attaching yourself to the many personas bubbling there. I'd go to comment under a reel and find the exact thing I was going to say already there. It was like I had become a part of a hive-mind that had forgotten how to think for itself.
It is a reflection on this treacherous game of identity that Anahita brilliantly presents in her piece. She writes from a perspective of someone who knows the rhythms of being online with the awareness of herself within that landscape. She dissects how in India — where identity used to be something inherited, fixed, sometimes historically heavy but also meaningful in some ways — the digital world now demands that you perform, label, signal, and package yourself as a version that the algorithm can read and reward. Which, when you snap out of that 3-hour scrolling trance, is such a tyrannical ecosystem to be in! One of my favourite things about the nature of writing is to give words to something that another person feels but hasn't found a way to articulate. And that is exactly what this article does. It takes all my reservations and anxieties about the internet and presents them to me, in a witty and sharp voice that makes me giggle, as a gift-wrapped analysis, and a much-needed reality check that I can always go back to.
