Street Talk

Tehran: The price of now; spiraling infration and currency collapse

In Iran, we have a common joke: "I fell and felt something break. Thank God it was my leg and not my phone!" Yes, it's irrational. Your body should be...

Karachi: Surveillance, panic and chaos: the price the people pay for safer streets

Rapper Kashan Ali calls himself a ‘middle-class lover boy’. His Instagram reels score thousands of views, featuring music on broken hearts, unrequited love, cricket, and most recently, e-challans. Over a...

Kyoto: Zen and the art of being a tour guide

“Is there a good place to scatter my mother’s ashes?” This question came from a traveller visiting from the UK. He had a pensive gaze. His mother, he said, had...

Gaza: How genocide has transformed the daily lexicon

*This article was written in December 2025 under the prevailing conditions at that time. Genocide changed Gaza’s shape. But it also twisted time itself by the neck, rewired daily routines,...

Bangalore: The many tongues heard at midnight in the backseat of a cab

By night, Bangalore’s first-world dreams flicker out, and in their place rises the familiar roar of the third world – endless construction, half-finished roads, dust in the headlights, a city...

Medellin: The politics of street art in Colombia’s second city

Last month, my boyfriend and I went on a little getaway to celebrate our anniversary. On the way out of town we saw a large banner on the highway that...