Digital garden of longform articles
My friend Divyansh, introduced me to the idea of digital gardens – a digital garden is your corner of the internet, a place for you to explore and write about what interests you, just because it interests you (Here, here and here are some really creative digital gardens!). I fell in love with the idea immediately. While other bloggers have done wonderful things with this idea, I just wanted to create a digital garden of all the longform articles I’ve enjoyed and loved. I truly enjoy reading good writing, especially when the author is narrating a story. And when I read a great article on the web, I tend to bookmark it, send it to myself on email or share it with my friends. But ultimately, they end up being scattered across platforms. So, this blog is a collection of all the longform articles I’ve loved, those that I want to keep going back to. Let me know which one you liked best!
Top 3 Recommendations
- Looking for Alice by Henrik Karlsson on his blog, Escaping Flatand. An incredibly personal article on how he found his partner, Joanna.
- Listen to Her by T.R. Shankar Raman on his blog, View from the Elephant Hills. Raman, an Indian ecologist and conservationist, who has worked on restoring forests in the Western Ghats, read books only by women for an entire year in 2019.
- The Origin of Research University by Clara Collier - a truly fascinating, informative history of the current model of research universities.
A list of articles, in order of when I read them -
Last updated: 16-02-2026
- Why don’t Indians read for pleasure by Anurag Minus Verma
“Indians do read for pleasure, but they also read anxiously, strategically, and sometimes secretly. They read in languages that rarely enter metropolitan surveys. They read on cheap paper and cracked phone screens, often because income does not allow even the small pleasure of changing a new tempered glass.”
- I keep making the mistake of going on hikes by Quirine Brouwer
- My mind is open but my heart is closed by Vikram Shah
- The River Kills when Angry by Saul Elbien
“There is a common belief in the river valleys of Peru that when the river is high and rain-swollen, it is angry. And it will not rest until it takes someone.”
- The Origin of Research University by Clara Collier
“Through a carefully constructed program of seminars and socratic dialogues, students would be encouraged to cultivate the faculty of scholarly reason which would guide them through the world as fully-realized individuals. The capacity to learn would serve students far beyond their university days. It was the same capacity that would allow them to discover new things about the world.”
- M M Kalburgi’s life and legacy in the crosshairs of history by Srikar Raghavan
- The Rage of Research by Laura Deming
- Estranged: Ramadan 2025 by Afnan Hassab E. Siddig
“So much of who I am is tied to the state of my home country, yet I hesitate to bring it up in conversation. War is a three-letter word that functions like a full stop. Once it is introduced into a conversation, it brings it to an end, leaving behind awkward silence and downcast eyes. So I try not to bring it up too often.”
- The Bandaya Literary Movement: Ebbs and Tides by Swati Simha
- The Case Against Travel by Agnes Callard
- For the Love of Jim and Pam : Why there’s no disgrace in loving for a living by Rahul Desai
“Either way, the stability of loving is routinely ruptured to pursue the restlessness of living.”
- Absurd Trolley Problems by Neal Agarwal (not an article - but really fun!)
- Heirlooms by Prakriti Singh
- The art of Sleeping in Seminars by V. Gates, Empty Kangaroo, M. Roachcock, and W.C. Gall.
“5. If possible, choose a chair with padding. Plastic and metal chairs also fall noisely.”
- How to Stay Alive and Horny Under Authoritarianism by Talia Levin
- Multiple Fractures : Numerous Fault Lines Await India’s New Government by Ramchandra Guha
- Let My Country Awake by T.R. Shankar Raman
“As far as I know, the family’s temple — that has for decades provided solace and adequate space for worship of Ram and Sita — had been built without any conflict or need to dispute with any other community.”
- How Caste Smells : Notes From A South-Asian Beauty Salon in London by Nandita Dutta <!–
- The Quality Control Interview for Big Classes by Cosma Rohilla Shalizi
- AWOL from Academics by Aden Barton –>
- On limitations that hide your blindspot by Henrik Karlsson and Johanna Wiberg
“But there was also a deeper mental shift for me. I transferred my loyalty away from the thing in front of me and toward what I could achieve.”
- The Future of Friendships in the Age of Opinions by Manu Joseph
- Economic Ornithology by Robert Francis
- A National Evil by Jonah Goodman
- Things I Wish I Could Tell Every Woman by Ankita Apurva
“A man — any man, is a companion or a junction but never your identity or your destination. And no man who loves you will waste your time. Please don’t while your years away. Very few girls get a ‘second chance’ of focusing on their existence, let alone a third or a fourth. Before you know it, your relatives will start bringing arranged marriage proposals of men seven years older to you—do not. Okay. Work hard. Very hard. Rest well. Very well. Not only because you want to escape abuse and be safe but also because you deserve to enjoy and be celebrated.”
- Trial by Fire by Meera Ganapathi
“In fact, I believe that you can spot a seasoned cook by their tolerance to heat. They have fireproof fingers that hold searing iron pans without the trace of a wince. They can be identified with brown-black tattoos on their wrists and arms from years of being splashed by boiling oil and burnt by hot vessels.”
- Dating like a Savarna by Ravikant Kisana
“This English-filtering, becomes a tool of social ostracization (bordering on bullying) and is often the first line of attack and tool for excluding non-elite folks from elite social spaces. But language is not the only social barrier. Even if SC/ST/OBC people master English enough to blend in, they come to painfully realize that the Savarna dating landscape is a much more complex bubble. It is an art curation of cultural capital accrued over a life of intergenerational privilege.”
- Childhoods of Exceptional People by Henrik Karlsson
- Platonic by Prachi Pinglay-Plumber
- My grandmother’s indulgent recipes show how Indian women express their love by Anindita Ghose
- Eye in the Sky by Anisha Jayadevan
<!–
“As I watched the Blue Tiger Moth caterpillar languidly moving up a plant in my husband’s ancestral house in Kasargod, I heard my mother-in-law in the kitchen, cooking breakfast for the rest of the family. Before my husband and I went in to help her, I wondered how women burdened with care-giving find the time and support to access public spaces and observe the wondrous strategies of butterflies to escape predation—when the predator named patriarchy is still very much at large.”
- Indira Gandhi : One earth, One environment, One humanity by T.R. Shankar Raman
- We need a multi-pronged approach to end child marriage by Uma Mahadevan Dasgupta –>
- Studying the Antlion Taught Me How to be Human by Ambika Kamath
“I eventually came to understand that, as a behavioral ecologist, I was asking of the natural world the very questions I was too scared to ask of myself and those around me. I had so many questions about how to exist in this world, and it seemed impossible that a single organism could hold all the answers. Rather, I found that different creatures hold the keys to different doors, with each door leading away from a different difficult situation. After all, any living creature on this planet has an evolutionary history exactly as long as the evolutionary history of any other living creature, stretching billions of years between the moment when life began and right now.”
- The PhD Supply Chain Problem by Inger Mewburn <!–
- Learning the tricks of turmeric trade in Tamil Nadu by Aparna Karthikeyan –>
- A short history of the India Coffee House by Karthik Venkatesh
- Stitching Hope by Kamala Thiagarajan
“After the tragedy, people in her village were paralyzed with fear; many were reluctant to go out to fish. The doll-making workshop seemed like a godsend.”
- What Cancel Culture Is - and Isn’t by Cathy Young
- Troops by Monika Mondal
“Monkeys and humans are fighting for space in Indian cities. Right now, it doesn’t look like a winnable war.”
- The Humanism of Siddalingaiah by Chandan Gowda