As a barely 77-year-old country, younger than both Donald J. Trump and Joe Biden, India has given us so much to talk about. It has managed to become world famous for beautiful landscapes, a strong democracy, VVIP ultra-luxury spiritual pilgrimage packages for elites intent on renouncing materialism, Israeli coffee shops in hill stations where IDF soldiers come to rid themselves of the guilt of committing war crimes against Palestinian children, and a very free, very independent Press. 

Armed with our pen strokes of ludicrous alternate realities and UnTruths, The Savala Vada and The Polis Project take it upon ourselves to be the Lady Whistledown of news from South Asia and beyond—if Lady Whistledown had a WiFi connection and a grasp of Indian and Global geopolitics.

To the uninitiated, The Savala Vada is the face of satire in India, bridging the gap between news and fiction—something that is getting harder to differentiate with each passing day. With groundbreaking non-journalism and humor that got us banned from YouTube for a 57-second video about the 2024 Indian elections, we have long strived to be the Instagram court jester for Indian Emperors. 

Over the years, we have poked fun at billionaire weddings, tracked election updates where governments with Burn Books straight up jail their opponents, partnered with organizations like Savera to probe the overlays of Diasphora Hindu Nationalists, and their hometown brethren while occasionally indulging in an unhealthy dose of internet conspiracy theories. 

India is a mystical land of contradictions too. We mourn when billionaires die but rejoice when PhD scholars are thrown in jail without trial, thump our chests for surgical strikes against Pakistani trees, and weep in sorrow at Kamala Chitti not making the White House (but at least J.D Vance’s wife is Indian). 

Sometimes our diaspora even sends bricks to place on demolished mosques to show their determination for a Strong Bharat—while earning dollars from Silicon Valley. Who doesn’t love funding a fascist ethnostate to fill the nostalgic feeling of missing your motherland? 

The blossoming homoerotic camaraderie between the Supreme Leader and Donald J. Trump highlights the deepening fascination of Indian Americans with Trump and his MAGA movement. The World’s two largest “democracies” sure love embracing strong-arm populist leaders with a penchant for flipping off minority communities and immigrants, while the price of eggs remains higher than a Made In China “Namaste Trump” hat. 

Trump isn’t doing anything new with his assault on DEI; we in India have perfected it when Mishra from South Bombay, with intergenerational wealth and a family lineage of caste slavery, complains about the reservation system meant to help India’s disadvantaged castes because 3000 Years of Chaturvarna DEI couldn’t help him match up his college scores with his classmates from communities who have only been allowed into schools less than 200 years ago.

Nonetheless, The World’s Largest Democracy has big plans for advancement in 2025, despite the deepening crisis of having only two billionaires dictate government policy. It will summon resources to watch over news anchors who dutifully do their job of speaking truth to power by blaring graphic visuals capable of inducing photosensitive epilepsy. 

Speaking of fiscal priorities, what do you do when you have 129 million people living on less than $2 a day? Build a 40,000 crore nuclear submarine project, of course. “Let them eat uranium!” as Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said. Its pointy secular parliament was inaugurated with a religious puja, top government scientists help put mirrors on demolished mosques, and a Finance Minister swears to never eat onions. 

In this modern age of connection, bullet trains now ferry people from a stadium named after a sitting Supreme Leader to universities embracing Indian Knowledge Systems in their curriculum instead of paying teachers on time. India, after all, has always been one step ahead of the world. 

Unity in Diversity is the maxim of the Indian Nation; this is why we have One Nation, One Election, One Civil Code, One Ration Card, and soon One Nation, One Netflix Subscription, One Ātman, and One Self until a billion people are all amalgamated into a cosmic blob of a singular consciousness. 

This month, India took the bold step of criminalizing situashionships to protect young, impressionable couples. As part of its environmental initiatives for the Paris Climate Agreement and COP 69, it is now banning the Azan to deal with rising noise pollution, while ensuring that Tinder only matches people within the same caste and religion to reduce heart attacks among Indian parents. 

For far too long, our international media has been dominated by countries that have unstable democracies, high child malnutrition rates, and occasionally topple regimes that come in the way of their oil supplies. So much is their obsession with oil that even a coconut oil factory in Kerala, the South Indian state that we print from, often has US Marines drop by. The Occidental Western White Inc. has had a monopoly on showcasing us to the rest of the world. Now, we take the mantle upon ourselves.

The Savala Vada will use this column to help readers familiarize themselves with a fast-changing nation that cloaks itself with the banner of The Mother of Democracy. Join us as we travel far and wide across the subcontinent and meet exploding electric scooter CEOs, influencer politicians with their own genre of Spotify hits, ancient flying helicopters, humble billionaires, imagined school history textbooks, and your friendly neighborhood Starbucks partnering with a corporate conglomerate making drones for Israel. 

As the famous adage by the beloved Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore goes, “Where the mind is without fear and caramelized popcorn is taxed at 18%, in that W rizz sigma male mindset, let my country awake.”