Santosh Desai is regarded as one of India’s leading social commentators. A columnist and a founder at Think9 Consumer Technologies, he is the author of two books on contemporary India, ‘Mother Pious Lady: Making Sense of Everyday India’ (2010), and, more recently, ‘ Memes for Mummyji: Making Sense of Post-Smartphone India’ (2025). Desai has been described as “the nearest thing we have to RK Laxman in prose” as well as “the prose laureate of India’s hybrid modernity”.

Siddharth Pandey speaks to him on the occasion of the launch of his second book.

SP: While it is tempting to regard your recent work as a sequel to your previous one, I am more inclined to treat them as companion volumes on the contemporary Indian moment. In the Introduction of ‘ Memes for Mummyji ’, you prov

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