Palak Writes | Content That Connects and travel to the World

A few days ago, a Reddit post about a DRDO internship stipend caught my attention. The offer was simple enough: a chance to intern at one of India's premier defense research organizations, work alongside scientists, gain exposure to cutting-edge projects, and add a prestigious name to a résumé. The stipend? ₹5,000 per month. At first glance, many people assumed it was either a typo or an exception. Surely one of India's most important research institutions wasn't expecting engineering students to relocate and work for months on a stipend that barely covers a week's expenses in many cities. But the more I looked into it, the more it became clear that this wasn't a one-off case. Multiple DRDO laboratories across the country advertise internships with the same stipend structure. And that's what makes this conversation worth having. Because this isn't really a story about ₹5,000. It's a story about how India treats the people it hopes will build its technolo...

A few months ago, most people weren't talking about data centres. Today, they are at the centre of India's AI ambitions. Google is partnering with Adani to build what is being described as India's largest data centre campus in Visakhapatnam. Andhra Pradesh is preparing power infrastructure capable of supporting more than 15 GW of data centre demand. Haryana has signed a ₹20,000 crore agreement with Anant Raj to expand data centre infrastructure. On paper, this looks like progress. Billions in investment. New digital infrastructure. More cloud computing capacity. A stronger AI ecosystem. The story sounds simple. But the deeper you look, the more complicated it becomes. Because while India is racing to build the infrastructure needed for the AI age, a question is quietly emerging in the background: What exactly will it cost us? The scale of what is being planned is enormous. The Visakhapatnam region alone has attracted proposals from major players including Google, Reliance, ...

"The better I write, the more AI it detects." That was something a writer friend said to me recently. At first, it sounded funny. Then it sounded absurd. And then, the more I thought about it, the more it felt like a glimpse into a much bigger problem. Because if you're a writer today, this fear is surprisingly common. You spend years learning how to write clearly, structure ideas effectively, and make your arguments easier to understand. You learn to cut unnecessary words, improve readability, and develop a consistent style. Yet one day, after doing everything you've been taught to do, an AI detector looks at your work and suggests it may not be yours. The irony is difficult to ignore. AI did not invent good writing. It learned from it. The models we use today were trained on books, essays, blogs, research papers, newsletters, and articles written by humans over decades. The qualities we associate with strong writing- clarity, coherence, structure, persuasion were de...

I don't remember when people started talking about cortisol face. Or hip dips. Or skin barriers. Or facial harmony. I just remember that one day these words seemed to be everywhere. Every few scrolls, there was another video explaining a feature I had never noticed before, why it mattered, and what it apparently said about me. The strange part is that none of these things suddenly appeared overnight. My face didn't change. My body didn't change. The only thing that changed was that I had learned a new way to look at myself. And I think that's what social media does better than anything else. It doesn't always convince us that something is wrong with us. Sometimes, it simply teaches us where to look. Once our attention has been redirected, it's incredibly difficult to stop noticing the very thing we had lived happily without thinking about before. Beauty standards have always existed. The internet didn't invent them. What it did invent was a never-ending stre...

We all knew privacy was slowly disappearing. Every new app, every smarter device, every convenience seemed to ask for a little more data in return. At some point, most of us accepted that trade-off because the technology was genuinely useful. That’s exactly how I felt when I first came across Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses. As someone who creates content, I immediately understood the excitement. The idea of recording your day hands-free, capturing moments exactly as you see them, or interacting with AI without constantly reaching for your phone feels like a natural next step. I’m clearly not alone in thinking that. Meta has already sold over 2 million pairs of these glasses, making it obvious that wearable AI is moving well beyond being an experimental gadget. Whether or not it replaces smartphones, people are already comfortable inviting AI onto their faces. But somewhere between watching product demos and seeing real people use them, my perspective shifted. My feed slowly filled with...