A cultural autopsy of the death of hobbies in India

Somewhere in the second half of the Kala Kendra's nritya-natakam on Karna's life, just after the scene where he donates his kavach and kundal to Indra, I caught myself zoning out. I was sitting in the Kamani Auditorium (Delhi), surrounded by rows of earnest culture aficionados, retirees, visibly bored schoolchildren, and those select few who were more absorbed in making reels than enjoying the performance.
The stage glowed with molten amber, Karna's silhouette frozen in a moment of tragic generosity, the mridangam beating low, and the echoes of Manohar Singh's baritone voice-over still resonating. And yet, my mind drifted.
A strange thought sneaked in: What on earth was I doing here? Not 'here' as in physically present (I can account for that), but 'here' as in still doing this. Still attending long, meandering theatre performances in a time of short-form everything.
What am I trying to prove, or preserve? Is this hobby of mine, watching theatre, some quiet, performative nostalgia designed to feel slightly superior to the Netflix binge crowd (to which I too belong, incidentally)? Or just plain angst dressed up as a pretentious cultural flex?
The doubt passed, as such thoughts do. The dancer moved again, and Karna's dilemma bled back into mine. Later, walking out into the golden haze of Mandi House, I realised that what I experienced was not just momentary self-doubt.
It was a lingering suspicion that hobbies, of any kind, are quietly dying in India. And with them, something more intangible – our capacity for leisure without utility, and joy without transaction.
Traditional Indian hobbies such as numismatics, philately, collecting old books and memorabilia, ham radio, amateur birdwatching, chalk art, painting, and classical music appreciation are increasingly the preserve of people stuck in a 'those were the days' time warp.
The spaces they once occupied in middle-class life are now filled with the hypnotic glow of smartphones and the curated dopamine rush engendered by social media. This loss is deeper than mere rose-tinted nostalgia.
Hobbies, at their best, anchor us to time. They reintroduce the value of patience and help cultivate deep attention. They also refine our aesthetic temperament, what the ancients used to call rasa-bodha.
In essence, they are un-monetizable joys, for you cannot 'scale' a stamp collection or 'leverage' your knowledge of the difference between the Indian bulbul and Indian pitta. Perhaps this is one of the reasons for their fading away.
For the post-liberalisation generations raised on the urgency of cracking competitive exams and continuously upgrading skill-sets, hobbies came to be seen as frivolous distractions unless they impressed the job interviewer or led to a CV boost. Parents, too, changed.
Where once a child who practised the violin after school was indulged as 'creative', today he or she is nudged toward robotics classes or extra tuitions. This is the industrialisation of childhood. Time not monetised is wasted, and effort without an audience is vanity.
Meanwhile, the idea of the hobby itself has been subtly co-opted by platforms. Reading is often reduced to performative lists on Goodreads. Even music, formerly a slow courtship between the listener and the raga, is now consumed through remixes of bhopali and malkauns. And to be honest, I have been guilty of this too.
There was but a gentle rebellion in pursuing hobbies. They resisted the fallacy of outcomes. You did not indulge in amateur astronomy to become a better executive, nor did you read old editions of Reader's Digest to improve your CGPA.
You did it because something in you stirred when you did that activity. But our modern, digital culture demands metrics: followers, shares, views, virality. Leisure, simply, has been devoured by hustle.
The decline of hobbies is also intertwined with India's shrinking public commons. Parks are either decrepit or commercialised. Local libraries, once havens for readers, are in disrepair. Hobby clubs and societies – all staples of the genteel consensus which informed Indian middle-class society – are dwindling.
In Delhi's Lodhi Garden or Bengaluru's Lalbagh, you will still find hobbyists gathering quietly, but their numbers pale in comparison to the influencers posing for curated photo shoots. The urban commons is now, simply, an arena for performance, a check-in location on Instagram.
Hobbies allowed for the democratisation of expertise. You did not need elite credentials to cultivate knowledge in entomology, or to become a respected chronicler of the history of food.
In fact, some of India's most respected niche historians and conservationists began not as professionals, but as hobbyists. For instance, the venerable Valmiki Thapar, who passed away recently, started tiger conservation as a hobby.
All things considered, the picture is not entirely bleak. Reddit forums on Indian archaeology, niche podcasts on Indian theatre forms, and running clubs, are enabling young Indians to find communities beyond their physical geographies. But these are still fringe movements and not yet part of mainstream consciousness.
What we need, perhaps, is a quiet cultural shift. One that re-legitimises leisure and restores dignity to doing something for its own sake. Schools must make time for unstructured exploration. Cities must nurture non-commercial public spaces. Parents must reimagine ambition.
And we must not be rigid. Social media can be leveraged to spark a resurgence in hobbies by encouraging them to be archived and displayed. For instance, the act of performing a hobby can be shared and hashtagged to make it attractive to a larger populace. The hobbyist must become the content creator, but a conscientious one at that.
Thus, we must work overtime to rescue the culture of hobbies from whatever it has devolved into. For if we lose it, we lose the invisible curriculum that taught us introspection and quietude.
We lose spaces where class and ambition were momentarily suspended. Hobbies taught us to care. And in an India that is rapidly developing, noisy, and fast, such care is not an indulgence. It is a necessity.
Author's plea:
If you still practice a hobby, please do share more about it with a friend, family member, fellow hobbyist, or even a rank stranger. Not necessarily over social media, but perhaps over a cup of chai or filter coffee. This might seem unnecessary, but then does not the soul of a civilisation lie in its unnecessary acts?
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Views expressed above are the author's own.

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