Pooja Pillai is an entertainment journalist with Asian Media Group, where she covers cinema, pop culture, internet trends, and the politics of representation. Her work spans interviews, cultural features, and social commentary across digital platforms.
She began her reporting career as a news anchor, scripting and presenting stories for a regional newsroom. With a background in journalism and media studies, she has since built a body of work exploring how entertainment intersects with social and cultural shifts, particularly through a South Indian lens.
She brings both newsroom rigour and narrative curiosity to her work, and believes the best stories don’t just inform — they reveal what we didn’t know we needed to hear.
For most people, childhood memories often fade into dusty corners of photo albums. But for Ralph Leng, they stood still behind the familiar walls of a house in India he hadn’t seen in over 16 years.
Ralph, a London-based video creator, recently travelled back to India, the place he once called home. The moment he reached the gate of his old house; a flood of emotions took over. In a short video shared online, he’s seen walking through the lanes of his childhood and breaking down as he finally steps into the house he had to leave as a boy. His voice cracks as he says, “It’s crazy,” capturing the moment years of distance came crashing into the present.
The video also cuts to clips from his early days in India, him laughing, running around, and even playing with an elephant. The house hadn’t changed much, but for Ralph, everything felt different. He wrote simply, “I love India,” in his post. No frills, just raw memories and emotions.
Viewers online were quick to connect with him. His video has crossed over 2.4 million views and sparked thousands of comments, many from people who had similar stories. One person wrote about growing up in their grandmother’s house in Delhi and how they still cry thinking about it. Another said, “You don’t leave memories behind. They come with you.”
The reaction wasn’t just about nostalgia, but it was about shared longing. Many related to Ralph’s story of moving countries and leaving a part of themselves behind. Some even asked if he managed to find any old friends. Others simply said, “This made me cry too.”
Ralph hasn’t stopped there. While in India, he’s been sharing glimpses of his journey exploring places, meeting locals, and soaking up the chaos and beauty of the country that once shaped him.
What made Ralph’s video resonate was its honesty. No elaborate setup, no filters, just a man standing where he once played as a boy, trying to make sense of time gone by. And in doing so, he reminded many that no matter where we go, a part of us always waits back home.
László Krasznahorkai takes home the 2025 Nobel Prize in Literature
Swedish Academy praises his dark, intense storytelling and visionary work
Known for Satantango, The Melancholy of Resistance and sprawling sentences
Prize includes £820,000 (₹1.03 crore) and Stockholm ceremony in December
Joins past laureates like Han Kang, Annie Ernaux, and Bob Dylan
Okay, so this happened. László Krasznahorkai, yes, the Hungarian novelist who makes reading feel almost like a slow, hypnotic descent into some bleak, hypnotic place, just won the Nobel Prize in Literature 2025. The Swedish Academy made the announcement on Thursday, describing his work as “compelling and visionary” and throwing in a line about “apocalyptic terror” fitting, honestly, given the his obsession with collapse, decay, chaos.
Hungarian writer Krasznahorkai wins Nobel Prize in Literature as critics hail his daring, unsettling literary vision Getty Images
Why Krasznahorkai got the Nobel Prize in Literature
He was born 1954, Gyula, Hungary. Tiny town, right on the Romanian border. Quiet. Nothing much happening there. Maybe that’s why he ended up staring at life so much, thinking too hard. In 1985, he wroteSatantango, twelve chapters, twelve long paragraphs. It’s heavy, but also brilliant.
You read it and your brain sort of melts a little but in the best possible way. The Swedish Academy called him a Central European epic writer, in the tradition of Kafka and Thomas Bernhard.
Nobel Prize in Literature 2025 goes to Hungarian author Krasznahorkai known for bleak and intense writing styleGetty Images
His writing life: chaos, darkness, a bit of play
Krasznahorkai is not the type to do interviews. He’s private and rarely smiles in photos. People who have read his work, including Hari Kunzru and a few others, describe him as “bleak but funny.” Strange mix, but it fits his style.
His novels The Melancholy of Resistance, War and War, Seiobo There Below are not casual reads. They are intense, layered, almost architectural in their construction. Then there’s Herscht 07769, his new book. Dark, set in Germany, full of social unrest, and the story is threaded with references to Johann Sebastian Bach’s music, giving it a haunting, atmospheric backdrop.
Krasznahorkai has also had a long partnership with director Béla Tarr. Satantango was adapted into a seven-hour film, and it worked.
Readers around the world react to Krasznahorkai winning the Nobel Prize in LiteratureGetty Images
Reactions to the Nobel
Writers are reacting. Some saying “finally.” Some saying “he’s too intense for most people.” Some saying “I can’t imagine anyone else this year.” Krasznahorkai just keeps writing, keeps being him. Once, when someone asked him about his crazy long sentences, he shrugged and said something like: letters first, then words, then sentences, then longer sentences, and so on. He has spent decades just trying to make something beautiful out of chaos. That’s him, really.
The Nobel includes a medal, a diploma, and £820,000 (₹1.03 crore), with the ceremony taking place in Stockholm on 10 December. And now he’s standing alongside some huge names like Bob Dylan, Olga Tokarczuk, Han Kang. He’s not like them though. He’s a darker, twistier, strange, human. You read him and you feel something. Maybe unease. Maybe awe. Maybe both.
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