Commercializing Culture: Why We’re Paying for Walks, Talks, and Togetherness?
- Neha Jha
- Dec 18, 2025
- 7 min read
Updated: Dec 19, 2025
When I first wrote about my experience with Ekamra Walks in Bhubaneswar, I received a pretty sharp reaction from a senior citizen on Facebook. Ekamra Walks is a heritage walking trail in the Old Town of Odisha’s capital city, held every Sunday. My first walk was a perspective-shifting experience, and, back in 2017, heritage trails were a novelty in Odisha. That sharp criticism was more of a scepticism towards organisations that collaborated with the tourism department because citizens didn’t really like strangers and youngsters walking around their own city dressed like vagabonds or backpackers with cameras in their hands, seeing, judging, the lanes and bylanes, the cows, the smell wafting from temples, and the garbage around them. I just dismissed it as pure scepticism of a senior citizen towards something new.
Cut to 2025: I saw a similar comment, masked as a sly criticism of heritage walks in Old Delhi. Purani Dilli is an oft-visited yet mysterious place. You do need people to guide you through its many lanes and bylanes, and also help evade scammers and thieves throughout. But this critic was more annoyed by the fee the heritage walk folks charged per person for a residential walk through Old Delhi. We paid ₹700 per person, and unlike Ekamra Walks, no water bottles or juices were provided. Maybe that’s why the comment - “Imagine paying money to walk through our lanes when you just have to ask any local.” - kind of hit me.
I don’t mind paying for such experiences, but weren’t such concepts of paid walks, nature camps, pottery sessions, park visits, or musical sessions in parks unheard of before? Why? Not because people weren’t interested. When have people not been interested in the arts, culture, and entertainment? But because we always had them around us, in our homes, communities, festivals, everywhere! We never thought we’d have to ‘pay’ for such ‘curated experiences’. It was just there!
The Rise of Curated Experiences
There was a time when the community didn’t need curation. You didn’t have to sign up for a heritage walk or pay for a readers’ circle to feel like you belonged somewhere. Most of us grew up watching our parents build community almost accidentally—on morning walks, during Sunday cleaning routines, while borrowing sugar from next-door neighbours, while writing letters that travelled slower but carried far more weight. These weren’t events. They were rhythms. And they quietly held our lives together.
Somewhere between the rise of gated apartments, odd work hours, digital-first lives, and the constant hum of screens, we slipped out of these small rituals without even noticing. What replaced them feels… strangely transactional. Especially in the last few years, particularly during India’s winter months, cities big and small have witnessed a surge of curated “experiences”: heritage walks, book clubs, reading circles, writers’ mixers, city trails, pottery mornings, sunrise meetups. You register on Instagram, scan a QR code, and show up.
It’s charming, yes. But it’s also revealing. Because what we’re really looking at is the slow commercialisation of basic human experiences—the same ones we once shared freely, through everyday life.
Desiring a Community We Leave Behind
Earlier, a big part of moving to a new city or a new place was making friends. When I first moved to our brand new flat in Bhubaneswar with my family, there were curious people all around - neighbours asking us where we came from, girls my age trying to befriend a painfully shy me, newspaper vendors knocking on our doors - a whole community came into being. My brother made friends that last to this day.
Cut to the present: I’ve moved to a new city, and when my mother asks if I’ve made any friends, I say No. I don’t even know my next-door neighbour, even though she is my namesake. I doubt anybody here knows anybody. Had it not been for work and livelihoods, nobody would move to metro cities, leaving communities behind in their small towns. Community keeps us alive and mentally well.
Urbanisation didn’t just change how we live; it changed how we socialise. What used to be ambient—bumping into a neighbour, gathering around a park bench, chatting with uncles who held court outside the grocery store—has now become a rarity. People stay indoors more, commute longer, move cities more frequently, and rely on digital platforms for companionship or recreation.
So when a natural community thins out, a curated community steps in.
And increasingly, curated community comes with a price tag.
A Sunday-morning heritage walk costs between ₹599 and ₹999. Book clubs charge for entry, membership, or a seat in a reading circle. Even wellness walks, nature trails, and morning meditation meetups—activities once embedded into daily life—are now structured events.
None of this is inherently bad. But it does raise a quiet, important question:
Why are we paying for what used to be free? And what does it say about our relationship with culture, connection, and urban life?
Repackaged Rituals
Think of our parents. When they woke up and went for a walk, they didn’t need a host, a registration form, or a curated theme. The walk was the community. People walked together, discussed politics, exchanged recipes, and checked in on one another’s lives. No one called it “networking.” It was simply living.
Today, that same walk might be marketed as:
A heritage trail exploring forgotten city landmarks
A wellness walk with guided conversations
A sunrise meetup for “like-minded people.”
We’re not just walking anymore—we’re subscribing to belonging.
That’s the core ironic twist of our times.
We withdrew from shared public life, and now we’re paying to get fragments of it back. And we know we can’t get it back entirely, so we take what we get.
The basic premise of the criticism I received on both walks was simple: why spend money to see something that already exists?
And I see the point. A heritage walk is not a movie or a restaurant where we pay for a service we can’t get on our own. Or do we?
I know it's next to impossible to explore Old Delhi or Bhubaneswar’s Old Town entirely on one’s own. So, we prefer being with someone who knows everything about such places. And we call it a service.
However, it’s still a community activity, and not just entertainment. And let’s not forget - even movie-watching experience has become isolated. We’d rather have endless subscriptions to streaming services than watch one theatrical release.
Enter Offlining Subscriptions
The subscription economy didn’t start with heritage walks—it started with entertainment.OTT platforms, music apps, learning platforms, fitness subscriptions. Paying small recurring amounts doesn’t feel like spending; it feels like access.
According to studies on India’s young consumers, subscription culture thrives because it promises convenience, discovery, and a sense of identity through curated choices. Monthly payments hide the psychological burden of cost. You don’t “buy,” you “access.” You don’t commit, you subscribe.
But something interesting has happened in the last couple of years:
the subscription mindset has moved offline.
Events and experiences now mirror the digital subscription model:
Monthly or annual memberships
Tiered access
Exclusive groups
Recurring community events
Pay-as-you-go rituals
What Netflix did for entertainment, these curated experiences are doing for physical social life: making belonging something you acquire, not simply participate in.
And because younger Indians are increasingly comfortable with recurring payments, this feels normal, even natural. We are primed to subscribe—whether it’s to a streaming service or a walking club. Now, I don’t mean to critique this criticism further. The point is to look at both sides of the coin. The shift is more complicated, more human.
Filling a real gap
People are lonely. Urban life is isolating. Those old rituals no longer fit our pace, our lifestyles, our architecture. A curated meet-up can genuinely offer connection, discovery, and joy. Book clubs help people read again. Heritage walks revive local history. City mixers allow strangers to form meaningful friendships.
Paid doesn’t always mean hollow—it often means intentional.
When every small pleasure—walking together, reading together, talking to strangers—becomes a purchasable offering, culture becomes a product. Capitalism finds a way to monetise everything we breathe, see, or feel. And we become consumers of life rather than participants in it.
Instead of rebuilding the natural textures of community, we might be outsourcing them.
Both arguments are valid. And they co-exist without cancelling each other out.
From “Part of Life” to “Part of the Calendar”
The most telling change is this:
Our rituals are no longer embedded in our days—they are booked into our schedules.
You don’t bump into neighbours, you plan a mixer.
You don’t join a casual morning group; you sign up for a themed walk.
You don’t build friendships through repetition; you discover people through curated prompts.
You don’t have hobbies anymore; you ‘create content’.
Life has become a series of appointments.
Even joy has an event manager now.
What do We Lose, and what might We Regain?
Perhaps the point isn’t to dismiss new rituals—many of them are beautiful, thoughtful, and empowering. They bring strangers together in ways that might never have happened otherwise.
But as we participate in them, it might be worth remembering:
We once had access to the community without paying for it.
We once knew how to create rituals without outsourcing them.
We once built belonging through presence, not curation.
Maybe the answer isn’t to reject these paid experiences, but to let them remind us of the rituals we’ve forgotten—and the possibility of bringing some of them back, in small, unstructured ways.
If heritage walks bring people closer to the city, we could also revive the simple act of strolling with a neighbour.
If book clubs help us read again, reading itself can become a shared ritual of everyday life.
If mixers help us connect, connection can move beyond scheduled spaces.
Culture doesn’t disappear; it mutates. And in that mutation lies the chance to rebuild what we lost—without always needing a QR code. Or a meetup in an overhyped cafe.
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