The new office: How workplaces are undergoing dramatic transformations

The idea of working from home, once derided in India owing to the widely held belief that one "worked" only if one went to an "office", is now no longer an incentive but a necessity.

Manu Vijay’s new workplace fully meets the mandatory requirement of being a well-ventilated office in a pandemic-afflicted world. Whenever he doesn’t have video conferencing calls lined up, the graphic designer with Infosys heads over to a treehouse. Made of mahogany and bamboo, topped with coconut and palm fronds, it took Vijay and his cousin Unni K S, also an Infosys employee, three weeks to make the treehouse. The treehouse is in Unni’s backyard, a few minutes from Vijay’s family home in Kottayam, Kerala.

“We used to work in Bengaluru but got home before the lockdown. I don’t think we could