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Tuesday, September 2, 2025

PoV

Matching kundalis is cool again. India’s youth is consulting sun, moon, stars to plan life

Tarot card readers are playing therapists. Astrology cults are big on DU fest grounds.

Why is Bollywood nostalgia selling? Because the present is exhausting for the young

Imtiaz Ali’s Love Aaj Kal – the good one, 2009 – is back in theatres. The Ghost of Pritam Past has risen, guitar in hand, to soothe our collective meltdown.

Global fashion houses have overused Gateway of India. We’re not a one-monument wonder

The formula is predictable—a global luxury house picks a location that’s desi, but with training wheels. Extra points if British royalty once passed by it in a carriage.

Gujarat HC quoting Pink Floyd is fun. It makes people want to read judgments

Democratisation of legal language should take support of pop culture to make law not only more accessible but also fun, and also add depth and value to otherwise banal judgments.

Desperate celebrities are doing podcasts to be relevant. We’re sick of it

Fame used to be effortless. All you needed was a viral Koffee With Karan rapid fire moment. You didn’t need a lukewarm Spotify deal or a rebranding sob story.

Trying too hard is now cringe. Welcome to the era of Bare Minimum, effortless detachment

Reels are busy romanticising the Pinterest-ification of apathy. The frantic Monday grind is swapped for an eight-minute-long snooze, and barely-there effort is rebranded as a self-care day off.

A white woman wants to see real India in Forster’s ‘Passage’. Britain is yet to find it

If the latest cohort of writers is anything to go by, it seems like colonisation continues to have an existential hold, particularly over British-Indian authors.

Nadaaniyan has ruined Bollywood rom-coms for me. A who-can-act-worse contest with no winners

Ibrahim Ali Khan’s character is presented as a middle-class boy. But how authentic is the portrayal? I have never known of middle-class families that own wood fire ovens.

Hired on Hinge—Dating apps are networking goldmine. Students use them to land jobs

With no cold emails or LinkedIn requests, dating apps let users pitch themselves—short, sweet, and personal. It’s all about connections, minus the power suits and soulmates.

I prefer Chandigarh over Delhi. Too many broken people in the capital

Delhi wears annoyance as if it’s a built-in personality trait. Take a slow, casual walk while boarding the metro, and you’ll irritate half the crowd.

On Camera

Road building is a money-making racket in India. And we have a very short memory

We get very angry when rain disrupts our lives and brings our cities to a halt, but by the time the elections come around, we have forgotten how angry we were.

A Rs 33,000 cr ‘banking fraud’: ED’s case against Arvind Dham, Amtek’s web of ‘500 shell companies’

ED has accused Amtek promoter Arvind Dham of controlling web of nearly 500 shell companies operating as a layered structure, with up to 15 levels of indirect ownership, to divert funds.

‘Real-time, all-climate’ explosives detector could enhance airport & border security—no dogs, no swabs

Bengaluru-based CeNS designs accurate, portable, and cheap sensor using surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy. It could significantly reduce risks at vulnerable choke points. 

For Indian Mercedes, Asim Munir’s dumper truck in mirror is closer than it appears

From Munir’s point of view, a few bumps here and there is par for the course. He isn’t going to drive his dumper truck to its doom. He wants to use it as a weapon.