[ad_1] One of the most enduring sights of Mumbai is the sea of blue tarpaulin that acts as roof to the settlements that surround the Chhatrapati Shivaji international airport. “It […]
Tag: HTWknd
Kolkata’s Dhakeshwari idol: More clues unlocked
[ad_1] Could the vajra-dharan mudra, held by every deity in the Dhakeshwari idol tableau, have a link with Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, guru of Swami Vivekananda? Take a look at the image […]
Another side to summer: The Way We Were by Poonam Saxena
[ad_1] Living through these interminable days of blazing heat, every month seemingly among the hottest on record, all we can do is hunker down and ask ourselves: How are we […]
A lot of sweet nothings: Swetha Sivakumar on sugar-free highs
[ad_1] It was while analysing the chemical compounds in coal tar that Russian researcher Constantin Fahlberg of Johns Hopkins University discovered the world’s first artificial sweetener. After working in his […]
Table manors: Meet seven immigrant women who helped change how America eats
[ad_1] One of the easiest ways to say “This is us” is through food. Alongside race and dress, it is among the clearest markers of identity and “otherness”. It is […]
Ṭallī, kuṛī, baniyān: The intriguing story of where our words come from
[ad_1] Some magic hides in plain sight. Take the languages we speak. Each word represents not only itself — intricate, complicate, duplicate, communicate — but also the story of how […]
Set and match: Ludo meets chess in a new game called Squarace
[ad_1] Elements of two ancient Indian games, chess and ludo, have been blended to form a brand-new one — Squarace — in an unusual effort by a former ISRO engineer […]
From scrawny teen to the Liverpool team: Colombian football star Luis Diaz
[ad_1] The boy was so thin and small, anyone could nudge him off the ball. The coaches and talent scouts were in a quandary. The boy was also a wonder. […]
Keeping score: How to judge a gaming world
[ad_1] In April, The New York Times published a review of Elden Ring, the recent release by FromSoftware. The piece, by Brian X Chen, met with scorn and derision in […]
Spotted in the wild: A Wknd interview with Charudutt Mishra, snow leopard man
[ad_1] Nobody knows how many snow leopards there are in the wild, not even Charudutt Mishra, the world’s foremost expert on the big cat, and he’s been studying them for […]
Where ‘they’ ends and ‘we’ begins: Charles Assisi on AI
[ad_1] Just how people who write fiction exercise the “imagination muscle” is a question that has always intrigued me. It appears ridiculously tough. Friends familiar with the task tell me […]
At the end of her rope? The Wknd Puzzle by Dilip D’Souza
[ad_1] An old chestnut of a puzzle that we used to puzzle over as schoolkids involves an elastic rope and an intrepid ant, let’s call her Sharvari. The rope is […]
Here’s why you really must befriend a bore
[ad_1] How many friends do you have that you consider boring? Chances are, not many. A new study on what we consider boring, what else we draw from that inference […]
Inside the mind of the cereal filler: Swetha Sivakumar on breakfasts
[ad_1] It is ironic that ready-to-eat cereals, which are now sugar-laden and carb-heavy, started out as an ideal healthy breakfast. The first manufactured cereal is credited to James Caleb Jackson, […]
How Beethoven’s 9th, born #OTD, became a new world anthem
[ad_1] There’s a video on YouTube, shot at the Placa de Sant Roc in the small town of Sabadell in Spain. It opens with shots of the square, then moves […]
Bollywood is learning about the perils of vanity, says Anupama Chopra
[ad_1] The current mood in Bollywood is panic. Last week, two high-profile films, Heropanti 2 and Runway 34, with A-list stars (Tiger Shroff and Ajay Devgn), opened to sub-par numbers […]
Art on the moon, in a storage depot,near Everest: See how galleries are changing
[ad_1] A tiny art gallery on the moon; an artists’ residency at the foot of Mount Everest; an all-access warehouse museum in the Netherlands: A space for art can be […]
Man of the mat: Meet Siddharth Singh, India’s Brazilian-jiu-jitsu champ
[ad_1] Everything was going well in Siddharth Singh’s life. After Doon School, Delhi University and University of St Andrews in Scotland, he got a well-paid job as regional business manager […]
‘A museum must never be seen as a dead space where old things are stored’
[ad_1] He has designed a state-of-the-art display for a 2,000-year-old Egyptian mummy in Hyderabad; equipped a new museum in Kerala with a hologram that lets visitors “talk” to late CM […]
Navigating the gift of a second chance: With Love by Simran Mangharam
[ad_1] On my morning walks in the park, I have made new friends across age groups. One of these, Roopa, is a cheerful, sprightly 74-year-old who has lived alone since […]
Freefall, hover, fly: Inside Hyd’s new indoor skydiving arena
[ad_1] If strapping on a parachute and stepping out of an airplane feels like an odd fit, you can now try something that approximates at least part of that experience. […]
A return of the Lord of the Ring? Rudraneil Sengupta on Tyson Fury’s ‘last bout’
[ad_1] Tyson Fury has retired. Or so he said on April 24, after he knocked out compatriot Dillian Whyte to retain his World Boxing Council (WBC) heavyweight title. This is […]
Indians are travelling again. See what’s on the cards for 2022
[ad_1] This March, India resumed regular international flights after a two-year hiatus, and Indians are raring to go. Over 3,200 flights are set to leave for foreign lands each week, […]
Aiming for ‘Game Over’: Meet India’s top gaming speedrunners
[ad_1] If they give you ruled paper, write the other way, Spanish poet Juan Ramón Jiménez said. In the world of gaming, the rebels writing the other way are the […]
Raising the bar: Swetha Sivakumar on how gritty beans became beloved chocolate
[ad_1] We groan about industrial food processing. “Food was so much healthier and tastier in the past,” we say. While this is true of certain things, it is certainly not […]
All aflutter: Create a garden friendly to butterflies and birds
[ad_1] How much do you really know about the birds and the bees? Jokes aside, it’s an important question when planning a garden — whether in an outdoor space, on […]
Earth day 2022: Discover the citizen scientist within you
[ad_1] Let your next picnic, hike, nature trail serve a larger cause. Around the world, citizen-science projects enlist regular people — usually nature-lovers, birders and amateur naturalists — to collect […]
What kind of packaged juice is the freshest squeeze? Swetha Sivakumar explains
[ad_1] What do satellite imagery and a “black book of algorithms” have to do with beverages? I have one word for you: Coca-Cola. These technologies are now being used by […]
Faking it in five letters: Study finds more people are cheating at Wordle
[ad_1] Launched in October 2021, it united the online world in an incredibly difficult time, using just a few rows of recognisable squares. Then the New York Times (NYT) acquired […]
Tox screen report: Check out new variants of the Bechdel test for movies
[ad_1] “If you can remove a female character from your plot and replace her with a hot lamp, and your story still works, you’re a hack,” American comic-book creator Kelly […]
AI lullabies, sensor sheets: The future of sleep is here
[ad_1] We spend a third of our lives sleeping, or at least we’re supposed to. But as stress levels rise and screens shine on for longer, sleep cycles are breaking, […]
Snooze, don’t lose: The true cost of sleep debt
[ad_1] Put down the remote. Turn out the lights. You’re already likely deep in debt. As the war on sleep intensifies — driven by factors such as rising stress levels, […]
Powering down: Inside India’s sleep crisis
[ad_1] Shakespeare called sleep the “chief nourisher in life’s feast”, in his 17th-century play Macbeth. It would be another century before scientists began researching sleep as part of Western medicine. […]
An Elon Musk-run Twitter? I’d log out: Charles Assisi, in this week’s Life Hacks
[ad_1] Elon Musk, currently the richest man in the world, has announced his intent to acquire a controlling stake in Twitter. The management, led by CEO Parag Agrawal, is determined […]
Strait shooter: A Wknd interview with the parents of autistic record-setting swimmer Jiya Rai
[ad_1] Standing on the jetty at Talaimannar in Sri Lanka, Madan Rai gazed at the expanse of the Indian Ocean. It was a cloudy night and the sea was choppy. […]
It enriches us when lives lived in the margins storm the page,says Poonam Saxena
[ad_1] Who is interested in the stories and lives of old people? Almost no one. In our aggressively youth-oriented society, people above a certain age — old parents, grandparents — […]
A spoonful of culture: Swetha Sivakumar on curd, yoghurt, kefir and skyr
[ad_1] Back in the ’80s, during a large family gathering, a non-Tamil-speaking cousin asked my old aunt, “Can I have some more?” while pointing to a dish that he enjoyed. […]
Survivor’s kilt: The rise of dystopia-core fashion
[ad_1] How would you dress for the end of the world? In scenes ranging from Biblical paintings to modern-day cinema, people are usually taken by surprise, whether by the Rapture […]
The Great Re-Set: How the tussle over the return to work is playing out
[ad_1] What shall we call this phase of the pandemic? We’ve been though The Great Retreat, those months when India locked down in 2020. We’ve had The Great Adjustment, as […]
Treasures going back 10,000 years: A peek inside the Encyclopedia of Indian Art
[ad_1] Khujasta needed dissuasion from leaving her home at night to meet her lover, and her husband’s pet parrot devised a way of doing that. It would start a moral […]
One for the ages: Klopp, Guardiola and a battle with no beef
[ad_1] Last Sunday, Liverpool and Manchester City played out yet another chapter of their thrilling, frenetic rivalry in the English Premier League. Since then, both teams have booked their places […]
How is one to keep up with it all? Charles Assisi offers tips in Life Hacks
[ad_1] All pride has a shelf life, as the saying goes. The truth of this was brought home to me during a recent conversation with my teenage kid. I was […]
Instant hit: Swetha Sivakumar on how a war sparked the birth of the noodle craze
[ad_1] In 1945, after Japan surrendered to the Allies, a young man named Momofuku Ando was walking through the streets of war-ravaged Osaka when he saw a long line of […]
Beyond the mouse: How the click became the soundtrack of our lives
[ad_1] The most reassuring sound in modern life is one everyone hears but no one registers anymore. It’s tiny, as sounds go; it’s only got one note. One probably hears […]
A new sea monster: See how light pollution is disturbing the ocean depths
[ad_1] City lights are disturbing the darkness as much as 40 metres below the surface of the seas, a new world atlas of oceanic light pollution has found. The atlas […]
Architect Gita Balakrishnan is walking from Kolkata to Delhi with a message
[ad_1] “It was not meant to be so hot,” says architect Gita Balakrishnan. When she set off from Kolkata on February 13, planning to walk to New Delhi over two […]
Bollywood could do with some of Rajamouli’s secret sauce: Anupama Chopra on RRR
[ad_1] In April 2017, just after watching Baahubali 2: The Conclusion, I posted the following tweet: “Stardom is defined as the power to get bums on seats. The response to […]
How much did they get right? A look at films set in 2022
[ad_1] By 2022, or so the movies had it, humankind would either have run out of food, seen society fall apart, or found solutions to its battle for survival on […]
Hopepunk, grimdark, noblebright: Gautam Bhatia on new genres of storytelling
[ad_1] Intro: Where does speculative fiction go in a dystopia? New genres suggest that the most likely directions are upward and onward, through stories that champion hope and optimism, collective […]
Flash drive: Meet the mother and son touring India anew every summer
[ad_1] For Mitra Satheesh and her 10-year-old son Narayan Satheesh, the pandemic will always be linked to a summer road trip that was just the two of them, and their […]
Dream scapes: How cities of the future are shaping up around the world
[ad_1] Somewhere in north-western Saudi Arabia, plans for an ambitious new city are taking shape. Neom, being constructed at the cost of $500 billion, is hoping to be “the most […]
The last thing you’ll do as a couple: Simran Mangharam on closure
[ad_1] Every break-up is its own kind of tragedy. Even when both people in a relationship sense that it is nearing its end, the person who actually ends it usually […]
On his own trip: See how a 21-year-old travelled to 40 countries in 4 years
[ad_1] A great way to start a conversation in Azerbaijan is by talking about the TV serial Ramayan (1987); it is still remembered there, for its opulent sets and costumes. […]
What’s in store for India’s coastal cities?
[ad_1] Indonesia is shifting its capital, partly in an attempt to get away from the sea. Jakarta, its current capital city, sits on the island of Java, a narrow strip […]
An uneven score: Rudraneil Sengupta on the Will Smith film King Richard
[ad_1] It is a pity that Will Smith’s violent outburst at the Oscars has drawn attention away from the film he won Best Actor for. Ironically, it’s about a man […]
He was cheerful, loving: Pt Ravi Shankar’s wife Sukanya Shankar looks back
[ad_1] His last words were, “I could have been a better musician,” says Sukanya Shankar, of her late husband, Pandit Ravi Shankar. He was a maestro who never met his […]
A fanciful flight plan: The Wknd Puzzle by Dilip D’Souza
[ad_1] I’ve heard and thought about variants of this puzzle several times, and they always remind me of the tragedy of Amelia Earhart. She and her navigator Fred Noonan disappeared […]
Drive My Car: Japan’s first film up for a Best Picture Oscar is exquisite
[ad_1] Can I persuade you to watch a three-hour Japanese film about the hesitant, fragile relationship between a theatre director-and-actor, still grieving and desperately trying to decode the actions of […]
Mafia! There’s a Godfather parody too
[ad_1] Were it not for VHS tapes and the local video library, kids of the 1990s might never have heard of Mafia! (1998). The oddly named movie (it’s also called […]
Bad guys, good moments: 6 key scenes from the Godfather trilogy
[ad_1] There have been films about the mafia before The Godfather (1972) and there have been films since. But Francis Ford Coppola’s adaptation of Mario Puzo’s 1969 novel isn’t just […]
The Godfather at 50: Life lessons you can’t refuse
[ad_1] There’s a scene in Nora Ephron’s You’ve Got Mail, where Meg Ryan asks her online friend, played by Tom Hanks, for advice on saving her bookstore. They have an […]
Vito power: The Godfather at 50
[ad_1] As he pounded away on an early draft of The Godfather on an Olympia Manual typewriter in his New York basement in 1966, the then-cash-strapped Mario Puzo couldn’t have […]
Triumph with a tee: A Wknd interview with golfer Anirban Lahiri
[ad_1] Like a classic slow burn, it built up slowly before everything spiralled out of control. Anirban Lahiri vividly remembers the tipping point. It was the crisp autumn morning of […]
A new master plan: DAG inaugurates new address in Mumbai with a massive show
[ad_1] DAG is all but bursting out of its frame. In Delhi, a second outpost of the 29-year-old gallery opens at Janpath in April. In Mumbai, its bright, three-level gallery […]
Look before you weep: There’s more to Meena Kumari than teary melodrama
[ad_1] Meena Kumari breathed her last on March 31, 1972, in Room 26 of Bombay’s St Elizabeth’s nursing home. She was 39. Pakeezah, directed by her estranged husband Kamal Amrohi, […]
Torque of the town: A museum where you can see and ride rare two-wheelers
[ad_1] It’s time travel of a different kind. A privately run two-wheeler museum in Mahabaleshwar is offering visitors a chance to gawk at specimens nearly 100 years old, and ride […]
All together now: Treasures from the Islamic Art gallery at Salar Jung Museum
[ad_1] Swords, ceramics, celestial globes and astrolabes that mapped the positions of the stars, miniature paintings and ancient manuscripts signed by Mughal emperors: it will be a mix of the […]
Pandemic pivots: Meet five people who have emerged with lives lived better
[ad_1] This week marks two years since India went into lockdown, on March 24, 2020. It was among the world’s widest, strictest and most sudden lockdowns, and one that affected […]
Model cars, furniture: What’s driving the craze for collectibles in India?
[ad_1] Sports memorabilia as collectibles, one would expect. It wasn’t such a surprise when Neeraj Chopra’s Olympic gold-winning javelin sold for ₹1.5 crore in October. Cars, coins, art, watches, jewellery […]
Swapping gloves for guns in Kyiv: The Sporting Life by Rudraneil Sengupta
[ad_1] In September, Oleksandr Usyk was running rings around Anthony Joshua, hammering the champion over 12 fleet-footed rounds, in front of the latter’s home crowd in London. The bout was […]
Stirring the plot: A Wknd interview with author Geetanjali Shree
[ad_1] When Geetanjali Shree turned 19 and was showing every sign of growing into an independent-minded young woman, her father gave her a hundred-rupee note as a birthday present (an […]
Read an exclusive excerpt from Geetanjali Shree’s Tomb of Sand
[ad_1] At some point later in time, in Sri Lanka, the ace batsman of the Pakistani cricket team starts hiccupping right before a match, and he just can’t stop. They […]
The work-from-where conundrum: Life Hacks by Charles Assisi
[ad_1] It’s only a matter of time before offices, in their current form, become relics. I’ve argued this point here before. What will the post-pandemic workplace look like? That is […]
Sanjay Leela Bhansali a rare auteur still true to his roots, says Anupama Chopra
[ad_1] “Even today I do not go to a shoot without listening to five songs of Lata Mangeshkar on the way,” Sanjay Leela Bhansali told me in a recent interview. […]
Can you find the sweet spot? The Wknd Puzzle by Dilip D’Souza
[ad_1] This is an easy puzzle really. There’s no doubt you will solve it. But there’s an elegant way to consider it which gives you the solution immediately. Can you […]
Can science help you win more hearts on Instagram?
[ad_1] There’s apparently a science to getting more likes on Instagram. The famous, and those paying for views, might not need it as much, but here’s some good news for […]
5 essential ‘E’s to help you ace hybrid meetings
[ad_1] Hybrid meetings are a feature of life in the pandemic, but they can be a challenge for managers new to the format. I taught my first hybrid class last […]
Head in the clouds: Rahat Mahajan on merging love, myth, reality in Meghdoot
[ad_1] Fact and fiction, myth and imagination, ancient India and the India of today, all overlap in Rahat Mahajan’s debut feature, Meghdoot (The Cloud Messenger), the only Indian film in […]
As his auction house sets new records, a Wknd interview with Dadiba Pundole
[ad_1] “Frankly, the first thing I felt was a huge sense of relief,” says Dadiba Pundole. He’s referring to those brief hushed moments at his auction house, Pundole’s, on the […]
Tackling trouble in paradise: With Love by Simran Mangharam
[ad_1] Most people struggle to have difficult conversations in a relationship. The fear of hurting your partner and the consequences of that strained dialogue mean the unsavoury task is either […]
Calling the shots: A Wknd interview with umpire Shubhda Bhosle Gaikwad
[ad_1] Shubhda Bhosle Gaikwad is a realist. It’s a quality that helps her in the field. At 30, she is one of India’s youngest umpires, a rare woman umpire, and […]
And the Oscar may go to… Bhutan, says Anupama Chopra
[ad_1] An Oscar-nominated film with a Yak in a starring role: Who could have imagined those words in the same sentence? Pawo Choyning Dorji’s gorgeous, tender and wise feature debut, […]
Kaws for cheer: This art show took place in the metaverse
[ad_1] It starts off like a visit to any art gallery: A walk past manicured lawns, up a bank of stairs, past imposing pillars and into a large hall. A […]
Empathy Machines: Can virtual reality prevent domestic abuse?
[ad_1] Can tech help prevent a repeat offence? In France and Spain, virtual reality is being experimented with in cases of domestic violence. Headsets offer a “total immersion” experience where […]
Putting life on the record: Life Hacks by Charles Assisi
[ad_1] Reality doesn’t care what we think. It just happens. So, how does one deal with that mismatch in what one expects and what unfolds? The evolution of safety standards […]
At a boiling point: Meet the IIT Patna professor who is a bubble whisperer
[ad_1] It’s one of the most common scientific processes in the world — put a liquid in a heated vessel and it generates vapour bubbles as it evaporates. Boiling forms […]
Drone power: Research suggests that some BS might contain flecks of gold
[ad_1] How often have you been listening to someone drone on and on, and been tempted to say: What a load of crap? At the University of Waterloo’s department of […]
Spies in disguise: Can AI really predict and prevent crimes?
[ad_1] In Steven Spielberg’s Minority Report (2002), based on a dystopian 1956 novella by Philip K Dick, it’s 2054 and the world has advanced to self-driving cars (no such luck […]
Barkha Dutt: The stories behind the numbers
[ad_1] There are now an estimated 1.3 billion pandemic stories in India. About 500,000 of them involve the loss of a loved one. Another 40 million involve a Covid-positive report. […]