All of India gets ready for the mid-winter harvest festival, turning out laddoos, Pongal, Puran Poli and other endless delights.
Fight on toward goals that keep receding, or exit with most objectives unmet. Trump is agitated, his poll numbers falling below the Plimsoll line, his base fractured between those who back the war and those who remember that he campaigned on ending them.
From TimeOut's latest global line-up of 39 hip, exciting localities, here are 6 standout Asian stars...
Residential areas now exist cheek by jowl with smokestacks, while convoys of heavy trucks rumble through narrow roads day and night, throwing up clouds of dust.
The fact that a major studio put out a silent film starring some of the biggest names in the industry in these concerning times for the film business is the one big takeaway from Gandhi Talks, notes Arjun Menon.
'Mark had such a profound understanding of India, which was, of course, the land of his birth as well as of his death... He loved India, and lived two-thirds of his life here.'
The Natural History Museum, London, has officially unveiled the 24-image shortlist for the 2026 Nuveen People's Choice Award. This prestigious contest, a key part of the Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition and supported by lead sponsor Nuveen, invites the public to decide which image will be crowned the winner.
A train ride for Christmas? Why not?!
Is the parabolic rise in silver running out of steam or just getting started? Ramalingam Kalirajan offers his take on if you should invest in silver now?
14,845 kilometres. That's the distance that separates Nellore and Texas. But it could not separate Jaclyn Forero and Chandhan Singh Rajput.
Over 25 years, societies evolve and tastes change. Cinema absorbs and reflects this transformation. Picking only 25 films from the first quarter of the century is tough.
'Elementary, My Dear Holmes imagines Arthur Conan Doyle stepping into his own fiction, a man haunted by the clarity he created, forced to apply it to a world far messier than the one on paper.'
Stay somewhere that's as memorable as your destination, and India's got plenty of surprises!
Even by conservative assumptions that 5 to 10 per cent of infected individuals develop long Covid, India today may be home to 50 to 100 million infected individuals -- many silently coping with breathlessness, fatigue, palpitations, brain fog, or unexplained clotting tendencies.
'We kept importing educational models from outside that had no connection to our cultural and intellectual strengths.'
'When you attend an RSS function, the nation is your first priority.'
'... had gone to South Africa from India over a hundred years ago.'
After four failed reform drives, a new plan aims to rescue India's debt-laden power discoms through privatisation, accountability and long-term financial fixes.
Can change happen? Not unless the changemakers themselves want it since they benefit the most from the status quo, warns Biswajit Dasgupta.
As someone who could not predict a single beat in advance, who was exhilarated by its audacity to throw random elements together and take chances all over the place, Sreehari Nair thinks Odum Kuthira Chaadum Kuthira is one of the best films of the year.
LinkedIn experts and real-life stories offer hope that Indian tech talent can still thrive globally, even as the $100,000 H1B fee reshapes onsite opportunities.
'Government officials use Gmail and ordinary phones without basic security consciousness.' 'Interoperability, especially in joint exercises with countries like the US, worries me.' 'It often means we open our systems to them, but they don't reciprocate.' 'They could have kill switches in their systems and might even be able to affect ours.'
The Deepa Thoon controversy, if not allowed to die a natural death, could take the election focus away from the anti-incumbency impacting the DMK and into the secular space. Stalin would love to have it that way, all over again, after the three past elections, points out N Sathiya Moorthy.
Diane Keaton's wit and honesty taught us that ageing and uncertainty aren't weaknesses, they are part of what makes us human and graceful, observes Sreehari Nair.
'If your environment is constantly negative or stressful, you'll start feeling that way too.'
A software engineer who was suddenly laid off after 15 years shares the lessons he learnt about how to cope in these uncertain, insecure times.
'The largest listenership for Vividh Bharati outside the country is in Spain.' 'The labourers who go there for the tomato-picking season feel cut off from their country and listen to Vividh Bharati to overcome their loneliness.'
'On our first day at the Kumbh Mela, there was a fire and shook our confidence. 'There must have been a few crore people there.' 'How do we place the camera in between them?'
Sukanya Verma looks at instances of aristocrats falling for commoners on the silver screen.
Red Square and VDNKh easily rank among the most striking places I've visited -- both for their historical significance and architectural splendour.
My admiration for Russian culture, vision and ambition grew with every step as I clocked the miles, Nitin Sathe tells us after a visit to Moscow and St Petersburg.
'They wanted the city to be a great business hub. They didn't like the fact that taxes collected in Bombay would go outside the city.'
He was a storyteller who made me feel the pulse of history, the stakes of human ambition, and the thrill of a well-told tale. Prem Panicker recalls his debt to Frederick Forsyth, who passed away on Monday.
35,493 brides were killed in India between 2017 and 2022 -- averaging nearly 20 deaths a day -- over dowry demands, sometimes occurring even years after the wedding.
'If you watch songs like Acha Ji Main Haari Chalo Maan Jao Na, Lag Ja Gale or Jhumka Gira Re, you'll notice they're not just a distraction. There's a story unfolding within them.'
Office space owners are looking at good times ahead as rentals are expected to rise due to demand for Grade A office spaces outpacing supply that has been sluggish due to construction delays, long gestation periods and developers' interests shifting to residential.
'Arundhati Roy is like a ballerina performing on a high wire, cool, supremely at ease but conscious of all the adoring eyes on her,' notes P Vijaya Kumar.
'It has the potential to sow seeds of furthering discord when the direction of the discourse is aimed at propagating the perceived supremacy of 'cultural nationalism' from a distant past over the prevailing dominance of 'Constitutional nationalism',' argues N Sathiya Moorthy.
Suzhal: The Vortex 2 is a compelling watch with a tightly woven narrative, elevated by powerful performances, notes Divya Nair.
In the past 10 years, over 500 PSB officers have died by suicide. When targets are overwhelming, senior management and customers are both impatient, and there is constant fear, not every banker has the resilience to survive and thrive, warns Tamal Bandyopadhyay.
'I was just seeing myself here (pointing at the poster) and was like 'damn, I made it!'' Rediff's Mayur Sanap, Hitesh Harisinghani and Afsar Dayatar report from the teaser launch of Tanvi The Great.
