Shreekant Sambrani tells himself over and over again, don't lose heart in these dire times, there is asha (hope) still, in the divine voice of Asha Bhosle.
'Why can't we work towards a dignified end of the person when a cure is not possible and the end is inevitable?'
'You cannot run Parliament with 800 MPs as nobody will get time (to speak in Parliament). And Parliament sits for barely 60 days in a year.' 'Look at the House of Commons of the United Kingdom. They have 650 MPs and they sit for 150 days on an average in a year.'
'US and Iran have not annulled the ceasefire, and the possibility of continuing negotiations remains open.'
'Today, if 50 songs are composed, one or two work. In the 1970s, all 50 would work.'
Nikkhil Advani, a master of long-form storytelling, reflects on Freedom At Midnight and what it was to make a two-part series on the most difficult period of India's history in these polarised times.
'When I decided to be a cook I was ridiculed, heckled, bullied back home.'
'EPS exposed all the traitors. The DMK has given them political asylum. They are political orphans.'
Karex, the Malaysian company that makes roughly one in five of the world's condoms -- about five billion a year, supplying Durex and Trojan among others -- announced this week that it is raising prices by up to 30 percent. The reason is the Strait of Hormuz.
'Workers are the people who create all the wealth in this country. How can you call them anti-national?'
'India is at a critical juncture in this century. I want to be a part of the diplomatic team that works to make India great.'
'People have lost hope of finding justice in this state ... I want to give these victims, their families, the people of this state, a voice.'
'The entire party is centred around one man and that is Arvind Kejriwal.' 'Till the time you are in Kejriwal's good books you are powerful. The day you are not with him, you are no one in the party.'
'The reason why they rushed through the bill was they wanted to avoid using the 2026 Census because the 2026 Census by their own decision will be a caste census.' 'The BJP knows that a significant share of the OBCs who will get captured in the census, for the first time after the 1931 Census, are against the BJP. Only a segment of the OBCs are in their favour.' 'So they wanted to avoid the OBC reservation among women, which is a demand of a lot of Opposition parties.'
Asha Bhosle's only daughter Varsha Bhosle, who died in 2012, had penned this beautiful ode to her mother.
The intriguing bit is that Trump is likely to attend the talks in Islamabad this weekend -- if he does, it will be the clearest signal yet that the US is ready to exit the war with some sort of win to show, since he cannot afford to go for the talks and return empty-handed, notes Prem Panicker in his must read blog on the Iran War
Ajay Kela, CEO of Wadhwani Foundation, highlights India's significant opportunity to lead in the diffusion of technology, creating national-scale use cases that reach millions of end-users. He also discusses the role of deep-tech startups and SMEs in job creation and the importance of upskilling initiatives.
Learners in India prefer to pursue newer courses, such as Gen AI by building apps and code using the technology, along with learning about it.
The logic of war plus the gathering storms in US politics as the midterms loom large leave him with no real alternative but to negotiate, points out Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
'The unregulated marketing has to stop. People are getting recommendations for this from gym trainers, from marriage counsellors -- that is simply unacceptable.' ''There are many ways to lose weight -- eat less, fast, exercise, eat healthy. That is how you lose weight.'
'The BJP is keeping its options open and that the final decision is still tightly held.' 'That is consistent with the party's tendency to preserve suspense, avoid premature factional conflict, and use leadership selection as a way of resetting internal hierarchies.'
'He is not accessible even to his family, his wife or his mother or his father. No one.' 'He has created a barrier so that nobody can go and talk to him.' 'This kind of a mentality is a big question mark in politics.'
'My resignation is a larger governance and governance-plus kind of an issue, which the board of directors of the bank should be introspecting.'
'The AIADMK front comes second, and then the TVK.'
'It is going to be a negative vote against the government rather than a positive vote for the UDF.'
The cost of the war is being counted not in the corridors of power in Washington or Tehran, but in Firozabad's darkened furnace rooms, Howrah's idle casting sheds, and a barbershop in Kochi where the wait is suddenly, inexplicably, an hour long, notes Prem Panicker in his must read blog on the Iran War.
'The March correction was clearly due to the war and with prospects of that coming to a conclusion, there is a natural rally.'
'Nitish Kumar may be marginalised as an office-holder, but that is not the same thing as the disappearance of Nitish Kumar's politics.'
The ceasefire is still technically holding, to the extent that no overt hostilities have been reported yet, but the rhetoric has hardened dangerously. The week ahead will also clarify whether the Islamabad failure was a negotiating tactic or whether Washington has genuinely locked itself into a position from which the only exits are climb-down, escalation, or the slow bleed of a new status quo that nobody chose and nobody controls. Prem Panicker continues his must read blog on the Iran War.
'All terrorists are a blot on humanity.' 'No religion in the world teaches you to take the life of an innocent person.' 'Kashmiris have always been known for their hospitality. One moment of darkness cannot erase Kashmiriyat.'
'The BJP must have decided to replace Nitish with a green signal from JD-U leaders close to him.'
Acrylic nails have long had a reputation. They are glamorous, long-lasting, but notorious for making your natural nails thin, brittle and painfully sensitive.
The core issues to be settled -- access to Hormuz, Israel's aggression in Lebanon, the question of Iran's nuclear programme, sanctions relief and compensation -- are thorny enough to require weeks of patient negotiation. The most likely outcome of the opening sessions is that both sides take the measure of each other, establish what is and is not negotiable, and return home without having broken anything. That would count as progress.
'American stature has been reduced because they have not been able to achieve their aims.'
'Secularism or social development or social justice is no longer part of development, according to the youth in Kerala.' 'They are concerned about material wellbeing and material welfare, and they believe that Narendra Modi is capable to giving them that kind of development.' 'So, they don't have any ideological hesitation in voting for him.'
'The next phase of India's IPO cycle will be defined by quality, pricing discipline and investor selectivity.'
'The reality is that every one of us will be pushed to learn and relearn faster than ever before. Some people will rise to that challenge. Some may not. But the opportunity itself is massive,' says Noshir Kaka, senior partner, McKinsey.
'The jail staff told me Kasab was served only jail food and not biryani.' 'They told me that Kasab was beaten regularly after court proceedings.' 'And they filled Kasab's bottle with urine so that whenever he felt thirsty he used to drink urine.'
John Abraham and Bipasha Basu emerged as a popular power duo who set new fitness goals for their audience.
'The Supreme Court stated that once the delimitation plan is approved by Parliament and receives assent of the President, it cannot be undone. Nor can it be modified.'
