'People have realised they bought into the prime minister's package and it is empty.'
A recent survey discovered that Bengaluru has some of the classiest high streets in our country.
Mumbai bids adieu to its iconic red double-decker buses.
'In the second wave, probably due to the mutants, probably due to COVID-19-inappropriate behaviour, we are seeing it coming in the younger population, say from ages 30 to 50.' 'Also, we've seen that sometimes they deteriorate pretty rapidly and therefore we may need to keep a closer watch on the symptoms and on the oxygen levels at home.'
'In a fraction of a second everything started...'
The Blue City is calling out to you. Are you ready?
'The pandemic ends only when 70 per cent of the world is vaccinated with two doses.'
'If you keep on irritating the body by allowing all kinds of pollutants to get into it, the body cells are going to get irritated and cancer will come.'
We asked colleagues, present and past, to reflect on a man who has made such a difference to their lives and careers. Here it is then, a rich collection of memories that offer enchanting glimpses of the enigmatic Ajit Balakrishnan.
'He never used the party's cars and always was chauffeured in a private car.' On May 17, a day after his historic victory, Narendra Modi returned triumphantly to his old home at Ashoka Road where he lived as the party general secretary in the late 1990s. A Ganesh Nadar/Rediff.com meets folks who worked with him in the capital at that time. A rare glimpse of our next prime minister.
Harry & Meghan, Vaihayasi Pande Daniel realises, is just a sequel to Diana's Story.
'I would put my hand in the ground and have a little listen to what the mountain was doing.' 'Actually, it was still collapsing.' 'And there was a very real possibility that at some stage, without warning, the collapse could continue -- and continue across us, the people who were doing the rescue and also across to the men on the other side, who were being rescued.'
Prince William and Princess Catherine, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, collected quite a few Mumbai hearts on a hot two days in April.
Amitabh: "There is a very famous limerick that aptly describes my presence tonight, ladies and gentleman: A funny young man from Clyde In a funeral carriage was spied; When asked, "Who is dead?" He giggled and said, "I don't know; I just came for the ride."
'Pollution acts as an endocrine disruptor.' 'When it acts as an endocrine disruptor it has an effect on the endocrine system of the human body and the effect on the pancreas is an important one.' 'The way you get type two diabetes is due to two defects.' 'One is the pancreas doesn't produce enough insulin.' 'The other physiological defect is insulin resistance.'
'After 11 years of medical education, training in various hospitals, giving various competitive exams and finally, if you're able to save a child's life at 20,000 feet above the ground, in the air, with limited resources, that is like an unbelievable feeling.'
'I've never seen such cooperation before. Problem solving. Everyone working together. And truthful.' 'Someone from the prime minister's office was there the entire time, at the table, one of the team.' 'Now you have to figure out how to get them out. And I'm just gonna sit here patiently.' 'But if you annoy me, I could actually ruin the whole game for you and for the people in here, which is the avalanche'.
In 1989 when Bajaj came out with their legendary and elegant Hamara Bajaj campaign, that looked more at apna India, rather than the scooter, and at all hues of scootered Indians, it drew millions of eyeballs and was brilliantly successful.
At this year's TIME ball in New York City on Thursday, April 25, you would have run into a Coimbatore-born American scientist, looking lovely in Sabyasachi Mukherjee designer finery, who would most likely have been hanging out with Dua Lipa.
'The problem is delaying (or missing) the second dose would probably keep you at a 20 per cent risk of still getting COVID-19, till you are fully immunised.'
Indrani is in a buoyant and energetic frame of mind these days -- in a full-on Mood Positive. She has a tell-all book titled Unbroken out, that she terms as an 'eet ka jawab kalam se' and appears in media interviews all over the place, when she is not kick-boxing, doing yoga, or travelling, visiting temples, or floating in shikaras on Srinagar's Dal Lake.
'His expression was like a million dollars!'
Britain's Prince William and Kate Middleton enjoyed a game of cricket with Sachin Tendulkar.
Kumar Gaurav, the second secretary at the Embassy of India in Brussels tells Rediff.com's Vaihayasi Pande Daniel that the Belgian government has closed off its borders and shut down its entire transport system.
'The virus is constantly, constantly making mistakes when it replicates.' 'When the virus has accumulated enough mistakes, then it becomes now a variant and it behaves differently.'
'But he was very quick and did a very stylish adab.' 'Of course, I didn't expect him to hug.'
'My God, we could win half the world over just by our food alone.'
Rediff.com's Vaihayasi Daniel Pande and Rajesh Karkera snap up the way supporters have been paying the respects to Bal Thackeray during his funeral procession
'Unless we change and we see a change in the direction we are taking, times can only get worse.'
Two Nobel Laureates, four listed writers of this year's Man Booker Prize, Pulitzer Prize winners and finalists, winners of Commonwealth Writers' Prize, Crossword Prize and film stars will be the attraction at the most sought after literary event in India -- the Jaipur Literature Festival.
'The most important pillars of disease prevention remain masking, hand/cough etiquette and physical distancing.'
'In the likelihood that Omicron is circulating, you have a much greater chance of getting infected now, than you did during the Age of Delta.'
Wonder how you sanitise your groceries and deliveries and keep yourself and your family safe from the coronavirus?
'India will want a lot of help from the US, but it's not going to want US troops.'
Shashi Tharoor says the British Museum should change its name to Chor Bazaar because whatever it has within its portals is the result of 200 years of theft. The museum is once again in the eye of a storm for the possession of a statue of a god Hindus, across the world, worship as the Supreme Being.
'Rishi is brought up with Indian values -- Indian qualities like respect our parents, respect our uncles -- but he is more British.'
There is something very compelling about the story Harry and Meghan have been telling through the first three parts of this limited series, feels Vaihayasi Pande Daniel.
'The only way to contain this is to see that a lesser number of people are affected.'
'If you think you think you're going to booster yourself out of the pandemic, in COVID-19's case, you can forget it.'
'An individual who maybe has had two vaccines, or has had two vaccines, and a booster, is going to be pretty well protected.'
