Looks like there will be a homecoming of sorts for Spider-Man, now that Disney and Sony have settled their differences.

The two studios announced on Friday that they will collaborate on a third Spider-Man film starring Tom Holland.

The as yet untitled film will be released on July 16, 2021, and be produced by the Disney-owned Marvel Studios and its president, Kevin Feige, according to a press release sent by both studios.

Amy Pascal will also produce through Pascal Pictures, as she has on the first two Holland-led films, the release said.

“I am thrilled that Spidey’s journey in the MCU will continue, and I and all of us at Marvel Studios are very excited that we get to keep working on it,” Feige said in the release. “Spider-Man is a powerful icon and hero whose story crosses all ages and audiences around the globe.”

The agreement also allows Spidey to appear in a future Marvel Studios film.

Feige acknowledged the collaboration makes the webslinger unique among superheroes.

”[Spider-Man] happens to be the only hero with the superpower to cross cinematic universes, so as Sony continues to develop their own Spidey-verse you never know what surprises the future might hold,” he said.

The end to the Spidey standoff came more than a month after it was reported the two studios were unable to reach terms on a deal for a sequel to their previous films, “Homecoming” and “Far From Home.”

The sticking point was that Disney ― which owns the character ― reportedly wanted a co-financing stake in future films with Sony, which has the film rights thanks to deals set up before the Mouse bought Marvel in 2009.

The Hollywood Reporter notes both sides had good reason to come together. “Far From Home” is Sony’s biggest box office hit ever, while Marvel gets to maximize merchandising and keep creative control.

One person who was happy the impasse has ended was Holland himself, who expressed his joy on Instagram.

Jammu, Sep 28 (PTI) An Assistant Sub-Inspector (ASI) of the Indo-Tibetan Border Police allegedly committed suicide by shooting himself with his service rifle here, a police official said on Saturday.

ASI Jaswant Singh was found dead with a bullet injury in his neck at Van Bhawan near Rail head complex on Friday, he said.

Quoting preliminary investigation, the official said it is believed that the ASI shot himself with his service rifle, resulting in his instant death.

The body of the deceased was handed over to his unit after completion of legal formalities, he said.

Singh’s unit was part of the recent deployment of forces in Jammu and Kashmir following abrogation of Article 370 provisions and reorganisation of the state into two Union Territories on August 5, the official said.

The motive behind his taking such an extreme step was not known immediately, the official said.

Singh hailed from Himachal Pradesh.

In Bollywood, perception can sometimes carry more weight than reality itself. That’s why, after a film’s release, most actors make sure they have set aside time for what’s called ‘post-release’ publicity, to ride the wave of their most recent success and cement their position as star performers. If the film didn’t score with either critics or the box-office, some smart actors even apologize for disappointing their viewers.

Sajid Nadiadwala’s Chhichhore, directed by Nitesh Tiwari, didn’t fall in either camp. It performed steadily at the box-office and received critical praise as well. But after its release, the film’s leading actor Sushant Singh Rajput went on the opposite of a media overdrive—he booked a sprawling suite in a boutique club-hotel in Western Mumbai, and spent his days reading complex books about quantum physics and evenings playing tennis.

This wouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who’s followed the actor’s career trajectory till now. Born in Patna to a father who was an engineer and a mother who was a homemaker, the 33-year-old has often taken a detour near the peak of success, or at least success as is conventionally understood. He dropped out of his engineering course months before graduation, he quit his popular TV show Pavitra Rishta when it was topping popularity charts, and a couple of years after his big-screen debut, he walked away from a lucrative contract with one of Bollywood’s most powerful producers.

When we meet in his suite, which has a quaint little library, an in-house butler and a spectacular view that doesn’t look like it belongs to Mumbai, Rajput is dressed in a casual tee and pants, looking like he’s just come out of the shower.

In the six years since his Bollywood debut, he has done 9 films with some of the most celebrated filmmakers. Despite consistently delivering strong performances, there hasn’t been much recognition from within the industry, and his films just don’t inspire the kind of blitzkrieg one witnesses around a Vicky Kaushal, Ayushmann Khurrana or a Varun Dhawan release.

Rajput agrees. At times, he says, it has been way too obvious, although he doesn’t know the reasons for it.

“I was disappointed during Dhoni. Then I told myself, maybe I overestimated what the reactions were going to be.”

In another interview, he was more forthcoming. He had said, “When you’re successful as an outsider, you’re discussed but in a very hushed tone. That’s about it. But when you are an insider and you succeed, it’s multiplied by ten and if you lose, it’s divided by ten.”

Though Rajput speaks emphatically, there’s an air of detachment that engulfs him.

He remembers the quote. 

“Now, I’ve created my own markers of success. At that time, I was young in the industry, I was looking for it. That validation. Now I don’t, so it doesn’t hurt,” he says.

But can actors really survive without external validation? Don’t they, at least sometimes, crave confirmation of their talent and celebrityhood?

“It comes from the people who offer me work.”

Move To The Big Screen

In 2013, Rajput successfully transitioned from the world of melodramatic TV serials to the prohibitive universe of Bollywood, which, despite its corporatisation, still remains a family business. 

Rajput belongs to that breed of actors that didn’t challenge the old order as much as found breathing space to comfortably exist alongside. An actor who didn’t inherit stardom but slaved it out for earning it. A gifted performer, Rajput, as I wrote in my Chhichhore review, sometimes has a tendency to draw attention to the subtlety of his acting, thereby defeating its very purpose. When he wants to appear understated, like in some portions of the spectacular Sonchiriya, it seems he’s trying a bit too hard, possibly a hangover from his television days. Many have even observed that he’s too influenced by Shah Rukh Khan and draws from his style. But in most of his roles—like Sarfraz in Rajkumar Hirani’sPK or Mansoor in Abhishek Kapoor’s Kedarnath—he hits the right note, balancing emotion with a boyish charm that makes the viewer root for his character. In MS Dhoni, where he was immaculately restrained, getting everything, from the cricketer’s gait to his body-language, pitch perfect. 

“An actor needs to understand or visualise or perhaps have experienced a reality in order to understand it. Only then can you use tools to communicate it. It’s one thing to understand, the other thing to feel and the third thing is to tell it. I need to feel it for you to feel it,” he says, resting his face in his hands and smiling as he looks out of the window.

After Kai Po Che (2013), Rajput signed a multi-million deal with Aditya Chopra’s Yash Raj Films, considered Bollywood royalty. However, after doing just two films, Shuddh Desi Romance (2013) and Detective Byomkesh Bakshi (2015), both of which underperformed at the box-office, Rajput was out of the contract. Word on the street was that he felt sidelined at YRF, as the studio’s plum projects would go to their blue-eyed boy Ranveer Singh. Another rumour was that Ankita Lokhande, his then girlfriend, had given a smashing audition for YRF’s big-ticket project, Salman Khan’s Sultan (2016), but despite that, the studio chose their in-house talent, Anushka Sharma.

Rajput has never confirmed or denied these stories. When I ask him how he looks back at breaking his association with YRF—he hasn’t worked with them since—he says cautiously, “Why retrospect and figure out what went wrong? I’m that guy who has 50 dreams that I want to accomplish in the next one year and I can work towards attaining them only because of what I’ve done in the past few years. So I think I’m doing okay.”

Rajput admits that the decisions he has taken are ‘debatable’ but he doesn’t regret them, nor does he wish he could’ve done things differently. “I will take full responsibility for them. I don’t get disappointed by any of them.”

Star Quotient

In the five years since his debut, Rajput has done just 9 films, mostly with top filmmakers. That he draws from Shah Rukh Khan while talking (and even performing) is known. That his performances have always been well-received is a fact (barring, of course, Raabta (2017)). Where Rajput seems to fall behind peers such as Ayushmann Khurrana and Rajkummar Rao is when it comes to the question of bankability.

When I ask about this, Rajput does what many people had warned me about before I met him. He answers the question, but in a way that makes it almost impossible to understand what he meant. “In the day and age when everything is served on the internet, we need to think about all the collaborative and associative ways of aligning to each other. We need to talk more about collaboration patterns and networks.”

Wait, what?

He offers some clarity. “We understand that the society would prefer one sort of entertainment over the other. But art is not science. Science is quantifiable but art isn’t.”

Well, sure. But is he saying that he isn’t affected by the box-office outcome of his films?

No, he gets affected box-office, he rightly points out, isn’t an indicator of the merit of the film itself. At least not the weekend collection, a recent industry obsession.

“If a film’s footfalls have progressively increased due to word-of-mouth, that’s a good enough indicator of the quality of the film,” he says.

As for failures such as Byomkesh Bakshy or the more recent Raabta, Rajput says he’s found his equilibrium—he doesn’t let himself get affected by either success or failure.

If the weekend collections are great, he has a mild sense of euphoria and if they aren’t, he’s mildly upset.

“But on Monday, I’m back to normal. Whether it’s Dhoni, which opened well, or Byomkesh which didn’t.”

Among his many heartaches is Shekhar Kapur’s Paani, an ambitious drama on the water crisis that was put in cold storage by Yash Raj Films after months of prep. Kapur had once said in a Twitter post that Rajput had meticulously prepared for the role and was gutted when he learnt that the film isn’t happening.

Though he was upset at the film not taking off (one day YRF called and said the project was off, he recalls), Rajput says he learnt tremendously from the experience and narrates an anecdote where both he and Kapur spent 6-7 hours talking to a cobbler opposite Juhu’s Iskcon temple, an experience he says “enriched” him and opened him up to perspectives other than his own.
“Somebody should make that film. We’re closer to a water crisis then we were ever before,” he muses.

But Paani wasn’t the only Rajput film that met with a sudden demise.
Tarun Mansukhani’s Drive, a Karan Johar production where he stars opposite Jacqueline Fernandez, has been in limbo since its completion in 2018. Two films that the actor shot after Drive have released since then. In off-record conversations, a Dharma executive joked that they don’t know how bad the film is because half of them haven’t bothered to see it.

What’s happening to it?

“I don’t know, I was repeatedly told that it would release but haven’t heard anything from them.” Rajput says, matter-of-factly. “I have only happy memories of Drive because the money I made off that film was donated to the Kerala floods.”

A few days after our interview, Dharma announced that Drive will stream directly on Netflix as part of their multi-film deal.

Heartbreaks and heartaches

In May 2016, Sushant Singh Rajput formally announced his split from his longtime girlfriend Ankita Lokhande. Once again, there were multiple rumours—one went that Rajput was cheating on his partner, while another suggested that Lokhande had an alcohol problem. Rajput had to issue a tweet refuting the stories.

“Neither she was an alcoholic nor I am a womaniser . People do Grow apart & its unfortunate . Period!!” he wrote.

When asked how the breakup of the long-term relationship affected him, Rajput pauses for a moment.

“Not every experience would teach you something,” he says, but then veers off to talk about his mother’s death and how he inherited all her good qualities and how much that experience helped him grow. It’s almost as if he has come prepared to digress from questions he doesn’t want to address head-on.

According to the grapevine, he’s been seeing actor Rhea Chakraborty. But does he still believe in love?

His face lights up, as if he’s only recently found it, all over again.

“Absolutely,” he says.

“I will glide and fly in love. What’s not to believe in the idea of love? I think logic and love, they’re not mutually exclusive but they’re also not mutually inclusive. We have to find ways to be both most of the time.”

That he’s perceived to be a serial womaniser doesn’t bother him. He recounts that when he signed his first film, Kai Po Che, a gossip item wrote unsavoury things about him. “The piece said that I slept with a dude and a woman to get the role.”

And? In his characteristic style, he goes on to quote Einstein, no less. “When Marie Curie got a Nobel Prize, people started writing things about her. Men couldn’t take it. Then Einstein wrote a letter to her. He said many great things and he ended the letter saying, ‘in case you indulge yourself with these frivolous stories, measure the length of them.’ So next time when I read something like that, I’ll get myself a ruler.” 

While Einstein did write a letter to Curie, asking her to not pay any heed to the naysayers, HuffPost India couldn’t verify this specific quote. 

#MeToo

In October last year, hundreds of women, from various industries, spoke up about facing sexual harassment. A little before that, some rumours had begun flying around that Rajput had behaved inappropriately with his Dil Bechara (previously titled Kizie aur Manny) co-star, Sanjana Sanghi, although she herself never came forward with the allegations.

Rajput is visibly disturbed when I bring this up and even before I finish, points out that Sanghi herself called the allegations “baseless” in a statement (which she did, the statement can be read here)

He is, however, working with Mukesh Chhabra, a well-known casting director who makes his directorial debut with Dil Bechara. In a story published in mid-day, two women spoke about facing sexual harassment from Chhabra. While he was temporarily removed as the director, he was soon back after getting a “clean chit” from the Internal Complaints Committee of his own company, a template that was later followed by Queen director Vikas Bahl and Phantom Films.

“Is he still accused? Is he liable right now?” Rajput retorts.

That Chhabra was cleared by a company he himself founded, which makes the decision suspect, isn’t a view the actor shares.

Instead, he tells me that we shouldn’t be talking about it.

“Because it’s a matter of his reputation. The more we talk about it, the more people are reminded about it.”

We get into a debate about the #MeToo movement and how it exists on the Internet because most institutions have failed to provide any semblance of justice to survivors. Rajput disagrees but refuses to elucidate, responding with quibbles such as, “This is like saying people die in a plane crash because of gravity.” I tell him no, it isn’t anything like that. He says it is. And then there’s silence followed by that line repeated by many men when speaking about sexual harassment.

“I have four sisters,” he begins. “My mother and my four sisters have taught me this that first you need to respect women and anybody not doing that for any reason should not be respected. I will never work with them. I have always maintained this.”

Beyond Bollywood

While there haven’t been any fresh announcements about upcoming projects, Rajput appears to be excited about a bunch of different gigs.

“I’m looking forward to Christmas, New Year’s, starting my film in January and I’m probably sending a few kids to NASA, like I did last year. These kids would be from government schools and I have already spoken to people at NASA. They’ll stay there for 20 days and have a workshop,” he says, eyes beaming with pride.

He is also collaborating with NITI Aayog to promote the BHIM app and women’s entrepreneurship. He has also been discussing with them how to use exponential technologies such as Artificial Intelligence to bring about structural changes.

“I like programming. I like when I sit with the people there and talk about the economy. It’s quite interesting, don’t you think?”

In his fancy suite, he appears to have installed a mini-library. Those who follow him on Twitter would be familiar with his tweets on science and astrophysics. He also owns a top-of-the-line LX-600 telescope. Clearly, the glitz of showbiz hasn’t dimmed the science nerd in him. When I ask him what he’s reading currently, he doesn’t have an immediate answer but tells me it’s a book on quantum physics.

“Sounds complicated,” I say.

“Just like #MeToo,” he replies.

Mumbai, Sep 28 (PTI) Vicky Kaushal had a career turnaround with “Uri: The Surgical Strike” one of the biggest hits of the year and the film which earned him his maiden National Award but the actor says he had “almost” turned down the action thriller.

Directed by Aditya Dhar, the film was based on Indian Army’s surgical strikes across the LoC.

“Uri” featured Vicky as a commander, who leads a group of paratroopers in the surgical strikes following terror attacks on the Indian Army camp in Uri in Kashmir.

“Actually I had almost said no to ‘Uri’. I was shooting for ‘Raazi’ when I got a call from Ronnie Screwvala’s team. I was told they’re sending me an action film script and I’m the first actor they’re approaching, and plan to make the film now.

“We were shooting an emotional scene in ‘Raazi’, so it was a heavy day. I went back home and I saw the script. Then I wasn’t (thinking like) an actor, I wanted to know what had happened because we had seen it in the news,” the actor said.

Vicky was in conversation with film critic Rajeev Masand on Friday at the 10th Jagran Film Festival.

The actor said he picked up the script as a book, wanting to know the details of the operation, but because he was tired or was “subconsciously in a separate space”, even after reading it for four hours, he couldn’t connect with it.

“There was so much technical information involved, the Army, the language. For 14 hours that day I was playing a Pakistani major and then suddenly this was India versus Pakistan and I have to be on Indian side. There was something I couldn’t connect to.“

Vicky went back to shoot “Raazi” the next day, with the script still lying in his house. It was his father, action director Sham Kaushal, who read the script and asked the actor what he thought of it.

“I said I couldn’t enter the zone. It took me a long time as usually I finish a script in two hours but I took four-and-a-half hours for this one. He told me, ‘If you miss doing this film, it’ll be the stupidest decision of your life’,” he added.

Vicky then decided to finish his “Raazi” schedule and then come back to the script properly.

“Then I finished it in one-and-a-half hours and felt I was reading it for the first time. I called RSVP and said I want to do this, please don’t go to any other actor I will do anything for the film,” he said. 

“They hound people in this world,” Renée Zellweger says in the new biopic Judy. Really, it’s her character, Judy Garland, who says it, but it might as well be Zellweger herself. Who can better relate to such a sentiment than someone who retreated from the public eye for four years, only to return to vicious commentary about her appearance? Zellweger’s struggles may not have involved Garland’s addictions and custody battle, but the 50-year-old actor nonetheless brings a meta connection to the renaissance she’s currently enjoying on behalf of Judy.

In the rousing showbiz lark Chicago, which came on the heels of her star-making turns in Jerry Maguire and Bridget Jones’s Diary, Zellweger played a striver seduced by the glitz of fame. In Judy, she plays a bigwig hiding from it. As thoroughly as she morphs into Garland, that famous Zellweger panache doesn’t go anywhere. The acting tics that made her a powerhouse of the 2000s ― distended lips, shy smile, breathy vehemence, fidgety arms ― are essential here. Those years when Hollywood reduced her to the dowdy wife (Cinderella Man) or the self-absorbed cliché (New in Town), only to later question why she could have wanted to escape herself cosmetically, become the fulcrum for Zellweger’s rebound.

Watching Judy, which chronicles its subject’s final year, specifically her five-week residency at a London nightclub in 1969, is like watching Zellweger walk a tightrope. Can she pull off the complex physicality and robust contralto? Garland’s fans used to wonder the same thing. When Zellweger soars, so does your heart. The film is most alive during her musical numbers. Judy takes the stage to perform Over the Rainbow, and it’s a once-in-a-lullaby trance — an artist who is, finally, where she’s meant to be, just as Zellweger is meant to be onscreen. That’s a triumphant arc, as if the movie exists to remind us what brought Zellweger to our attention in the first place. The story of a Hollywood dignitary subsumed by an industry that applies heightened scrutiny to women finds added resonance. 

Zellweger is one of several stars appearing in Oscar-season vehicles that directly or indirectly comment on their storied careers — roles that flourish because it’s this person inhabiting that character. There’s Eddie Murphy portraying a profane comedian in Dolemite Is My Name, Adam Sandler testing the limits of a protagonist’s unlikeability in Uncut Gems and Shia LaBeouf reckoning with his aggro notoriety in Honey Boy.

All four actors, whose movies screened at the Toronto International Film Festival in September, have hit something of an impasse in recent years, either vanishing entirely or hitting the same notes time and again. Now, a timeless movie-star trial follows: How do their respective legacies inform this chapter, and what will it take to get audiences to see them in a different light? 

Murphy, like Zellweger, discovered Hollywood lost any sense of what to do with him. Once ranked among comedy’s most reliable leading men, he scaled back on live-action work after his Dreamgirls boon gave way to Norbit (2007), Meet Dave (2008) and Imagine That (2009). Critics savaged all three films, and the box-office revenue was equally rough. Murphy’s fast-talking theatrics — so winning in edgy ’80s and ’90s hallmarks like Beverly Hills Cop, Coming to America and “Bowfinger — had become one-joke gambits. If The Nutty Professor flaunted his range, it also turned into a curse. Afterward, most writers handed him increasingly childish buffoonery (The Adventures of Pluto Nash, Daddy Day Care). 

His late-2000s decline called Murphy’s longevity (and decision-making) into question right as Hollywood was shifting from a star-driven marketplace to a franchise-driven one. “I don’t whore myself out as easily as I used to,” Murphy told Rolling Stone in 2011, a sentiment he re-emphasised to Ellen DeGeneres two years later: “I don’t wanna do anything else that sucks ever again.”

With Dolemite Is My Name, Murphy lives up to his promise. (Let’s just forget 2016’s maudlin Mr. Church.) Not only does Dolemite not suck; it also identifies with Murphy’s struggle to find ace material as he ages, much in the way that Judy softly comments on Zellweger’s history. In bawdy stand-up comic Rudy Ray Moore, whose under-the-radar career soared after he poured all his might and money into the 1975 blaxploitation romp Dolemite, Murphy finds a kindred spirit. Like him, Moore’s presence was that of a coarse jokester with a vulnerable core, equal parts demanding and defenceless. 

Rudy is so accustomed to rejection — and so defiant in the face of it — that, when his passion project wins over audiences at its Los Angeles premiere, the beam on his face acts as catharsis. At the premiere in Toronto, Dolemite Is My Name director Craig Brewer (Hustle & Flow) called the film Murphy’s own passion project. Surely it was gratifying for the actor, who was there in the room, to hear the crowd’s raucous laughter and to know that he, too, is worthy of another shot.

Interestingly enough, one of Murphy’s comedy peers is playing around with his legacy in adjacent ways. Adam Sandler, another funnyman who parlayed Saturday Night Live renown into blockbuster clout, pulls off something that only a beloved movie star can: He makes you love him in spite of the loathsome character he portrays. 

Sandler has long tested audiences’ patience for infantile dimwits, from Billy Madison and The Waterboy to Big Daddy and Little Nicky. But in the 2000s, he found opportunities to broaden that palette. Punch-Drunk Love capitalised on his uncouth persona for a deceptively graceful romantic comedy, while Reign Over Me and Funny People showed he could telegraph grief without sacrificing charm. When Sandler revisited his old ways, he seemed listless, as if he’d tasted lobster but was stuck eating boiled eggs again. And yet the Netflix production deal he signed in 2014, which yielded four antic-laden comedies in which he looked particularly bored (see also: this year’s Murder Mystery, which wasn’t part of that arrangement), generated massive viewership. 

Sibling directors Josh and Benny Safdie, who toyed with Robert Pattinson’s matinee-idol image in 2017’s Good Time, know how capitalise on Sandler’s skills in Uncut Gems. Presenting the movie at a screening in Toronto, the Safdie brothers said they wrote the role of Howard Ratner, a New York diamond dealer, specifically for Sandler. He turned it down, then wisely changed his mind. In Sandler’s hands, Howard’s intense unlikeability is almost an afterthought. (The movie begins with his colonoscopy, which is poetic because he’s such an asshole.) Howard lies to his clients, cheats on his wife, disregards his kids. He’s childish, but not in the clownish manner that Sandler usually exhibits.

All id, Sandler wears a smug smile on his face. He’s more gleeful and engaged than we’ve seen in years (The Meyerowitz Stories being an arguable exception). His eyes are wider, his forehead more expressive. Employing their signature kinetic style, the Safdie brothers cede the screen to Sandler’s every move, the camera drifting around him as though he is directing the action. If Murphy’s grin in Dolemite Is My Name is happy-go-lucky, Sandler’s in Uncut Gems is testy-go-lucky. (Coincidentally, the Safdies are reportedly set to direct a remake of Murphy’s breakout movie, 48 Hrs.) 

Were a lesser-known actor to play Howard, Gems might not work. It’s hard to spend two hours in the company of someone that incorrigible without established affection for the person inhabiting him. But here, because Sandler seems so enlivened by the material, it’s a treat to watch him feel his way through Howard’s recklessness — a movie star doing what only a movie star can do.

The same goes for Shia LaBeouf. His role in Honey Boy is direct autobiography, pulling from his volatile life as a child star with an abusive father who once turned a gun on him. As LaBeouf aged, offscreen blunders (street fights, arrests) and oddities (hitchhiking, that paper bag) overshadowed his acting, even though he was often just as feral onscreen (Nymphomaniac, American Honey, Borg vs. McEnroe). It seemed like he was melting down in real time, stricken by PTSD, substance abuse and unrelenting hostility. So he turned his pain into art, writing the script for Honey Boy during rehab.

But instead of playing himself, LaBeouf does something more daring: He plays his dad. How’s that for a therapy session? (A Quiet Place breakout Noah Jupe portrays LaBeouf’s Even Stevens-era analog, and Lucas Hedges portrays him as an angry young adult in a treatment centre.)

It’s a raw and gritty but somehow forgiving performance that presents his father — and, in turn, himself —  as both wounded and egotistical. LaBeouf’s receding hairline is matched by a grizzled Southern accent that couldn’t be further removed from his days as a Transformers stooge. He spends most of the movie on the verge of a breakdown, blurring the lines between character and self-flagellation. The results don’t necessarily absolve LaBeouf’s misdeeds, but they do reframe his image. There’s more to him than the privileged brat we saw in headlines. 

That’s what accomplished movies can achieve for stars whose reputations have been digested by a fickle public. LaBeouf, Sandler, Murphy and Zellweger are enacting what is proverbially called “career rehab.” By acknowledging, directly or indirectly, what has befallen them in recent years, they ensure a path forward. And by demonstrating a self-awareness that sometimes evades the rich and influential, they lob a middle finger at the forces that reduced them to ciphers. Judy, Dolemite Is My Name, Uncut Gems and Honey Boy are testaments to films tailor-made for their leads, a rarity in a superhero-saturated landscape. They hound people in this world, but those people get the fiercest comebacks.

Kolkata, Sep 28 (PTI) BJP leader Mukul Roy on Saturday appeared before the CBI probe team to face questioning in connection with Narada tapes scandal, agency sources said.

Roy had been asked to appear in the probe agency’s office on Friday. But he did not go there citing “preoccupations” and sought more time.

The former railway minister was then asked to come on Saturday.

“Roy reached the CBI office at around 2.15 pm,” the sources said.

The CBI on Thursday arrested IPS officer SMH Mirza in the scandal, the first apprehension in the case since the tapes surfaced in 2016.

In the footages, persons resembling senior Trinamool Congress leaders are seen accepting money from the representatives of a fictitious company in return for favours.

Roy, who was then a Trinamool Congress MP, was purportedly shown conversing with Mathew Samuels who claimed to have conducted the sting operation in 2014.

Burnout is a real occupational hazard, and it does not disappear when the workweek is done. The tired, snappy, apathetic employee at the office is the same person who still holds those grudges at home.

According to the World Health Organization’s International Classification of Diseases, the main criteria for burnout isn’t necessarily being overworked. It can also come from being under-challenged. Burnout is chronic workplace stress that can result in feelings of being drained and being increasingly disengaged and cynical about your work. 

When you are experiencing burnout from the stress of your job, you can forget what time off is supposed to feel like. You can even develop bad habits on the weekend that are making you feel even more drained and overwhelmed on Monday morning. 

Psychologists and career experts shared weekend habits that can contribute to burnout and offered solutions to combat it.  

You live too much for the weekend. 

There’s a difference between having something to look forward to on your days off and having that be the only part of the week you live for. That’s when this all-or-nothing thinking can be a sign of underlying burnout. “When people say, ‘I hate Mondays,’ or ‘Thank God it’s Friday,’ these are cute little sayings, but what you’re telling yourself is, ’80% of my life sucks,’” said clinical psychologist Ryan Howes. 

“When people split their week up and start thinking of work as bad and the weekend as all good, that contributes to the problem,” Howes said. “They spend all weekend dreading going back to work on Monday and griping and complaining about it.” 

Solution: Bring your weekend into your week, and find engagement elsewhere. “If your weekends are filled with connecting with friends and getting some rest and going on little adventures, fantastic. How can you make that part of your workweek?” Howes said. Examples Howes offered are getting breakfast with a non-work friend or going to a bookstore on your lunch break.

When your work is draining the life out of you, “people have to feed their soul,” said Adriana Alejandre, a licensed marriage and family therapist. She said that surrounding yourself with people who are funny can be helpful and that trying something new can invigorate curiosity.

When you feel like your job isn’t challenging enough and you’re burned out from being under-challenged, you can also find fulfillment elsewhere, said Melody Wilding, a licensed social worker and executive coach. “That weekend time can be really valuable for starting a side hustle or volunteering or doing an artistic project. Something that makes you feel more engaged,” she said. 

You can’t stop thinking and venting about work.  

Constantly complaining about your terrible colleagues and your overbearing boss on the weekend can feel like a stress release in the moment, but in the long-run, this rumination can make you feel even worse. 

When you can’t get the feelings off your chest and keep expressing these negative emotions, Howes said, “you’re not venting, you’re ruminating, you’re dwelling on it, you’re holding a grudge, and that means that the venting isn’t effective.” 

Solution: Gain self-awareness and reframe your thinking. “What can I do about this?” is a reframing question Howes said employees can ask themselves to redirect their complaining energy into something productive. “Venting should be the beginning of a problem-solving process, not an end to itself,” he said.

Wilding said a “brain-dumping” ritual of using reflective questions to think about your workweek can provide you the necessary closure to move on to your weekend. “I find a lot of people crash into the weekend and they don’t really have this time to decompress,” Wilding said.

Wilding added that some questions you can ask yourself for this ritual are ones that help you reflect on what did go well, such as, “What did I accomplish this week? Where did I make progress? What would I like to improve?” or ones that have you looking ahead, like, “How can I learn from this going forward?” 

By giving yourself emotional and mental closure, you don’t let your work thoughts “leak over and be this pervasive thing that haunts you all weekend,” Wilding said. 

You’re completely checked out, even in your free time.

When you’re experiencing burnout, your tunnel vision of work, work, work can lead to trouble engaging in the world outside of it on the weekends. 

“I see a lot of times where people are so overwhelmed with the sheer amount of life things they have to do or want to do that they just check out over the weekend, so they’re not even spending that time in a restorative way,” Wilding said. “They’re sort of just numbing out with Netflix or bottomless brunches and things like that to escape everything and avoid it.” 

Solution: Be intentional. This doesn’t mean you can’t relax on your couch and watch movies, but be thoughtful about this plan. “It’s fine if you’re going in for a Netflix binge for the right reasons, and you know what you want to get out of it,” Wilding said. “As long as it’s a personal choice. But if your reasons are, ‘I just want to turn everything off, I just want to go into my cave and hide from the world,’ then it’s not with the healthiest intentions.”

Technology controls you and not the other way around.     

When your phone is nearby, you can feel like you are on-call to your boss, even when you’re officially not. You may even find yourself checking email apps and work notifications mindlessly to check in. 

First, recognize where this need to be available may be coming from. “Usually, that’s all based in fear. That’s why it’s stressful, because they’re afraid. ‘I’m afraid I’m going to miss out on something. I’m afraid I’m going to get behind. I’m afraid I’m going to come back and be unprepared,’” Howes said. 

Solution: Create boundaries about when you’re available, and share those expectations. If you are driven to stay on-call by a fearful urge of “what if they need me?” self-reflect on how this thinking can perpetuate the burnout cycle. “If they’ve always depended on you and if you reply to them or engage with them on your time off, you’re enabling them to continue relying on you. Fighting against that anxiety is really important,” Alejandre said. 

Even if you need to be reachable, you can be intentional about how much work you allow to take up your weekend, Wilding suggested. “Yes, you need to be reachable and you need to put parameters on that,” she said.

Once you make boundaries for yourself, you can share what your parameters are to others. “Be clear around your working hours, when you will be available, when you won’t be available, and the timeframe in which you’ll get back to someone,” Wilding said.   

Burnout is not always your problem, but you should feel empowered to change what you can.

Of course, some of the contributing factors of burnout ― demanding bosses, unreasonable deadlines ― are outside of your control. But this can also be a signal that you need to change what is not working. When you trace your burnout to a systemic toxic source, you need to decide whether staying at this job outweighs what it is doing to your mental health. You may need to have a conversation with your boss about work expectations or get real about your career priorities. 

But in the meantime, reclaiming your weekend is possible. But it does take work to cure the stresses of work. 

Mumbai, Sep 28 (PTI) NCP president Sharad Pawar on Saturday scotched perception of a family feud over resignation of his nephew Ajit Pawar as a member of the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly a day before.

Earlier in the day, Ajit, who remained incommunicado after he resigned on Friday, met his uncle at the latter’s residence in Mumbai.

“There is nothing to worry. He (Ajit Pawar) himself will give you (media) further details,” Pawar told reporters after the meeting.

The Pawar senior’s daughter and party MP Supriya Sule, who was advised rest after being diagnosed with dengue, also attended the meeting where only members of the Pawar clan were present.

Ajit is scheduled to address a press conference soon.

On Friday, Ajit caused a flutter in the party when he sent his resignation as the MLA from Baramati segment to Legislative Assembly Speaker Haribhau Bagade, which has been accepted.

Ajit, a former deputy chief minister, did not disclose the reason while tendering the resignation.

His resignation in the run-up to the October assembly polls came on a day when NCP leaders and workers rallied behind Sharad Pawar, against whom the Enforcement Directorate (ED) has filed a case in connection with the Maharashtra State Cooperative Bank (MSCB) scam. 

The anti-money laundering agency has also registered a case against Ajit in the alleged Rs 25,000 crore embezzlement scam.

According to reports, Ajit was upset because his nephew Rohit Pawar was likely to make a debut on the state political scene.

However, the Pawar senior had dismissed reports of differences within his clan.

“There is no feud. My decision is the last word in all family matters. When I meet Ajit I will ask him the reason for his extreme decision,” Pawar had said.

According to Pawar, Ajit’s son Parth had told him that his father was “restless” as he felt that he was the cause behind the ED registering a case against the veteran politician.

Reports of a cold war between Ajit and Supriya Sule for supremacy in the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) keep surfacing intermittently.

OnePlus has, in the recent past, timed its biannual releases to coincide with the latest Qualcomm chip or to release a fresh new design. With the new OnePlus 7T going on sale barely four months after the OnePlus 7 and OnePlus 7 Pro went on sale, let’s start by acknowledging one thing. Anyone who bought a OnePlus 7 then has good reason to be ticked off by the launch of the new phone, 

But if you resisted the brand at that time, then you might find the OnePlus 7T a much better proposition.

Te phone’s combination of slick design, high-end specifications and that unmistakably-OnePlus hallmark of overall fluidity, courtesy the 90Hz display and the polished Android 10-based Oxygen OS are quite compelling. The level of refinement and polish OnePlus continues to deliver is still very worth your consideration, even as the competition gets fiercer.

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The OnePlus 7T goes on sale Saturday September 28th in 8GB RAM and 128GB or 256GB Storage variants priced at Rs. 37,999 and Rs. 39,999 respectively. Specs include the all-new Qualcomm Snapdragon 855+ processor with Adreno 640 graphics, a 6.55-inch 90Hz 2400x1080pixel display, a 48MP f/1.6 main + 12MP f/2.2 2x zoom + 16MP f/2.2 ultra-wide setup with a 16MP f/2.0 selfie shooter and a 3800 mAh battery with 30W Warp Charge 30T fast charging.

Design

The OnePlus 7T may look similar to the OnePlus 7 from the front, but only just. The all-new circular camera bump on the rear gives the rear a rather Moto Z look, only way more premium with the use of metal and frosted glass.

The display gets taller with a 20:9 aspect ratio, which bumps up the size to a palm-stretching 6.55-inches (vs the 6.41-incher on the OnePlus 7) bringing it closer in form factor to the OnePlus 7 Pro, with the scaled-down waterdrop notch taking the place of Pro’s pop-up camera module.

The phone is tall, but the flat display and the ever so slightly narrower body means that the OnePlus 7T sits way better in the hand than the bulky and ungainly OnePlus 7 Pro. The ever-handy mute slider remains, as do the somewhat-mediocre stereo speakers, unfortunately.

The phone lacks any IP-rated waterproofing (OnePlus opts for independent water-resistance certification ostensibly to keep costs down) or wireless charging, so those shortcomings continue onto this generation as well.

Display

Flip it around and you’ll see the biggest feature that OnePlus borrowed from the OnePlus 7 Pro-the AMOLED display with a 90Hz variable refresh rate-a feature that, once you get used to, you never want to return to a phone without it.

The benefit of a high refresh rate display is felt on practically everything you do with the phone, but it is difficult to understand the improvements over a standard 60Hz display unless you see it in person.

The panel is still 1080p, but it’s plenty bright and ships with HDR10/HDR10+ support, the latter allowing you to enjoy all the new color- and contrast-rich shows Netflix keeps on adding. The in-display fingerprint scanner felt a tad slower than the OnePlus 7 Pro, but the face unlock usually gets there faster anyway.

Cameras

The new camera setup on the rear is one of the big changes, on paper at least. The camera packs the du jour 48MP Sony IMX586 sensor that we saw previously on the OnePlus 7 Pro, with its pixel-binning magic turning out high-quality 12MP images. 

You’ll be happy with the images the OnePlus 7T takes, for the most part–it over accentuates the reds, sometimes overexposes trickily lit scenes and manages just fine with portrait and super macro shots-but by and large produces images that are rich and pack in bags of detail.

The three cameras allows for a lot of versatility for composing shots, as long as you reconcile yourself with the fact that the wide-angle and telephoto shots are going to be lacking in quality compared to the main sensor.

There are a couple more downsides. The color science and calibration is different on each of the three cameras, which renders images looking like they were shot by different cameras.

Low light images took a terrible amount of time getting the autofocus to lock and sometimes didn’t lock altogether (see Batman photos), but since this isn’t something we’ve seen in the OnePlus 7 or the Pro, this could be something OnePlus could address with a software fix.

Performance and Internals

I’ve said this previously, but few phones can touch the snappiness and fluidity of OnePlus devices, and shipping with the 15% boost to graphics performance has only boosted the performance figures we’ve seen on the 855-sporting OnePlus 7 and OnePlus 7 Pro.

Expectedly, PUBG and Asphalt 9 ran smoothly at the highest settings with no sign of lag or stutter. Using the 7T is a joy, no less. Rounding out the performance tuned package is the faster UFS 3.0 storage, which we’d advise you pick up all 256GB of during purchase for added two grand, since there is no microSD card expansion on the 7T. A minor upgrade which has a significant impact on daily use is that the OnePlus 7T finally has the same high-quality vibration motor that we loved on the 7 Pro.

Performance and Internals

Few phones can touch the snappiness and fluidity of OnePlus devices, and shipping with the 15% boost to graphics performance has only improved the performance figures we’ve seen on the 855-sporting OnePlus 7 and OnePlus 7 Pro.

Expectedly, PUBG and Asphalt 9 ran smoothly at the highest settings with no sign of lag or stutter. Using the OnePlus 7T is a joy, no less. Rounding out the performance tuned package is the faster UFS 3.0 storage, which we’d advise you pick up all 256GB of during purchase for added two grand, since there is no microSD card expansion on the 7T. A minor upgrade which has a significant impact on daily use is that the OnePlus 7T finally has the same high-quality vibration motor that we loved on the 7 Pro.

Software

Beating the upcoming Pixel 4 as the first phone with Android 10 out of the box must have given the folks at OnePlus a sense of satisfaction, and OxygenOS on top of stock Android continues to be an exercise in restraint, one that many OEMs can certainly learn from.

There were a few bugs and app crashes which can be attributed to the pre-release software on the test unit. OnePlus has confirmed all retail units will ship with an updated version of software which should fix these niggling issues.

Battery Life

The OnePlus 7T ships with support for the Warp Charge 30T standard, which takes the phone from empty to nearly 70% in half an hour flat, with the remainder trickling in over the next 45-50 minutes. In our week of usage, we got just past six hours of screen-on time, which isn’t bad at all with the power-hungry 90Hz display.

OnePlus 7T: Verdict

The OnePlus 7T takes inspiration from the OnePlus 7 Pro and applies it to the tried-and-tested OnePlus 7 formula, and the result is a solid update that you really can’t go wrong with.

Interestingly, the OnePlus 7T is priced right up alongside the Asus ROG Phone II, which packs in a Snappdragon 855+ processor, 8GB/128GB of memory and storage and a 120Hz display!

The Asus is an out-and-out gaming phone, a hulking mass of glass and metal, and what it lacks in form factor (intentionally so, for the gaming market), it more than makes up with a gargantuan 6000mAh battery, gaming triggers and cooling vents and all manners of hardware add-ons, including a big ecosystem of gaming accessories. If you’re heavily into mobile gaming, pick up the ROG Phone II. Everyone else can head in OnePlus’ direction without a sliver of regret.

NEW DELHI—A five judge constitution bench of the Supreme Court led by Justice N V Ramana, the third senior most judge, is likely to hear all petitions challenging the Narendra Modi government’s decision of revoking the special status for Jammu and Kashmir under Article 370 beginning October 1, The Hindu reported.

A bench led by Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi had, on August 28, referred all petitions to a five judge constitution bench for hearing in October. “Subsequently, the CJI is learnt to have constituted the bench headed by Justice Ramana to hear the matter,” a report in The Indian Express said.

Among the petitioners are Advocate M L Sharma, National Conference party, politician Shah Faesal, activist Shehla Rashid Shora and others. They have opposed the August 4 decision of the Narendra Modi-led government to scrap the special status for Jammu and Kashmir under Article 370 and the state’s bifurcation into two union territories, as per this report in The Hindu.  

For an Indian woman, Tinder often feels like the mental equivalent of being groped on a DTC bus. It’s not just the disturbing number of men who are still obsessed with Friends in 2019 and insist it should get leeway for beingsexist, homophobic, and transphobic “because it was from the 90s”, or the type who comment furiously onUNILAD videos about how women who wear make-up are cheating them with their dark mastery of Revlon products.

Thing is, men who may have just begun learning how to handle rejection gracefully, how not to hyper-sexualise women and be generally respectful of their space and agency, seem to believe that the rules are different online. A dating app culture that on one hand thrives on candid conversation and on the other allows for secrecy and elusiveness with very few checks in place has facilitated the predatory and entitled behaviours that many urban, educated Indian men generally keep under wraps in real life. Here are some manifestations that could perhaps inspireSandeep Reddy Vanga’s next ‘hero’, but have women wanting to press delete forever.

1. The ones that slide into your Facebook and Insta DMs even after you’ve not matched with them

When a woman creates an online dating profile, she may as well be opening applications for ‘friendship’ on all her social media accounts. Most women would concur that the moment they signed up on the casual dating app, their ‘others’ folder basically doubled up as their Tinder recycle bin, full of the users who refused to give up after a left swipe. Many of these disbelieving men end up shooting their second (or third or fourth) shots on Facebook and Instagram, unmindful that this persistent entitlement to a woman’s time and attention is not only intrusive, but also goes against the very spirit of this online subculture. Tinder’s defining feature is allowing users to text each other only after they mutually swipe right, and the app is designed to grant complete control to its users over who they choose to engage with (on the app at least). These rules of engagement are sacrosanct, and anyone who doesn’t honour them should rightfully be banished—from your matches, if not the app.

2. The ones who break the ice (and seal your legs shut) by going from zero to ‘DTF?’

When the “Wanna fuck?” message arrives as a conversation starter, it feels an awful lot like an unsolicited dick pic. Tinder has built a reputation as a booty call app, and neither the company nor its users—not most of them, anyway—have any qualms about using it the way the tech-gods intended it. So, propositioning someone for sex is acceptable, if not expected of you. But even then, this particular MO gives away not only a lack of communication skills but a dehumanising attitude toward women. Do I hear you whine, “But I just want to be upfront and not mislead anyone”?

The difference between spending the night drinking wine straight out of the bottle alone, and swirling it around in your mouth pretending to be a sommelier, and making up an origin story to impress a date, could be this slightly longer, more polite message: “Hey brand new match, would you mind if we got straight to the point and figured out if we could get together/hook up, and when?” 

Kids, remember, when in doubt, talk it out.  

3. The ones who assume every lesbian/bi-sexual/pansexual woman is dying to have threesomes with them

If pornography or a handful of obscure coming-of-age art films are to be believed, all non-heterosexual women spend their entire day unravelling the mysteries of their bodies and testing the boundaries of their sexual desires. Non-hetero women are highly fetishised not only in porn but also in pop culture, and these associations and perceptions follow them everywhere. Given the cushy illusion of anonymity that online interactions provide, queer folks get directly propositioned for threesomes painfully often. Some have even complained of being asked by cis male matches if the latter could join just to “watch”.

While the patriarchal notion that women’s bodies are inherently sexual has been widely documented, here’s a crucial intersectional observation—non-hetero women are subjected to this creepy entitlement much more rampantly. And sadly for them, life off the app is no different. They are accustomed to being asked questions that are all too personal, all too inappropriate (“do you like licking or scissoring better?”), all too often.

4. The ones who list truly brag-worthy achievements in their bio, like “Taller than you in heels” and “Can cook better than you” and… that’s it, that’s the whole bio

Virginia Woolf in A Room of One’s Own wrote, “Women have served all these centuries as looking glasses possessing the magical and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size.” Just about every woman with A Tinder Account of Her Own has felt this too when she encounters a dude who defines himself in relation to (his idea of) his female audience. There are those who believe they should be showered with accolades and matches for picking up a skill that they clearly believe is a ‘woman thing’, marking them as extra special and sensitive. As for the guy whose USP is that he’s “taller than you in heels”(?) all you can do is congratulate him on being able to more easily reach the lightbulbs he was born to fix. There’s nothing like a bit of reverse sexism to restore the balance in the universe.

5. The ones who like “big women” and cannot lie

Some men like to proclaim their love of fat women on their bio. Now, try to think of the last time you caught a woman describing her specific body-type preferences on her Tinder profile. This doesn’t necessarily mean that all women are brimming with body positivity towards men—it’s just that contempt for big men is not the default for them, so they do not feel the need to make any disclaimers. Moreover, men who articulate their desire for larger women are most likely not coming from a place of body positivity—it’s garden variety objectification and fetishism only dressed as inclusivity. They typically view large bodies as a thing of novelty rather than normality, and reduce them to a porn category. Several women have confessed to being told it was a check-list item, too. What’s worse, in their warped heads, these men are doing a kind of charity; social media is crawling with screenshots posted by plus-size women who call out this fetishism, but instead, are asked to be “grateful” that someone finds them desirable at all.

When I tell people I’m from Goa, they often assume that my culinary life is an orgy of choris (Goan sausage) and poi for breakfast, pork vindaloo for lunch, fish curry for dinner, bebinca for dessert—and of course, nips of feni all day long, because hey, Goa is the party state of India. Um, no.

People tend to hold on to stereotypes about a place because of the sense of comfort and familiarity it offers them. When it comes to this favourite holiday destination in India, such stereotypes abound. Many of them centre on food. Many of them are only partially true. 

We Goans take our food very seriously. Here then is a list of some common myths and the truths behind them.  

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Myth 1: It’s all Portuguese-Catholic food, just with more spice

Goan cuisine is influenced by the many peoples that passed through its shores, and the kingdoms that ruled the land. So, Goan flavours are informed by many cultures— Arab, Malaysian, Portuguese, Brazilian, French, African and closer home, Konkan and Malabar. 

“People of all three main communities—Hindus, Christians and Muslims—have contributed to the cuisine. Historical influences include the Saraswat migration, Arab invasions, and the Portuguese colonisation,” says Neelam Dutta, who writes on Goan food at Ranchikood—Goan Kitchen. Many of the curries she writes about have Hindu origins - fish curries like hooman, tondak - vegetable curries made with coconut and spices, and uddamethi - curries with coconut, fenugreek (methi) and urad dal.

The Portuguese heavily influenced Christian cuisine, introducing new food habits and recipes that were modified according to the local palate and availability of ingredients. The new recipes created or adopted - bebinca, dodol, cafreal, vindalho - gave rise to an Indo-Portuguese cuisine, which remains popular with tourists in shacks and restaurants. It’s what leads people to believe that’s what everybody in Goa eats. 

Myth 2: Recheado is a masala

It’s common to see recheado on the menus of restaurants, usually paired with fish such as mackerel or pomfret. But, contrary to popular belief, the word isn’t used to describe the fiery red masala that is stuffed inside the fish. “The word ‘rechear’ in Portuguese means to stuff. Hence, anything that was recheado implied that it was something that had been stuffed with something else,” says Fernando Monte da Silva, a Goan food and travel writer. The tangy spicy red masala, therefore, needs to be used as a stuffing to qualify as ‘recheado’.

So, while bangda recheado (stuffed mackerel) is fine, something like a chicken in recheado masala is not. “The masala itself isn’t stuffed, nor is the concept of anything recheado limited to the masala,” adds Monet da Silva.  

Myth 3: Goans guzzle feni all day

Hindi movies are to blame for the stereotype of the perpetually buzzed Goan party animal. It has led people to assume all Goans are drinkers because, well, doesn’t feni grow on trees? Mention you’re a Goan teetotaller and people will look at you askance. “I hardly ever drink, and if I do it’s usually at social gatherings where I might have a beer or a shot of feni with Limca to toast a celebration,” says David D’Souza, administrator of the Traditional Goan Foodies community on Facebook. “This may be a myth created around the bars and beach clubs. My dad never drank either. Some may find it funny, but I currently have no alcohol in my home.” 

Yes, many Goans enjoy a tipple, particularly at feasts and weddings, but regular drinking isn’t a defining part of our culture.

Myth 4: People eat spoiled curry (kalchi kodi)

To put it simply, kalchi kodi is yesterday’s curry. It comes with a history and a certain sense of nostalgia for many Goans. In the olden days, these (often) fish curries, heavy on the coconut, were prepared in earthen pots (kunddlem) and anything left over was stored over the dying embers of firewood. It meant that the next morning, the thickened preparation could be eaten with bread or pez (rice gruel) as a filling breakfast. 

With gas stoves having largely replaced firewood, kalchi kodi these days usually involves a coconut-based curry that is refrigerated overnight and heated the next morning until the water dries out and the concoction thickens. It doesn’t taste the same as the firewood version, but nostalgia keeps alive the ritual.  

Myth 5: Poi is the only local bread

“Goan bread has its own identity,” says Alison Lobo, who conducts classes (Ally’s Goencho Pao) on the art of baking local Goan breads. “There’s so much variety, but people haven’t heard of everything that’s there.” All you need to do is peek into the basket of the poder to find a bread bounty in store. The whole-wheat poi with bran on top, the sweet (god) poi, the pillowy soft and square pao, the crustier and round unndo, the hard and crusty bangle-shaped kakon, the butterfly-shaped katre pao, and sometimes, the poderancho bol (a soft sweet bread, big in size, and made with coconut, cardamom, sugar and ghee). 

Myth 6: You don’t get good veg food in Goa

Neelam Dutta begs to differ. About 80% of the food posts she puts up feature vegetarian dishes. There is khatkhate (mixed vegetables in coconut gravy), ghotache sasanv (a piquant curry made with mango seeds), deep-fried neerponos (breadfruit), wheat vermicelli upma, raw jackfruit sushel (a spiced side dish) and kismoor (a flexible salad-like mixture that features ingredients such bitter gourd, ash gourd vadas, and even pappad). 

Goans love their vegetables especially seasonal ones. There is quite a bounty to choose from, too. Unusual ingredients such as hyacinth beans, jackfruit seeds, banana flowers, bilimbi, hog plums (ambade) also find their way into curries or stir-fries.  

And who can forget the most famous vegetarian dish, the ubiquitous patal bhaji? This nourishing and cheap curry of white peas is sold in tea shops and small stalls, usually with pao. It is either eaten by itself or paired with a dry potato bhaji.  

Myth 7: Balchão is a pickle

This is a tricky one because even the Goans are divided into two camps about its use. 

At its essence, balchão is a sweet-hot-sour spice mixture that is commonly used for pickling meat or shrimps, which is then cooked into a dry dish. Thus, it is essentially a method of cooking that includes some pickling. Some believe the dish originated in Macao as balichao, others say blachan came from a South East Asian country and was made from shrimp and other salted fish that were allowed to ferment in the sun, and subsequently used as flavouring in dishes. The Portuguese brought the technique to Goa, and you will typically see balchão made with small shrimp (called galmo).  

However, it’s gained a rep as a pickle because it is often bottled and sold as a condiment. “Those in favour of referring to it as a pickle can point out to the fact that it has all the qualities of a pickle. It’s hot and fiery, it resembles pickling in every regard, and it can be made days in advance without reheating. Those who disagree can say that the balchão came to Goa via the Portuguese, who themselves had no culinary history of pickling food (using spices) and hence it was always intended to be a dish,” says Fernando Monte da Silva.

BENGALURU, Karnataka—“There’s some good frogs here,” Sanjay said from the wheel of the jeep he was driving through heavy monsoon rains in the direction of Sunset Point. It was early September and unlike us—we’d arrived in Guddukeri (a small hamlet in the environs of Agumbé Rainforest in Karnataka) on the train from Bangalore that morning—Sanjay was on his sixth visit since March. A software engineer with SLK Group, the frog bug had bitten him. 

Back at Hingaara–The Nature Stay in Guddukeri, more frog enthusiasts were gearing up for the long night of frog photography ahead. People carrying SLR cameras strolled around the property, tripods rested against a bedroom-apartment door or boot of a jeep. An air of anticipation hung around the twelve-strong wildlife-photography tour group. 

Over dinner, our host Shashank Hegde broke the news that a forest department ban had ruled out many of the local trekking options. For three consecutive years, a lone tusker elephant had been making Agumbé’s rainforest his Monsoon habitat. 

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The guests weren’t concerned—they needed go no further than the nearest puddle for a spot of ‘frogging’, as they say in the community. Hegde explained that the recent interest in small species as a way for people living in Bangalore to enjoy nature on Facebook and Instagram. The social media values encapsulated in #goexplore, #adventureseeker or #lovetotravel motivate others to get up and go to the Western Ghats.

Animal photography has been popular for a long, long time, but small creatures like frogs and reptiles were often beneath notice. Today though, as social media makes it easier for amateurs to showcase their work, things have changed, particularly over the last couple of years.

“Frog photography started coming up two years ago,” he said. “That’s when people were getting into macro.” 

Bleary-eyed guests sitting at the next table had been photographing frogs on Shashank’s property until 3am that morning. These were likely candidates for tagging their Instagram uploads with #natgeoyourshot.

In the ‘attention stream’ created out of the scroll up, down, and swipe screen experience, NatGeo’s 2 million Instagram followers gives #natgeoyourshot more than some sway.  Surprisingly, #Hingaara on Instagram shows barely a photograph or two of the house, which at 350 years old and fully restored is no slouch, photogenically speaking.

Instead, there are macro shots of frogs, snakes and insects, evidencing a turn away from the food and destination shots that dominated online travel photography until very recently.  

Walking with living fossils

On our second evening in Agumbé, we ventured into a neighbouring plantation on a night walk with Hingaara’s naturalist Girish Gowde. The night air boomed with mating calls of frogs ranging in size from a fingernail to a closed fist. In this uniquely immersive experience, I wondered if we were witness to a couple-of-hundred-million-year-old sonic environment.

“Frogs are living fossils,” explains Sathyabhama Das Biju, an amphibian biologist known in the media as ‘the frogman of India’, in an interview with Forbes Life India. “They are among the few living beings with us who have witnessed all the five mass extinctions.”

Despite their longevity, a third of amphibians around the world are threatened, owing to habitat destruction, chemical pollution, climate change, disease and invasive species, according to a report.  “In the Western Ghats the threat level is high for an estimated 40% of amphibian species, even as more are being discovered,” it states. 

And there is a lot of diversity that’s easy to spot. In a visit to a plantation, we spotted the Blue Eyed Bush Frog/Coorg Yellow Bush Frog, a Malabar Gliding Frog and a Knob-handed Bull Frog, and initiated ourselves into #frogs of India# photography with our camera phones.

A Water Droplet Frog was heard but not seen. An arboreal creature with a preference for high tree canopies, the first recorded sighting of it to catch my attention online involved a frog spotter who admitted to finding it difficult to photograph ‘while balancing high on a tree branch with a torch and camera’.

On the plantations in the area, you’ll find banana, arecanut, vanilla, coffee and pepper trees, and there can be up to 10 frog species. Towards the end of the frog tour, we came across the rest of our party huddled in the dark in a corner of the property, their cameras pointing in a single direction. One of them rushed over to Gowde, and scrolled through some frog images on the camera’s rear LCD screen.

His Nikon was accessorized with a DIY diffuser, made from an A4 sheet of foam paper, of which Gowde had a large stack in standby, and resembling an Elizabethan collar, or pet cone. The camera was also very visibly dripping wet. When I asked him if it was waterproof, he replied ‘not really’ with little concern before returning to enthusiastically sharing his screen captures. It was difficult to discern if his high was coming from frogs or photographs of frogs. When I asked Gowde later if the serotonin levels on this night were higher than normal, he said not at all.

Instagram is like a competition

By phone a few days later, I had the chance of returning with Gowde to the subject of Instagram frogs. When I asked him about amphibians and reptiles’ recent admittance to forms of wildlife photography that were previously fixated on charismatic animals such as tigers and elephants he explained the kudos accruing from the physical demands of shooting smaller species.

“You need to walk a bit, you need to shoot in between rains and stuff, it’s the challenge of shooting in the Monsoons,” he said, adding that it was very different from shooting on safari. “Nowadays that’s the easiest you can do, of all kinds of photography, if you have money, you have a camera, the right equipment, you just go out, you sit in a vehicle and you shoot, that’s how easy it is, and a lot of organised photography tours are doing that.”

And what diverts them from safaris to explore forest patches and small-acreage plantations? “Initially they see photos on social media, they are inspired by that to come down here and shoot,” said Gowde.  “It is pictures at the end of the day, that’s what it speaks. More unique it is better for them. If they get likes, that is satisfaction for them.”

When asked if the frog crowd were a fickle bunch moving quickly onto other subjects, he responded with the example of one guest at Hingaara who had returned 10 times in one monsoon, and he knew of many more people who had stuck to frog subjects for several years.

Having said all that, he was equally of the opinion that “For the majority, it is social media. That’s how it ends. It’s more of a competition: he has done, so I will do, and I will get a better one.”

Macro photography in his estimation had “picked up too much” thanks to “people teaching others techniques online and cheap equipment you can add on to your main equipment, to get more detailed shots.”

But it doesn’t always follow that photographers educate themselves about species protection and habitat preservation.

“Not many are concerned about what happens to the frog because not many are aware of it. What happens if I shoot hundreds of flash at a frog?” Although the rising documentation of frog species is a boon to researchers, having huge numbers of tourists descend on a place can also cause problems. 

“The craze for wildlife photography has increased, but unfortunately, there is no understanding of ecology or animal behaviour amongst most photographers,” Ramki Sreenivasan, co-founder of wildlife portal Conservation India, told Livemint.

“Most photographers probably don’t even think about their impact (ecological footprint) on wildlife habitats, and may regard animals simply as models that exist for their photographic pleasure.”

Initially, Gowde was also first and foremost interested in photography but became bored quite quickly with the same photos of the same things, and started to spend more time with the subject in order to understand its behaviour and shoot more naturalist images. 

“I was into IT, I had money and I used to come here as a stress buster,” he said. In the intervening years, he’s gone from being a guest at Hingaara to its on-site naturalist and is hugely popular with both Instagram and Science communities for his wildlife photography.

While he often leaves his camera behind when accompanying guests on nature walks, he still uploads occasional images to Instagram. 

While one shouldn’t entirely take Gowde’s comment that “everything I’ve learned I’ve learned on FB” at face value—since on our nature walk he also referred to frog findings published in research journals—both proprietary and citizen science collaborative web platforms had nonetheless provided him with opportunities for identifying species and learning about their behaviours and habitats.

“Mine is more of online discussion with people, so I’m part of lots of WhatsApp groups, lots of Facebook groups,” said Gowde. “I keep sharing photographs, I keep seeing photographs from other people. That’s how I keep myself updated, it’s more of interaction with a lot of people, not one set.”

How Orkut helped an academic stop using traditional British textbooks

Self-taught experts like Gowde now co-exist with trained academics who have been studying the field, such as batrachologist Gururaja KV. “They are pioneers, they have mentored a lot of kids, they’re active online,” Gowde said, describing Gururaja’s contribution to scientific research and citizen science.

Not only had Gururaja discovered a new frog species in the first year of his PhD, he is co-founder of Frog Watch, an online platform designed for members of the public to upload frog images and observations, and is an adjunct scientist at Gubbi Labs, a Bengaluru based a research collective started in 2010, and involved in diverse projects such as a mapping exercise for the Bhadra Tiger Reserve, or developing a bus-based transportation system in Tumkur, Karnataka.

In a country where wildlife conservation and ecology awareness is disproportionately focused on tigers, their habitats and other charismatic mammals, Gururaja is recognized for extending Citizen Science initiatives to include the smaller species.  

For Gururaja, the engagement with photography and social media started early. He credits user uploaded photographs to Orkut, an early social media avatar, as a factor helping him to come out of a 100-year-old habit of using traditional British books on fauna in India for visual reference points.    

I met with Gururaja in a shared faculty workspace at Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology situated in a northern suburb of Bangalore. I asked Gururaja if the Instagram ‘school’ of photography had given anything to science. “Contribution wise it’s humongous; you’re building a map, you’re seeing so many frogs in different localities, and that’s a great way for conservation to happen because you can understand the spatial extent of where frogs are found,” he said.

The story behind the Malabar Tree Toad is exemplary for Gururaja. First sighted in the 1800s, between its rediscovery 100 years later and 2004, only 4 sightings had been reported with hardly any recorded knowledge relating to their lifestyle.

This is when Gururaja set up an online portal, naming it Mapping Malabar Tree Toad. “What I did, I said, guys whoever you are, take a picture let me know where you have taken it and just post,” he said. 

Today, 55 photographs taken in different locations in the Western Ghats have been uploaded to the portal and the species has consequently been delisted from endangered to common species. ’This where I really appreciate the photographer,” he said. 

Gururaja himself is more likely to upload images of frog stamps, postcards and greeting cards than of actual frogs to his Instagram account. For now, he has decided to use the platform to illustrate how frog representations are embedded in culture. But that has not dampened his love of frog images taken in the field: “if someone has taken a good photograph of a frog, there’s nothing like that right?”

And he remains attuned to what makes frogs such appealing photographic subjects. “Their eyes are so beautiful and the colouration might actually be what captures attention compared to any other animal. There are multiple things that come up with macro photography, it’s another world that gets exposed.”

Can social media spur conservation?

Facebook and Instagram have the advantage of getting to people that information that tells them what’s in their backyard. “If people know what is in their backyard, they’re aware and they’ll protect it,” Gururaja points out. He’s of the firm belief that “science will come up only when it is shared and many people participate in it.” Many who follow or upload on Instagram and FB will come into contact with other dedicated platforms such as India Biodiversity Portal or iNaturalist.

Citizen scientists such as Gowde, who upload across platforms are aware that their actions are not simply vanity exercises, and that they are contributing to open access research and conservation, simultaneously keeping themselves updated and updating India’s biodiversity database.

In our conversation, he alluded to the behavioural photographs posted by hobbyists online that have lead to scientist authored research papers. This echoes his own experience of having researchers who have viewed his social media feeds asking him behavioural questions: “they ask what did you see next.”

While not everyone using the popular hashtags #frogs of India  #frogs of Karnataka #frogfriends #frogs of Instagram and so forth are necessarily learning anything beyond taking the trophy frog shot, and regardless of their motivations for doing so, they are taking part in an unprecedented collective documenting of frog species, behaviours and habitats.

If, of the 450 recorded frog species in India, only 220 have IUCN status, then the knowledge gap affects 50%. This for Gururaja is the “plus point of Facebook and Instagram posts,” since they are sources of data for concluding whether a species is endangered, vulnerable or least concerned.

At least 13 persons have died after buildings collapsed and trees fell on them due to incessant rain in Patna, Bhagalpur and Kaimur districts of Bihar.

The three districts are among over a dozen in the state that were lashed by incessant rain for close to 48 hours bringing normal business to a grinding halt and disrupting rail and road traffic in most places.

According to weather department, the state capital has received more than 200 mm of rainfall since Friday evening, which was described by Principal Secretary, Disaster Management department, Pratyay Amrit as “totally unexpected”.

He also expressed concern over water having entered many power sub-stations which could affect the functioning of sump houses in the long run.

Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, emerging from a video conference with district magistrates, told reporters, “We are making all possible efforts. I would appeal to the people of the state to have patience and courage. Torrential rain have followed a prolonged dry spell which vindicates our governments resolve to combat climate change through environmental preservation.“

According to Bhagalpur District Magistrate, Pranav Kumar, three persons died when the boundary wall of a temple collapsed in Barari police station area while as many people were buried alive when a house caved in at Khanjarpur area.

In Danapur, on the outskirts of Patna, a one-year-old girl and three women died when a tree fell on an autorickshaw carrying them.

Three deaths were reported from Bhabhua, the district headquarters of Kaimur, where continuous rain led to the collapse of two mud houses.

A birds eye view of Patna made the city appear like a huge lake dotted with structures of concrete while low-lying areas like Rajendra Nagar and Pataliputra Colony home to many prominent citizens, private hospitals and medical stores and situated several kilometres apart were submerged in waist-deep water.

“It was unexpected. The weather department had last week predicted heavy rainfall for many parts of Bihar but not Patna. We are trying our best to rescue people from inundated areas with the help of NDRF and SDRF. The sump houses are working overtime. However, water entering power sub-stations poses a challenge,” Amrit said.

“In the event of water entering a sub-station, power has to be disconnected to avoid major casualties. The sump houses then become dependent on diesel. But the availability of fuel is finite and if heavy rainfall persists, pumping out water from inundated streets could be hampered drastically,” he said.

Meanwhile, the East Central Railway headquartered in Hajipur said that close to 30 trains have been cancelled and many others short-terminated or operated through alternative routes on account of the flooding of Patna and Danapur junctions and many other smaller stations.

In Nawada, water has crossed the danger mark, threatening residents of five villages even as efforts were on to trace three locals who were reportedly swept away by the current.

The Scott Z Burns-directorial The Report, Alma Har’el’s Honey Boy and Joanna Hogg’s The Souvenir are among the films expected to screen at the upcoming Mumbai Film Festival, HuffPost India has exclusively learnt.

The festival, popularly known as MAMI, will run in Mumbai from October 17 to October 24.

The Report features an interesting ensemble that comprises Adam Driver, Annette Bening, Jon Hamm and Jennifer Morrison. The film, which revolves around a secret torture program of the CIA, had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year and has received overwhelmingly positive reviews. The MAMI screening will mark the film’s Asia premiere.

Honey Boy, that has Shia LaBeouf mining experiences from his own life, is  about the stormy childhood and early adult years of an actor struggling to reconcile with his abusive father, played by Labeouf himself.

The film, too, premiered at Sundance, and was promptly acquired by Amazon Studios, where it will stream in November. It also features FKA Twigs, Natasha Lyonne, and Lucas Hedges in key roles.

Critics have hailed the film as an ‘act of cinematic therapy.’ In a post-screening session at its Sundance premiere, LaBeouf said, “It is strange to fetishize your pain and make a product out of it and feel guilty about that. It felt very selfish. This whole thing felt very selfish. I never went into this thinking, ‘Oh, I am going to fucking help people.’ That wasn’t my goal. I was falling apart.”

The Souvenir, starring Honor Swinton Byrne, Tom Burke and Tilda Swinton is about a shy but ambitious film student begins to find her voice as an artist while navigating a turbulent courtship with a charismatic but untrustworthy man.

The film won the World Cinema Dramatic Grand Jury Prize prize at the Sundance film festival and opened to much critical acclaim.

Guy Lodge of Variety called it “achingly well-observed in its study of a young artist inspired, derailed and finally strengthened by a toxic relationship.

The full line-up is expected to be announced in the coming week, with cinephiles and MAMI regulars fervently hoping that Bong Joon Ho’s Palme d’Or winner, Parasite, Pedro Almodovar’s Pain and Glory, and  Céline Sciamma’s festival darling, Portrait of a Lady on Fire make it to the final cut. 

This will be MAMI’s first edition with Deepika Padukone as chairperson while Anupama Chopra continues as festival director and Smriti Kiran as its artistic director.

MUMBAI: The political atmosphere in Maharashtra is charged as the state readies for the state Assembly election, now less than a month away. Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray’s son Aaditya Thackeray and NCP chief Sharad Pawar have already crisscrossed the state during their respective “Yatras”.

The Congress and NCP have declared their alliance for this election, while the BJP and Shiv Sena can announce their seat-sharing pact at any moment. There is, however, one prominent politician from Maharashtra whose absence has surprised many on the eve of this crucial election.

The absence of Raj Thackeray, the president of Maharashtra Navnirman Sena, for over a month is fuelling intense rumours and speculation about his political future. 

The last date of filing nominations is less than a week away.

The MNS chief’s last public statement came on 22 August when he was grilled by the Enforcement Directorate for over nine hours in a case related to the monetary transaction of a company he was once a part of.

“I will not shut my mouth no matter what they do,” Thackeray had thundered after returning home on 22 August after the ED inquiry. 

He has rarely appeared in public since then, refraining from making any public statement, addressing a press conference, and not appearing at any public function in the past month. 

In early August, Thackeray had announced a grand opposition morcha to be held in Mumbai in the last week of  August against the EVM.

The morcha did not happen. 

Ajit Pawar, a senior leader of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), took a jibe at him, saying, “Look at Raj Thackeray. This is how people become silent after an ED notice.” 

Earth To Raj Thackeray 

A couple of weeks ago Thackeray had decided not to contest the election and some senior leaders around him, who had been former MLAs, were not averse to him sitting this one out, young leaders from the MNS told HuffPost India. 

But a large section of party workers and second-rung young leaders, who were eager to contest, reportedly asked him permission to quit the party.

“We did not contest the Lok Sabha election. Our workers would have started questioning us if we would have decided not to contest even the Assembly election. The pros and cons were communicated to Raj,” said an MNS leader from Mumbai, requesting anonymity.

Thackeray did not contest the 2019 Lok Sabha election but campaigned against the BJP, especially against Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP president Amit Shah through his unique rallies. 

But the results showed how Prakash Ambedkar-Assaduddin Owaisi’s Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi (VBA), a Muslim-Dalit platform, had more impact than Thackeray. 

VBA dented the Congress-NCP’s chances on 12 seats while MNS’s strength could not be gauged as the party did not field any candidate.

The reluctance of Thackeray to contest the Assembly election appeared to be driven by a small coterie of former MLAs who were not keen on spending money in “a not so favorable election”.

Dwindling Fortunes

The last five years have not been politically favorable to Thackeray whose party could win only one seat in the 2014 Assembly election. MNS had won 13 seats in 2009. 

In the past five years, the MNS’s prospects dwindled further when it lost control over Nashik Municipal Corporation and its strength in the cash-rich Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation was reduced to single digits.

Sharad Sonawane, the only MNS MLA,  quit the party to join the Shiv Sena just before the Lok Sabha polls. Six out of seven MNS corporators crossed over to the Shiv Sena in 2017.

“He was in a mood to focus and prepare for 2022 BMC polls but it would have triggered an exodus from the party if he had decided not to contest (the 2019 Assembly election), said a former MNS corporator, speaking on the condition of anonymity.  “There was a risk of MNS being restricted as a social pressure group which we explained to him.”

Thackeray was convinced and he was considering contesting from Mumbai or from the area around the city, the corporator added. 

“The plans to contest from 25 to 30 seats have now turned into contesting from more than 100 seats. We may end up contesting from more seats than any other party in the state in this election,” said another MNS leader, speaking on condition of anonymity. 

The official announcement, however, is yet to be made.

Thackeray is scheduled to address a rally in Mumbai on Monday and widely expected to break his silence. 

MNS spokesperson Sandip Deshpande, however, termed speculation over Thackeray’s absence as a media creation.

 “We never said that we are not going to contest so there was no question of uncertainty. It was all a media creation. We are going to contest this election and the number of seats will be decided by the party soon,” Deshpande told HuffPost India.

On the month-long silence of Thackeray, Deshpande claimed that that was his style of functioning.

“He doesn’t talk every day. Raj Thackeray is a very creative person and you would witness that creativity in this Assembly election also, but I don’t think there will be an alliance with any party,” he added

However, a senior NCP leader told HuffPost India that there would be a hidden understanding with the MNS especially on the seats in Mumbai and area around it.

“We have asked our workers to work for him in the seats where we won’t be putting candidates.  The Congress is likely to do the same on some seats in Mumbai as his strength is more in Mumbai compared to us,” the senior NCP leader said. 

NCP chief Sharad Pawar has spoken of his party’s willingness to accommodate Thackeray in the alliance.

"On Raj Thackeray’s induction issue, we are yet to reach an understanding. We are discussing it. I cannot say that they (Congress) are totally negative but I am not the only person and our party is not the only party to decide it. Our other partners have to be taken in confidence before taking a final decision,” Pawar told HuffPost India in an exclusive interview earlier this month.

Franklin Leonard, the founder of The Blacklist, the company that undertakes an annual survey of best unproduced screenplays and conducts live staged script readings along with screenwriter labs, will host a masterclass at the upcoming Jio MAMI Mumbai Film Festival.

The festival will run from October 17-October 24 and here’s a list of some of the films that are expected to screen there.

Leonard is a formidable name in the film business as his company.

He has worked in feature film development at Universal Pictures and the production companies of Will Smith, Sydney Pollack and Anthony Minghella, besides several others.

The Report,The Souvenir and Honey Boy are just some of the films expected to screen at the festival that starts later this month.

Meanwhile, here’s a TED talk about his journey and how Blacklist came about.

In a resolution passed in 2017, the United Nations General Assembly declared September 30 as International Translation Day, an opportunity to “pay tribute to the work of language professionals”. In India, at a time, when political leaders want the country to have one “common language”, the act of translation is more important than ever to support linguistic diversity even while building bridges between languages.

We mark the day, we asked some of India’s finest literary translators who translate into English to answer two questions: what has been their favourite work out of all that they’ve translated, and what work or author, in the languages they work in, would they most like to translate or see translated into English.

Nirupama Dutt (Punjabi and Hindi)

Although I translate prose aplenty, I enjoy translating poetry the most. I have translated works of several poets from Hindi and Punjabi. However, what I look back on with the most love are two poems. The first is the last poem written by Amrita Pritam, to her partner Imroz. After she wrote it, I got a call from her to come and meet her. She showed me the poem and said, “All ends with death but there is something that survives and thus I have addressed this poem to Imroz.” The poem was “Main Tainu Phir Milangi” and my translation of it “I Will Meet You Yet Again” was published in The Little Magazine while she was still alive and it made her smile even amidst pain. The second is a poem on Partition by a Hindi poet of Punjab, the late Kumar Vikal, called “Smriti Aur Sugandh Ke Beech”. It recalls the shared culture of Punjab before Partition as seen through the eyes of an adolescent. In English, it is called “Betwixt Remembrance and Fragrance”.

I would like to see more works of Amrita Pritam translated well into English. A few have been published but there is a lot more that needs to be done. Also, the complete poetry of Kumar Vikal. The first poems I translated were his, for an anthology ‘Spring Thunder’ published in the early 80s. I owe my learning of translation to this amazing poet.

J Devika (Malayalam)

I generally enjoy translating poetry more than prose but KR Meera’s Hangwoman was the most exciting challenge. Like I said in my translator’s note, it felt like a swimmer taking up the challenge of long distance swimming across treacherous waters. But each author is a unique challenge because one tries to carry their unique rhetoric into another language.

N Prabhakaran was on my list but Jayasree Kalathil has translated Diary of a Malayali Madmanbrilliantly. I am now looking forward to working on a novel that Meera is beginning to write that promises to be even more exciting than Hangwoman.

Rakhshanda Jalil (Urdu)

Without question, the works of Intizar Husain, the Man Booker Prize shortlisted Pakistani writer who wrote in Urdu, have been my favourite. I have translated several of his stories for two collections – Circle and Other Stories and The Death of Sheherzad – and a novel, The Sea Lies Ahead (Aagaey Samandar Hai in Urdu). I love the way he crafts his stories and builds them at a gentle pace, and his fine craftsmanship as a prose stylist.

Qurratulain Hyder is an important voice in modern Urdu prose. Unfortunately, she insisted on translating her own works and in the process did not do justice to her writing for an English readership. I would love to, systematically, work my way through her short stories, novellas and novels. 

N Kalyan Raman (Tamil)

I loved working on Manasarovar, my translation of a Tamil novel by Ashokamitran. The backdrop of the novel is the film industry in Madras during the early 60s. It is narrated alternately by Satyan Kumar, a superstar from Bombay, and Gopalan, a local screenwriter whom he befriends. The novel is not just an account of the two men struggling to find faith and inner peace in the aftermath of certain tragic events but also a portrait of the times with a cast of characters that includes, among others, Pandit Nehru and Meher Baba, the silent mystic. A complex and meditative work, Manasarovar showcases Ashokamitran at the height of his craft as a novelist. It was also the work closest to his heart. I loved translating the voices of those fragile, besieged men as they strove to respond to both history and their private circumstances. Since the actor was modelled on Dilip Kumar and the story was set in the Madras and India of my childhood, it was a source of endless fascination for me. It puzzles me to this day why such a dazzling work that strives to illuminate the private hungers and impulses from a certain period in our recent history is not more widely known, even among the intellectuals of our film industry.

Though my translations of contemporary Tamil poetry have been published widely in many journals and anthologies, I haven’t had the opportunity so far to publish a volume of Tamil poetry in translation. Among contemporary Tamil poets working today, I find the work of Perundevi fascinating. Not only is Perundevi innovative in terms of language and themes, she also experiments with styles ranging from lyric poetry to anti-poetry a la Nicanor Parra. Perundevi brings a sophisticated political vision – shaped by issues of gender, sexuality, technology – and a deep empathy for the human condition, fraught with desire, hope, quest for love and need of community, to her poetic imagination. She is a contemporary Indian poet who needs and deserves a wider audience.

Aruni Kashyap (Assamese)

I just finished translating one of my favourite Assamese novels: Hriday Ek Bigyapan by Anuradha Sharma Pujari. First published in 1997 in Assamese, Hriday Ek Bigyapan was an instant bestseller, selling 32 editions over the next 10 years, which was a surprise because it wasn’t a thriller or potboiler. It asks the reader to take a hard look at the heavily corporatized world, our lives governed by advertisements, mindless consumerism, and objectification of the female body by a culture led by sexist men. I do not remember any other Assamese writer asking those questions in the early 90s. Despite the bleak atmosphere, the novel offers so much hope. While translating it, Anuradha Pujari told me about the thousands of letters she received after its publication. Most of them were from people who are successful in their careers but find no meaning in their work. They say reading the novel gave them hope and prodded them to continue living and to fight depression.

I want to translate more works by Yeshe Dorjee Thongchi to English. I am translating one of his novels called So Kota Manuh and have finished translating a collection of his stories. Thongchi is a Sahitya Akademi award winner from Arunachal Pradesh, belonging to the Serdukpen tribe. Thongchi mostly writes about Arunachal and his community. His stories and novels often make me think of Chinua Achebe from Nigeria but most importantly, he reminds us of the numerous tribal writers who have contributed to Assamese literature. I also want to see more translations of writers such as Anupama Basumatary, Lutfa Hanum Selima Begum, Syed Abdul Malik, Jehirul Hussain, Medini Choudhury, Sameer Tanti, Hafiz Ahmed, Kengsam Kenglang, Addus Samad, among others. I also want to see more writers translated from the Barak Valley. When we talk about literature from Assam, we often forget the writers there. 

Jerry Pinto (Marathi)

I suppose there will always be a special place in my heart for Baluta by Daya Pawar. I never did meet him personally but by all accounts, except his own, he seems to have been a very good man. In an odd way though I feel I know him well because for two years he was a constant voice in my ear, a companion in the lonely business of writing.

I think we need many fresh translations even of works that have already been translated. But Sane Guruji’s Shyamchi Aai would be my choice. My cup runneth over to know that Shanta Gokhale is doing one.

Daisy Rockwell (Hindi and Urdu)

It’s hard to think in terms of favourites when thinking of translation. It can be mind-bogglingly exhausting to translate a book. The incredible attention to detail, working through many more drafts than one would with writing of one’s own, and then the copy editing. Translators love metaphors: maybe it’s like running a marathon? Do runners have favourite marathons? But since I’m being asked to pick, I’ll choose Krishna Sobti’s A Gujarat Here, A Gujarat There. First, because I had the great honour of meeting Krishna ji in person at the end of her life. She was an amazing human being – full of insight and thoughtfulness even in her final year. Second, because there were times I felt as though the book was impossible to translate. Sobti writes so sparingly, cutting out all extra words, that it is hard to guess what she means at times, and difficult to reproduce in equally sparing English. I was delighted to work on the project, but also terrified, and what’s more, I was happy with the results, which is rare for a translator. We hate to look back at our work because we always see room for improvement.

There is one work that I would like to see re-translated in English, one that I would never attempt myself, as the heavy flavouring of the Maithili language would be difficult for me: Phanishwar Nath Renu’s 1954 novel Maila Aanchal. This novel is a satirical masterpiece, which would be extraordinarily difficult to translate, starting with the title, which no one seems to be able to render properly (the one English translation is titled “The Soiled Border”). I happen to know someone is attempting it right now, but I won’t divulge the details.

Arunava Sinha (Bengali)

Buddhadeva Bose’s When The Time Is Right stands out for me. It really has something to do with the nature of the prose – half the quality of this work lies in the way the words unravel, and there’s no better way of savouring it than by translating it, which is the closest form of reading. Besides, this is a novel of delicate sensibilities, which personally resonate with me.

Kamalkumar Majumdar’s fiction is incredibly difficult to translate because of the complex structure and layers of the prose, which is perhaps why it has not been translated at all. But each of his works bring a poet’s vision to stories featuring characters placed in a vortex of personal and social upheaval. The novels and short stories are quite unique, and will test the true mettle of a translator.

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