First, the disclaimer. The video in circulation is AI-generated – entirely fictional, produced by pixels with a sense of humour. It shows Congress dynast and Leader of the Opposition, Shri Rahul Gandhi ji, seated inside the party war room – known more popularly as the ‘lie factory’. Beside him sits the ever-vigilant Congress spokesperson, Supriya…
Somewhere in a brightly lit studio – location unknown, channel unidentified, date untraceable – a Pakistani news anchor recently discovered a shortcut to prosperity. Not through exports, innovation or painful reform. Not through productivity or fiscal discipline, but through data crunching. If you add what is visible to what is invisible, she announced with admirable…
A viral video from Germany shows a man, apparently observing Ramadan, storming into a store and flinging food off the shelves — as though flour packets and biscuit tins had personally offended his piety. His demand is simple: ban food sales during fasting hours and force Germans to fast against their will. Elsewhere in parts…
A man walks into a ‘five-star hospital’ in Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh, with chest pain. After a battery of tests, he is told he has a blockage. It is ‘critical’. Surgery is ‘immediate’. The estimate – Rs 12 lakh. His fixed deposits tremble. EMIs march past his eyes. SIPs look suddenly suicidal. But life, he decides,…
Charity may begin at home. Apparently, billionaires now begin at Rs 22,000. They were around a few months ago, gently nudging us about a ‘last chance’ to become potential millionaires. They are back again. Clearly, I have missed the bus – again. This time, the familiar trio doing the algorithmic rounds are Defence Minister Rajnath…
There he was – Mohsin Naqvi, chairman of the Pakistan Cricket Board – seated in the VIP enclosure in Colombo, wearing the serene smile of a man who has already won something. Not a match, certainly. But a cup. The same Asia Cup he had once spirited away in the UAE with the efficiency of…
The idea that a candidate who scored one mark out of 800 can secure a postgraduate medical seat should not merely raise eyebrows, it should raise blood pressure. We are told this is an administrative adjustment – a pragmatic solution to fill vacant seats. But there are some vacancies that are better left vacant. An…
However much I restrain myself from calling Rahul Gandhi by his epithet, the Leader of Opposition proves himself, with unfailing consistency, to be a Pappu. Earlier he waved a coat-pocket-sized red book, calling it our Indian Constitution, with the flourish of ‘Honey, I Shrunk the Kids’, crying samvidhan khatre mein hai (democracy is in danger)….
Every time a supercar meets a divider, a footpath or a pedestrian in India, a familiar miracle occurs. The steering wheel, moments ago gripped by a young man with inherited wealth, is suddenly discovered to have been operated by someone else. Usually a driver. A report in The Times of India on a Lamborghini crash…
Some books change history, books that gather dust, and then some books do not exist but still manage to enter the Lok Sabha. One also wonders, in passing, whether Rahul Gandhi has the habit of reading any books at all – published or unpublished. The safer assumption is that he relies on briefing notes supplied…
