The ill-fated ventures that were Rahul Gandhi’s election campaign and the final season of Game of Thrones have many parallels. But perhaps the greatest similarity between the two is the feeling of utter dissatisfaction at the way things panned out in the end and the hype around The Prince that Was Promised.

Disappointment for the anti-Modi crowd was as inevitable as someone saying “Winter is coming,” on a Game of Thrones episode. Still, that doesn’t make the bitter pill any easier to swallow. These are the five stages of grief, as experienced by non-BJP supporters.

Maybe George RR Martin has a personal dislike for Jon Snow, which the writers of Game of Thrones inherited. It’s the only explanation I can think of to justify how many times the plot has swerved Jon, who can never retire his sulking expression for too long.

You can never really judge a book by its cover – or in Keanu Reeves’ case, an action star by his string of blockbusters. Movie stars normally have a reputation for being demanding and narcissistic. Clearly, nobody gave Reeves that memo.

John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum does not have the luxury of low expectations like the first two films in the franchise. And with the bar set higher than ever before, John Wick manages to clear it yet again, in a dapper Italian suit to boot.

About three weeks ago, a mother cat abandoned her litter in my building’s parking lot. Even without the hassle of diapers and bottles that human babies would entail, these kittens have taken me to my wits’ end.

Season Eight’s fourth episode, “The Last of the Starks”, reveals that the greatest threat to humankind wasn’t external. Rather, we’re more than capable of tearing ourselves apart in our pursuit of power, even without the threat of an impending apocalypse.

The bystander effect is an epidemic in India, which promotes a culture where people are likely to turn their heads when they witness a crime. Speaking up and taking action when no one else will might be a thankless job, but somebody has to do it, like the woman in black did.

I’m going to remember April 2019 for a long, long time. Apart from the political implications, this month will also go down as a landmark in pop culture. Both on TV and film, nerd culture planted its flag in mainstream, with Avengers and Game of Thrones becoming the most discussed, tweeted about, recapped, and memed franchises ever.

The MMRDA Grounds in Mumbai’s Bandra-Kurla Complex where Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressed a rally on Friday evening was partially empty. I wish I could say the same about the multiplexes that screened Avengers: Endgame.

The nation mourned when Sachin Tendulkar retired and wondered about how we would find “the next Sachin”. But Virat Kohli’s ascendance has set Sachin’s legacy free. We can now fully appreciate Tendulkar’s genius career without worrying if we’ll ever find a suitable replacement.

Sunday’s explosions are all too familiar for Sri Lankans who survived the civil war, which ended ten years ago. The suicide bombings bring back memories of its tragic past. Between 1980 and 2000, the LTTE carried out more than 160 suicide bombings across the country.

When Game of Thrones began, nobody could have predicted that the person to best embody why second chances matter would be Jaime Lannister. If Jaime is to fall in the next episode’s battle, he will be the most sociopathic, twisted, and occasionally inhuman character for whose death I’ll shed a tear.

Despite sporting the familiar trappings of most nature documentaries, Our Planet’s tone is markedly more urgent. While shows like The Crocodile Hunter and Planet Earth provided stunning retreats into the bosom of the wild, in Our Planet human presence and activity looms like an impending storm-cloud.

If Game of Thrones were a rock band, then the premiere episode “Winterfell” (and hopefully the rest of this season), will serve as a “Greatest Hits” compilation. When Thrones first emerged in 2011, the world was a different place. Now that the show has become the pop culture juggernaut of our time, are we ready for a world without it?

The Electronic Voting Machine is back in the spotlight after claims of EVMs malfunctioning on the first day of the Lok Sabha elections in Andhra Pradesh. But it's about time that the EVM deserves recognition as Indian politics’ MVP.

The Dehradun student’s death is a very grave example of why we need to check bullying and violence among boys. The idea that traditional masculinity needs an update has been around for a while, but if we want to see a generation of better – non-toxic – men, first we’re going to have to save our boys.

Being a night owl was never a conscious decision – I don’t derive any secret joy from knowing I’m awake while the world around me slumbers peacefully. It’s no fun needing a cup of coffee just to check your email inbox in the morning, nor is the feeling of drifting off into a fugue state by lunchtime something I would recommend to others.

Every April 1, news outlets blatantly indulge in an open relationship with the truth and carry fake stories to fool unsuspecting readers. However, we now live in the era of fake news, and it’s news outlets that are made to look stupid, all year round.

When your uncle who only posts old songs on Facebook, or friend who spams Instagram with memes is suddenly discussing national policy, you know you’re now scrolling through your election newsfeed. And like Thanos in the upcoming Avengers movie, there’s no running or hiding from it.

The open bar is the maggot-infested wound on the carcass of the Big Fat Wedding. Shout, whistle, wave – you will still fail to capture the bartender’s attention, and end up being crushed to dust by the weight of the crowd piling up against your back.

The Christchurch terrorist was influenced by far-right ideologies, and his manifesto called for removal of “invaders”, including Indian immigrants. It’s a bit mind-boggling then that brown folks like us – no different for the terrorist – should align with his white supremacist ideology and justify the killings.

Why exactly are we sneering at the video of Akash Ambani clapping when he sees his bride Shloka? Aren’t we all desperate to create “perfect moments” at our own weddings? Haven’t we all rehearsed to put up a performance in happiness?

Twenty years ago, IAF pilot K Nachiketa was shot down and taken prisoner by Pakistani forces, just like Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman was yesterday. The two episodes are separated not just by two decades, but by a sea change in the attention they have received and the reactions of the public.

Only Subramanian Swamy would be able to say that “BJP has failed in Kashmir” in the wake of the Pulwama attack and get away with it. How has the pugnacious Swamy managed to co-exist with his party colleagues for so many years?

Adil Ahmad Dar, a construction worker before he became a Jaish-e-Mohammed militant, left home on a cycle a year ago, never to be seen again. Stories like Dar’s are plentiful in J&K, where simmering tensions between locals and security forces boil over into lethal confrontations with disheartening regularity.

Until the attack on the CRPF convoy in Pulwama, all parties were waging hard-fought election campaigns. The tragedy has changed their tune, as it ought to.

To wish Priyanka Gandhi luck in her maiden foray into politics, Robert Vadra posted such a mushy social media update that Cupid decided to advance Valentine’s Day just so Vadra’s message wouldn’t give the internet diabetes.

There is a philosophical basis for the arguments of Raphael Samuel, the Mumbai man suing his parents for being born. But in carrying out a superficial social-media stunt rather than addressing the issue with any nuance, his intent is hard to discern.

For a country that aspires to build Smart Cities everywhere, turn its financial capital into Shanghai, and wishes to be at the forefront of global innovation and technology, incidents like the Seemanchal Express derailment are inconvenient reminders of just how far we have to go.

The layoffs at Buzzfeed and HuffPost – both established leaders in digital publishing – imply that the field is not in the health most people thought it enjoyed. What options are left for news companies looking to survive? Digital journalism might have been hit hard, but it is not dead – yet.

On Mahatma Gandhi’s death anniversary, the Hindu Mahasabha shot at an effigy of the Father of the Nation and set it on fire. Where are these defenders of Indian values, society, and culture, when the name of one of the architects of the nation is being besmirched?

Before I got on social media, I used to think that there were a few things most, if not all, Indians could agree on. Chief among those was the idea that everybody knew that the man who killed Mahatma Gandhi was a Bad Guy. Once you come online though, you realise that Nathuram Godse is a polarising figure who still commands a vocal following.

BJP ministers Anant Kumar Hegde and Yogi Adityanath have made it amply clear that they’d like to change the Constitution, the word secular particularly. They should listen to what advocate-activist Menaka Guruswamy has to say: The beauty of the Constitution is it compels us to unlearn the prejudices that we hold true.

Both Manikarnika and Thackeray will release tomorrow, and both bring to the fore why Indian biopics so rarely do justice to their subjects. Bollywood biopics have, at best, a testy relationship with reality. Fact might be stranger than fiction, but filmmakers can’t seem to resist embellishing the truth.

Maybe there is more to the sedition charges against Kanhaiya Kumar and the JNU student-activists. The delay in the filing of the chargesheet smacks of convenient timing. With the General Elections just a few months away, expect hyper-nationalistic rhetoric to be dialled up, and accusations of “anti-Indian” practices to fly thick and fast.

Indian Army Chief Bipin Rawat today said he won’t allow gay sex in the forces – enough to win the “Outrage of the Day” contest. But expecting a woke response on sexuality from a 60-year-old army man is like looking for an auto-rickshaw outside Andheri station – you should be prepared for disappointment before you even begin.

The Cabinet has announced 10 per cent reservation for economically backward upper-castes: a transparently populist move from a BJP government gearing up for election year. But it has also turned a demographic that has been traditionally critical of reservation policies into supporters of the same overnight.

Since October, the CBI has been embroiled in an intra-agency squabble between its two top officers, Alok Verma and Rakesh Asthana, over the Bureau's independence. The SC verdict reinstating Verma is a huge setback to the government, which had sent him on forced leave.

When faced with a crisis, some people turn to religion and seek divine deliverance from their problems. I’m not religious, but I do have idols, and out of the entire pantheon, JRR Tolkien is the one who rules them all.

As the Mumbai Comic Con takes off this weekend, please make sure to brush up on your pop culture trivia to avoid upsetting any of the cosplayers. Under no circumstances, ask the dude dressed as Black Panther the capital of South Africa or offer Rani Padmavati a light.

2018 can be defined as a year full of corkers of greater affronts to science and history. Tripura CM Biplab Kumar Deb’s “internet Mahabharata” remark and Satyapal Singh’s dismissal of Darwin's theory have made them pioneers of alt-facts.

#BoycottAmazon is trending in India, after the online retailer's international platform featured Hindu deities on toilet covers. But do all-powerful, all-knowing deities really require human protection?

Last month, PM Modi derisively referred to the “leader who wore a rose” as one who had knowledge of gardens, but was ignorant of the plight of farmers. Even as 2018 winds to a close, India’s right wing hasn’t gotten tired of unloading on its favourite punching bag, Pandit Jawarharlal Nehru.

It’s taken 35 years, but Sajjan Kumar’s conviction is a watershed moment for the surviving kin of the more than 3,000 people who lost their lives during the four days of mob violence in 1984. Here’s looking at you Kamal Nath and the other leaders accused in 2002.

Indian liberals have an almost compulsive tendency to bring up the 2002 Gujarat pogrom, under the BJP’s watch. But the Congress’ Kamal Nath, slated to be the chief minister of Madhya Pradesh, allegedly played a central role in the violence that claimed the lives of hundreds of Sikh citizens in Delhi in 1984.

The Zomato rider seen eating a customer’s order in a viral video, has been sacked. Congratulate yourself, Twitter. What made the man take a bite was, quite possibly, a horribly unfair system that had him working ungodly hours, to deliver food he could never afford for himself, to people who likely never tip.

Rather than expressing faith in Congress as an alternative, most voters have voted against BJP; this election was marked by anti-incumbency and the ruling party’s failure to create jobs.

The biggest threat that looms over the jungle and its denizens in Netflix’s Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle, isn’t Shere Khan, but human encroachment. In today’s times, man’s rapaciousness is a graver danger to the balance of nature than a tiger.

The political landscape in Rajasthan currently resembles a minefield. As the election goes down to the wire, unemployment, religious polarisation, and anti-incumbency might cause BJP to lose the state.

Inspector Subodh Kumar Singh’s murder in Uttar Pradesh’s Bulandshahr has made the government’s priorities clear – the lives of cows are more important than those of citizens, and public servants even. What seemed like a bad joke a couple of years ago has become our dark reality.

Yesterday, Subodh Kumar Singh was a policeman trying to do his job and prevent an incident of communal violence; today, he’s a martyr and a reminder of how dangerous India’s mob violence problem has become.

The latest film in the Rocky franchise brings back Ivan Drago, its most imposing, intimidating villain, only to show a softer, more human side to his character. Had this movie been titled Drago instead of Creed, he would have made a natural protagonist.

India’s farmers have grown increasingly vocal in the last year, with protests in urban centres primed to raise awareness among city-dwellers about what goes on beyond their cushy bubbles. But the farmers’ patience may not last forever.

The fallout from Mithali Raj’s exclusion from the Women’s World T20 games has cast a spotlight on a cricketer most fans of the game had all but forgotten: Ramesh Powar. Remember him? The bit-part all-rounder most notable for being India’s answer to Inzamam ul-Haq, when it came to running between the wickets?

If the toilet was the BJP’s unofficial symbol for 2014, in 2019, it’s statues. Sardar Patel now lords over Gujarat, Maharashtra has plans to construct a Shivaji statue in Mumbai, and Rajasthan’s agenda is to put up the world’s tallest Shiva Murti. We are well and truly living in a Statue Rashtra.

Outside contact with Andamans’ Jarawas is forbidden, as it is with the Sentinelese, but a search on YouTube will find tourists in the Andamans going on “Jarawa safaris”, where the islanders dance for cameras and accept fast food from vehicles. The free people of North Sentinel Island should not go this way.

It took 34 years for courts to find Yashpal Singh and Naresh Sherawat guilty of murder during the 1984 anti-Sikh pogrom. But what are the chances of Congress heavyweights being prosecuted in the case? Very slim. The same as the likelihood of leaders in Gujarat being punished for 2002.

The indoor garden has become the bean bag of today – every millennial home has one. We’re taking the concrete jungle, and reclaiming it for #MotherNature.

Netflix denied reports of self-censorship, but this may be our reality sooner than we think. Just like the free press, the free internet is also under threat. And this might deprive us of access to information and entertainment that our governments don’t want us seeing.

Cities with names that point to India’s real history are an embarrassment to those who wish to rewrite the past. Running out of time before next year’s election, renaming cities and building extravagant statues feels like a relatively low-risk, high-reward approach for the government to leaving a lasting impact.

Indian trolls are mostly sanskari or sleazy AF, but instead of squabbling among themselves, they get along just fine. In fact, they are two sides of the same coin, and more often than we know, the moral police turns out to be the pervert.

There’s an Uncle Crackers in every neighbourhood, housing society, and gali across the country. Each Diwali, he’s easily identifiable as the maniac standing in the middle of the street with lit bottle rockets in his hand.

Avni’s fate was sealed the moment she first came into conflict with humans. But there is no glory to be gained in hunting endangered animals, even if they’re supposedly man-eaters, and each life lost is a sign of the failure of our conservation efforts.

Netflix’s House of Cards began the march towards its finale with its lead actor markedly absent. Kevin Spacey has become persona non grata in a way other men accused of harassment, like Louis CK, have managed to avoid. It’s hopefully a sign of things to come.

I learned the lesson that it’s better not to tarnish the memories of the books I would read by torchlight after bedtime with a movie more goofy and ghastly. Written by RL Stine, the Goosebumps books were where younger readers were introduced to all of horror’s tropes as a genre.

India’s #MeToo movement might currently be limited to urban, educated women, but it’s still a start. Its momentum might soon enable women across the socio-economic spectrum to call out their predators. Let’s hope it percolates to women most vulnerable to violence.

Eminem and controversy go together like McDonalds and indigestion – the latter inevitably follows the former. Today, it’s easy to look at his body of work and dismiss it as an offensive collection of regressive ideas. But, maybe, there is another way to look at the controversial rapper.

Dear Chetan Bhagat, you don’t get to play the victim card at a time when women are coming forward to share their stories of real oppression. To whine about how the controversy about your “wooing” chats has prevented you from promoting your latest book only makes you look like a self-serving schmuck.

Millennials who grew up with video games, still form a huge chunk of the gaming population. I’m not a bespectacled, socially awkward, 12-year-old hogging the PlayStation in my friend’s living room anymore, but a productive adult who has a job and pays rent. It’s time adult gamers get their time in the sun.

Venom will go on to join Suicide Squad as an anachronistically, indisputably bad superhero film in what is a golden age for the genre. Comic book fans were excited that Venom was returning to screens over a decade after his last appearance. It wasn’t worth the wait.

Renting a house in Mumbai isn’t a happy fairy tale, it’s a horror story written by Stephen King at the height of his ’80s cocaine addiction. The stages of renting are inspired by the five stages of grief, because saying goodbye to half your salary every month is worse than a heartbreak.

It’s the age of #PeakTV, and there’s a plethora of content out there that is intellectually stimulating, aesthetically pleasing, and artistically rewarding. But it is possible to have too much of a good thing. Acclaimed shows are like caviar – perfectly fine to treat yourself to, but sometimes you just want good old vada pav.

Sikkim is the last state in India to get its own airport and we’re not sure how we feel about it. We’re glad for the infrastructure upgrade, but are worried: What if we turn into the next Shimla, or even worse Goa?

A long-forgotten classmate announces he’s getting hitched, and from that point on, it’s likes, camera, action. Social media has turned the simple proposal into an affair more elaborate than the Royal Wedding and Modiji’s inauguration ceremony put together.

With a new Lok Sabha Bill, the practice of triple talaq might finally be on its way out. But the games, it seems, have just begun. The impact triple talaq has had on public discourse, and the number of voices on opposing ends, underscores the different facets of the conversation.

In a cruel and unusual case of “It Happens Only in India”, Shambhu Lal Regar, the man who committed murder on camera, has become a folk hero to jackasses across the country. Reports have emerged that he will now contest the Lok Sabha elections in Agra next year.

Game of Thrones, this rollercoaster of tits and dragons that we’ve been riding for the last few years, is a veiled allegory about the threat of climate change.

Alarm clocks are among humanity’s worst inventions. How did we all agree that we’d begin our day with a mechanical banshee shrieking and disturbing our beauty sleep? Enter the snooze button: the only thing that makes you feel like you still have control over your sleep cycle, when you don’t.

The results of the Kiddie Kangaroo elections were announced yesterday. The BabyVP won both crucial posts of class monitor and assistant monitor, while the NS-U/A bagged the nominal post of cupboard monitor.

Cricket and its players would benefit from mixed-gender teams. If players like Mithali Raj, Jhulan Goswami, and Poonam Raut were on the same team as Virat Kohli, R Ashwin, and Hardik Pandya, they’d be eligible for the same lucrative contracts, playing for the same crowds, and benefitting from the same level of exposure.

Section 377 can only be traced back to the Buggery Act of 1533, an English law passed during the reign of Henry VIII. The medieval roots are quite fitting, as most supporters of the law seem to be time-travellers from that period.

It will take more than the historic 377 verdict to eradicate homophobia and transphobia from our workplaces. Just ask Harshini, a trans-person who now holds a corporate job, after years of being turned down by employers who held her identity against her.

Consent is, to a large section of the country, what Vijay Mallya is to the Indian authorities: impossible to grasp. Case in point: BJP MLA Ram Kadam, who offered to kidnap any girl who refused the proposal of any member of his constituency. For men like Kadam, a girl who says “no” is painting a target on her back.

Seven decades ago, one generation of freedom fighters drove British colonisers away from this country. Today, another generation has seen one of their lingering relics off for good. Menaka Guruswamy is one of the many participants who’ve helped win us the right to love who we want.

A family can be divided over an issue as serious as politics or as frivolous as what radio channel to play in the car. But have Amitabh Bachchan pop up on the screen, pose a trivia question with four options, and they’ll come together to solve it in a happy ending befitting a Yashraj film.

“Giving up smoking is easy… I’ve done it hundreds of times,” said Mark Twain, and truer words were never spoken. Quitting might yield health benefits in the distant future, but it’s turned the immediate present into a miserable hell.

Urban Naxals have been propped up as the nation’s greatest bogeymen. The ambiguous term now joins the country’s lexicon alongside “anti-national” and “tukde-tukde gang” as a catch-all epithet for those who express dissent.

Atishi Marlena is at the centre of a controversy once again, over the dropping of her “Christian”-sounding last name. The last time AAP’s Lok Sabha Candidate made news, it was for being dismissed from her special post as Delhi’s education advisor, when she was credited for turning around the course of the Capital’s public schools.

In a religious tinderbox like India, where copies of books like The Hindus are burned in the street, and makers of films like Padmaavat are threatened with violence by frothing fundamentalists, is life imprisonment for offending religious sentiments really what we need?

On the 20th anniversary of Blade’s film debut, it’s worth remembering his role in making superhero movies what they are today. He was the first black superhero before Black Panther, the first gritty franchise before Batman Begins, and Iron Man and Captain America owe their popularity to him.

Kerala is facing the worst natural disaster in decades. And yet, keyboard warriors far removed from the situation are focusing on discouraging others from donating toward relief efforts. Justifications range from Kerala being a Left-leaning state to the entry of women in Sabarimala.

Atal Bihari Vajpayee has passed away after a prolonged illness at AIIMS, marking the end of a simpler, gentler era in Indian politics. We bid goodbye to a leader who, more than anyone who followed him, embodied what the PM’s post stood for.

In every Indian gathering of intoxicated people, someone has to play “Summer of ’69”. I’ll bet you my Aadhaar number that there’ll come a point when everyone is triumphantly screaming, “Those were the BEST DAYS of my life!” That's the magic of #BryanAdams.

American propaganda continues with NASA announcing its Parker Solar Probe as the first mission to explore the surface of the Sun. Just like the internet, plastic surgery, and fire and the wheel, Indians were the first people to venture into the field of solar exploration.

Dog is a man’s best friend, and a biker’s worst enemy. Stories about being chased by dogs is to motorcyclists what having famous parents is to Bollywood debutantes – Can you even call yourself the genuine article if you don’t have any?

It’s been 15 years since we were introduced to Jadoo, Hrithik Roshan’s alien best pal in Koi Mil Gaya. But the family-friendly film takes a much darker note when Jadoo writes a letter describing the harsh reality behind the story we thought we knew.

There’s been a series of high-profile resignations at ABP News. The Indian media seems to be experiencing a dark period, as evidenced by our ranking on the Press Freedom Index. In these times, it’s important to hold on to the moments when the Indian media did display a backbone.

In India, reservation was originally meant to last for only 10 years. But it persists to this day, because here, even for traditionally dominant groups, being labelled “backward” is considered your best chance to get forward.

The Mission Impossible series always promises a thrilling break from reality, and addressing geopolitical issues has never been its selling point. Why, then, did the CBFC feel the need to completely cut out the scene with dialogues where the characters say Kashmir?