World Cup games between the two nations are not as exciting as they once used to be, but despite the lopsided nature of contest, the rivalry couldn’t get anymore bitter. The ads from Star Sports and Jazz TV have started a war of words on social media. And it could be more melodramatic than the game itself.

As Yuvraj Singh calls curtains on his international career, his lasting legacy will be the delivery of unforgettable moments both on the field and off it, whether it was Natwest 2002, World T20 2007, or World Cup 2011.

In India, everyone is a cricket fan. But it takes something special to be a cricket fanatic. A die-hard fan does not eat an apple but practises bowling with it. He grows up to be the only uncle in the building who does not get mad when a ball hits his window.

The low-scoring game between India and South Africa was a brilliant endorsement of good old ODI cricket. It was, in the truest sense, a fair contest between bat and ball — the way cricket was always meant to be played.

If I’m expecting a good game of cricket, I head to the men’s salon in my gully. These gatherings are simple affairs – there’s no one flaunting an expensive jersey; there are no stands named after cricketing greats. It’s just a musty shop, where emotions run high and complaints that someone is stepping on your toes are not welcome.

A vote for Narendra Modi is a vote for hate. But a vote for the Trinamool is not a vote for a dictatorial Didi. A vote for the Congress is not a vote for a riot-accused Kamal Nath. But every single vote for the BJP, regardless of the candidate or the rationale behind the vote, is a vote for Pragya Thakur.

Ever since I learnt about Game of Thrones, I kept hearing, “Winter is coming.” It’s been some eight seasons and I still don’t know whether it’s winter yet. All I know is that, it is the middle of summer here and aayega toh Modi hi.

I remember the results from 2014 like it was yesterday. I had managed to get the Congress party its lowest tally in history at 44 seats. Passing marks were 35, but there’s no pleasing some people. Now after the 2019 exit polls, everyone is saying that I’m going to fail again and Modi ji is going to top the class, says RaGa.

Impressed by Liverpool’s comeback over Barcelona in the Champions League semi-final, Rahul Gandhi considers hiring Jurgen Klopp to script a Congress comeback in the Lok Sabha elections. German manager benches Congress president in first move.

After seven long years, Delhi’s moment in the IPL has finally arrived. Delhi Capitals seem to have found their mojo after being the butt of jokes for years. Along with the name of the team, the outfit’s fortunes have also changed.

You might have forgotten about it amid the Avengers frenzy, but Monday is Voting Day for Mumbai. I know your Endgame for this long weekend is to take off for the hills. But for once, think about what you can do for your city. Go ahead and vote – we’ll bear with the inked-finger selfies.

A line from the dramedy Hindi Medium has stayed with me: “Angrezi sirf zubaan nahi, class hai class.” My “Gujarati-medium” parents understood this years ago when they insisted upon an English education for me. But our obsession with the language has become a tool of discrimination – aimed against ourselves.

Dear Naresh Goyal, welcome to the club. As someone who is a veteran in the defunct airline business, let me tell you there is no dignity in stepping down if you are not going to flee. Kanoon ke haath lambe hai... magar itne bhi lambe nahin hai ki London pahunch jayein. Lol.

Out-of-work Bollywood actors, former politicians and diplomats, ex-cricketers all found employment at the Akash Ambani-Shloka Mehta wedding. While most were asked to dance at the baraat, some were asked to click selfies for Nita ben.

Highly unreliable sources tell us that India is considering Pakistan Prime Minister’s suggestion to sit and talk. That is why Delhi plans to send a man to Islamabad who loves to talk – our beloved news anchor Arnab Goswami.

Since India-Pakistan tensions have escalated every civilian has turned into a defence expert. WhatsApp and social media have turned war into a dinner-table conversation, where we now plan how to “finish Pakistan” and “kill Masood Azhar like the US killed Osama”.

Technology is a giant slayer of many things wonderful and one of them is the joy of sitting at the window seat. Where do we have the time to simply sit and stare amid the constant notifications and the lure of Netflix on your phone?

With a little bit of help from global warming and us screwing up the environment, the temperatures in Mumbai have dropped significantly this year. It was 11 degree Celsius last Friday. Now that is legit winter, isn’t it?

Vijay Mallya has a list of demands from prison authorities at Mumbai’s Arthur Road jail. He wants a cell with a view and IPL cheerleaders to liven up the atmosphere. Like all famous prisoners, he wants to write a memoir – The Accidental Airline Company.

Dear Piyush Goyal, all these years we have felt like the veg biryani at a Punjabi wedding – ignored. But the budget has changed that. Today might be a good day to ask the middle class, “How’s the josh?”

The accusation that the government has failed to create jobs is ludicrous. In Uttar Pradesh alone, thousands of new jobs have been created for gau rakshaks and members of the Anti-Romeo Squads.

Amid all the badly made collages filling up our timelines, let’s not forget the original inventors of the #10YearChallenge – Indian parents and relatives who catch you unawares and ask, “Beta, dus saal mein kya karoge? Aage ka kya plan hai?” This quiz could come at you at a family puja, grandmother’s funeral, or in the washroom.

PM Modi has been awarded Order of Saint Andrew the Apostle, the highest order of the Russian Federation, and I believe we do not appreciate him enough. Whether we award him another term or not, we should felicitate him with more prizes like the Wright Brothers Travel Blogger Prize and The Bol Bachchan Award for Eloquence.

It’s been a year since the Supreme Court made it not mandatory for cinema halls to play the national anthem before a film. Since that day, patriotism has been under threat. The cult of anti-nationals has multiplied. We desperately need films like PM Narendra Modi and Uri to curb the rise of Urban Naxals.

Virat Kohli has become the first Indian captain to win a Test series against Australia in Australia, solidifying his legacy and having his name etched in the record books. Could this be the real feather in his cap, the mother of all his achievements so far?

The ongoing India-Australia series has been a glorious endorsement of two things – competitive Test cricket and a good old-fashioned sledge. Right from Tim Paine’s “Can you babysit?” to Rishabh Pant’s “Ever heard of a temporary captain?”, the “contest” has been loved by commentators and fans alike.

It might look like the world is coming to an end, but this is the first day of the new year. We hope the indomitable spirit of “thain thain” will be with you. In the days that follow, if you find yourself in a hopeless place, remind yourself, as the police officer did, to always keep punching.

Yogi Adityanath was the BJP’s star campaigner in the assembly elections and despite the party’s loss in many states, he remains undeterred. He is here to protect cows and give us the Ram Mandir. And this year, his greatest contribution to the nation has been the Name Change Abhiyan.

The face of financial frauds in India in 2018 was Nirav Modi… with dishonourable mentions for Nitin Sandesara, Vikram Kothari, and the OG Bank Chor Vijay Mallya. Let’s hope our public sector banks will take up a New Year resolution: Avoid reckless lending.

Virat Kohli is not the best batsman in the world, across formats, despite his aggression and combativeness, he is the best because of it. Like all elite sportsmen and sportswomen at the very top, Virat Kohli hates to lose.

What can you do in life with hard work, determination, and a net worth of $43.1 billion? A lot. For one, you can get Salman Khan to be a background dancer to an even worse dancer in Anant Ambani at his sister Isha Ambani's wedding. On a Shah Rukh Khan song.

So much has happened between the RBI and the government in the last few months that it feels like a retelling of A Series of Unfortunate Events. In August, the government appointed S Gurumurthy, an RSS ideologue, to the RBI’s central board. Today, the RBI Governor Urjit Patel has resigned citing personal reasons.

Today, children in the building cringe at the thought of playing in muddy fields and dusty grounds. But the joy of running around in the muck and making the perfect sliding tackle in the sludge is unmatched. I vote to bring keechad football back.

For a week now, Mithali Raj has been at the top of the news cycle. Fans have outraged over Harmanpreet Kaur’s decision to drop her from the team, which might have cost us the semi-final of the Women’s T20 World Cup. This outrage, this demand for accountability, this scrutiny is a good thing for women’s cricket.

Ahead of the 2019 elections, all the positive messaging and promise of acche din from 2014 seems to have dissolved. As the PM, it is only fair that you direct the country toward the kind of intelligent debate we deserve.

If there’s one word to describe a captain who leaves out a veteran from her squad in a crucial game, it’s bold. That’s Harmanpreet Kaur, India Women’s T20 skipper for you.

We Gujaratis love sweet food, truly madly deeply. We like our pizza with more ketchup than toppings and when the cook forgets to add sweet to undhiyu, she is promptly shown the door. I often wonder that if I become conscious about my sugar intake, will I be letting down my community?

My mom, like many Indian mothers, suffers from “Yeh toh main ghar pe bana sakti hoon” syndrome: An attitude of outright rejection and dismissiveness rooted in desi pride. Burger is no better than vada pav, and French fries are just homemade finger chips.

PUBG has been banned in many cities across India, with 10 students arrested in Gujarat. Everywhere I look, I find addicts. Smoke breaks in office have been replaced by PUBG breaks, and the only exercise kids in my building get is crawling in the grass on screen in the “safe zone”.

Diwali ki safai is not just another day where the family gets together to dust the table and clear the cupboard – it is an event. Mama announces the date in advance so that dad does not have “important work” and the kids don’t have any “scenes” planned.

Virat Kohli has reached a rare peak that only few sportsmen do, where he has become so good that it has become boring. It’s not a surprise anymore when he gets a 100; in fact, it’s a surprise when he doesn’t. And that is an astonishing feat.

First the Supreme Court allowed menstruating women inside the Sabarimala Temple, now they want to regulate the use of firecrackers during Diwali. The world is just out there to destroy our great traditions of pollution and discrimination.

Manchester United has 99 problems, and football is just one of them. While failures off the pitch are behind closed doors, the visible culmination of it all takes the form of poor performances on the ground. As a fan, watching the entire spectacle at Manchester United is more heartbreaking than the entire run of This Is Us.

TikTok is not merely an app, it’s an experience. It’s an avenue to a different world, a different India. But is only about cringe videos? The Supreme Court has asked Google and Apple to ban the popular app, saying it was encouraging pornography.

Instead of looking at the positives of the #MeToo movement, I actively tried to pinpoint its imperfections – by focussing on legal loopholes or that one woman who made a false accusation on Twitter. I started finding reasons to convince myself that there was something wrong with the movement. But why was I making excuses for sexual harassers?

Once you rise above the post of manager, why try to learn employee names and bother memorising them all? The corporate experience is all about being treated like shit, and the best way to do it is to refer to a human being with the same word you can use for a stapler.

Google+ is dead, but the question to ask is, was it ever alive? A Google+ account was like a deodorant in India: Everyone had one but no one was using it. And it became as irrelevant as development is to India’s politics.

At the age of 18, I thought I was cool because I knew the lyrics to Sean Paul’s Temperature. At 18, Prithvi Shaw is plundering the West Indies bowling attack like it is his daily glass of Bournvita.

My old-fashioned father, who still believes women should do the bulk of cooking and tolerates no criticism of Narendra Modi, suddenly turned liberal when a young couple needed his help. Unlike most people from our generation, who use social media to signal our virtues, my father had become the IRL definition of woke.

The corrupt politician is aware of the fallacies in our public service delivery system and what makes the voter tick. He offers rice to those who struggle to earn two meals a day and electricity to those who sleep in the dark. He gives them access to a system that is out of their reach.

I’m in a complicated relationship with Aadhaar. When we first met, we “linked” instantly. But then things went south and the courts helped save our marriage. But what about my embarrassing pictures that she already leaked? How do I make people unsee them?

Like India’s foreign policy, an India-Pakistan cricket match was full of ups and downs. But that was back in the ’90s and to say things have changed would be an understatement. These days when India faces Pakistan, you often don’t even hear of the game until you have Cricinfo bookmarked.

Today Ganeshotsav is about visiting that one relative who keeps Ganpati and having one-fourth of a modak. As children, though, it caused more excitement than for Charlie at the Chocolate Factory, because pandal-hopping was the only all-nighter we were allowed.

Ganesh Chaturthi is when every parent turns interior designer, every kid a painter, and every uncle a craft expert. It’s an art exhibition of the middle-class — and every clay mountain or paper flower, is the pièce de résistance.

Apple has announced its new iPhone and it is driving men nuts. They know it’s the only way they will ever have close to six inches in their pants.

Can we just ignore statistics and facts, and look at the good things demonetisation gave us? Sure, we are still waiting for ₹15 lakh to be deposited to our bank accounts, but the economic literacy of the country shot up faster than Mehul Choksi’s frequent-flyer mile points.

PV Sindhu and Saina Nehwal have scripted history at the 2018 Asian Games. Their individual journeys and accolades are no doubt inspiring. But what they mean for India and for the sport goes far, far beyond those solo pursuits.

It might be the most boring shot to watch in cricket, but maybe there is still place for the front foot defence alongside some of the more eye-catching shots in the game, a fact Team India would do well to remember for the rest of their tour of England.

India was thrashed 4-1 by England but it is Navjot Singh Sidhu who had a worse summer. He has been accused of demoralising our soldiers at the border, and declared a puppet of the Pakistani government. All for attending Imran Khan’s swearing-in ceremony.

One week into your childhood swimming classes, the coach becomes more dangerous in the water than a coked-up crocodile. Scared toddlers are thrown from the diving board and horrified kids are set adrift without floats, struggling for their lives and gulping down weird-tasting water.

Sunil Chhetri has been providing fans with magical moments throughout his career, it’s just that we haven’t been around to witness them. He’s more than a “Goal Machine” and “Captain Fantastic”, he is the man who has inspired an indifferent crowd to finally pay attention to Indian football.

If Bear Grylls hosted a show on Mumbai it would be titled Man vs BMC. The traffic in the city is a true equaliser, where Mukesh Ambani gets stuck in the same jam as you and I. Two hours of commute every day also provides a lesson in anger management and patience.

The MNS, which has been breaking Mumbai footpaths to protest potholes and beating up cinema hall managers, has a unique approach to tackling problems. It can be summed up by the motto, “What would Gandhi do? I’ll do the exact opposite of that.”

Congratulations, Mumbai, your apathy truly deserves an applause. Your tax money is used to build roads, repair them, so when there are pothole-related casualties, you are paying for your own death. The biopic on the city should ideally be titled “Bombay, the City that Never Feels”.

In a world that idolises speed, Luka Modrić has mastered the art of the pause. Of waiting for the right moment. Of moulding space and time on the football pitch. With three Man of the Match awards, he’s had a stellar tournament. And yet, nothing about him screams, “Look at me!”

Everything is fair in love and VAR. This was true at the World Cup final between France and Croatia where a controversial VAR decision tilted the game in the favour of Les Bleus.

Unlike the BMC, Mumbai’s trains were there when their city needed them the most, in the harshest days of the monsoon. Timely announcements were made, heavy-duty pumps chugged water out, and food packets were provided to stranded passengers on long-distance trains. The local truly is the city’s 3 am bestie.

Every Monday to Friday, you wake up during the monsoon with just one question in mind: “Aaj chutti hai kya?” You may rant against the BMC on Facebook, but you secretly hope that your faith in its inability to deal with any rain situation is not shaken.

Dear Football World Cup, now that India vs England cricket has started, I will have to dump you. You made quite a few false promises. You told me Neymar was going to bring swagger to the Cup, but all he did was roll on the floor. If I wanted to see a brown guy with a funky hairstyle doing nothing for 90 minutes, I’d pick Hardik Pandya instead.

2018 marked a rare World Cup where England arrived sans their usual hype and unwarranted swagger. Fans and pundits didn’t have high expectations from this young England squad – until the first kickoff whistle blew.

Diego Maradona is GOAT. At the World Cup clash between Argentina and Nigeria, he showed us yet again that he is not just the world’s greatest footballer. He is also the world’s greatest football fan.

With the monsoon, comes a surfeit of #pluviophile Tinder bios. You, who takes an Uber to the ATM a couple of kilometres away, impulsively sign up for a 15-kilometre trek on a rainy Sunday. Because the exhibition of your love for the rain is incomplete without a selfie atop Harishchandragadh. What could possibly go wrong?

When Sachin didn’t do well, the Indian team would invariably fold like a pack of cards, and the situation isn’t too different for Lionel Messi, Argentina’s all-time top goal scorer. When Messi has a quiet game, Argentina looks more disjointed than India’s finance ministry.

In a letter addressed to the finance minister, Arvind Subramanian writes, “Now is a good time to look back at my memorable, if patchy, tenure as chief economic advisor. Yes, I’d have loved it if we weren’t forced to do yoga every morning. On the bright side, it has made me fitter, although I wish I could say the same about the shape of our economy.”

Cricket is no longer a contest between bat and ball. It’s Virat Kohli vs Steve Smith vs Joe Root vs Kane Williamson. Bowlers do not exist to create their own legacies, they merely exist as a hindrance to a batsman’s legacy.

As world leaders advocate stricter immigration policies and hostility toward Muslims around the globe rises, that one of the world’s most loved footballers should be a Muslim, is a sweet irony. Mohamed Salah is not merely an icon of the game, but as Liverpool fans call him – a gift from Allah.

I have a game plan against Portugal, and his name is Sergio Ramos. I’m not going to go into much detail, but I’ll just whisper “Ronaldo” in his ears before kick-off and he’ll know what to do.

The next 30 days are going to be all about football and the World Cup. So even if you don’t find the game beautiful, you need to fit in. Pick a top team and pretend to support it. Do not say things like “I think The Netherlands or Italy will win the Cup” and “The Mexico team is building a wall. Lol.”

Everyone remembers their first day of college, when you walked in, the epitome of cool – i.e. a sasta rip-off of Honey Singh who is desperate to fit in. But by the time you’re ready to leave, you know you’ll miss the little things, like the Xerox shop where you got chocolates instead of change.

With journalistic credibility at an all-time low, I now look at news channels the same way my parents look at my career - with zero expectations.

In the world of finance, Advanced Excel is the only thing that will get you respect. For accountants everywhere, Excel is not the class nerd; it is Clark Kent. It can also help further your love life – because Excel in the spreadsheets, is better than coffee in the streets.

To all the poor sods expecting their results this exam season, you have our sympathy. We get it. A two-digit magical number is now going to determine the rest of your life: Whether you get into the best college, land a good job, get a marriage proposal, or want to go to Jupiter someday.

The state has developed a rather incompetent manual on How to Respond to Protests, which was applied to the Sterlite stir in Tuticorin. First ignore an agitation, then try to contain it. And after attempts to shut a protest fails, bring out the big guns.

The result of every office conference call is like the Karnataka elections. After spending hours of time and energy on debating a subject, you reach a fractured verdict.

Uneasy lies the head that once wore the crown. As if it weren’t difficult enough to once run Pakistan, I now feel scared in my own country over my 2008 Mumbai Attack remarks. I am now receiving the only thing that is worse than hate in Pakistan – love from India.

Being the car DJ is like being a parent. No matter what you do, it’s never going to be enough. If you play pop music, you’ll be asked if you’re 12 years old. Try playing classic rock, you’ll be asked if you’re 100. Crank up some Arijit Singh, you’ll be asked if you broke up recently.

I fondly remember the early days of Flipkart, when we delivered books on our scooters. People were still reading books instead of listicles and the traffic at Silk Board junction was not yet frozen. But now I have a billion dollars, so I’ll just sit back and watch the street fight between Amazon and Walmart.

The Bollywood apocalypse movie begins with a MET warning, but given its previous history with predictions, no one believes them. This doomsday scenario and everyone’s complete ignorance to it, is articulated through a Malaika Arora item song about living life to the fullest.

The Kathua rape and murder has illustrated once again that whataboutery is our national pastime. Social media is rife with arguments that refuse to acknowledge it as a communal attack, because “where were you in 1984”? The goal of all whataboutery is to never get to the bottom of difficult questions – and to never ask the right ones.

I received sex education long before the rest of my classmates, when a senior pointed out what my name “actually” meant. Dick references became an integral part of my life like diabetes in a Gujarati meal. I do believe names shape your personality – mine taught me a sense of humour.

The metrics for being a good child are different for Indian boys and girls. There is a soft bigotry of low expectations for boys, and a very high degree of expectations from a girl. By 10 years of age, my sister was equipped to survive a season on LOST – but I was the good boy who didn’t need to do anything more than tuck his legs in.

Salman Khan walks into Jodhpur Central Jail and bumps into another “celebrity inmate” – Asaram Bapu. Bhaijaan greets him with a namaste, Bapu turns around and says, “I’m a virgin too.”

I lose control of myself to another entity when I’m using cashless payments. The real me knows that that gola-maker is a reckless purchase, but the cashless wallet version says, “Wouldn’t a kala-khatta gola be great in this heat?”

Remember that one house in the building that was lit up the entire night during board exams? Those kids have now grown up to be accountants at multinational companies. And the financial year end brings out the worst in them.

If there’s one lesson I’ve learnt from this ball-tampering fiasco, it is that you can never trust these interns. You had one job, Bancroft!

In the Cambridge Analytica exposé, Facebook has been negligent with sensitive data. Google was fined €2.42 billion by the EU for manipulating search engine results to favour its own shopping service. Do they then have a moral right to carry out the function of being the internet police?

As Facebook turns 15, can you imagine a world without it? I worry about the extreme consequences of this event, for the timeline of my life would be ruined if Facebook had to deactivate its account.

A manufactured sense of happiness is pervasive these days. On social media in the form of #HeartReactsOnly and #MyHappyPlace and #LoveMyLife. It is this constant reminder of how I’m not leading a happy life that is making me… unhappy.

Each time I go for a shower, I feel like I have entered an examination hall of cosmetic care. WTF is a “Strawberry and Cream Silky Shampoo”? Is it meant to be eaten or used on the hair? What about the egg-nourishing conditioner? Can a vegetarian use it?

The Finance Bill and Appropriation Bill were passed in the Lok Sabha on Wednesday in a little over 30 minutes. I spent more time choosing between a paneer roll and vegetable sandwich on a flight from Mumbai to Pune than our elected representatives did, about money that would affect the lives of 130 crore people.