She’s turning 40 and has turned temperamental, refusing to cooperate. I give her all the TLC and all this isn’t just a ruse to make her mushy. I reminisce about the good ole days when all it took was a kiss on the neck in a dark nightclub to get her going. She is amused but does not change her stance.

Ramzan in isolation doesn’t make the acts of fasting and worshiping difficult. Those are deeds deeply personal in nature. But what takes a hit is working for the greater good together. When you are looking to usher in change or fight the good fight, the support of a community only strengthens your resolve.

In the era of physical isolation, does a sporting event that brings people together need to mentally isolate itself from the devastation caused by the pandemic? As the country gasps for breath, it is too much to expect our cricketing heroes to amplify an SOS tweet or do something that shows they care – anything that’ll tone down the tone-deafness of the tournament.

Where is Rajneeshpuram’s enigmatic Ma Anand Sheela? In Netflix’s Searching for Sheela, we meet a polite grandmother who is visiting her country after decades abroad.

In the tradition of Captain America, Sam Wilson is pure and optimistic. Unlike Steve Rogers, however, his hopefulness is not borne of a rose-tinted view of a better time, when right was right and wrong was wrong. People are complex, he acknowledges, and flawed. But they are also equal.

As COVID-19 hits home for lakhs of families, complaints on Twitter about having to work from bedrooms and Zoom fatigue have slowly made way for urgent pleas for hospital beds, Oxygen cylinders, and medicines. And the Twitterverse has stepped up, providing details of beds available, preparing a list of oxygen suppliers, compiling Google docs with information on where to find the life-saving Remdesivir and more.

I was once randomly dumped after six rounds of interviews, which included writing an elaborate test, over a generic text message. Even by modern dating standards that was cruel. Dear hiring executives, how about putting the human in Human Resource management?

I knew my grandma for 15 years but there is so much I didn’t know about her. I realised this after reading her favourite novel, Anna Karenina. Why did my very traditional grandma love a book about unfaithfulness, extra-marital affairs, and fractured families? It made me realise that one way to really understand a person is to discuss their favourite books.

After two decades of trying to tame my curly hair, I let it breathe. With time, the comfort of not having hickey-looking burn marks on my neck and forehead from the straightening iron became something I looked forward to. Embracing my curly hair has been synonymous with embracing my person.

It’s been 10 years since the first episode of Game of Thrones aired. It was like nothing anyone had ever seen on TV. Yet the series has not lived up to its initial promise of joining the glorious pantheon of enduring fantasy franchises like The Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter. Somehow you don’t want to keep going back to it.