Since most readers are used to consuming their meals in front of the TV while wearing their pajamas, this field guide to the cast of characters you’re likely to meet at Mumbai’s food festival this weekend is what every hungry foodie needs.

In Ford v Ferrari, the rivalry indicated in the title is merely a footnote. Instead James Mangold is more interested in locating the bruises that propel men to declare war and mistake it for glory. The result is a thrilling racing drama that ruminates on the line separating ego from pride.

The lines between work and non-work hours have long been blurred, and that’s a bad thing. A three-day weekend in India would be pretty pointless unless the remaining four days are utilised well, and we stop glorifying long work hours.

It’s been a decade since Sania Mirza won her first Grand Slam title, and India is still waiting for another woman to emulate her. But her road to the pinnacle was far from an easy one. Her life might look like a bed of roses, but Mirza sleeps on a thousand thorns.

Milap Zaveri’s Marjaavaan is yet another pointless outing, based entirely on the idea of finding an excuse for two overgrown man-childs to glare at each other while threatening murder after every five minutes without actually doing anything.

There are many today who seem all too willing to hold Panditji guilty for all of life’s ills. But Jawaharlal Nehru is a man who escapes easy definition, and perhaps strove to definitively remain just that — a man; not a saint, nor a saviour, and not in the very least, a self-appointed chowkidar.

Nehru’s 130th birth anniversary marks the rare occasion where he isn’t being criticised by rivals of the Congress party. The last few years have seen Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru become the right wing’s favourite punching bag.

Amar Kaushik’s Bala, that has a TikTok influencer as its lead protagonist, offers possibly the most accurate representation of a generation whose lives are so dependent on apps that their permanent address is the internet.

It’s only the third time in Maharashtra’s history that President’s Rule has been imposed, and like the previous two times, Sharad Pawar is at the centre of the action. For the experienced campaigner looking for his next big victory, could the third time be lucky?

I picked Portugal for my bachelorette – it sounded way fancier than the very plebeian Thailand. Invariably, the day would dissipate from being a quest of discovering a new city, to an endless tirade of “The local market is trending online, so we will have better photo-ops!”, to “Why can’t we just laze by the pool – my pedicure hasn’t received enough justice yet!”

India is saddled with an education system that is a vestige of Britain’s industrial revolution, which churns out efficient workers, not innovative thinkers. If analyses from UNICEF and NASSCOM are to be believed, the bulk of our graduates are unemployable. We’re a country desperately in need of education reforms.

Like Veer and Zaara’s love story, the movie’s music stands the test of time. “Main Yahaan Hoon” became the ballad for an entire generation. Fifteen years on, it makes us pine for eternal love even when we find ourselves in an age where regularly liking someone’s Instagram posts is the zenith of commitment.

It’s odd that the ongoing student protests against fee hikes in JNU are being viewed by most as an excuse for the students to sponge off the privileged taxpayer’s money. Especially in a country where qualifying for a tax slab is in itself a privilege that most would be happy to have.

Solutions for Delhi’s (and any other city’s) pollution lies in new government policies and programmes – improved public transport, building cycle lanes, a well-thought out ban on plastic. Someone using one less firecracker during Diwali or cycling to work is not going to help.

I remember clutching my father’s finger as we made our way through the crowd at the Golden Temple. My head was covered with mother’s red dupatta; I was clenching onto a ₹100 note for dear life until I managed to slip it inside the donation box. That was always my “duty” and I would take it very seriously.

While followers of the BJP-Shiv Sena and Congress keep launching tirades against each other with cries of “bhakts” and “libtards”, their so-called “nationalist” and “secularist” leaders have abandoned their ideologies faster than Rohit Shetty abandons the laws of physics.

In an interview from 1999, which has gone viral today, Bal Thackeray said he would never join hands with Sharad Pawar. Getting the CM’s post then would be a short-term victory for Uddhav, but if the Shiv Sena is perceived as having turned its back on Bal Thackeray’s legacy, the win could be a self-defeating one.

Everyone on LinkedIn seems to be deep in the throes of a never-ending professional orgasm. And they’re not afraid to bellow their pleasure out from a digital rooftop: Made the long list for the best beauty blog award given by a website that didn’t exist until a month ago. Got invited to speak on a panel discussing digital disruption in in 2020.

The centuries-old Ayodhya dispute has stifled and bolted political discourse in India to the regressive wall of hate and bigotry. It has limited the average citizen’s capacity to disassociate from the politics of religious difference. Secularism had almost turned into a hoax. Saturday’s verdict, however, may change something, if not everything.

Netflix’s The End of the F***ing World tells us that social awkwardness isn’t necessarily a prison people need to break out of. That looking and behaving like everyone else isn’t the end-all of our existences.

Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi will go down in history as the man who led a bench of judges to resolve one of the most important cases in India – the Ayodhya dispute. Gogoi, who will retire on November 17, has never shied away from taking difficult decisions: He was among the four judges who revolted against CJI Dipak Misra in January 2018 and was driving force behind the controversial NRC.

Many are calling Mastodon a better version of Twitter — sans the hate and trolls. Alas, reality is going to be a lot harsher. Those who think it’s going to be a panacea for “Twitter’s evils” are likely to be very disappointed.

Swara Bhasker might be one of those rare celebrities in the country whose trolls follow her actions even more closely than her fans. But between her using an expletive for a child on a talk show, and her haters descending on her en masse, the four-year-old starts looking like the most mature person involved.

It’s naive to assume that the makers of Pati Patni Aur Woh didn’t predict the backlash to the rape joke. Like the success of Kabir Singh shows, in 2019, every denunciation is actually a win for a film. The fact that we’re rewarding Pati Patni Aur Woh with our attention is its own payoff.