Shahid Afridi, Harbhajan Singh, and Yuvraj Singh are cricket legends who’ve have engaged in fierce competition, but are now coming together in the face of Covid-19. Unfortunately, what should have been a powerful message about overcoming differences and banding together was hijacked by some unsavoury trolls on social media.

India has reportedly sent 90 tonnes of “medical protective equipment” to Serbia. Meanwhile, doctors in India fighting the pandemic complain of a critical shortage of surgical gear.

While adults have coping mechanisms and access to information, what about our children who depend on us for assurance in this state of lockdown? How am I supposed to tell my six-year-old, whose greatest concern at the moment is a creepy spider hiding somewhere in our room, that I have no idea when coronavirus will all be over?

Uttar Pradesh’s Rampur is dealing with a pesky problem in the middle of the lockdown. Locals are flooding the essential services helpline and demanding samosas and pizzas. Their punishment – clean the drains.

For hundreds and thousands of migrants stranded across the country, coronavirus is not their biggest worry – starvation and hopelessness is. In Bihar, an 11-year-old boy died after his family could not feed him for three days. In UP, an eight-month-old pregnant woman had to walk for 200 kilometres to return to her village.

The Nizamuddin Markaz gathering in Delhi, which attracted thousands of devotees some of whom were carriers of COVID-19, has become an excuse for several sections of India to paint Indian Muslims as bioterrorists. The hashtag #CoronaJihad is evidence.

What’s up with the new PM-CARES fund created for those who wish to contribute to India’s fight against Covid-19? And how different is it from the Prime Minister’s National Relief Fund?

Hotstar VIP’s Special Ops, created by Neeraj Pandey, is a homegrown thriller that satisfies the hunger for desi espionage shows. Special Ops’ plot might be a work of fiction, but it intertwines very real events into its narrative, making for exceptional content.

In these dark times, my friends and I turn to Hera Pheri, the heist comedy that informed our childhoods. The Priyadarshan film is a bunch of guffaw-worthy skits, where the narrative is secondary. It has aged perfectly for the meme generation with our ten-second attention spans and voracious appetite for punchlines.

Rules and Indian citizens don’t exactly go hand in hand, so it will be interesting to see how a nation of over a billion lock themselves in. Everyone keeps saying that we are in this together, but we are also in this as single, solitary individuals who need to channel all our will power and practice self-discipline like never before.

In UP’s Bareilly, authorities were asked to sanitise buses. Instead they used the disinfectant on migrant workers returning home.

If locals in Goa are to be believed, the lockdown has cut off the supply of essentials to the state. They have no access to groceries and those stepping out to head to the market are being punished mercilessly by the police and CRPF.

In the middle of a pandemic, hope is the first thing you lose. But it will pass. And when you come out on the other side, you’ll be a different person. Pubs will be full of people, you’ll enjoy your cramped train commute, you will even like the colleague you botched about for three years. There will be no more surprises.

The stories emerging from rural India are truly heartbreaking. In Rajasthan, men and women looted a truck carrying flour, as the supply of essentials has stopped amid the lockdown. In Karnataka, a farmer had no choice but to throw away tonnes of grapes, since there were no buyers.

In Uttar Pradesh’s Bulandshah, Muslim neighbours cremated a Hindu man and even chanted “Raam Naam Satya Hai” during his funeral procession, as relatives failed to gather amid the coronavirus lockdown.

German finance minister of state, Thomas Schäfer committed suicide after being “deeply worried” about the coronavirus crisis. Back home, in Kandivali, Mumbai a man killed his brother because he’d stepped out during the lockdown. It is important to focus on your mental health in these time. Fortunately, help is available.

Shikha Malhotra, who was seen in the Shah Rukh Khan-starrer Fan, has joined a BMC-run hospital to assist doctors fighting coronavirus. She has a nursing degree from Delhi.

Yes, coronavirus makes you sick with flu-like symptoms but it also sucks out all the decency out of you. A pandemic that threatens your life as much as it threatens that of others is all it takes for the facade of humanity to slip.

Ratan Tata announced that the Tata Trust would donate Rs 500 crore to protect medical personnel, treat patients, and increase testing in the country. The Tata group has also paid all temporary workers and daily wage earners, for March and April.

Minal Bhosale, of the Pune-based Mylab Discovery Solutions, led a team of 10 that designed a new coronavirus home testing kit in a record of six weeks. The following day, the real-life Wonder Woman delivered her baby.

Images from across the country show thousands of labourers attempting to get back home on foot over large distances. The crisis was the worst at Anand Vihar bus station.

With the British Prime Minister, Health Minister, the Queen, and the Prince of Wales all in isolation, two key decision-making ministers in the cabinet right now are Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak, and Home Minister Priti Patel. Social media had a field day with the fact that two Indian-origin ministers are now in charge of Britain.

The global coronavirus pandemic has been hard to endure for humans, but other species on the planet seem to be doing just fine. Odisha’s beaches are being reclaimed by the rare and endangered Olive Ridley sea turtle. In another Indian city, a small Indian civet was spotted crossing a street.

The air quality index in Delhi has drastically fallen as a side effect of the Coronavirus lockdown. The AQI is below 50 across large parts of the capital, and the scary “hazardous” in blood red has turned to a pleasant green “good” on air quality monitoring apps, leaving Dilliwallahs in shock and awe.

Ramayana isn’t the only old gem in Doordarshan’s archives. Here’s our recommendation of 12 Doordarshan serials we’d love to watch again.

Not all cops are as heavy-handed as the ones currently gaining infamy on social media. While the dominant narrative has portrayed a brutal police cracking down harshly on civilians, there are many who are feeding homeless people and taking care of stray animals.