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Latest from HT Weekend

New ear resolution: Sanjoy Narayan on the iconic Sennheiser HD 600 headphones

A digital rip of Led Zeppelin’s Ten Years Gone is like a 3D soundscape. Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue sounds brand-new. This is music as it was meant to be heard.

These humble German cans that can be bought for about $270 are the audiophile’s equivalent of a beat-up Fender guitar: a tool that melts into the art instead of stealing the spotlight.
Updated on May 24, 2025 06:04 PM IST

Doctors by Nature: Read an excerpt from a book about how animals heal themselves

We can play a role too. In this chapter, author Jaap de Roode explores how the modern urban garden shapes animal and insect ‘pharmacies’.

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Updated on May 24, 2025 05:58 PM IST
ByJaap de Roode

Blocked buster: Deepanjana Pal on the tussle over the release of Bhool Chuk Maaf

The tug-of-war between theatrical dates and streaming release has entered a new phase, with a ₹60-crore lawsuit thrown in.

Bhool Chuk Maaf, starring Rajkummar Rao, needn’t have had such a crisis of confidence. With just a two-week window before it becomes available on streaming, the odds are now stacked against its theatrical run.
Updated on May 23, 2025 04:04 PM IST
ByDeepanjana Pal

What came before the UN?: In Egypt, China, ancient bids to administer the world

Idealism, a hunger for power and a wish to prosper have driven some of the earliest efforts to build a world order.

The remarkable Terracotta Army was crafted during the Qin dynasty, in the 3rd century BCE. At one point, this dynasty aimed to govern “all under heaven”. (Shutterstock)
Updated on May 23, 2025 03:59 PM IST
BySukanya Datta

For best results: Why countries group together, despite the UN

The earliest of these groupings – NATO – dates to just four years after the United Nations was formed. What role does the UN play, amid these alliances?

A child on a swing outside a Kyiv building bombed by a Russian missile. When fading or dysfunctional multilateralism doesn’t meet a country’s interests, it will find other ways to exert influence or extract resources. This is where the role of the UN becomes vital. (Getty Images)
Updated on May 23, 2025 03:55 PM IST

An experiment UNdone: Prashant Jha writes on what ails the United Nations

There are no two ways about it: the UN, now 80 years old, has failed at its core mission of preserving the peace.What role can it play? Why do we still need it?

 (HT Imaging: Puneet Kumar)
Updated on May 23, 2025 03:51 PM IST

How does it all go so pear-shaped?: Poonam Saxena writes on bonds with mothers

It can become something of a fractured relationship, the one with a mother. No one explored this with more delicacy than masterful Hindi writer Swadesh Deepak.

Author Swadesh Deepak. (Image: Soumitra Mohan)
Updated on May 17, 2025 01:52 PM IST

The Ruins of Gour: Read an excerpt from a book on Bengal’s lost cities

Henry Creighton, a Scotsman working at an indigo factory, stumbled upon the ruins more than 200 years ago. His 1817 book notes what it was like. An excerpt.

The Kadam Rasul or Footprint of the Messenger mosque. (The Ruins of Gour)
Updated on May 17, 2025 01:45 PM IST
ByHenry CreightonHenry Creighton

Capital gains: Tour the lost cities of Gaur and Pandua in West Bengal

These were once grand capitals. All that remain are fragments: a mausoleum, minar, parts of a palace. The good news: The influencers don’t yet know they’re here

The Firoz Minar in Gaur. (Leah Verghese)
Updated on May 17, 2025 01:42 PM IST
ByLeah Verghese

The end of the Age of Kohli: Rudraneil Sengupta writes on an exceptional leader

The former captain, now retired from Tests, didn’t just lead, rack up the runs, and win. He altered the DNA of the Indian team.

When was the last time we had a cricketer who wore his heart on his sleeve as Virat Kohli did? (PTI)
Updated on May 17, 2025 01:38 PM IST
ByRudraneil Sengupta

A host of mini-me’s: History of the tiny bio, and what makes it so hard to frame

Chinese traders struggled to describe themselves in a few characters, in 300 CE. Such tags are battlegrounds of politics, power, delusion – even more so today.

(HT Illustration: Rahul Pakarath)
Updated on May 10, 2025 03:13 PM IST
ByNikhil Narayanan

Blunt-force drama: Deepanjana Pal writes on the new series Black, White and Gray

The new series on Sony Liv offers both twists and familiar tropes – all the while asking: Has Bollywood made storytellers of us all?

Palak Jaiswal in Black, White & Gray - Love Kills.
Updated on May 10, 2025 02:44 PM IST
ByDeepanjana Pal

Jane character energy: How are Austen’s novels still the stuff of blockbusters?

How is it that her stories are still being retold, in Hindi, English, Japanese, Tamil? It comes down to her eye for people, says K Narayanan.

The Bridget Jones franchise is the story of Pride and Prejudice, retold. Watch the fourth instalment, this year’s …Mad About the Boy, for the way it moves its characters beautifully into uncertain middle-age.
Updated on May 09, 2025 01:38 PM IST
ByK Narayanan

It’s not just that the heat could kill you: Author, researcher Jeff Goodell

His latest book is an attempt to make this abstract threat more visible. “It wasn’t easy. It was like writing the biography of a ghost,” he says.

A pharmacy in Rome displays the day’s temperature, as a means of alerting pedestrians. (Getty Images)
Updated on May 09, 2025 01:36 PM IST
BySukanya Datta

Feel the burn?: The nature of the heat we face is changing

As summers become more deadly, governments are responding with literal alarm bells: awnings to cover entire streets, names and grades for heatwaves. Take a look

Rajpath shimmers in the Delhi heat. IMD does not yet factor humidity levels into its heatwave parameters. This is an issue, because humidity levels are rising - as part of the urban heat island effect - even in the drier megacities. This is part of what is making heat more deadly. (HT Archive)
Updated on May 09, 2025 01:31 PM IST
BySukanya Datta

The thing is...: Wknd interviews an unusual collector of everyday objects

Part of his horde ended up at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum, raising the questions: Do power, status have to define a collection? Who are our museums for?

Over 50 years, Khandakar has collected 12,000 objects. Some are extraordinary – antiques dating to the Mughal era. Many are simply the nuts and bolts of the everyday: pens, toys, perfume bottles, beads, letters. (Anand Kumar Ekbote; Dotgain Info for Berlin Biennale 2022)
Updated on May 09, 2025 01:29 PM IST

India, Angola, Peru and the Moon: See who’s on an endangered heritage sites list

Why did Sea of Tranquility make the cut? What marks out ancient fields in Peru, a lake system in Kutch, an Indian city centre with a river running through it?

The Sea of Tranquillity, with its unusually flat surface, has served as a landing pad for numerous Moon missions, including the first manned one, featuring Buzz Aldrin. A flag, a boot print and assorted trash and memorabilia now lie strewn across the area. (Getty Images)
Updated on May 03, 2025 05:47 PM IST

The vault in our stars: Rudraneil Sengupta on Indian gymnastics

Interviewing a jubilant Brazilian gymnastics star recently was a bittersweet experience. How much hope, and help, she has had.

What does it take to pull off this kind of balancing act? Don’t ask the Gymnastics Federation of India. (Photo Courtesy Laureus)
Updated on May 03, 2025 05:45 PM IST
ByRudraneil Sengupta

Best fruit forward: Check out a unique ‘mango museum’ in Gujarat

Guests can walk through an orchard made up of 300 varieties. Expect rare breeds from Japan, Thailand and West Bengal, as well as lessons in climate resilience.

Samples of the red ivory, strawberry, banana and King of Chakapat mangoes grown on the Jariyas’ 12-acre farm.
Updated on May 03, 2025 05:44 PM IST
ByShreeya Amberkar

The three Indias: Making sense of the great economic divide

India is third on the list of countries with the wealthiest billionaires. Meanwhile, less than 38% of households own a refrigerator.

Viewed as a separate country, India 1 - made up of the top 10% - would consist of about 140 million people, with per capita income at about <span class='webrupee'>₹</span>12.80 lakh. (Pixabay)
Updated on May 04, 2025 08:01 AM IST
ByAnesha George

Just someone I used to know?: Charles Assisi writes on fading intimacy

When friends, or ex-lovers, drift apart, it may leave no bruises. But it’s still hard to reconcile, isn’t it, the quiet loss of a bond that once meant so much?

We rarely even talk about it, except perhaps in the movies. (Above) Kieran Culkin and Jesse Eisenberg play cousins, once close and now in different worlds, in the masterful film A Real Pain (2024).
Updated on Apr 26, 2025 03:14 PM IST

What are we all watching?: Deepanjana Pal on the missing Hindi comfort show

There was a time when we had Gullak, Panchayat, Bandish Bandits. Why is a vivid vampire flick the best thing I can currently recommend?

Hollwood is still doing the comfort watch fairly well. This year’s Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy is a good example. It allows Jones to retain her silliness but adds layers of depth and even pathos.
Updated on Apr 26, 2025 02:58 PM IST
ByDeepanjana Pal

A thriller Top 10: Check out K Narayanan’s essential Hitchcock watchlist

Psycho, of course. But also The Lady Vanishes, and The 39 Steps. A century since his first film, Narayanan puts together a list of fan and critic favourites.

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Updated on Apr 25, 2025 02:35 PM IST
ByK Narayanan

‘Are we ready for this?’: Wknd interviews the astrophysicist who captured signs

At 45, Nikku Madhusudhan has made the discovery of a lifetime. How did he know where to look? What else could these gas signatures be? An exclusive interview.

The gas signatures Madhusudhan and his team at Cambridge have detected are the surest signs of life outside Earth that humanity has ever encountered. How we interpret and build on this data, from 124 light years away, will be crucial, he says.
Updated on Apr 26, 2025 03:07 PM IST

Read herrings: Poonam Saxena celebrates Hindi crime writer Surendra Mohan Pathak

His books are a mix of Hindi, Urdu, Punjabi and English. These are the many Indias he has known. What keeps the pulp-fiction legend ticking?

Pathak’s aura remains undimmed, even though the glory days of Hindi pulp-fiction themselves are long over. (HT Archives)
Updated on Apr 19, 2025 04:59 PM IST

More than you can chew: Swetha Sivakumar explores extreme food records

What makes someone grow the biggest pumpkin or bake the largest loaf in the world? Exactly how risky are those eating competitions? Take a look.

Where do you draw the line?: Shaggy and Scooby-Doo.
Updated on Apr 19, 2025 04:54 PM IST
BySwetha Sivakumar

Pounds and prejudice: Graphic novel Shrink explores life in a large body

Artist and researcher Rachel Thomas traces childhood scars, everyday cruelties – and vital research around medical bias, anthropology, history.

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Updated on Apr 19, 2025 04:51 PM IST
BySukanya Datta

Lather, rinse, record: A new book traces the ancient history of dhobis of Delhi

They’ve been here since the founding of Shahjahanabad, says SM Channa. Her book explores their world then, and how they are now being edged out of their city.

A dhobi at work in Jangpura, Delhi. (HT Archives)
Updated on Apr 19, 2025 04:57 PM IST

Leaps of fate: See how people of the past attempted to predict the future

Spiders, parchment, bone and complex math were among the methods ancient cultures used. What drives this need? Who are the soothsayers in our midst today?

A 19th-century Chinese wheel of fortune. (Courtesy Divination, Oracles & Omens)
Updated on Apr 19, 2025 05:26 PM IST
ByAnesha George

Landscape view: How the bungalow, born in Bengal,took on new shapes across India

Hybrid formats in Mysuru. A modernist take in Lutyens’ Delhi. Art Deco in Mumbai... see how each of these evolved, what made them special.

The Shovabazar Rajbari in Kolkata. The grandeur of these erstwhile homes came at a price. It cost about 10 times as much to build a bungalow in Kolkata as it did elsewhere in colonised India. (Getty Images)
Updated on Apr 18, 2025 02:30 PM IST
BySukanya Datta
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