Messi in Kolkata, and the familiar Indian sports farce

Lionel Messi’s visit to football-crazy Kolkata should have been a celebration. Instead, it became yet another reminder of how badly Indian sport is organised—and, more importantly, who really matters in our sporting ecosystem. Fans paid an exorbitant ₹12,000 per ticket, only to return home without even catching a glimpse of their hero. Messi, predictably, was…

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Which city are you from? Grab a chair

We are at our go-to restaurant to grab a quick bite, if you can call two sabzis, one dal, two starters, three desserts, and fifty-seven naans a quick bite. My wife, who for some reason has become a gym freak, is staring down my soul, wondering if I have any shame left. “Chew slowly,” she…

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A SENSORY ENCOUNTER WITH ART

I want you to think with your body, feel with your mind… to experience this exhibition in a very corporeal way,” curator Nikhil Chopra’s words still linger in the air. It is an invitation that sets the tone for the sixth edition of the KochiMuziris Biennale, an exhibition designed to be lived as much as…

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Glass Baubles And Watchhouses Speak Of Survival

Suspended glass baubles that catch the faintest glint of light, and tiny steel watchhouses balanced delicately on stilts — at the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, Palestinian artist and architect Dima Srouji and Italian curator Piero Tomassoni present two installations that feel at once fragile and quietly defiant. Their works, “Air of Firozabad/ Air of “Palestine and “Time…

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When vertical integration meets governance reality

Elon Musk is no longer building discrete companies. He is engineering a vertically integrated intelligence–energy–mobility ecosystem. Satellites in space harvesting solar energy at scale. Orbital data centres powering xAI. That intelligence embedded into Optimus humanoid robots and Tesla vehicles. Cars that charge autonomously, operate at the lowest marginal cost on Earth, and are continuously pre-corrected…

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Imagine There’s No Country, No Money

Tesla boss said some profound stuff in his two podcasts Why is Elon Musk on a podcasting spree? Two shows he has appeared in the last two weeks are Nikhil Kamath’s People by WTF and The Katie Miller Podcast. Several of his talking points have been identical. One in particular is indicative of what might…

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Dancing in the dark

People sometimes react too quickly without thinking—like when the doctor taps your knee and your leg kicks automatically. But doing that with important things like rules, safety, and fun can cause problems. For example, if one big car crashes a few times, some people say, “Ban the car!” If one nightclub catches fire, some say,…

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