Innholdsfortegnelse for 24 February 2025 i India Today

IN last year’s Lok Sabha election, the Narendra Modi government was nudged from its comfort zone. The catchy slogan of “char sau paar” (400-plus) envisaged a domineering majority. Eventually, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won only 240 seats, 63 less than in 2019 and 32 short of a majority on its own. The National Democratic Alliance (NDA) got its historic third term but only as a coalition with just 293 seats. Dependent on demanding allies for the first time, Modi was forced onto the back foot to navigate the dynamics of coalition politics. But that rare moment of vulnerability is truly past. The BJP learned from its setback and shed its overconfidence. Subsequently, a thaw with its ideological mentor, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), revived last-mile connectivity for the party’s…

The India Today Mood of the Nation (MOTN) poll was conducted by CVoter, a globally renowned name in the field of socio-economic research, between January 2, 2025, and February 9, 2025, interviewing 54,418 respondents covering all Lok Sabha segments across all states. In addition to these samples, 70,705 interviews from CVoter’s regular tracker data over the past 24 weeks were also analysed for the long-term trendline projections of votes and seats. Thus, the opinion of a total of 125,123 respondents was considered for this MOTN report. The margin of error is +/-3 per cent at macro level and +/-5 per cent at the micro level of reporting with 95 per cent confidence level. From May 2009 onwards, the CVoter Tracker has been carried out each week, 52 waves in a…

Amid the ever-changing fortunes of regional satraps, Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath has emerged as an exception, securing the title of the most popular chief minister for the 10th consecutive time in the India Today Mood of the Nation (MOTN) poll. Adityanath’s unique blend of hardline Hindutva, strict law enforcement and infrastructure development has cemented his nationwide appeal. This, even after fingers were pointed at him for the Bharatiya Janata Party’s dismal Lok Sabha poll performance in the state. While 35.3 per cent of the respondents back him as the best CM, up from 33.2 per cent just six months ago, Adityanath needs to focus on building more support in his home state. West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee ranks second nationally, maintaining her stronghold in her state through fiery…

“Bengaluru was called the garden city earlier…25 years back, we had 70 lakh people living here, now we have 1.4 crore. Last year, we saw 7,000 borewells drying up…now I’m trying to fix the water bodies, rejuvenate the water table. We’ll change the image of Bengaluru” - D.K. SHIVAKUMAR, Deputy Chief Minister, Karnataka Karnataka is home to 60 per cent of the Western Ghats but it is also the state with the second largest area of arid land in the country after Rajasthan. Thanks to this unique geography, it has always been susceptible to the adverse effects of climate change, the state’s minister for forests, environment and ecology Eshwar Khandre pointed out at the first India Today Environment Conclave held in Bengaluru on February 4. The conclave, spanning a wide…

Call it serendipity or a dream come true, but a few years back, theatre writer-director Purva Naresh found herself reading a Hindi translation of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s short story White Nights in St Petersburg, during white nights. Last year when Aadyam, an Aditya Birla initiative to promote theatre, came knocking on Purva’s door seeking a pitch for a new play, she found herself returning to Dostoevsky’s tragic romance. “I had seen the film [Luchino Visconti’s 1957 classic] at FTII and I remember the entire batch came out crying. The melancholia, the way it strikes you, the monochromatic white nights, it was all so compelling,” says Purva. “But I couldn’t find any stage adaptations.” In Chandni Raatein, Purva’s take on the tale, she deploys music to underline the emotions and make it…

Q. How did you come up with the title ‘Of Worlds Within Worlds’ for the retrospective? I was living in a small town in Gujarat and a world opened for me when I joined the Faculty of Fine Arts in Baroda in 1955. I went to England in 1963 and a third world opened to me. I saw all the great works of art. Then I travelled within India. This wanderlust has been with me from the beginning. ‘Of Worlds Within Worlds’ seemed apt for this journey. Q. Why do maps interest you? I was always interested in maps, but I did not find the kind of map I could work upon. In 2001 or 2002, I discovered a little booklet about maps in a British museum bookshop and found…

Italian actor Sophia Loren has famously said: “Spaghetti can be eaten most successfully if you inhale it like a vacuum cleaner”. Well, quite a unique analogy but ask any cleanliness buff and we are pretty sure the statement will strike a chord. Something similar would be the case with me. A neat freak who simply abhors dust, grime, spills and stains, a spic and span home is what instantly puts me in a ‘Zen’ state of mind. So, when given an opportunity to review a vacuum cleaner, Bosch’s Unlimited 7 Handstick vacuum cleaner in this case, there were no second thoughts. First things First Weighing 4.910 kg with a run-time up to 55 minutes and charging time of about an hour-and-a-half, the cordless vacuum cleaner is sleek, smart, and easy…

Mystery, opulence, and a rich blend of history collide at Jaipur’s City Palace, where Mughal and Rajput architectural mastery intertwine in an awe-inspiring tapestry. This sprawling complex of palaces, pavilions, courtyards, gardens, and temples isn’t just a monument—it’s a living, breathing masterpiece. It’s also home to 26-year-old Maharaja Sawai Padmanabh Singh, affectionately known as ‘Pacho’ among friends and family, who stands at the helm of Jaipur’s royal legacy. Not only does he champion the preservation of Jaipur’s culture and traditions, but he’s also a polo star and a global youth and fashion icon—talk about a modern-day renaissance man. Legacy in Every Brick “The construction of City Palace, commissioned by Maharaja Sawai Jai Singh II, started in 1727 and is said to have been completed by 1732. It’s a vast complex,…

The team at the marble shop are baffled. They don’t understand why I want the stained white sandstone with the irregular edges, or why I would want massive black unpolished slabs of Lepatra. The sandstone is for a table and the black stone is for my floors; the stone specialist tells me I cannot lay 4 feet by two feet slabs in my space as it just isn’t possible. Earlier I bought one of those bicycle carts off a man because I wanted to remove the wheels and turn it into a table. I have this contemporary vision that local artists and artisans in Jaipur help me execute and create. What once was a sleepy laid back town is now at the helms of what has fast become known as…

If space is the final frontier, both art and design court it with equal intensity and tenacity. Salvador Dalí’s Mae West lips sofa, Frank West’s Lamps, Roy Lichtenstein’s Brushstroke Chair and Ottoman and Marc Newson’s Lockheed Lounge are all cases in point. So, it was only natural for the India Art Fair to celebrate design. This year they have an expanded design section with limited edition and hand-made collectible design by 11 studios curated by Alaiia Gujral, who is a multidisciplinary artist, curator, and the visionary behind Future Galerie Showroom in Chicago. Gujral also brought an interesting perspective, a kind of East meets West, with more of a contemporary, contextual vibe. After all, she lives in Chicago and remains rooted in India. So, her curatorial list included Vikram Goyal, Atelier…

Most already know Diipa Büller-Khosla, as an entrepreneur-influencer who loves fun yet functional designs. So when she, her husband Oleg Büller-Khosla, (both are co-founders of inde wild and Post For Change) decided to carve a personal space in Mumbai with their daughter Dua in tow, we knew we had to make this spewcial. I was introduced to Diipa and Oleg through a close friend and when we started this journey, we immediately connected in our common passion for sustainable design. The house favours natural materials including fabrics where we prioritise cottons and linens over synthetic fabrics. Having been briefed about their house in Amsterdam we wanted to infuse bicultural elements into Diipa and Oleg’s new residence. In so doing we wanted to access the raw palette of Flemish and Dutch…

At the launch of A Maverick in Politics (Vol. 2), on-and-off Congressman Mani Shankar Aiyar had the packed house in splits with his trademark nofilter tales. He surmised that Sonia Gandhi did not like him initially, perhaps because her “straight, faithful and loving” husband, the late prime minister Rajiv Gandhi, was getting a tad too friendly with the “notsostraight” Aiyar. Then came the story of the evening: as petroleum minister in UPA1, he once made a top industrialist wait at his office while he wrapped up a meeting. That industrialist was Reliance Industries chief Mukesh Ambani. The fallout? Ambani, who wasn’t used to waiting, did not meet Aiyar again, and the minister soon found himself out of the petroleum ministry. Aiyar now suspects it was for his unintended slight. ALL…

Two 17-year-olds captivated Indian sport last year and both have made their debut in the India Today Mood of the Nation Poll. Para archer Sheetal Devi may not have bagged an Olympic medal but her heroics won hearts in Paris after her very first arrow, fired from her legs, scored a bull’s eye. In April 2024, D. Gukesh became the youngest winner of Candidates, the tournament which decides the challenger to the world champion. By December 16, he became the game’s youngest world champion. While Sheetal broke new ground as the first para athlete to debut in the female sportspersons list, Gukesh entered straight at No. 3 in the male field. The teens show that the future of Indian sport is in safe hands. Among female sportspersons, P.V. Sindhu,…

As a senior artist, Usha Uthup has performed on many stages, but it is the recent experiences of her singing in musical baithaks that she talks of with utmost joy. “It is a great experience to be singing to a diverse audience who engage and enjoy my music so much and are fantastically receptive to it,” she says. Musical baithaks and mehfils have been a part of India’s cultural repertoire for centuries but never before have they seen such a vast outreach—both in terms of the audience demographic and the variety of artists performing for them. Delhi-based Ibtida – Ek Mehfil, which hosted these baithaks with Uthup, is among the frontrunners of this resurgence. They have brought a host of senior artists like Uthup, Hariharan, Shilpa Rao, Kavita Seth and…

Conversation Starter With a wooden silhouette carved from tropical hardwood and sterling silver head and legs, the Gazing Ram Sculpture is a remarkable sight. But the attention to details doesn’t end here, the eyes, adorned with tiger’s eye gemstones, reflect resilience and vitality. Clearly, no matter where you place this sculpture from Lotus Arts de Vivre, it can’t help but stand out. PRICE ₹12.72 lakh AT @lotusartsdevivre (Instagram) Call of the Wild Rabyana Designs’ latest collection is all about taking your home from drab to fab. At the heart of the collection lies the Panthera photoframe and vase, a majestic tribute to the wild’s allure. With its sleek, sculptural silhouette and bold metallic accents, it embodies a striking harmony between nature and modernity. PRICE ₹3,499 (photoframe), ₹10,399 (vase, small) AT…

Resilience. Originating from a Latin root, the word once described the quality of materials to resist deformation under stress. In later years, psychologists and sociologists came to apply the concept to characterise individuals who could cope better with adversity than others or had the special ability to bounce back from difficult challenges, stress or trauma. It is a word that aptly sums up Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s rare ability to withstand setbacks and grow even stronger, as has been evident in the recent past. In the 2024 Lok Sabha election, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) led by Modi received a rude shock when it won only 240 out of 543 seats, which was 32 short of the 272 seats needed for a simple majority to form a government on its own.…

Pushpa fire nahin, wildfire hai (Pushpa is not fire, it’s wildfire),” says Allu Arjun’s character in Pushpa 2–The Rule, the highest grossing Indian film of all time. It is no surprise, therefore, to see him rise to No. 3 in the India Today Mood of the Nation poll. Amitabh Bachchan, of course, continues to be the eternal flame that shines the brightest. To reign supreme, the veteran doesn’t even need to be as prolific as Akshay Kumar (No. 5) or charm audiences like Shah Rukh Khan (No. 2). The masses are still under the spell of the 82-year-old’s cinematic stature. Behind him after a sizeable gap comes Shah Rukh ‘Badshah’ Khan. SRK didn’t have a release last year and will be missing from the big screen in 2025, but that’s…

If you’re a fan of screenwriters such as Sudip Sharma (Paatal Lok, Kohrra) or directors like Abhishek Chaubey (Udta Punjab, Killer Soup), Avinash Arun (Killa, Unpaused) and Amit Masurkar (Newton, Sherni), then you’ve heard the work of Naren-Benedict. Each of them counts the composer duo of Mumbai-residing Naren Chandavarkar and London-based Benedict Taylor as regular collaborators. The pair, whose latest is the music for Paatal Lok 2, believes they’ve established a comfort zone with these filmmakers. “With creative areas where things can be quite abstract, you end up going back to the same people who you can really trust and have a creative shorthand with,” says Chandavarkar, whose Marathi drama Sabar Bonda (Cactus Pears), in which he’s both co-producer and sound designer, recently won the World Cinema Grand Jury Prize…

In 2021, a Malayalam film dropped on OTT and struck a touchy nerve with women over what was either their lived reality or their worst nightmare come alive. That Jeo Baby’s brutal kitchen drama, The Great Indian Kitchen, came in the midst of the pandemic, when everyone was cloistered in their homes, only aggravated the torment its leading lady (Nimisha Sajayan) was put through. Sanya Malhotra remembers watching and being inspired by Sajayan’s class act and also “feeling trapped, uncomfortable, moved and irritated”. In Mrs., a Hindi adaptation of the acclaimed drama, which released on ZEE5 recently, Sanya hopes to evoke these feelings with her portrayal of a new bride who is overwhelmed with the demands in the kitchen. Going by the response to the trailer on her social media, she…

India’s smallest state brims with paradoxes, counterfactuals, and what can seem like outright contradictions, which explains why the same is true of the life of Maria Aurora Couto (1937-2022), whose posthumously published At Home in Two Worlds is both her best book and the finest explainer of Goa’s history and culture. Couto was eulogised as the “grande dame of letters and culture of Goa” by the academic Peter Ronald de-Souza, and the great Konkani writer and Jnanpith Award-winner Damodar Mauzo’s assessment of her as “Goa personified” is on the cover of this new book. But a fuller assessment of this tenacious, largely selfmade intellectual force must take into account her assiduously cultivated proximities to state power, partly explicable by her IAS administrator husband Alban (a constant presence in her writings),…

A sophisticated fusion of design philosophy, ideology, and meticulous attention to detail, The Singleton Social and Nicobar launched Between the Moments collection in January. The collection embodies the essence of those fleeting, intimate moments that define true luxury—the spaces between time where life’s richness unfolds. For Bhanu Gupta, VP of Luxury and Super Premium at Diageo India, this collaboration felt like destiny. “Both brands share a deep appreciation for life’s meaningful, unhurried moments. Nicobar’s design ethos—anchored in simplicity, elegance, and thoughtful craftsmanship—aligns seamlessly with our vision of modern luxury. It’s not about grand gestures; it’s about finding depth in presence and connection,” reflects Gupta. Like all great things, Between the Moments was months in the making—18 to be exact—each detail carefully curated. “This collection celebrates the quiet, immersive pauses of…

Several Indian cities have had their brush with Art Deco architecture, but none has had the racy, head-over-heels affair that Bombay/Mumbai did. Beginning in the 1930s and lasting till the early 1950s, the city saw the development of several ‘Deco Districts’, along the sea and elsewhere, which blended Art Deco with Indian elements to create a unique style which has been called Indo Deco. Marking a stark departure from its Victorian Gothic identity, the new architectural style defined Bombay forever as a modern, future-forward metropolis. In 2018, UNESCO designated the combined ‘Victorian Gothic and Art Deco Ensembles of Mumbai’ as a World Heritage Site, catapulting them into the international limelight and kindling interest among architecture enthusiasts worldwide. The UNESCO citation acknowledges two waves of urban development in Bombay—the construction of…

The Cluster Chandelier, Kaleera These Kaleera lights above the dinning table are inspired by Indian jewellery made in metal and semiprecious stones. Jaipur gave me an opportunity and affinity towards exploring the art of jewellery design and many of my products are inspired by jewellery. The Majestic Bed, Chini Khana Sweet dreams are made of these. Chini Khana is inspired from glorious niches of Amer Fort embellished with thikri work. Further, the bed that has a statement headboard upholstered in faux leather in the pattern of Mughal jaali and has a jacket created with a metal trim, specially casted in the desired form and shape. The leg side is bejewelled with bevelled mirrors and metal profiles. Bed Linen, Araish Textiles can easily tell a story, these draw inspiration from Araish…

Design, much like art, is a reflection of its time—an interplay of global influences and cultural heritage. Today, we stand at the confluence of tradition and modernity, where Indian design is embracing international trends while staying rooted in its essence. Jaipur, the cradle of heritage craftsmanship, is no exception. Nestled near Jaipur’s historic Parkota gates, the Garden of Eternal Spring is a tribute to the vibrant legacy of Meenakari. This space, envisioned as a museum of memories and craftsmanship, encapsulates the essence of heritage while embracing modernity. The gallery narrates an evocative tale through over 300 images sourced from iconic museums such as the British Museum, V&A, and the Met, mapping the evolution of enameling across centuries and continents. In parallel, our team at the House of Shekhawat meticulously created…

Nature met nurture, and we got indigo, a hue that evokes everything from drama to danger. In India it has often been referred to as Neel, a name that textile and fashion designer Gaurang Shah has borrowed for his latest collection under Gaurang Home. Neel is a curation of bedspreads, comforters, pillow covers, table linens, hand-painted crockery, carpets, and statement furniture pieces in hues of indigo. The designs also use craft, Andhra ‘s Jamdani weaves, Lucknow’s chikankari, Bengal’s Kantha, and Bihar’s Sujini embroidery, juxtaposed with kalamkari, batik and shibori techniques. PRICE on request AT @gauranghome (Instagram)…