Galle is all set for a milestone 50th Test, between Sri Lanka and India. It is admired as one of the prettiest venues in the cricketing world. The Fort Ramparts and the Indian Ocean surrounding it make it even more famous. The home team — Sri Lanka began playing Test cricket there in June 1998 and has won 27 of the 49 matches so far — considers the venue lucky, despite losing 15. Only seven Tests have ended in a draw, including the 49th against Bangladesh last June. This was the first stalemate match in over 13 years. Sri Lanka has defeated India there three times, while India has won twice — once in 2008 by 170 runs and again in 2017 by 304 runs. The team compositions have changed significantly since 2017, and both teams, with their spin bowling weapons, will fancy their chances. Australia played two Tests at Galle early in 2025, winning both — by an innings and 204 runs and by 9 wickets — fielding one fast bowler, Mitchell Starc, and three specialist spinners, mainly off-spinner Nathan Lyon and left-arm spinner Matthew Kuhnemann. These two took 30 wickets. Will India be tempted to select a spin-heavy attack with just one seamer? The Lankan spinners have taken 221 wickets there at an average of 30.18 over six and a half years, while the visiting team’s spinners have taken 172 at an average of 35.12. Clearly, Sri Lanka would look up to left-arm spinner Prabath Jayasuriya (81 wickets at 26.63) and off-spinner Ramesh Mendis (64 wickets at 26.63) to deliver. The two have 14 five-wicket hauls at Galle and three 10-wicket hauls. Left-arm slow Ravindra Jadeja has taken six wickets in one Test; none of the other Indian bowlers has played at Galle.

In the age of instant outrage, a single technical slip can threaten to derail an entire tribute to our war heroes. Netflix’s Operation Safed Sagar has been rightly praised for bringing the 1999 Kargil air campaign and the sacrifice of Squadron Leader Ajay Ahuja to life. Yet an Indian Army veteran has flagged the incorrect draping of the Tricolour on Ahuja’s coffin; green visible instead of saffron towards the head, as mandated by the Flag Code. He has gone further, demanding the series be suspended until digitally corrected and an apology issued. Yes, the producers and military advisors missed it. That is an oversight, a technical glitch in an otherwise sincere production. It is not deliberate disrespect. Flags, protocols and symbols matter. But demanding the entire show be yanked offline turns a correctable error into a national crisis. Creative works are not military manuals. Digital fixes exist. An apology can be issued. Pulling a series that honours fallen air warriors does not. We have seen this script before. Just last month, Satluj vanished from Zee5 within 48 hours amid security concerns and political heat. One side saw threat; another saw overreach. The pattern is familiar: a portrayal of history, identity or national symbols triggers instant mobilisation, hashtags, and calls for bans. OTT has become a pressure cooker where every uniform, every dialogue, every historical detail is scrutinised for offence. Respect for the Tricolour and our armed forces is non-negotiable. Mistakes should be pointed out and fixed. But mistaking every error for malice, and every oversight for an insult requiring cancellation, only weakens the culture of storytelling we claim to protect. Operation Safed Sagar is a tribute, not a textbook. Let the correction happen. Let the series continue. And let us stop treating every glitch as grounds for a cultural emergency. Thicker skins make stronger nations; and better cinema.

Walk into any Mumbai restaurant, club or bar these days and ask for an Old Monk. The waiter’s face will tell you the story before the words do. The iconic dark rum that once defined monsoon evenings, army canteens and late-night addas has quietly vanished from many shelves. The reason is not a supply-chain glitch. It is Tukaram Mundhe. The 2005-batch IAS officer, Maharashtra’s Food and Drug Administration Commissioner and the man the public now calls “Singham,” has been busy. After more than two decades and 25 transfers that never managed to dilute his spine, Mundhe took charge of the FDA in May and decided public health would no longer be negotiable. Elite clubs that once felt untouchable; Cricket Club of India, MIG Cricket Club in Bandra, Willingdon Sports Club and several other high-end and government-linked establishments, suddenly found their food license suspended. Besides, adulterated milk and synthetic paneer has also come under his glare. Now the net has tightened around liquor standards as well. Certain Old Monk variants, along with a few other popular spirits, ran into FSSAI rules on artificial flavouring and misleading age claims. Maharashtra FDA, under Mundhe, is enforcing those rules without apology. The result is visible on every bar counter: the monk is missing. Mundhe’s style is blunt, consistent and free of the usual bureaucratic theatre. He has made food safety a public conversation instead of a file note. In a city that thrives on shortcuts, an officer who refuses to look away is rare. The empty Old Monk shelf is not a crisis. It is a sign that, for once, someone is actually doing the job. Mumbai is eating and drinking a little more carefully. That is a wonderful start.

West Bengal’s political landscape is beginning to reveal a curious contradiction. The recent appearance of three MLAs associated with Opposition leader Ritabrata Banerjee’s faction at a protest organised by the Mamata Banerjee camp against the alleged attack on Didi recently is one such indication. The developments involving the three NCPI MPs point to a similar dilemma at the national level. Their reluctance to be seen as unequivocally aligned with the NDA, while simultaneously engaging with the government on constituency issues, reflects the pressures of electoral politics. Abdul Khaleque Molla, Mohammad Tausif-ur-Rahman and Bibhas Sardar of the Ritabrata Banerjee-aligned faction appeared alongside senior Trinamool leaders Sovandeb Chattopadhyay and Kunal Ghosh at the Assembly premises. Their presence has triggered speculation about whether some legislators are moving back to Didi’s fold. Tausif reaffirmed his loyalty to Mamata, while Sardar stressed that the MLAs had won on the Trinamool’s symbol. Molla, however, said he continued to align with the Ritabrata faction but had joined the protest over the alleged attack. Ritabrata sought to play down the speculation but maintained that his group still had 65 MLAs. Meanwhile, three Muslim MPs of the breakaway Nationalist Citizens Party of India—Abu Taher Khan, Khalilur Rahaman and former cricketer Yusuf Pathan—have again stayed away from NDA meetings, yet attended the breakfast organised by PM Narendra Modi. They also attended a meeting with West Bengal chief minister Suvendu Adhikari. Khan said the MPs would remain with NCPI and would not join or support the BJP, stressing that they had “voters to answer to”. Pathan said he raised the issue of voter-list deletions and constituency concerns at the meeting with Adhikari. This is perhaps the larger lesson from both episodes. Bengal’s emerging political realignment cannot be understood simply through the language of defections, camps and alliances. The more consequential...

Exiled Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasrin’s six-day return to Kolkata, nearly two decades after she was forced out amid violence in autumn 2007, has become a political statement for the BJP government as much as a homecoming. Posters welcomed Nasrin, while chief minister Suvendu Adhikari shared the dais with her. Her return offered the BJP an opportunity to draw a line between its approach and that of the Left Front and Trinamool Congress governments, which Nasrin said had forced her out or prevented her return. Adhikari said the change in West Bengal was not limited to the government’s face but extended to the system, and assured Nasrin of security while inviting her to return whenever she wished. Nasrin, who arrived in late July, thanked the BJP leadership for facilitating her return. She said Kolkata was the closest place to her home in Bangladesh, which she fled in 1994. She contrasted the three political regimes, saying the first had forced her out, the second had prevented her return and the BJP government had facilitated it. She backed implementation of the Uniform Civil Code and a ban on madrasas, both pursued by the BJP government. The BJP presented her return as evidence that it will not allow Muslim fundamentalist groups to dictate terms. The Left and TMC face criticism for placing minority support and electoral calculations above free expression and dissent in the State. During her stay, Nasrin warned that governments yielding to religious fanatics may temporarily avert violence but cannot sustain peace. Her visit comes amid strained India-Bangladesh ties since Sheikh Hasina’s fall in August 2024, and highlights a contradiction: the Adhikari government has spoken of removing suspected Bangladeshi foreigners while welcoming an exiled Bangladeshi writer.

In the grand circus of Bollywood, where originality is a rare guest and recycling is the house specialty, Ram Gopal Varma has once again decided that the Mumbai underworld still has unpaid rent in his imagination. T-Series and RGV have joined hands for Police Company, with Harshavardhan Rane stepping into the shoes of legendary encounter specialist Daya Nayak. Because clearly, the world was starving for yet another film about the man who has already inspired Ab Tak Chhappan, Aan: Men at Work, Risk – a Kannada biopic. RGV has drunk from the underworld so many times that the water must taste like leftover Satya, Company, D, Sarkar, Rakta Charitra and whatever else he poured into the same glass over three decades. The man once made Shiva in Telugu, remade it in Hindi, and then, years later, decided the world needed Shiva again in 2006, purely out of artistic restlessness, or so the legend of his arrogance goes. That third attempt did not exactly set the box office on fire. Yet here we are, watching the same director circle back to the same blood-soaked alleys, this time with the same encounter-cop template he already helped popularise. Recent years have not exactly been kind to the once-feared RGV brand. A string of flops, legal headaches, public spats and the general air of a man still fighting yesterday’s battles have followed him. The same man who once bent the crime film to his will now seems determined to prove that repetition, when done with enough swagger, can pass for reinvention. Whether Police Company will feel like a fresh bullet or just another spent casing remains to be seen. The underworld keeps dying on screen, and somehow Ram Gopal Varma keeps bringing it back to life.

International choreographer, dancer and model Saswat Joshi is all set to make his mark at the forthcoming OSUK Convention 2026 in Manchester, North England, at the end of August. The 47th Annual OSUK Convention comes with an intriguing cultural twist this year — “Odisha Da Swagat, Punjab Di Raunak” — promising, for the first time in its history, a fusion of the warmth of Odisha with the vibrancy of Punjab in a grand celebration of culture, community and heritage. Joshi, 42, born in Titlagarh, will be the exclusive international Odia artiste at the convention. Known for his distinctive use of the Odissi dance style, Joshi began his journey under gurus Prasanta Patnaik and Shantanu Behera in his native village before receiving professional Odissi training from Guru Padmashri Kumkum Mohanty. An exponent of the Odissi style of Padma Vibhushan Guru Kelucharan Mohapatra, he also trained under Guru Ileana Citaristi. Having performed across Europe and Asia, Joshi has shared the stage with acclaimed artistes including Carla Fracci, Luciana Savignano, Giuseppe Picone, Beppe Menegatti, Rossella Brescia and Luciano Mattia Cannito in I Have a Dream in Palermo, Sicily. Joshi is also the founder of the Lasyakala Institute of Performing Arts.

Sarfaraz Khan is back in the running for a middle-order slot in the national team. If he gets a chance, he will have to call the shots against Sri Lanka in the two-Test series. With left-hander Devdutt Padikkal, a like-for-like replacement for the injured Sai Sudharsan, having firmed up his place for the opening Test at Galle with a bright century in the warm-up, India can only look at Khan as another specialist batter option. The door is ajar for him, and it’s up to him to force his way in and deny the selection committee the leeway to overlook him for future Test match duties. Two years ago, the selection committee wrongfully sidelined Khan after the third Test against New Zealand in early November 2024. After a spectacular 150 in the second innings of the first Test, he did not get a fifth innings, thanks to the blunder by the team management to opt for turning tracks in Pune and Mumbai. New Zealand’s left-arm finger spinners, Mitchell Santner and Ajaz Patel, outwitted the Indian batters. India has played 15 Tests since that disastrous home series (0-3 loss) against New Zealand, and Khan — though in the squad for the five-Test series in Australia — has not played any. Khan’s scores after the 150 at the M Chinnaswamy were 11, 9, 0, 1. Even Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli floundered against Santner and Patel. Khan has fallen to the spinners seven times in his 12 Test innings, and he will be up against a home team’s spin attack that has accounted for 264 victims at home in the last five and a half years, as against 63 by the fast men. So, Khan has his task cut out if he gets a chance!

Batwara 1947, which was earlier titled Lahore 1947, reunites the same director-star pair of Sunny Deol and Rajkumar Santoshi after nearly three decades and is scheduled for release on 14th August 2026 as the Independence Day or Partition Day weekend. Produced by Aamir Khan Productions with music by A R Rahman, it is a serious period drama set against the 1947 Partition. The trailer has been widely praised for its scale, emotional weight, and trademark Santoshi–Deol intensity, yet the pre-release buzz remains relatively muted. The heavy, solemn subject matter and Sunny’s casting in a more restrained, principle-driven role, rather than pure action-hero mode like Jaat and Gadar franchise, have so far limited the kind of mass excitement usually associated with an Independence Day release. Current box-office conversation is still dominated by Spider-Man, leaving Batwara needing a sharper final push. Let’s remember the release of Damini which was released on 30th April 1993. Directed by Rajkumar Santoshi and featuring Sunny Deol in a career-defining supporting turn as the fiery lawyer Govind, it became a blockbuster and is remembered as a cult classic for its strong social message, Meenakshi Seshadri’s performance, and iconic dialogues. Audiences responded to the justice-driven courtroom drama, Sunny’s intensity…turning it into a sustained success rather than a pure opening-day phenomenon. The Santoshi–Deol combination delivered the expected high-voltage signature—raw anger, moral force, and memorable lines that amplified the film once people started talking about it. The parallel with Damini is clear. Both films carry the Santoshi–Deol DNA of high-stakes moral drama and potent dialogues. Damini proved that a serious subject can open respectably and then explode on the strength of word of mouth once audiences experience the emotional payoff. Can Batwara 1947 follow the same path, deliver the expected intensity in theatres? One has to wait and watch.

Maharashtra chief minister Devendra Fadnavis has officially joined the film promotion business. At the inauguration of Namit Malhotra’s Prime Focus Studio on 6 August 2026, he declared he would be “very disappointed” if Nitesh Tiwari’s Ramayana, starring Ranbir Kapoor, Sai Pallavi and Yash, fails to win an Oscar. “It’s not a film of a decade,” he announced, “it’s a film of a millennium.” Earlier, at the Waves Summit, he had already been “amazed” by its scale. When a CM starts campaigning this openly, the marketing budget has just received a free government upgrade. This is no isolated outburst. It is the latest evidence of a larger shift: Politicians have become Bollywood’s most enthusiastic publicists. PM Narendra Modi has repeatedly endorsed films like The Kashmir Files, The Kerala Story and Article 370 as correctives to “fake narratives.” Amit Shah has praised select projects from special screenings. Yogi Adityanath has made multiple films tax-free and personally felicitated their teams. Across BJP ruled states, official blessings, tax waivers and photo-ops have become as routine as the interval. History offers precedents. MGR and NT Rama Rao built political careers on their screen images. Karunanidhi wrote scripts from the CM’s office. The difference today is the scale, the coordination, and the open fusion of mythology with nationalism as reliable box-office fuel. Ramayana sits perfectly at this intersection; big, mythological, technologically ambitious, and timed for maximum cultural resonance. By elevating it to a civilisational project, Fadnavis has given the film a halo no conventional campaign can buy. The politicians are no longer silent well-wishers. They are the new faces of the campaign, delivering the soundbites themselves. In today’s India, the red carpet increasingly leads straight to the corridors of power.