India, which has reached the moon but cannot reach out to a country with the moon on its flag, launches Aditya-L1 to understand how the sun has the largest amount of energy in the universe after the Prime Minister. According to the Indian Save Resources Organisation (ISRO), the transformative effects of a successful study of the sun’s atmosphere might finally give the organisation more funds than headlines.
Meanwhile, Neeraj Chopra, who has touched more gold than all your neighbourhood aunties combined, becomes the most popular Indian in Pakistan, surpassing Madhuri Dixit and Chetan Sharma. The BJP advises the champion athlete and his mother to go in for rigorous media training, so that even his bigoted compatriots can enjoy his success.
Elsewhere, after deep conversations with his father, a senior BCCI official has assured frustrated Indian cricket fans that they will get their cherished ICC men’s World Cup tickets before Jammu and Kashmir gets its statehood.
Wondering what else happened while you discovered that K.L. Rahul has a better strike rate in ODIs than you have on BookMyShow? Here’s presenting the top stories from the week that should have been.
August 28
As per the Dalal Street Journal, the Ambanis have a secret clause in their will whereby all their assets will go to Rohit Sharma in case their children try to deceive each other TT archives
- Nita Ambani decides to step down from the Reliance board to make way for her three children two days after they raved about HBO’s Succession on the family WhatsApp group.
- According to a survey by Sleep Your Way to Success (SYWS), most urban Indian adults struggle to sleep at night because of five major reasons — the absence of the childhood comfort of a snoring parent, their boss’s reply to an email from five months ago, the last seen status of their situationship partner, the sound of a neighbour enjoying themself and (especially for Kolkatans) their post-lunch siesta.
August 29
Asked to comment on Rahul Gandhi’s intelligence, Mani Shankar Aiyar channels his inner Mahatma Gandhi and quips: “It would be a good idea” TT archives
- At the launch of his latest book, Mani Shankar Aiyar, who was the Congress’s Shashi Tharoor before Shashi Tharoor, explains that India’s oldest party is struggling because “the smartest people in the INC have been reduced to writing memoirs instead of manifestos”.
- Sunil Narine, playing in the Copycat Premier League (CPL), is the first cricketer to receive a red card, owing to his team taking so long between overs that the broadcasters ran out of ads to play.
August 30
Several Indian male college goers have requested their newly discovered sisters to tie them rakhis that look more like friendship bands Shutterstock
- On Cadbury Celebrations Day (also known as Raksha Bandhan), thousands of young Indian men refuse to attend college for fear of becoming overnight brothers to their crushes.
- Indian CEOs of American start-ups, who began their entrepreneurial journey with nothing but a fat inheritance, suddenly feel out of place in Silicon Valley, as California becomes the first US state to pass an anti-caste discrimination bill.
August 31
“I’ll always be a son-in-law first and the Prime Minister second,” smirks Rishi Sunak TT archives
- UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak agrees to begin the process of British colonial reparations to India by finalising a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) between the two countries that will see Infosys pocket most of the compensation for imperialism.
- Following Yevgeny Prigozhin’s “one-way trip to hell” (or so the Kremlin is calling it), history courses at select Russian universities add a series of lectures to their module on “Deliberate Accidents”.
September 1
Emma Mackey admits that she has been signing more autographs than ever before since the release of ‘Barbie’ Netflix
- Ahead of the fourth and last season of Netflix’s most popular teen drama, which has far more sex than education, lead actor Emma Mackey gets emotional: “I’ll miss this show so much! I’ll forever be grateful to the cast and crew and all the viewers who have fantasised about watching Margot Robbie as a schoolgirl.”
- Dream Girl 2, where nonsense cross-dresses as the plot, gives Ayushmann Khurrana the best box office opening of his career, as Indian uncles, previously miffed at Khurrana’s changemaker roles, eventually relate to his true talent.