Full-page ads fade from memory, but punchlines stick: “Ye dil maange more”, “Do shoes breathe too?”, “Jeet hai dar ke aage”, “Thanda matlab Coca-Cola”.

There was a time when love itself was rebellion. Falling in love meant defying the family. Challenging society. Whispered meetings, secret letters, stolen glances. The whole affair had the flavour of a Bollywood drama. As the old dialogue goes: “Pyar kiya to darna kya."

From the desert whispers of films like ‘Koi... Mil Gaya’ to the glowing fingertip of ‘Extra-Terrestrial’, cinema has long hinted that we are not alone. In ‘PK’, an innocent alien questions human rituals, holding up a mirror to our own absurdities. Hollywood counters with the haunting vastness of ‘Interstellar’ and the quiet arrival of the unknown in ‘Arrival’. Literature, too, has dared to imagine cosmic neighbours — from ‘The War of the Worlds’ to ‘Childhood's End’, where the sky is not a ceiling but a corridor.

Around Agra Cantt railway station or along Yamuna Kinara Road, you must have seen small children picking scrap plastic. Every few minutes, they lift a chemical-soaked rag to their noses, as if that toxic vapour is their only relief.

For a long time, intelligence scores, commonly known as the Intelligence Quotient, kept rising across generations. This trend is called the Flynn effect. But, in recent years, researchers have observed something different. Younger generations, especially Gen Z, are scoring lower than Millennials and Boomers did at the same age. Why? The reason isn’t just one, but it is a mix of changes in lifestyle, education, and environment.

Lavish gifts, intense declarations and constant attention might feel romantic — but experts warn these Valentine’s Day behaviours could actually be signs of control rather than love.

In the morning mist, as the Taj Mahal emerges like a secret unfurling its silken veil, marble silence probes: Is love still that fathomless ocean, or shrunk to a smartphone glow? Where Mughal emperor Shah Jahan once imprisoned passion in stone, today, in its very shade, WhatsApp pings, missed calls, and dating apps weave fresh bonds. The question lingers like dawn dew: Can this newfangled romance endure through centuries?

In North India, the veil, aka Ghoonghat, is more than a tradition; it is a question mark placed over a woman’s very identity. This is the story of a silent revolution, the journey of one woman from a muffled existence to quiet liberation, where education and self-worth finally dismantled the barriers of the cloth.

Last week, during my morning walk, I suddenly ran into Bhatia ji. Age had taken its toll, his gait had slowed to a thoughtful pause, and there was a strange sense of relief in his eyes. As we talked, I learned that after 42 long years, he had finally packed up for good and bid farewell to America. The reason was simple: in his sunset years, the fragrance of his hometown's soil had pulled him back.

If India’s democracy is still standing after scams, cyclones, cult leaders and campaign speeches longer than the Constitution itself, the secret isn’t federalism, institutions, or constitutional checks and balances.