Why Do We Feel Watched in a Room That We Know Is Empty?

The Feeling of Being Watched: Meet the Night Watchman Inside Your Head

You know the room is empty. You checked it yourself. The door is locked, the family is asleep or away, and the only living things in the flat are you and a half-dead money plant. And still, something at the back of your neck insists that you are not alone. The air feels occupied. You do not turn around, because turning around would be admitting something. Here is the strange part. That feeling is not a flaw in your mind. It is the work of a night watchman who has been on duty for hundreds of thousands of years, and who has never once been fired for a false alarm.

Feeling of Presence in Psychology: A Sense, Not a Sight

Scientists have a plain name for this: the feeling of a presence. It is the sense that someone is nearby when nobody is there, and the key word is "sense." Most people do not see a figure. They feel one, a weight in the air, a person standing just behind their shoulder. Researchers note that healthy people report it as well as neurological patients, and it shows up in survival situations, bereavement, sleep paralysis, and brain disorders. It is not a rare glitch of the unwell. It is a normal human experience that happens to sit at the edge of what we are comfortable talking about at dinner.

How Violence, Gore, Sick Killers on OTT Are Making It Harder for Parents to Trust Anyone Around Their Child

When Fear Follows You Outside the Screen

A parent watches a crime series in which a trusted neighbor turns out to be a killer, a family friend harms a child, or a person who seemed kind hides a terrible secret. The episode ends, but the fear does not always end with it. The next morning, the parent watches their child leave for school, meet a relative, or play with a neighbor, and an uncomfortable thought appears: How well do I really know the people around my child? Crime stories have always explored the dark side of human nature, but streaming platforms have made graphic violence and disturbing stories easy to watch at home, often one episode after another. For some viewers, this can make danger feel closer than it is. A story designed to create fear may begin to shape how a parent sees ordinary people. The problem is not simply that these shows contain violence; it is that repeated exposure can make the world feel less safe, even when the screen is switched off.

Are You One of Those Who Says 'Please' and 'Sorry' to an AI Log-In?

Saying Please to ChatGPT: Congratulations, You Hold a Robot Uprising Policy

Be honest. The last time a chatbot gave you a decent answer, did you type "thanks"? And did you ever type "sorry, my bad" after a typo, to a program that has no idea what an apology is? Then congratulations. You are paying a monthly premium on an insurance policy nobody sold you: Robot Uprising Cover. The terms and conditions are unknown. The claims department is also unknown. But you keep paying, with a "please" here and a "thank you" there, just in case.

Sanatan Dharma Once Existed Everywhere: Did Non-Violence Lead to a Religion's Geographical Eradication?

Sanatan Dharma History: A Banyan Tree, Not a Forest Fire

A banyan tree doesn't spread like a flood or burn like a forest. It drops roots from its branches, each root thickens into a trunk, and one tree slowly becomes a grove. Cut a few trunks, and the tree does not vanish. Its shape changes, and some of its roots become other trees. I kept returning to this image while working on a question people ask with grief, pride, and sometimes anger: that Sanatan once existed literally everywhere, and that non-violence ended it. It is a powerful story. It is also two claims joined by the word "and," and each needs its own test. So I tested them. I read the historians, the inscriptions, the census tables, and the people who disagree with each other. Throughout this piece, I try to tell you which statements are documented, which are debated, and which are simply my own reading of the evidence. When I can't verify something, I say so. This is history, not a verdict on any community alive today.

The Short Answer: Three Claims, Three Verdicts

Claim one: Sanatan existed "literally everywhere." Not supported. The Indic world, meaning Hindu, Buddhist and Jain traditions together, stretched across a vast arc of Asia, from the Kabul valley to Bali. That is astonishing. It is not the globe. Claims of a Hindu presence in the Americas, Africa or northern Europe rest on parallels in myth and symbol, not on evidence of institutions, temples or states.

Claim two: non-violence caused the decline. Not supported as the main cause. Hindu, Buddhist and Sikh powers fought long and hard wars. Warlike religions elsewhere, from Baltic paganism to Persian Zoroastrianism, shrank too. What the record points to instead is patronage, trade routes, conquest, conversion, and the design of institutions. Claim three: "eradication." The wrong word. What happened is contraction, transformation, and concentration. There are about 1.2 billion Hindus today, and there are also real, painful losses in specific places.

Why working with a knife should be taught as a life skill in every school?

Knife Skills for Kids: The Drawer We Keep Locked and Never Explain

There is a drawer in every kitchen in Delhi, and in every kitchen everywhere else. Inside it lies the oldest tool our species ever made, and we treat it with a strange mix of fear and silence. Children are told "don't touch," then at some unannounced age they are expected to chop onions, peel mangoes and carve a roast, with no lesson in between. Nobody teaches the middle part. We teach algebra, the water cycle and the dates of battles, and we leave the sharpest object in the house to luck. This piece argues for something simple: open the drawer, with a teacher beside the child, and teach the skill properly.

Stars Were Always So Beautiful in the Sky. Why Did We Have to Try to Reach Them?

The Sky Was Beautiful Enough from Here

Long before rockets, telescopes, and space stations, people looked up at the night sky and wondered about the tiny lights above them. Stars helped sailors find their way, farmers understand the seasons, and families pass down stories about the world. They were beautiful, but they were also mysterious. Nobody could touch them, and people had little idea how far away they were. For thousands of years, the stars offered wonder without asking anyone to reach them. Their distance was part of their beauty, and looking at them was enough to inspire stories, questions, and dreams. Yet human beings have always wanted to understand the things they see but cannot explain. Once people began asking what stars were made of, how they shone, and whether other worlds existed, simply looking at the sky was no longer enough. The wish to explore grew from that desire to know more about a universe that had always been above us.

What are dreams of a person blind since birth like - with or without colors?

Do Blind People Dream? Why "Is It in Colour?" Is the Wrong First Question

Ask most sighted people about the dreams of someone born blind, and the first question comes out in a flash: do they dream in colour? It is a natural question, and it quietly gives the game away. It assumes a dream is a film, and that the only open matter is whether the film is in black and white or colour. But a dream is not a film. It is a world, built overnight by a tireless set designer who has one strict rule: he can only work with materials you have actually lived. Hand him light, and he builds pictures. Take the light away from birth, and he does not stop building. He simply reaches for different tools.

Did You Just Talk to Yourself Out Loud, Again...Should We Be Worried?

Why Do I Talk to Myself Out Loud? The Spoken Sticky Note

You were alone in the kitchen. You said, "Keys, keys, where are the keys?" to nobody, then answered yourself. Then you froze, half-embarrassed, half-listening for witnesses. Relax. Think of it as a spoken sticky note, a way of pinning a thought in the air so your brain does not lose it. The psychologist Lev Vygotsky observed that children talk aloud to guide themselves through tasks, and that this speech gradually goes inward and becomes silent thinking. Sometimes it simply slips back out. Cleveland Clinic's psychologist Dr. Tworek notes there is no rule saying your inner dialogue has to stay inside your head.

Pharmaceutical Health Supplement Leftovers for Your Plants: Is This Worth Trying?

Leftover Vitamins for Plants: The Pill Drawer Meets the Planter

Every home has the drawer. Half a strip of B-complex, a calcium bottle that outlived the diet plan, a vitamin C tube bought in a burst of January optimism, a few aspirin nobody remembers. Then a video or a gardening forum whispers a tempting idea: why not feed it all to the plants? It sounds thrifty, a little clever, and a lot kinder than throwing it away. So, is it worth trying? Mostly no, and the reason is easier to picture than you might think. Plants are chefs. They make their own food. Handing a chef a ready-made sandwich does not make dinner better.

Final Destination Movie Franchise Stoking Generalized Anxiety Symptoms?

The Final Destination franchise is not the best in the movie world in terms of growing with each sequel or bringing in some twists that nobody could foresee. However, it does well in one aspect - it keeps alive the notion of meeting a horrible death when your time is up, and that death could be waiting for you just around the corner of your own living room! This is exactly what my problem is with the Final Destination series; it makes death too omnipresent and almost trivial in the sense that it plays the weirdest tricks to make someone slip, fall, and die. For folks who have generalized anxiety, such movies are the worst. Just imagine a 40-year-old manager at his morning desk at a new workplace. It is just about 10 am when he is having his morning brew.

Will Cities Like Delhi Wake Up to Soup Bars and Dedicated Soup Places Anytime Soon?

Soup Bars in India: Why Delhi Has a Bar for Everything Except Soup

Delhi has a bar for nearly everything. Cocktails, craft beer, juice, chai, even dessert. Ask where the city's dedicated soup bar is, and the conversation goes strangely quiet, as if you had asked for a library inside a nightclub. And yet, on a December evening when the cold slides in off the Ridge and your hands ache around nothing, what you want is not a cocktail. It is a warm bowl, held in both palms. This piece asks whether Delhi is ready to admit that. The short version: the city has been serving soup all along. It just keeps it in disguise.

Soup in Indian Food Culture: Why Dal, Rasam and Shorba Don't Count as "Soup"

India's soup culture is huge, and almost none of it is called soup. Take mulligatawny. The name comes from the Tamil milagu thanni, "pepper water," a thin South Indian broth related to rasam, which is traditionally eaten with rice. English writers were mentioning it by 1784. One food historian notes that Indian cooking has no dish that maps neatly onto the English idea of a soup course, and rasam only comes close. So the dal on your plate, the shorba at a wedding, the rasam beside your rice, all of them are soup in disguise. India never needed the word. That may be exactly why it has never built the shop.

Are You the Daytime Rainbow or the Classic Midnight Full Moon Type of Romantic?

Types of Romantic People: Every Heart Has Its Own Weather

Every romantic carries a weather system. Some arrive like a rainbow: bright, unexpected, there at four in the afternoon when you least expect it, gone before you can take a proper photo. Others arrive like a full moon: slow, glowing, best enjoyed after midnight, and a little dramatic about it. Both are lovely. Both are also quietly exhausting in their own ways. So here is the question, and be honest, because nobody is marking you: when you love someone, do you reach for the daylight or for the dark?

The Daytime Rainbow Romantic: Small, Bright and Full of Surprises

You know the rainbow type. They send a ridiculous meme at 11 a.m. because it reminded them of you. They show up with chai at the right moment, remember the name of your difficult colleague, and notice the new haircut before anyone else does. Their romance lives in ordinary light, in tiny moments that look like nothing and add up to everything. Ask them for a grand gesture, and they will give you three small ones before lunch. In Delhi, the rainbow romantic is the person who texts "chai-pakode?" the minute the first monsoon shower hits the window.

Passengers | Amazon Prime Movie Reviewed - Road Trip Horror | Travel Horror Plot

This movie seems to do everything right because it does not try to do anything perfectly. A movie that uses understated visuals without batting an eyelid, jumps directly into the storyline, and does not try to explain much is perhaps more to my liking and to the Instagram-fed generation that does not want more slow-burn content. Passenger, the horror movie that was released recently, is now showing on Amazon Prime Video, and it is the ideal OTT watch for anyone who likes horror without explanations and too much reasoning. If there is darkness lurking outside, it should do so without the need to connect it with lost Biblical drawings or a secret embedded in the castle of extremely rich folks. Passenger does this in such a simple and impressive manner that you instantly start liking it. The characters are realistic, and until the end, the story does not let you deviate to check if the doorbell actually rang or if you just hallucinated it again. There is nothing magnanimous about Passenger, a folklore-type horror movie that brilliantly uses the hollowness, the inherent darkness, the unwavering silence, and the sense of loneliness yet being connected to the community that is experienced by traveling caravans and those who choose always traveling as a way of life.

Hokum (2026) Movie Review: The Irish Horror Film That Dares to Scare without CGI | Amazon India OTT Cinema

What is the definitive parameter of a good horror movie or any movie, for that matter? Is it something that grabs your attention from the opening scenes, or is it about not being able to move on to everyday tasks as soon as the final scenes are wrapped? I am not really sure, but there is one thing that I can tell you - if a movie makes you Google the director right away, since you now believe that any other movie crafted by the same creative soul would be worth the time, you are pretty much close to having scored a great movie! HOKUM does this with amazing ease. You will end up Google searching more about the cast and the director because you will love how the movie seems to do everything right in the horror genre without using CGI-generated scares. HOKUM is for folks who love the spooky, slow-grinding storyline over acrobatic zombies. Anyone who loves a good, creepy scare without a global cast should seriously consider watching HOKUM.

Why Do Some People Refuse Corrective Surgery? The Psychology of Acceptance, Identity and Self-Love

When a Difference Becomes Part of Your Identity

Imagine living with a visible physical difference for decades. You have learnt how to dress around it, respond to curious stares, handle awkward questions, and recognise the difference between genuine concern and unwanted pity. Then a doctor offers a relatively safe operation that could change it. You might expect the decision to be easy, but it isn't always. For someone who has lived with a physical difference for years, the body is not simply a problem to be corrected; it is the body in which they have grown up, formed relationships, built confidence and learnt to navigate the world. Changing it can feel less like fixing something and more like stepping into an unfamiliar version of oneself. This does not mean everyone with a physical difference feels attached to it, or that refusing surgery is necessarily an act of self-love. It means the decision can involve identity, history,y and emotion, not just medical risk.

What seems more gross - a person digging his nose or the ear?

Why One Finger in the Wrong Place Can Ruin Your Appetite

Picture yourself sitting opposite someone at a café. They casually push a finger into their nose, roll something around, and inspect what they have found. Now imagine the same person putting a finger into their ear and rubbing away at the wax. Both acts can make you look away from your food, but they may not trigger the same level of disgust. Nose-picking often feels more revolting because nasal mucus is closely associated with germs, bodily waste, and something the body is supposed to expel. Earwax, on the other hand, is often treated as a natural substance that protects the ear canal. The difference is partly cultural and partly psychological: we do not react only to what a substance is, but also to what we believe it contains and what it says about the person handling it. Both habits can look unpleasant in public, but nose-picking often carries a stronger social stigma.

Not the slapping sporting events but seriously, is slapping often therapeutic for the slapper?

The Strange Relief of Losing Your Temper

Have you ever watched someone slap another person during an argument and noticed how, for a moment, the person delivering the slap seems to feel more in control? It can look as though the anger has finally found somewhere to go. There is a psychological reason why aggression can feel satisfying in the moment, but that feeling is not the same as emotional healing. When people feel insulted, humiliated, threatened, or powerless, anger can create a strong urge to act. Hitting someone may briefly provide a sense of release, dominance, or revenge. The action can also make the person feel that they have finally expressed what they could not put into words. However, a momentary sense of relief does not prove that aggression reduces anger in the long run. What feels therapeutic may simply be the short-lived satisfaction of acting on an impulse.

Should assisted, recreational sexual activities Be Part of Managed Care for People with Uncurable Paralysis?

When Medical Care Treats the Body but Forgets Intimacy

When someone becomes paralysed after a spinal cord injury, a stroke or another neurological condition, medical care often focuses on survival, movement, bladder and bowel function, pain management and rehabilitation. These needs are essential, but they do not represent the whole of a person's life. The desire for affection, sexual pleasure, intimacy and companionship does not automatically disappear when mobility changes. Yet conversations about sexuality may be postponed, avoided, or treated as less important than other aspects of recovery. A patient may feel embarrassed to raise the subject, while a clinician may assume that the person is not sexually active or is no longer interested. This silence can leave people searching for answers about their bodies, relationships, and options on their own. Sexual well-being is part of quality of life, not a reward reserved for people without disabilities. The question is whether healthcare systems should make room for it in rehabilitation and long-term care, rather than leaving patients to navigate it alone.

Why Does Your Reflection Look Strange When You Stare at It for Too Long?

The Moment Your Own Face Starts Looking Unfamiliar

You stand in front of a mirror and look directly into your eyes. At first, everything seems normal. Then you keep staring without moving your head or looking away. Gradually, your face may appear distorted, your features may seem to shift, or your eyes may begin to look like someone else's. You might even feel a sudden sense of unease, as though the familiar person in the mirror has become a stranger. This experience can be unsettling because your face is one of the most familiar things you know, yet prolonged staring can make it look surprisingly unfamiliar. The effect has been documented in laboratory experiments, particularly when people gaze at their own faces in dim lighting. Your reflection is not necessarily changing; the way your visual system processes it is. The brain depends on continuous sensory information to maintain a stable picture of the world, and staring at an unchanging image for too long can interfere with that process.

Just like a person's height, do eyebrows too have a largely genetic disposition?

The Face You Inherit

Look at old family photographs, and you may notice something amusing: the thick eyebrows that make one relative instantly recognisable might have appeared in a parent, grandparent, or sibling, too. Just as height is influenced by genes inherited from your parents, eyebrow thickness has a genetic component. Researchers have identified genetic variants linked to eyebrow thickness, including those near genes involved in hair development. A large genetic study published in PLOS Genetics in 2018 examined thousands of people across several populations and found evidence linking variations near the genes SOX2, FOXD1, and EDAR to eyebrow thickness. This helps explain why some people naturally have thick, full brows while others have fine, sparse ones, even when they follow similar grooming routines. Your eyebrows are not simply the result of a beauty trend or a choice made in front of a mirror; some of their basic characteristics are inherited before you are even born.

In an era of widespread food allergies, should eateries keep histamine shots or allergy tablets as essential safety gear?

A Meal Out Should Not Feel Like a Medical Gamble

For most people, eating at a restaurant means choosing something delicious, sharing a few stories, and enjoying an evening without thinking twice about what is on the plate. For someone with a serious food allergy, that simple pleasure can come with a quiet calculation: Can I trust this kitchen? Did the waiter understand me? Could one careless mistake send me to the hospital? Even a tiny amount of an allergen can trigger a serious reaction in a susceptible person. Milk, eggs, peanuts, tree nuts, wheat, soy, fish, and shellfish are among the foods that can cause allergic reactions. The fear is not always visible, either. Someone may look perfectly healthy while mentally checking every ingredient. As more people seek safer dining experiences, restaurants must take food allergies seriously, from clear ingredient information to preventing cross-contact between foods.

The Simplest Things You Perhaps Don't Know: What Not to Eat With Your Daily Coffee?

What Not to Eat With Coffee: Why Your Coffee Needs Better Table Manners

Coffee is the loudest guest at the table of your body. It walks in at 8 a.m., or 4 p.m., or both, and sits down next to whatever you are eating. It does not mean to be rude. But it talks over the quiet foods, grabs their share, and sometimes leaves them hungry. Most of us have been told what coffee does to us: it wakes us up, it makes us jittery, it makes us run to the bathroom. Hardly anyone tells us what coffee does to the food sitting beside it. Here is the simple version. You do not have to quit coffee. You only have to fix the seating plan.

E-Rickshaws and Delhi's Civic Sense: A Courtroom Comedy Where Everyone Is Guilty

Delhi E-Rickshaw Problem: Why the City Needs a Trial, Not Another Rant

Order, order. The court of public irritation is now in session. The accused: the e-rickshaw, a three-wheeled battery box with a legal top speed of 25 km/h and the moral confidence of a bullet train. The charges: wrong-side driving, sudden stops, blocking the lane outside every Metro station in the city. The complainants: anyone who has ever been stuck behind one at 9:05 a.m. The judge: a city that has been "reviewing the matter" since 2014. One warning before we begin. By the end of this hearing, the accused will not be the only one standing in the dock.

What If Being a Dream Teller Was an Actual Job?

Dream Interpretation as a Career: The Job Nobody Offers When You Need It Most

It is 3:12 a.m. You sit up in bed, heart racing. In the dream, you were failing a maths exam you passed fifteen years ago. Or someone you lost was standing at the door. Or your teeth were crumbling like old biscuits. You reach for your phone and type "teeth falling out dream meaning," and a search engine gives you four thousand different answers. Nobody in your house is awake. Nobody you know is trained to hear this. And here is the strange part. Every single night, your mind posts you a letter, and nobody ever taught you to read the language it is written in.

Is Your Partner's Body Odour Actually a Turn-On? The Strange Psychology of Attraction and Smell

There are few things more human than trying very hard not to smell human. We shower, scrub, spray, powder, perfume, wash clothes in scented detergent and buy increasingly sophisticated products designed to make sure our bodies smell “fresh”. Underarm odour, in particular, has become something that modern personal care culture teaches us to manage almost automatically. The underlying message is simple enough: whatever your body naturally smells like, there is probably a product available to make it smell different.

And then you fall in love with someone and discover something slightly ridiculous: you may actually like the way they smell. It may have nothing to do with their perfume, shampoo, or the carefully engineered fragrance that came out of a bottle. Sometimes it is simply that unmistakable combination of skin, hair, sweat, and whatever else makes up the particular smell of a person you know intimately. You may not even be able to describe exactly what you like about it, but you recognise it immediately when that person walks into the room, lies beside you in bed or leaves a shirt on the chair.

Are Men Genetically Inclined to Like Women With Long, Long Hair?

Male Attraction to Long Hair: A Billboard Evolution Never Taken Down

Somewhere in the last few hundred thousand years, hair became advertising. Not jewellery, not clothing — advertising, the kind with no off switch, growing continuously on the one part of the body a man can see from across a crowded room, a train platform, a wedding hall, without ever making eye contact first. Every strand is quietly broadcasting data about age, nutrition, hormone levels, and general biological upkeep, whether the woman wearing it intended to broadcast anything at all. That's the uncomfortable starting point of this whole conversation: before culture, before shampoo commercials, before a single Bollywood ad ever existed, hair was already doing a job most of us never signed up to assign it.

11 Eerily Useful Things We Should Thank Colonial Rulers For — Even Though We Probably Shouldn't!

There is something uncomfortable about looking at the modern world and noticing how many ordinary pleasures, habits, objects, and institutions have complicated imperial histories. A khaki jacket can now be a fashion statement. A gin and tonic can be an expensive bar order. Afternoon tea can be a luxury hotel experience. A botanical garden can be a peaceful Sunday destination. A mosquito net can mean a good night's sleep. A tiffin box can carry someone's homemade lunch to work. None of these things, however, arrived in the world in the simple form in which we know them today.

Colonialism was built around power, trade, military expansion, extraction and administration. It also created networks through which clothing, plants, medicines, architectural ideas, food habits, educational models and social institutions travelled between continents. Some were imposed. Some were borrowed. Some were already present and were simply given new meanings. Others escaped their original purpose completely and became part of everyday life.

You Should Watch & Read: The Art of the Tale of the Princess Kaguya by Isao Takahata

The Art of the Tale of the Princess Kaguya by Isao Takahata | Format: Hardcover on Amazon

The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter (Kaguya-hime)

A simple retelling of Japan's oldest surviving story

Chapter 1: A Glowing Bamboo in the Forest

How an old bamboo cutter found a tiny girl inside a shining stalk

Long ago, in a small village in Japan, there lived an old man who cut bamboo for a living. Everyone called him the bamboo cutter. He and his wife were kind people, but they were sad because they had no children.

One morning, the old man went to the bamboo forest as he did every day. This time, one stalk of bamboo was glowing with a soft golden light. He was surprised. He looked closer and cut it open carefully.

Inside the stalk sat a tiny girl, no bigger than his thumb. She was the most beautiful baby he had ever seen. The old man smiled. "You must be meant for us," he said gently. He placed her in his hands and carried her home to his wife.

4 Things Even Indians or Pakistanis Might Not Know About The North West Frontier Province [NWFP]

A book title that just might help...

Say "North West Frontier Province" to most Indians and the mental image that shows up is borrowed almost entirely from old war films and news footage — rugged hills, tribal rifles, a permanently restless border. What gets left out of that image is a far stranger, far more layered history: a province that was Congress-run in a Muslim-majority stronghold, home to the only fully nonviolent Muslim mass movement in recorded history, the site of a massacre that rivals Jallianwala Bagh in brutality but rarely gets taught alongside it, and for a good stretch of the 19th century, the actual western edge of a Sikh empire. Here are four things about this region that even well-read Indians tend to get wrong, or simply never learn at all.

Congress Ran a Muslim-Majority Province Right Up To Partition

Despite NWFP being the only Muslim-majority province in British India, it was governed not by the Muslim League but by a Congress-aligned ministry under Dr. Khan Sahib, brother of freedom fighter Bacha Khan. This upends the popular assumption that Muslim-majority regions automatically meant League strongholds in the run-up to 1947. NWFP's political loyalties were shaped less by religion and more by the Pashtun nationalist, anti-colonial politics of the Khudai Khidmatgar movement — making its eventual accession to Pakistan, decided by a contested 1947 referendum that Congress and Bacha Khan boycotted, far less of a foregone conclusion than most textbooks suggest.

What if the near-extinct doctor's trust was just rediscovered in Dr. Jaiswal's Dental Clinic in Delhi?

What separates a good dentist from a really awesome one? How do you know that the dentist you trust is actually reciprocating the feeling and is genuinely invested in the betterment of your health and not the billing mileage?

Running these questions on AI or a Google search query about Delhi's top dentists will lead you nowhere. This is simply because the healthcare scene is not structured or explained in a way where the trust factor can be measured and valued - these are paid services, and it is about professional justification of the role. However, every now and then, we come across healthcare providers who have kept up the diminishing flame of actually caring for you, and Dr. Jaiswal's Dental Clinic, in Delhi, is one such establishment.

Top Japanese folklore: Amaterasu and the Heavenly Rock Cave - Retold For Enjoyable Quick Reading

[An abridged retelling from the Kojiki and Nihon Shoki]

Amaterasu and the Heavenly Rock Cave - A simple retelling from the Kojiki and Nihon Shoki

You can still see traces of this story in Japan today. Amaterasu is honored at Ise Grand Shrine, one of the holiest sites in Japan, and millions of people visit shrines that carry her story. Its symbols, such as the shimenawa rope and kagura dance, are part of everyday religious life and festivals. The mirror is kept at the Ise Grand Shrine, where Amaterasu is worshipped. Straw ropes called shimenawa hang at shrines across the country to mark sacred places. Shrine dances called kagura remember Uzume's joyful dance. The story teaches a simple lesson: even the darkest time can end, and sometimes laughter and kindness are what bring the light back.

Baked or Air-Fried French Fries: Is Your Brain Trained to Expect Oil

The problem with a French fry that is trying too hard to be healthy!!

There is a strange psychological bargain hidden inside the modern French fry. We say we want the potato, the seasoning, and the crisp exterior, but when someone removes most of the oil, something about the experience can suddenly feel incomplete. The baked version may be golden, the air-fried version may make a respectable crunch, and the potato inside may be perfectly soft, yet many people will still take one bite and say that it does not taste like a “proper” French fry. That reaction raises a more interesting question than whether deep-frying is healthier:

Did this really happen? Madras High Court Verdict Rules Wife's Pressure to Live Separately From Parents as Cruelty

Anyone who has made chai on a gas stove knows that the flame decides everything. Keep it low and patient, and the leaves open up, the ginger softens, the milk turns the colour of a good afternoon. Push it to high because you are in a hurry, and the milk climbs the sides of the pot and spills over before you can reach for the ladle. Nobody blames the tea. People ask who turned up the flame.

That, in the end, is the question the Madras High Court has just asked about a marriage. Its answer has been read by many as a blanket rule against wives who want a separate home. It is not that simple, and the difference matters to every couple who has ever argued about where to live.

Madras High Court Verdict: Pressure to Live Separately as Cruelty

The Madras High Court recently held that a wife who forces an only son to leave the joint family and set up a separate residence, and who goes to her maternal home frequently without reason, commits cruelty against her husband. A bench of Justice PT Asha and Justice N Mala refused to disturb a Family Court order that had granted the husband a divorce on the ground of cruelty.

The case is reported as S v. S, Civil Miscellaneous Appeal No. 2942 of 2026 (2026 LiveLaw (Mad) 438). The wife appealed under Section 19 of the Family Courts Act, 1984, against a decree dated 8 July 2026 passed by the Family Court at Cuddalore. The High Court dismissed her appeal.

Why the Court Called It Cruelty

Should you watch 'They Will Kill You' on Hotstar Jio?

They Will Kill You does not shock you. Perhaps not worth remembering after a couple of months. However, you might still want to watch it! I realize this sounds strange, but why limit yourself to experiencing only the premium type of content - why reserve your content-digesting capabilities for the best of cinema only? This is the sweet spot for They Will Kill You - it is meant to be enjoyed like a fresh slice of pizza. Once done, you don't need to hold it up as a benchmark. The movie is high on gore, and with so much blood spilled, you have to ask yourself: did you like the Kill Bill series? If you enjoy that type of content, They Will Kill You can be your pick. Perfect for anyone who loves mindless violence without rooting for logic or reasoning, this movie is just about the best going around these days if you are talking about crazy a** women kicking and killing people by the bundle!

A lot of effort has been made to infuse some dark humor into They Will Kill You. Honestly, it works in patches. You will love Asia Reaves as Beetz - a woman who can do only wrong, including being in the wrong places, being penalized by the law, and learning a whole lot of violence wizardry during her time in prison. The movie takes no time to set up a storyline.

Reviewed - Netflix India - The Whisper Man | Indian OTT Serial K*ller Content

"If you leave a door half open, soon you'll hear the whispers spoken..." is one of the lines in the movie The Whisper Man, and you will not regret giving this title a chance. However, there is a big twist if you are expecting a regular who-done-it type of affair with a serial killer on the loose. It is not the opening sequence, the content that follows, or the standout performances that catch your attention - it is the last 5 minutes! Pack all of the cast in one big sandwich, and still that pile of talent cannot match up to what Michael Keaton delivers in the last 5 minutes of the movie. He is in the movie for barely 10 minutes of screen time, and still, you can almost feel the evil reside in him.

Watched, Reviewed - Lee Cronin's The Mummy (2026) Jio Hotstar

Lee Cronin's The Mummy (2026) premiered on JioHotstar in India on September 17, 2026. One look at the movie poster on the Jio app might make you believe that this is connected to the Mummy franchise that built and then destroyed Brendon Fraser. You are wrong! Lee Cronin's The Mummy is an entirely different movie. The content is not even remotely connected to the globally popular franchise. Lee Cronin's The Mummy is more like folklore without the special effects associated with the original. It is classified as a horror movie on Jio Hotstar, but you might not feel the scares. The movie is set in Egypt, where an American family is temporarily residing. It is their little daughter who falls into the darkness of a lady who is perhaps the vessel for an evil force. The little girl is kidnapped and returned to her family nearly a decade later. What happened during this time? Why does a teenage girl look like the possessed child from The Exorcist?

Body Horror is perhaps the right niche and definition for Lee Cronin's The Mummy. You will find plenty of it spread across the movie. Expect skin, nails, meaty flesh, hair, bodily fluids, and blood to take center stage every time a sequence builds up. The movie does not explain much. It does not dig into the origins of the prehistoric evil that is known to rip apart families - it is just there - sometimes in a mummified tomb and then as something that can be transferred from one vessel to the next medium. The good thing about Lee Cronin's The Mummy is that it does not relent.

From Comfort Food to Getting Comfortable in the Sack - Things Hinduism Perhaps Forbids When Death Comes to Family

Across North India, the loss of someone in the family gives way to an official period of 13 days during which it is advised not to indulge in things that would usually give you pleasure. I am not sure as I say this, but it seems like this includes your bedroom time too! In many ways, this makes sense. The death of a parent is about mourning and grieving the loss that cannot be overturned, no matter what others say about the healing prowess of time itself. The first few days are about abstaining from even eating proper meals, and again, this makes sense because grieving a parent shouldn't be about having a good mealtime. But then again, a question surfaces in my mind. When you're in the throes of depression and anxiety, when you have lost a pillar in your life, and you don't see the supposed positive side of things, at that moment, giving up on comfort food really cannot help you, can it?

Global Cultures: Strange Shopkeeper Superstitions Around the World...

Walk into any neighbourhood shop in Dwarka early enough in the morning, and you'll catch the owner doing something that has nothing to do with commerce and everything to do with faith — lighting an agarbatti in front of a small framed photo tucked behind the counter, well before the first shutter fully lifts. It looks like a private ritual, and it is, but it's also strikingly ordinary once you realise almost every shopkeeper on earth is running some version of the same quiet ceremony. Strip away the specific gods, coins, and salt, and what you're left with is a global, remarkably consistent human habit: treating the first transaction of the day like it decides everything that follows. In India and Pakistan, this habit even has a name — bohni, the belief that the day's first sale sets the tone, in terms of luck, for every sale after it. Shopkeepers try to ensure the bohni transaction happens in cash, ideally at full price with no haggling, and customers are expected to be generous rather than difficult during it, since walking away from a genuine bohni buyer without a sale is considered inauspicious. In some regions, the first cash received gets spat upon lightly to ward off the evil eye, or touched reverently to each eye as a gesture of thanks. It's not unusual for a shopkeeper to chase a small loss on the first sale just to avoid an empty-handed opening.

What is it? Stress Eruptions, Neurodermatitis, or just anxiety-induced stress rash?

The image on display here is from Healthline - it talks about Stress Rash. 

Have you experienced days when, out of the blue, without any history of things, and with no medically substantiated diagnosis, your skin develops maroon, reddish patches all across your face? It is hard to explain exactly what happens here, but I have suffered from this problem since 2005. I finally nailed it down to extreme anxiety that causes these flare-ups, but read around- AI or Google search- you will not find a lot of convincing answers regarding the diagnosis. I think anxiety-induced skin eruptions are a real thing. Perhaps, by now, there should be a well-defined name for this condition, if not a disease. I recall getting these patches and then running to a neighborhood chemist to give me something to compress it and cool it down. Needless to say, nothing really worked. You have to just talk to yourself and stop hyperventilating, but the problem is that you are trying to calm yourself down when your body is already reacting to something you have been carrying in your mind. I even had a teammate about 12 years back who had the same symptomatology. In her case, the entire face would develop red spots, like pox or chronic acne, and by evening, when her nerves settled, they would vanish! Literally, vanish without a trace.

From Midsommar to Hereditary - a few words about Ari Aster's creations

If Ari Aster is directing a film, expect psychological pain and grief to be a cornerstone of the plot. The same happens in Midsommar. If you have already seen Hereditary, you might find Midsommar somewhat similar. The presence of a cult or the occult is very strong in both stories. The big difference is that Hereditary is deeply rooted within a family. The darkness that resides in their home and lives is the focal point of the movie. In Midsommar, the entire setup is different. It is bright and sunny all the time in Sweden - the movie was perhaps shot during that climatic shift that happens every year, when nights are also like daytime, and this makes Midsommar creepingly different. The creepy feeling stems from the absolute lack of darkness. There is no dimly lit shot. There are literally no nights in the movie apart from the first few minutes. The movie starts as darkly as you can imagine, thanks to Ari Aster's habit of portraying family secrets, taboos, cult worship, and the filth of the human mind across most of his creations.

Messing with Kettlebells!

 

There is absolute truth in believing that the kettlebell is the true king of all body conditioning equipment!

This is for anyone who truly believes that kettlebell movement engages the whole body and that there is no other exercise that comes close - you were absolutely right! I am now about 8 months into kettlebell movements. I can say this with utter confidence - there is nothing out there in the form of fancy gym equipment that challenges, engages, and conditions the body like a weighted kettlebell. I use the word "kettlebell" because of another truth that my journey with the KB has uncovered - working out with light kettlebells is to just get used to the range of movement that swinging the kettlebell induces, but if you want to see real results, you have to get slightly uncomfortable. You have to choose kettlebells that are a bit beyond the realm of easily swinging them upwards or towards the side. A slightly heavier kettlebell really works out the entire body. Even those movements that are not intended to target the core do it anyway. This is why I truly believe that the love for kettlebell and its growing global credentials are not a passing phase - this is not an Instagram trend - this is here to stay. 

What Are Rumali Bicep Curls and Why Should You Do Them?

A bit of personal insight before we delve into the actual discussion - I chanced upon Rumali Curls via Instagram without really searching for this body movement. It has been a month, and I have progressed to just a 7.5 kg dumbbell in each hand while doing it. However, I don't use it as a means to grow muscles or build the biceps. For me, Rumali Curls are more about a whole-body movement, and something that warms up and works out the entire body before I get into heavy weights. I find them easy and without any major risks. You don't have to do 100 reps in the first week. You will feel it work the entire upper body with some strain on the upper arms...

Movie I am Waiting for: Dracula - The Night Around Us (2026)

The Night Around Us (2026): looking forward to what seems like a different version of Dracula!

Directed and written by Chris Schwab · USA · 2026 · English · 70 minutes · Modern reimagining of Bram Stoker's Dracula

A Man Who Has Lost His Faith

Chris Schwab's Dracula: The Night Around Us moves Bram Stoker's vampire story out of Victorian Transylvania and into contemporary America. At its centre is Dr. John Seward, now a psychologist working at a state mental-health facility. Seward is not introduced as the commanding Van Helsing-type hero familiar from many Dracula adaptations. He is an ordinary, somewhat disillusioned man whose faith in other people has been badly worn down. Seward meets Mina, a wary single mother who has moved into the apartment building with her young daughter, Lucy. Lucy is open, funny, and immediately more trusting than her mother. Seward develops an easy affection for the child, and his relationship with Mina gradually gives him something he had been missing: a reason to believe that human connection is still possible. The film deliberately compresses Stoker's enormous cast. Schwab combines elements of Jonathan Harker and Van Helsing into Seward, while altering Lucy and Mina from their roles in the novel. It makes the story depend on Seward's emotional investment in this little family.

Confessing to My Paradox of Fleeting Attraction

This is something beyond comprehension, despite coming from my own mind - something I have not been able to find a clear answer to over the years, and I am explaining this with an example or two. If you recall, Kiara Advani across the first handful of movies she did, including some where she just about appeared rather than owning a role - MS Dhoni: The Untold Story, being one of them. There was something outright appealing about her, not that she does not engage attention these days. Even later on, as long as her choice of costumes did not include metallic-hued swimsuits, she was constantly up there, in a small list that every man out there carries in his mind, a list of women that really attract them, women who might look like goddesses to them, and those who are constantly in their web of fantasies. Somehow, as soon as she started dropping the weight, the curves went away, the costumes became tighter and more compact; those unscripted moments of being attracted to her fell to nearly negligible levels. This is not about an Indian man finding more "clothed" women attractive, and neither do I have an agenda against bolder, provocative dressing, but I share it just the way it works in my mind. 

Genetic Trauma & Generational Trauma: What Are They, and Should You Be Concerned?

What Is Genetic Trauma? A Concept That Went Mainstream Through TV

The HBO series Watchmen introduced a lot of people to a phrase that sounds almost like science fiction: genetic trauma, the idea that whatever your ancestors lived through might still be sitting somewhere inside you, encoded rather than just remembered. It's a striking idea for a superhero show to drop casually into dialogue, and it stuck with viewers for good reason — most of us already suspect, in some vague unscientific way, that we're carrying more from our families than just their eye colour and their taste in food. The question worth actually answering is whether that suspicion holds up to scrutiny, or whether it's just a good line dressed up as biology.

Genetic Trauma vs Generational Trauma: Why the Terms Get Confused

These two phrases get used interchangeably online, which muddies the water considerably. Generational trauma — sometimes called intergenerational or transgenerational trauma — is a well-established concept in psychology describing how the emotional and behavioural aftermath of trauma gets passed down through families: parenting styles shaped by fear, silence around painful history, anxiety absorbed by children who never lived through the original event at all. Genetic trauma is a much narrower, far more contested claim — that trauma can leave an actual biological mark on your DNA's packaging, one inheritable through eggs or sperm. One is broadly accepted in family psychology. The other is a genuinely fascinating, still-unsettled area of science called epigenetics.