| Greetings from India! You're reading Meanwhile, Back Home, our daily newsletter specially curated for our overseas readers. While you were asleep, it was a whirlwind of a day here in India. We've got the top highlights lined up for you.
Dear reader, We open today’s edition with a story that’s equal parts absurd and alarming. In Patna, a four-legged applicant, a dog, managed to secure an official residential certificate through the Right to Public Service Centre portal. Registered as Dog Babu, complete with photograph, QR code, and the revenue officer’s digital signature, the canine’s paperwork was, on paper, impeccable. That it sailed through unchecked has left officials red-faced, especially with residential certificates now key to Bihar’s Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise ahead of the elections. The response has been swift: FIRs filed, suspensions ordered, and a system under scrutiny.
💡Spotlight In his address during the Monsoon Session of the Parliament, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh fielded pointed questions from the Opposition on the Pahalgam terror attack and India’s military response, Operation Sindoor. But rather than offering specifics, Singh flipped the script, accusing the Opposition of asking the wrong questions. Here's a breakdown of his combative response: 📌 Air Force losses When asked how many fighter jets were lost, Singh deflected. If a student scores high, does it matter if he lost a pen? he asked rhetorically. He asserted that destroyed terror bases and did not lose a single soldier. 📌 ‘India’s sentiments’ Calling the Opposition’s focus “misguided,” Singh said their questions failed to represent the nation’s pride. Instead of asking about lost jets, they should be asking about how many terror camps were wiped out, and the answer, he said was “plenty.” 📌 No Trump pressure Quashing speculation that the US pressured India to halt strikes, Singh said: “We stopped because we achieved all our military and political objectives.” He insisted the decision was made from a position of strength, not submission. 📌 Op ‘Paused’ Singh asserted that Pakistan had accepted defeat and requested that hostilities be stopped. “We accepted with a caveat: that the Operation has just been halted and not ended. If Pakistan attempts any misadventure, I want to assure the House, the operation will begin again,” he said.
☕ Spill the Expresso Sarzameen review The film, instead of stirring patriotic fervour, somehow ended up making the audience root for the wrong side, writes film critic Rohan Naahar. Sarzameen, co-produced by Karan Johar and featuring Ibrahim Ali Khan, tells the story of a soldier who lets his own son be murdered. The result? A narrative so misjudged it accidentally positions a brainwashed militant as the emotional center. Sloppy writing, laughable logic, and a twist-stuffed script do the rest. What should have been a complex drama unfolds instead as an unintentional case study in cinematic self-sabotage.
🚨 Must Read Bihar chessboard Chirag Paswan has turned up the heat on the Nitish Kumar government, calling out the state’s “spiralling” crime, a not-so-subtle dig at the administration he technically supports. His remarks, coming in the wake of the ambulance rape case, have drawn sharp retorts from JD(U) and discomfort within the BJP. But this isn’t just criticism, it is calculated politics. With Assembly elections on the horizon, Chirag is angling to grow beyond symbolic allyship, eyeing a broader caste coalition and a firmer foothold in Bihar’s fragmented power map. The NDA, meanwhile, finds itself on thin ice.
📚Book Nook Ghachar Ghochar In the 2015 book, author Vivek Shanbhag traces the subtle shifts within a family transformed by sudden wealth. Columnist Stela Dey reflects on how the novella captures the middle class’s uneasy relationship with prosperity, and the compromises that often unfold behind closed doors. That’s all for now. Until next time, Aishwarya Khosla
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