Youthquake

Mrinal Chatterjee

Window Seat

Youthquake means - a significant cultural, political, or social change arising from the actions or influence of young people. It was named Oxford Dictionaries' Word of the Year for 2017. The term was originally coined in the 1960s by ‘Vogue’ editor Diana Vreeland, Its usage surged in the mid-2010s to reflect the political and social awakening of the millennial generation.

We have recently seen a series of youthquakes around us. Nepal’s GenZ uprising this September marked the third time in three years that a ruling government and political establishment has been routed by a youth-led popular revolt in South-Asia, beginning with Sri Lanka and followed by Bangladesh.

What drove the explosion of discontent in Nepal, and in Bangladesh and Sri Lanka before it? What patterns can be discerned across all three, and what lessons do they hold for each other – especially as each country aspires to a new politics to do away with the old? Are these “Youthquakes” becoming a regional habit, and what risks and opportunities do they bring for South-Asia?

Will it impact India in near future? If yes, how? And the most important of the questions- what happens, then? We have not yet got an answer.

Rain

India experienced above-average rain this monsoon season (June to September), marking the second consecutive year of above-normal precipitation with an 8% surplus. Heavy rains in September significantly contributed to the overall surplus, leading to flash floods and landslides, especially in the northern regions.

Into the second week of October, the rain has not subsided in a large part of the country including where I live.

Yesterday I went to Bhubaneswar, the capital city of Odisha for some work. I was supposed to wrap it up by early afternoon and return home- some 100 km away. And then it started raining heavily accompanied by frequent lightning and loud thunder. I moved into a café, thinking it would stop in 10-15 minutes. It did not.

I flipped open my notebook and started writing on rain:

The rain has been falling for hours. It is difficult to tell now—time has merged with the rhythm of the downpour. The world outside the window seems blurred, softened by sheets of silver that dissolve shapes and edges. Each drop seems to carry a memory, a fragment of thought, a whisper from the past.

There is something meditative about incessant rain. It silences the noise of the world while amplifying the quiet within. The steady patter on the roof feels like the heartbeat of nature—constant, patient, unconcerned with human restlessness. As puddles form and streets turn into mirrors, I find myself reflecting too, on moments long forgotten, on people who drifted away like raindrops sliding down glass.

Incessant rain cleanses more than the earth; it washes the mind of clutter. Yet, it also stirs melancholy—the kind that makes you long for sunlight but compels you to linger in the grey. There is beauty in such contradictions: renewal and weariness, calm and chaos, silence and storm—all coexisting.

But as dusk faded into night, and the rain continued its endless soliloquy, I wished it to stop. I had to go home.

Moral of the story: no situation continues to evoke the same feelings in you if it continues. Transiency has its merit.

Diwana

Diwana, the first full-fledged Hindi humour and parody periodical addressed to adults was published in 1964. Brought out by the Delhi-based media house Tej, Diwana ran till 1986 as a bilingual weekly in both Hindi and English, with the English edition commencing in the early ’70s.

It was modelled on ‘MAD’, the well-known American humor magazine which was launched in 1952. Interestingly, MAD also inspired 'Unmad', (which in Bengali and Sanskrit means mad), a satire magazine in Bangladesh in May 1978.

Diwana’s most visible homage to MAD was in the form of Chilli, a Neuman-esque character with a mischievous smile, who assumes various culturally recognisable roles and personas on the magazine’s cover. Diwana offered opportunities to pioneering Indian cartoonists like Kripa Shankar Bharadwaj, Bharat Negi, Murli Sundaram, Manik Pande, Jagdish Gupta and Anupam Sinha in creating comic characters and experimenting with different forms and styles.

Dr. No

James Bond movies mirror our fascination with style, danger, and control. Beneath the glamour of tuxedos and Aston Martins lies a reflection of changing times—politics, gender, and technology evolving with each era. Bond remains timeless not for his invincibility, but for how he adapts, reflecting our shifting ideals of heroism.

The first James Bond movie “Dr. No," was released on 5 Oct in 1962, which introduced Sean Connery as the iconic secret agent 007.

The film was a critical and commercial success, establishing many of the visual and thematic hallmarks that would define the popular James Bond franchise for decades to come.