Maria Thomas, Madhura Karnik

At first, there’s something really satisfying about playing Tetris. That sense of achievement you feel when the colourful blocks in the video game fit perfectly into place, and line after line disappears with a chime. But soon the blocks begin to pile up, their edges don’t line up. And before you know it, you’re accumulating rows you can’t fill, and the screen is full of blocks of all shapes and sizes reaching all the way to the top. Game over.

With rumours spread on WhatsApp fuelling a spate of lynchings across India, the dark side of technology is becoming increasingly evident.

An Italian photojournalist’s staged images of impoverished Indians posing before fake food has sparked outrage online, with critics calling it exploitative and unethical.

On July 20, as the Narendra Modi government faced its first no-confidence motion in parliament, it began its defence by underlining its track record on women’s empowerment.

In 1893, years before he made his name as a legendary escapologist, a 19-year-old Harry Houdini sought to entertain visitors at the Chicago World Fair. So he darkened his face with makeup, put on a white robe, and posed as a “Hindu fakir.”

India’s supreme court, hearing petitions against a 19th century law criminalising homosexuality, has raised the hopes of the country’s LGBTQ community with some pointed remarks on the matter.

In 1956, a young graduate of Mumbai’s JJ School of Art walked into Air India’s art department and asked if the company would buy some of her paintings of Indian women. The officials there agreed. The artworks were eventually printed on the menu cards given out to passengers. They would even go on to decorate the airline’s booking office in London, a trend that spread to its outposts across the world.

India’s big push towards renewable energy is wiping out a critically endangered bird. So great is the devastation that in the western Indian state of Gujarat, one of the last sanctuaries of the great Indian bustard, only one male member of the species is left.

Even cricket-crazy India hasn’t escaped the football world cup fever. Fans are glued to screens, many reportedly even skipping work and school to watch matches.

India’s supreme court has confirmed that the four men accused of gang-raping a woman in New Delhi in 2012 will face the death penalty.

In the tiny Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan, thousands are leaving their villages to seek out a better life in towns.

On Aug. 25, 1949, Roshan Sharma got his first glimpse of the Golden Gate Bridge as the SS President Wilson approached San Francisco, California. The 22-year-old from Bhumbli in Punjab had braved a long, uncomfortable journey on the ship from Hong Kong, subsisting on the only vegetarian food available: boiled rice, potatoes, and fruit.

A decade ago, at the age of 22, American writer Elizabeth Flock moved to Mumbai with a vague idea of working in Bollywood.

The making of modern India owes a lot to a physicist-turned-statistician who pioneered the art of conducting large-scale surveys to better understand a newly independent nation.

In April this year, Anas Saleem, a Lahore-based freelance writer, posted an image on Instagram of the Katas Raj temples, the ancient Hindu site in Pakistan’s Punjab province. Soon after, the 21-year-old received a message from a follower in India, saying she had shown the photo to her 85-year-old grandfather who wanted to speak to him over the phone.

In the early 1930s, when Kamala Bhagvat, a graduate from Bombay University, sought admission to the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore (now Bengaluru), its then director, Nobel laureate CV Raman, turned her down.

India is now the worst place in the world to be a woman.

In the conservative parts of Pakistan, men and women don’t exactly mix, their two worlds separated by centuries of strict social norms.

The Indian-American doctor Atul Gawande wears a lot of different hats: surgeon, staff writer for the New Yorker, best-selling author, and MacArthur Genius. Now, he’s also been named the CEO of a new nonprofit healthcare venture launched by Amazon, JP Morgan, and Berkshire Hathaway.

The Indian government has decided to put off its stake sale of the debt-ladden Air India after its offer drew no bidders. But luckily there’s still a steady trickle of money coming from an iconic 44-year-old building with sweeping views of the Arabian sea.

The Donald Trump administration’s controversial new border policy has led to at least 70 south Asian asylum-seekers being detained at a federal prison in the state of Oregon in the US’s Pacific northwest.

Northeast India is inundated, again.

In 1776, an entrepreneurial Irishman who had come to India to make his fortune ended up in the horrifying squalour of an 18th century Calcutta prison.

In an industry not exactly known for its diversity, an iconic American carmaker has appointed its first female chief financial officer (CFO). And she’s from Chennai, India.