When booking a vacation, many people seek out fun and relaxing destinations. But for others, it’s all about the spook factor.

Many eerie sites have become popular tourist spots ― from hotels with grisly histories to abandoned ghost towns to chapels decorated with thousands of human bones.

In honor of Halloween season, we’ve rounded up 35 spooky travel destinations around the world.

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The source said she would have one more opportunity to file an appeal.

If that was also rejected, she would have to leave the convent, the source told PTI.

Apostolic Nuncio Archbishop Giambattista Diquattro has conveyed to the congregation the decision taken by the Congregation for the Oriental Churches.

“As you will see, the Congregation has rejected the Recourse presented by Sister Kalapura.

If she will consider that the present decree is against her lawful rights, she can present a new recourse to the Supreme Tribunal of the Segnatura Apostolica within the peremptory term prescribed by the law,” the Nuncio said in his letter to the FCC.

Reacting to the decision, the nun said it was taken without hearing her part.

The nun said she would not leave the convent as she has not done anything wrong.

In its August 5 letter to her, Ann Joseph, the head of the Aluva based congregation, said she was being dismissed from the congregation for failing to give a satisfactory explanation for her lifestyle “in violation of the proper law of the FCC.“

The “unanimous decision” to dismiss the nun was taken at the congregation’s general council on May 11 this year.

This was approved by the Congregation for the Oriental Churches in the Vatican through the Nuntiature in New Delhi.

In its notice to the nun early in January, the congregation termed as “grave violations”, Sister Lucy possessing a driving licence, buying a car, taking a loan for it and publishing a book and spending money without the permission and knowledge of her superiors.

The nun dismissed charges levelled against her by the congregation, saying many of them were a “deliberate attempt to paint her in bad light.“

In its notices, the FCC alleged that the nun violated its dress code in public without any permission and caused grave external scandal and harm to the Church by participating in the protest by ‘Save Our Sisters Action Council’ on September 20, 2018 at Kochi, seeking the arrest of Bishop Franco Mulakkal, accused of raping a nun in Kerala.

As those living with endometriosis know, the painful and often debilitating condition can affect many things including your periods, your mental health, your fertility, your sex life and beyond. 

With endometriosis, tissue similar to the one lining the inside of the uterus (known as the endometrium) grows outside of the uterus — typically on the ovaries, fallopian tubes, pelvic tissue, bladder, gastrointestinal tract or, less commonly, in other areas of the body. 

During a menstrual cycle, this misplaced tissue behaves like it would if it were in the uterus: It thickens, breaks down and bleeds, but the body has no way to shed it, causing inflammation. As a result, scar tissue, adhesions and cysts may form.   

Symptoms of endometriosis may include intense cramping, chronic pain, heavy periods, fatigue, uncomfortable bowel movements and difficulty getting pregnant. 

A study published in 2017 found that two-thirds of women with endometriosis experience some form of sexual dysfunction, which includes painful sex, known as dyspareunia. 

Though endometriosis is common — an estimated 1 in 10 women of reproductive age in the U.S. are affected by it — doctors often misdiagnose the condition or write off symptoms as just normal period issues. It takes an average of nine-plus years for women to receive an accurate diagnosis. (Note that trans and gender-nonconforming people also deal with endometriosis.) 

“Because of this long delay, young women often have years of painful sexual experiences before being properly diagnosed and treated,” Nan Wise — a New Jersey sex therapist, neuroscientist and author of “Why Good Sex Matters” — told HuffPost. “This perpetuates the cycle of pain, fear and avoidance, which may actually result in poorer outcomes.”

So how can you enjoy sex more while living with this condition? We asked OB-GYNs and sex therapists to share their best advice.  

Why endometriosis can make sex painful  

Though not everyone with endometriosis experiences pain during sex, those who do have described it ranging from a “dull ache” to “sharp” and “excruciating.”

“It felt like a knife was going through my uterus and hitting the other side,” Jessica Duffin, creator of ThisEndoLife.com, told Women’s Health. “At times, it hurt so intensely that I felt removed from reality.”

Penetration or thrusting during intercourse can stretch, pull or push against the misplaced endometrial tissue, known as endometrial implants, in the pelvis. The severity of the pain may vary depending on a number of factors: how deep the penetration is, when sex is happening (for some women it’s worst during their periods) and where the implants are located.

“If the implants are on nerves, ligaments and tissue stretched during sex, pain can be significant and, often, unbearable lasting hours and days afterward,” said Dr. Sherry A. Ross, an OB-GYN in Santa Monica, California, and the author of “She-ology: The She-quel.”

Psychological factors may also play a role in the pain. When a person is dealing with endometriosis, the body can start to “equate sexual stimulation with pain,” Wise said. 

“Essentially it causes a fear reaction in which the body braces for pain and the result is even more tension, which can exacerbate the pain,” she explained. 

In the long term, this fear response can further decrease libido and reduce vaginal lubrication, making sex even more painful and thus perpetuating a cycle of more distress. 

How to make sex more enjoyable

When sex becomes painful, it can be upsetting to the person with endometriosis, while also putting stress on the relationship with their sexual partner.

“Sex is supposed to be fun and if one partner is having severe pain this makes the act of sex much less enjoyable, not only for the woman who has endometriosis but also for her partner who does not want to hurt her,” said Dr. Diana Hoppe, an OB-GYN in Encinitas, California, and author of “Healthy Sex Drive, Healthy You.”

Here are some expert-backed pieces of advice to boost intimacy while avoiding pain: 

Communicate with your partner.

As difficult as it may be to speak up, don’t suffer in silence. Inform your partner about the condition in general and then get specific about how it affects your sex life. Tell them what feels good and what does not. Some partners may interpret a lack of desire to have sex as a sign that you’re not attracted to them anymore. So it may help to explain that the dip in your libido isn’t about them — it’s a result of your endometriosis. 

“The more your partner is informed about the pain and discomfort you are experiencing, the easier it will be for them to be supportive and helpful in finding alternative ways to express your sexual concerns leading to a healthy sex life,” Ross said.

Try different positions.

“For some women, being on top, rather than the missionary position, allows them more control with penetration and can lessen pain,” said Hoppe.

Discover what works best for the two of you. 

Time it right.

Keep track of your cycle and how it affects your pain levels; that way, you can figure out if there are certain times of the month that tend to be better windows for some hanky-panky. Then plan accordingly. 

“Some women say that having sexual activity after their period is less painful,” said Janet Brito, a psychologist and sex therapist in Honolulu. “Best to listen to your body and and find the best time where you feel the most relaxed.” 

Experiment with sexual activities that don’t involve vaginal penetration. 

In some cases, vaginal penetration may just be too painful, regardless of the position, speed or time of the month. Instead, try making out naked, mutual masturbation, giving and receiving oral sex, dry-humping or anal sex.

“Explore different sensations,” Brito said. “Discover new erogenous zones, such as nipple pinching, using sex toys or incorporating role play.”

Use lube. 

“Since vaginal dryness is a common cause of painful sex, it’s always best to make sure you have a go-to vaginal lubrication during sexual intercourse,” Ross said. “You don’t want vaginal dryness to be confused with painful sex caused by endometriosis.”

Explore mindful sex. 

Instead of engaging in goal-oriented sex where the only aim is orgasm, try to slow down and focus on sensations of pleasure, deep breathing, feelings of connection and a sense of curiosity that will help relax your busy mind. 

“When you are not feeling pressure to perform, you are more likely to be present and appreciate the present moment,” Brito said. 

Don’t underestimate the power of sexual imagery. 

Research has shown that just thinking about pleasurable genital sensations can light up the brain as if it were responding to actual physical stimulation. In a 2016 study, Wise and her colleagues found that when participants merely imagined the insertion of a dildo, it generated “extensive brain activation” and produced sexual arousal.

“What this study showed was that it is possible to just think about sex and these brain areas become activated, ultimately confirming how powerful a sex organ the brain actually is,” Wise said. “What I recommend to patients whose genitals have become associated with pain rather than pleasure is to use the power of imagery to imagine experiencing pleasurable sensations in the genitals.”

Consider seeing a professional.

In addition to visiting a doctor to discuss your medical treatment options, it may  be beneficial to make an appointment with a pelvic health physical therapist. This person can help you find ways to reduce your pain and improve your quality of life, inside and outside the bedroom. 

Another great resource is a sex therapist specializing in endometriosis, who can help you explore less painful sexual activities and give you the tools to improve communication with your sexual partners or significant other.

KOLHAPUR, Maharashtra— Raju Shetti, chief of the farmers’ party, the Swabhimani Shetkari Sanghatana (SSS), and a former ally of the Bharatiya Janata Party in Maharashtra, said he is upset about the right-wing party’s focus on Article 370 and Kashmir during the ongoing campaign for the assembly election in the state.  

“Is the election for Kashmir or Maharashtra? During Vidhan Sabha elections, they should talk about issues being faced by the people of the state about what they will do (for them),” Shetti told HuffPost India in an interview in the Western Maharashtra city of Kolhapur in the middle of the heated last few days of the campaign. The state will vote on 21 October, and results will be announced three days later.

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The two-time Member of Parliament, who suffered an unexpected defeat in the 2019 Lok Sabha election after he parted ways with the ruling party, said the BJP “only raises issues from which it can get political benefit. It is not at all interested in finding solutions to issues”.  

Shetti weighed in on Article 370 and Kashmir in reply to a question about Home Minister Amit Shah and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent speeches in poll-bound Maharashtra, where the two leaders repeatedly spoke about the withdrawal of special status to Kashmir. 

On CM Devendra Fadnavis’ recent announcement while releasing the BJP manifesto that, if elected again, his government would create 1 crore jobs, Shetti said, “They are still talking about the carrot of promises. You are talking about giving one crore jobs, but what happened to the 72,000 government jobs you were going to give people? It has been over a year-and-a-half since this announcement of a ‘Mega Recruitment’ was made. They should tell what happened to that promise. There has been a ‘mega recruitment’ in the BJP, not the government.”

Shetti’s party is contesting from five assembly seats in an alliance with Congress-NCP this time. An Economic Times report described the election as the “biggest litmus” test for Shetti.

Speaking with HuffPost India on a day when his deputy and SSS’s Maharashtra state president Ravikant Tupkar rejoined the party after briefly joining a BJP-allied party, Shetti dismissed worries of large-scale defections from his party to the BJP.

 Edited excerpts from an interview:

The BJP is widely expected to win and the opposition’s poll prospects are poor. What do you think is responsible for this state of affairs: poor campaign and internal lack of unity of opposition parties or the government’s good performance? Or both?

Government performance is very bad. People’s issues are grave. Unemployment, job losses in industry, economic slowdown—because of these everybody is severely affected. And because of natural disasters, the farmer is suffering. Under these circumstances, the resulting public outrage ought to have been channelised. But that is not visible; those who are doing it, their strength is not enough and those who must do it aren’t up to the task. 

That is so because, during the peak election season, the BJP-Shiv Sena succeeded in poaching important opposition party leaders. Now the problem opposition parties are facing is that they were depending upon these leaders during elections. With them having gone, a vacuum has been created. And it will have to be admitted candidly that they (BJP-Shiv Sena) managed to create chaos in the opposition. That is the reason for this situation. And it is taking time to emerge from that and face the election. 

Now this is what is superficially visible. But you must understand that the people have decided something else. And you will see it for yourself after the election. In 1980 as well, under the rule of the Janata Party, many people left the Congress in large numbers. But after that, Indira Gandhi made a comeback after giving opportunities to third and fourth-tier party workers, and the Congress revived in the true sense. Vilasrao Deshmukh was one of the leaders who emerged during this period. Many such people emerged in the Congress at the time. 

Sharad Pawar is playing the same role that Indira Gandhi played at the time. Even at this age, Pawar’s public meetings are getting response from the people. So he is playing that role. 

You saying this is interesting because you were one of his bitter critics once and in a political camp opposed to him. 

I have the habit of speaking the truth. I said what I am seeing. 

You contested as an ally of the BJP in 2014 in both the assembly and parliamentary elections. So what led you to part ways with them?   

In 2014, I had a detailed discussion with then Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi about what our movement and organisation expect: restarting the river-linking scheme, giving farmers price for their produce based on the Swaminathan Commission formula and giving independent status for the Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices. Those were the issues. We were committed to them. They had agreed to implement them soon after coming to power. In his first budget, Arun Jaitley allocated Rs 1,000 crore for the river-linking scheme. I don’t know if they spent or took back the Rs 1000 crore allocated. Not just this, during the UPA government’s tenure, after a long struggle many of us organisations got the land acquisition bill passed. 

And they brought a proposal to amend that law. I had opposed it. So, instead of doing something new, they tried to mess with what was going well. That is why we left their alliance. 

In response to my first question, you said that the state government’s performance has not been good but just yesterday, Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis while releasing the BJP manifesto, said Maharashtra has achieved substantial progress. He cited the NITI Aayog’s index involving agriculture in which Maharashtra has shown improvements and other sectors as well in which the state has done well. So what do you have to say about these assertions?

This is false. Because if that is the case, then why did farmers’ suicides increase in Maharashtra more than before? I agree they were there before as well, but why did they increase? Second thing: why did agriculture growth become negative? Let me speak in his language. Why did share of agriculture in GDP go down? Five years is not a small amount of time, it is sufficient. Something should have been visible during this time. I am not talking about one year’s work but for all five years.  

In the BJP’s manifesto which was released yesterday, they have promised 12 hour electricity for farmers, solar power supply—

(Interrupts question) There is nothing in this manifesto. It is like a stale rice and curry (shila bhat, shili kadhi). There is nothing new. They should answer what they did to implement their past promises. In Kolhapur district, about 1,03,000 farmers did not get benefits due to them under the 2017 loan waiver. If these are the numbers for one district, think how many must there be across the state? So what exactly did you do? Peddle lies? And nothing else but the government forced the farmers to be caught in a difficult economic situation. 

They were going to start giving new power connections for farming but haven’t given a single new connection in the past five years. If there is no power, how can the farmer get water for his crop? They said business based on farm goods will be set up. Where are they now? Give us the details. While the agitation about milk price increase was going on, the government told co-operatives and private firms to increase milk prices for farmers and it will give them grants. Those grants have still not been given. Who is responsible for this? 

What happened to the past promises? What happened to the Rs 34,000 crore loan waiver? It has been two-and-a-half years and yet they have not finished calculating. And, in a way, farmers faced economic restrictions. That is because, despite the government putting strict criteria to limit the number of beneficiaries, there were many whose names did get added to the list of those eligible for relief; and after two-and-a-half years, the government is yet to transfer the money that could clear their dues. Which means the government has not made calculations about the exact amount of relief they will get. That is why such kind of a farmer is in a bind because he doesn’t get a new loan as the previous one hasn’t been cleared yet. The tag of indebtedness is on him. 

Second thing is that farmers have not received crop insurance money to the extent they should have. In drought season, they earned a lot of money when you would have expected them to lose money by paying insurance claims to farmers who bought insurance and were grappling with crop losses due to drought. This means the state government failed to regulate the insurance companies. These insurance companies have colluded with agriculture department officials and duped farmers. We filed many such complaints but the government did not take them seriously. 

The situation of agriculture and farmers is grim, and Maharashtra has witnessed many protests against this in the recent past with the best known one being the Kisan Long March in which many peasant organisations including your party participated. So why did they vote for the BJP in the 2019 Lok Sabha election?

The BJP has been able to manage elections. They manage everything from EVMs to other things. In this scheme of things, all economic ideas are difficult to digest. These questions of farmers are relating to economic ideas. And emotional issues are like opium, they affect easily though not for a long time. The BJP understood this and in the name of nationalism, the way they marketed Balakot and Pulwama... tell me, did only the BJP workers get upset about the Pulwama attacks? The country backed the Balakot strike. All opposition parties supported them. Didn’t they? That is because the question was not about one party or government, it was the country. But they indulged in marketing about it in a way as if the party got it done. The opposition parties got tricked by that marketing and new voters between the age groups 18 and 25 were heavily influenced by it. That is why these daily livelihood issues were sidelined. And that is why the results.

If we look at the BJP campaign for the Maharashtra assembly polls, especially when we look at the manifesto released yesterday, while the party has spoken about Bharat Ratna for Savarkar, it has also promised one crore jobs. So it is also speaking about livelihood issues. 

They are still talking about the carrot of promises. You are talking about giving one crore jobs, but what happened to the 72,000 government jobs you were going to give people? It has been over a year and a half since this announcement of a ‘Mega Recruitment’ was made. They should tell what happened to that promise. There has been a ‘Mega Recruitment’ in the BJP, not the government. Second, the way the industrial sector is losing jobs—take what Mahindra and Parle have done. When everybody is sacking people, what has the government done to resolve the woes of the industrial sector as the state government? The first issue that the industrial sector faces is the availability of power and its tariff. In these times of slowdown, did you try to streamline the power tariff for them? After all, during times of slowdown reducing expenses is the only solution, isn’t it?

Second thing is that, after agriculture, textile is the second most intensive job-creating sector. What have you done when the sector is facing so many issues? Today, there is tremendous anxiety felt by textile clusters in Bhiwandi, Malegaon and Solapur. Livelihoods of workers in these clusters have been devastated. What happened to your Make in India and Start Up India?

Answers for these should be given and then promises made in the manifesto. 

So you are saying that they should give a report about their performance during the past five years and then speak about what they will do in the next five.

Yes. 

If we look at Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s speeches in the state, it is clear that the BJP has made Article 370 an issue in the state elections. And it is believed that the voters like that as well. So, as the opposition party, what is the message and issue that you are taking to the people?

Issue number one: is the election for Kashmir or Maharashtra? During Vidhan Sabha elections, they should talk about issues being faced by the people of the state about what they will do. Ok, you scrapped 370. Did anyone oppose that? Now, if you scrapped 370 what about 371? 

About that, the Home Minister Amit Shah has been clear that it won’t be touched. Are you demanding that it should be scrapped as well?

 Yes. And the last time, you came to power on the issue of separate statehood for Vidarbha. Why did you leave that issue? This proves that the BJP is not serious about any issue. It only raises issues from which it can get political benefit. It is not at all interested in finding solutions to issues.  

We are speaking about issues in Kolhapur and only some months ago, the entire country saw the fury of the flood waters consume the city. But now, looking at the campaign here, it seems as if it is not an issue for the election at all. Why is that the case?

There is outrage. But when does it get visible? Who are the eyes and ears of the society? The news media. In the age of paid news, how can the outrage of the common people come in front of the society? Tell me. 

But mass politicians like you are expected to be able to communicate directly with people, isn’t it? 

That is being done. But these days, unless the message comes through the media, it does not appear forceful enough. 

While members of other parties in the Congress-NCP led alliance are leaving for the BJP and Shiv Sena, in your case the most important defector from your party has returned. What did you do to ensure that?

This movement is based on ideas. Activists who join us know that they will get only happiness and satisfaction about having done something for farmers. All of them are kids of farmers. So while doing that, being part of a movement means, they are short-tempered. So sometimes they get impatient and it is important to talk to them about it. Now, these activists from the movement do not have any fear about agencies like the CBI, ED, IT. Nether are they afraid of the police. Many have charges against them. So they don’t get scared. The opposition capitalised on only one thing they could: short tempers of the activists. We have devised an anti-virus to deal with it. I can just say one thing: their tricks can work with other parties, not Swabhimani Sanghatana. 

In 2019, you lost your Lok Sabha seat which you had won twice before and in 2014, when you contested the state election in an alliance with the Shiv Sena-BJP, you did not win a single assembly seat. This time, even though you are in alliance with the Congress-NCP, they have fielded candidates against yours. So why should the voters vote for your candidates and party now?

We are telling the people what happened and telling them why (farmers’) movement is necessary. The movement must survive—that is our tagline. If the movement is finished, then the person who does not get justice from the system, the administration, law is also not sufficient to give him justice, for such a person, the last support system is the movement. Because through the movement, laws and policies can be changed and society gets to introspect on issues it must introspect about. Now, if this movement is finished, then what will happen to the common people? Think about it. And to sustain this movement, protecting the activists working in it is your duty. This is the kind of public awareness we are building among voters.

Jennifer Aniston joined Instagram this week and promptly broke the internet (well, caused temporary glitches on the service).

But the “Friends” star revealed on Wednesday’s episode of “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” that she’s actually been present on the social media platform for a while ― via a fake account.

“It was a stalker account,” Aniston confessed to host Jimmy Kimmel.

“When I was thinking about doing this, I sort of figured it was time to kind of understand the world and dip my toe into the social media pool,” she explained.

Check out the interview here: 

Aniston broke the Guinness World Record for the fastest time to reach 1 million followers after making her Insta-debut on Tuesday with this selfie alongside her old “Friends” castmates.

She hit the 1 million mark in just five hours and 16 minutes to take the record from the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, who took 29 minutes longer to reach the same tally in April.

By early Thursday morning, Aniston had more than 11.2 million followers.

For her second post, she mocked glitching the service with a spoof video, below. “I swear I didn’t mean to break it,” Aniston captioned the clip. “Thank you guys for the kind, glitchy welcome.”

When Kamali Moorthy was first gifted a skateboard by a friend of her uncle’s at the age of 4, she would simply sit on the board and let it roll down the sloping road that runs by the front of her house to the beach in Mahabalipuram where fishing boats sit silently on the sands. Five years later, things are a little different. A Bangalore-based skating collective, Holystoked, has since built a mini-skate park in the space adjoining the community centre across from her house. When I went to see her, Kamali flew across the ramp with speed and panache, turning deftly and looping round and round, till she casually leapt off the skateboard just as it careened out of control. I asked her if she was scared, but she just laughed, picked up her board and went for another go.

Kamali has gathered her fair share of fans for her skating skills, both within India and abroad – skateboarding legend Tony Hawk famously shared a photo of Kamali on her board three years ago to widespread delight – but it’s been a long journey for the 9-year-old skateboarder and her mother, Suganthi Moorthy, who has been a champion for her sporting dreams.

When Kamali first started skateboarding, people warned Suganthi that the sport would affect her marriage prospects. “They kept asking me, what will happen if she falls down and gets hurt? This was their biggest concern then. Who will marry her? Even today, someone asked me this,” she said. “Does getting married mean that her life will be fine?”

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It isn’t an idle question. A few years ago, Suganthi left an abusive marriage but not before being pushed to the brink of suicide. Her life has been far from easy and Suganthi wants something more for her daughter and her son, Harish. Perhaps the risk of falling off a skateboard isn’t such a strange way to achieve that. In her 2016 TEDx talk, Atita Verghese, described as India’s first female pro-skater, put it beautifully, “When falling is a normal process, then so becomes getting back up. The more you push yourself, the more you fall, the more you pick yourself up.”

Kamali and Suganthi’s lives have most recently entered the spotlight as the focus of Kamali, a 24-minute documentary by British director Sasha Rainbow. Shot in 2017, the film has been doing the festival circuit over the last year, picking up accolades and awards across the globe. Winning the Best Documentary Short at the Atlanta Film Festival has qualified it for the Oscars shortlist, meaning that there is a chance that Kamali’s story could make it all the way to the 2020 Academy Awards. While this is a big deal for Kamali and her family, for the meantime, life carries on as usual.

Every morning, before it gets too hot, Suganthi carries plastic stools, boxes of water bottles, limes, soft drinks, and club soda from her house to the spot on the beach where she sets up her lime soda stall. It takes multiple trips and the route cuts across the sandy beach, up a rocky slope, and skirts around the iron fence of the Mahabalipuram temple compound that attracts droves of tourists to this part of the world. Recently, she’s started rigging up a couple of poles and tarp for some shade. “Right now, nobody’s fighting. But soon the sea will come all the way in and we’ll all be squeezed together in the remaining beach. Then we’ll start fighting,” Suganthi laughed. Before she started this stall six years ago, she went door-to-door, selling fish.

For the last ten days, she hasn’t been able to work because of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s informal summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping that was organised in Mahabalipuram, having been warned not to set up the stall due to the heightened security. None of the vendors on this strip of the beach have official licenses and live precarious lives under the constant threat of eviction. Their income, tied to fickle tourists, is uncertain. As she sat at her stall on the beach, another vendor called out asking if she had change for a 500-rupee note. “We haven’t even done that much business today!” she shouted back.

Kamali spends most of her day at school, leaving in the morning and coming home only at 4 pm. Then, she skates for a while and goes for tuition at 5 pm. She likes English and Math but the other subjects not so much. She surfs as well on the weekends, keeping an eye out for rocks, and staying far from the rough side of the beach. But when it comes to skating, she’s fearless, despite having fallen and broken an arm once. “After a month, it only hurt a little,” she smiled. 

Kamali is still the only female skateboarder in the town. Suganthi says that while some girls from her school come to use the ramp when they have holidays, it is only for a short time, when their parents allow them. “If they fall, they start crying loudly and their parents come wailing and take them away and they say they’ll never come again,” she said. “It will change. Slowly, slowly, it will change.” Initially, there would also be trouble with the boys who would come to skate. “Sometimes, there will be twenty boys and Kamali will be alone. They won’t even let her take a turn. If it’s like that, she comes and tells me that she’ll just go later. So she usually waits for when no one is there and then skates.”

Skateboarding skews male in India. When Kamali first attended Jugaad, a national skateboard competition in Bangalore last year, she was one of only eight girls who participated. This meant that while the boys were sorted into age categories, all the girls had to compete in the same category regardless of how old they were. One of the girls had to sneak away without telling her parents so she could attend.

Given skating’s nascent reputation in India, it’s not surprising that Kamali’s reputation was global before it ever became local. In 2016, Áine Edwards, an Irish expatriate living in Mahabalipuram, who mentors Kamali and has become a close friend of the family had a chance meeting with Jamie Thomas, founder of Zero Skateboards, an American skateboard and clothing brand, while he was passing through Mahabalipuram. Thomas spent some time with Kamali, teaching her tricks and taking pictures. It was one of those photos, an arresting image of Kamali in a white frock riding her board, that went viral after coming to the attention of Tony Hawk, undoubtedly the single most recognisable name in skateboarding history.

Despite all of this attention, Kamali only recently got a board that was built for someone of her size. With the help of people like Warren RM Stuart of the Asian Skateboarding Federation, Edwards was able to reach out to a California-based skateboarding company that sent her a customised skateboard for free. Suddenly, Kamali was able to go so much faster than she had been able to with her old adult board. “Once you get a board like this, there is no going back,” Edwards said.

Currently, Kamali is gearing up for the next edition of Jugaad in December. Her excitement is palpable. “I want to go one day early,” she said. “And this time we have to stay for the prizes.” But she has her sights set higher, saying she wants to go to the Olympics some day. “How do you get there from here?” asked Edwards. “It won’t happen on a park like this,” she said.

The family is hopeful that the international attention garnered by the film might grow Kamali’s network of well-wishers and grant her access to the coaching and equipment that she would need to achieve her dreams. At the moment, with the stall as her only source of income, Suganthi often struggles to pay her children’s school fees. “If we put them in a government school, it would be easy. But it is my one small desire that they get a good education,” she said. “Me and my brother didn’t get an education. That’s why we want Kamali and Harish to study.”

Through it all, Suganthi remains hopeful. She vividly remembers the feeling of watching the film in Mumbai with Kamali and Edwards. “I was sitting in the back and I was crying,” she said. “For the other movies, everyone was just sitting quietly and watching. They didn’t clap or do anything. But when Kamali ended, everyone started clapping. That was the first time I felt success.”

The author is a Chennai-based freelancer.

The UK and EU have agreed a Brexit deal in the final hours of negotiations, keeping alive Boris Johnson’s hopes of taking the country out of the bloc on October 31.

Announcing the decision on Thursday morning, Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the European Commission, said it was a “fair and balanced” agreement.

The UK prime minister said it was a “great new deal that takes back control” and urged MPs to vote for it.

UK MPs are expected to be asked to approve the agreement at an emergency Commons sitting on Saturday.

Johnson’s chances of winning the knife-edge vote were dealt a blow earlier this morning when Democratic Unionist Party leader Arlene Foster said she could not yet back his Brexit plans.

And following the announcement of a deal, the DUP said it was still not onboard. “Has the EU changed its mind since 7am? You have our statement,” a party source told HuffPost UK.

Former Prime Minister and economist Manmohan Singh hit out at BJP-led central government over India’s economic slowdown, saying it was unable to find solutions and was obsessed with blaming the Opposition. 

Singh also partially responded to comments made by finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman, who has blamed Singh and former RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan for the bad loans India’s public sector banks are struggling with.

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“I have just seen the statements by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman. I won’t like to comment on that statement, but before one can fix the economy, one needs a correct diagnosis of its ailments and their causes. The government is obsessed with trying to fix blame on its opponent, thus it is unable to find a solution that will ensure the revival of the economy,” Singh said at a press conference in Mumbai on Thursday.

Singh said the Congress did not need a certificate on patriotism from BJP-RSS. 

The economist also said the economic slowdown and the government’s apathy were affecting the aspirations and future of Indians.

“Business sentiments are down across Maharashtra, many units face closure. Maharashtra has the highest factory shutdowns in the last five years,” he said.

The BJP government’s obsession with low inflation was inflicting misery on farmers, he added.

“The BJP government at the Centre and in Maharashtra are unwilling to adopt people-friendly policies,” Singh said.

Maharashtra will be voting for a new government in the state elections on October 21.

Nirmala Sitharaman assures investors

Singh’s comments came hours after Sitharaman assured investors that there was no better place in the world to invest in than India, which she said has a “democracy-loving” and “capitalist respecting” environment.

Sitharaman was speaking at an event hosted by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry in association with the US India Strategic and Partnership Forum at the IMF headquarters in the US.

“It (India) is one of the fastest growing (economies) even today. It has the best skilled manpower and a government that is continuously doing what is required in the name of reforms, above all democracy and rule of law,” Sitharaman said on Wednesday, PTI quoted.

The finance minister said that the government was engaging with everyone on a weekly basis and there was no trust deficit with the corporate sector and investors. She said there was a greater understanding that this government was willing to hear and also wanting to respond.

The government is committed to maintaining fiscal deficit in India, Sitharaman said.

To a question on the slowdown in the Indian economy, the finance minister said the government is taking steps to address problems in the “stressed” sectors, PTI reported.

In order to boost consumption, the government very clearly said public expenditure for infrastructure will be clearly front loaded, Sitharaman said.

“To increase money in the hands of the people so that consumption can improve, I’ve requested all the building sector banks together with their partners, non-banking, financial companies to reach out to villages, reach out to districts and extend every kind of credit that they would want,” she said, PTI quoted.

The two-prong approach makes sure consumption is boosted, both through spending on public infrastructure and by putting actual money in the hands of the people, and ensures the stress, which is specific to some sectors, is addressed, Sitharaman said.

This has to be a continuous system till the time the economy really shows substantial uptick, the finance minister said.

(With PTI inputs)

A letter from US President Donald Trump to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was worded in such an unbelievable manner that people, including senior White House correspondents, thought it was fake. 

In the Oct. 9 letter, which was released by the White House on Wednesday, Trump warns Turkey’s leader against invading northern Syria.

“Dear Mr. President: Let’s work out a good deal! You don’t want to be responsible for slaughtering thousands of people, and I don’t want to be responsible for destroying the Turkish economy ― and I will,” the letter begins.

Trump urges Erdogan to negotiate with Kurdish forces, then concludes by saying, “Don’t be a tough guy. Don’t be a fool! I will call you later.”

The letter was written the same day that the Turkish military launched an offensive against Kurdish forces in northern Syria after Trump’s Oct. 6 order for U.S. troops to withdraw from the region ― a decision that was met with bipartisan condemnation and that leaves the lives of U.S.-allied Kurds in jeopardy and risks the re-emergence of ISIS.

When Trump’s letter was first reported by Fox Business, many Twitter users presumed it to be satire or a hoax, and White House journalists felt the need to clarify when tweeting it that it was, in fact, real:

Appearing on CNN’s “Erin Burnett OutFront,” David Gergen, who has been an adviser to several presidents, said the letter “had such an adolescent quality to it” that when he first saw it, he assumed it was fake.

“When I read it, I immediately called my research assistant and said, ‘See if this is fake. I just can’t believe the White House sent this out,’” Gergen said.

“It is unprecedented to the best of my knowledge, and I do think it makes it tougher to work with Turkey, which is a member of NATO, and we need to figure out a way to get this stopped short of much more violence.”

The president was said to have handed around copies of the letter in a meeting with congressional leaders Wednesday, and copies were also reportedly handed out on the Senate floor.

It appears the president believed the letter had been something to be proud of, and multiplereports cited a Democratic aide from the meeting who said Trump opened the meeting by boasting about his “nasty” letter to Erdogan.

Twitter users had a field day with the correspondence, creating dramatic readings and re-enactments:

Jason Momoa celebrated the news that Zoë Kravitz has been cast as Catwoman in a sweet post on Instagram on Tuesday. 

The “Aquaman” actor said he is “stoked” about his stepdaughter’s upcoming role in the new Batman movie.

Momoa is married to actress Lisa Bonet, who had Kravitz, 30, with her ex-husband, Lenny Kravitz. Bonet and Momoa have two children together, Lola and Nakoa-Wolf.

“I’m so proud of u zozo bear,” Momoa wrote about Kravitz in the post’s caption accompanied by a photo of them together. “On and off screen OHANA. DC WB ohana Lola and Wolfies big sister is CAT WOMAN. Unbelievable so freaking stoked.”

News broke earlier this week that Kravitz had been cast to play Catwoman in the upcoming “The Batman,” starring Robert Pattinson in the title role. The movie, directed by Matt Reeves, is slated to hit theaters in June 2021. 

Kravitz joins a list of actors who have played Catwoman in films over the years, including Anne Hathaway, Halle Berry, Michelle Pfeiffer and Lee Meriwether. Eartha Kitt and Julie Newmar played Catwoman in the “Batman” TV series in the 1960s.

Pfeiffer recently gave Kravitz some sound advice about her upcoming role during her appearance on “Good Morning America” this week.

“Make sure whilst designing the costume, they consider how you’re going to go to the bathroom,” Pfeiffer said, before adding, “Minor detail.”

U.S., British and South Korean law enforcement officials said they had taken down a massive child pornography website on the dark web that contained more than 250,000 unique videos showing sex acts involving the abuse of children.

The global law enforcement operation led to the arrest of a 23-year-old South Korean man accused of running the English-language website, called “Welcome To Video.” Law enforcers also rounded up more than 330 accused users of the site in dozens of countries, including the U.S., U.K., Australia, Canada, France, Spain and Saudi Arabia.

“The scale of this crime is eye-popping and sickening,” said John Fort, chief of the IRS Criminal Investigation Division, NBC News reported.

Welcome To Video was described by the U.S. Justice Department as the world’s “largest child sexual exploitation” marketplace by volume of content. The site, which operated from June 2015 to March 2018, had a message on its landing page explicitly warning users to “not upload adult porn.”

Investigators found almost eight terabytes of footage showing the sexual abuse of children on the site, including videos depicting infants being raped. Almost half of the videos contained “new images that have not been previously known to exist,” the Justice Department said.

Users of the site could buy “points” with the digital currency Bitcoin, which they could use to download videos or purchase all-you-can watch “VIP” accounts, Reuters reported. Users could also earn points by uploading new videos to the site.

The site processed 7,300 Bitcoin transactions worth at least $370,000, officials said.

“Darknet sites that profit from the sexual exploitation of children are among the most vile and reprehensible forms of criminal behavior,” Brian Benczkowski, assistant attorney general for Justice Department’s Criminal Division, said in a statement on Wednesday. “Today’s announcement demonstrates that the Department of Justice remains firmly committed to working closely with our partners in South Korea and around the world to rescue child victims and bring to justice the perpetrators of these abhorrent crimes.”

According to the Justice Department, U.S., British and South Korean agents arrested Jong Woo Son, a South Korean citizen, in his home country in March 2018 and seized the server he’d used to operate the video marketplace. 

Son is currently serving an 18-month prison sentence on charges related to child pornography, Reuters reported. He was also indicted on federal child pornography charges in Washington in August. That indictment was unsealed on Wednesday. 

It remains unclear whether there are plans to extradite Son to face the charges in the United States. Jessie Liu, U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, said this week that she could not comment on “what may be happening with respect to extradition,” NBC reported. 

The Justice Department listed at least 34 suspected users of Welcome To Video  who were arrested in the United States. These include a 45-year-old D.C. man named Nicholas Stengel who was accused of downloading more than 450,000 hours of videos showing child sexual abuse; and Richard Gratkowski, a 40-year-old former Homeland Security Investigations agent, who was sentenced earlier this year to 70 months in prison on child pornography charges. 

The department said the global operation had also led to the rescue of at least 23 children living in the U.S., Spain and the U.K. who were being “actively abused by the users of the site.”

Officials said the successful enforcement operation should serve as a warning to child sex offenders that they cannot escape justice ― not even on the dark web.

“Dark web child sex offenders – some of whom are the very worst offenders – cannot hide from law enforcement,” Nikki Holland, director of the U.K.’s National Crime Agency, said in a statement. ”They’re not as cloaked as they think they are, they’re not as safe as they think they are.”

Navdeep Singh, who directed the deliciously tense Manorama: Six Feet Under and followed it up with Anushka Sharma’s powerful drama NH 10, returns with Laal Kaptaan, a period revenge saga that inspires more yawns than gasps. 

Set largely in the balding ravines of Bundelkhand (but shot largely in Rajasthan), Laal Kaptaan aspires to be a sweeping tale of bloody vengeance but lacks the emotional strength to make one care about its ash-smeared and dreadlock-donning leading man, Saif Ali Khan, who plays a Naga Sadhu.

For those unfamiliar, Naga Sadhus are generally Hindu ascetics who renounce worldly possessions and take a vow of celibacy. In Laal Kaptaan, Khan’s Gosai is on a quest to smoke out Rehmat Khan (a stoic Manav Vij), a foot soldier who betrayed the Marathas and fled with their gold. However, Gosai’s bloodlust to capture Khan isn’t driven by his betrayal to Marathas but something much more sinister - a detail the film withholds till the very end. 

With a wafer-thin plot (inspired by the Battle of Baxar) whose payoff hinges on the big reveal, Laal Kaptaan attempts to amp up suspense and tension but stunningly fails to sustain either. Within its first hour, the proceedings get dreary and dull, the imagery repetitive, and the dialogues (Sudip Sharma) increasingly banal. 

It appears that Singh wanted Laal Kaptaan to be India’s take on the Spaghetti Western and his influences from films of Sergio Leone are apparent but setting a film against the Northern badlands with a few eccentric characters riding horses doesn’t quite cut it. The iconography of the film fails to compliment its inhabitants, who look like sword-wielding stock characters lacking both, authentic motivations and a compelling backstory.

Unlike Abhishek Chaubey’s Sonchiriya (also set in the ravines of Bundelkhand), which examined the psychological toll and the karmic burden of crime on those who commit it, Laal Kaptaan doesn’t quite know what it wants to be. It’s a hollow period drama with nothing interesting to say. Its philosophical undercurrents reek of pretension ― this is a film that believes that adding intensely-worded commentary about karma and the circle of life will layer it with profundities, but the film’s soul is just like its aesthetic backdrop: barren. 

It’s only redeeming quality is its play with light and colour. As dusk creeps in, cinematographer Shanker Ramen gently lights up his frames with hues of neon-blue, tungsten yellow, and dramatic amber. A scene where Gosai wards off an army of attackers is particularly memorable as their white-fur coats clash with the dark blues of the night, causing a highly cinematic effect. Another scene, featuring Vibha Rani as a mystic, is appropriately creepy and contributes to the film’s strange universe. 

But despite Singh’s ability to create wildly satisfying-to-watch graphic violence - as was evident in NH 10 - he fails in doing so here, opting for generic combat sequences and seen-to-death sword fights. A pre-climactic battle sequence inspires some level of intrigue but soon fizzles out as one learns that a chunk of film is yet to unspool. 

The film’s strongest performances come from its female cast: Zoya Hussain and Simone Singh hold their own in an excessively male-dominated territory, but their characters are only seen in context of the men in the film. Hussein, a competent performer who was exceptional in Mukkabaaz, appears desperate and disheveled, as per the requirement of her part, and is a haunting presence on screen. Simone Singh, too, has an arresting presence, but her role doesn’t have enough meat to chew on. She’s pretty much reduced to a bickering wife. 

Which brings us to Saif Ali Khan.

While it’s commendable that the actor is consistently challenging himself by embracing morally ambiguous roles, the actor is too wooden, bereft of any allure or mystery, both key components for a character such as this to work. Despite the physicality, Khan looks disinterested, his lines sound forced - as if dubbed in a hurry. 

The only character who’s having fun in Laal Kaptaan is Deepak Dobriyal’s. In another nod to magic realism, his is a part who can sniff and track people and does so for anyone who’s willing to pay. He’s also accompanied by two dogs: Sukhiram and Dukhiram and it’s hilarious to watch the three sniff and prance around. In some ways, Dobriyal is an extension of the audience: trying to figure out where the film is headed but never quite certain although towards the end, he is the happiest.

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said about the ones watching the film.

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Our lives and habits are being tracked. Every time we tap in a Google search, every time we click “Like” on Facebook and every time we make an Amazon purchase, we are giving away information about ourselves: our thoughts, our preferences, our behaviors.

We are providing data that can be packaged up and sold to companies, which then use that data to try to modify our behavior and steer us toward buying their products and services.

Harvard Business School professor Shoshana Zuboff calls it the commodification of human data. In the information era we live in, she explains in her new book, “The Age Of Surveillance Capitalism,” we are the marketable product. It’s a terrifying idea.

In an interview with HuffPost, Zuboff talks about how this new world is not just a threat to our privacy, but — as it starts to shape our actions — to our democracy itself:

So, what is surveillance capitalism?

It’s important to know that in many ways, surveillance capitalism differs dramatically from other forms of capitalism over the last couple of centuries. Capitalism is claiming things that live outside the marketplace, bringing them into the market and turning them into what people call “commodities,” things that can be sold and purchased.

Industrial capitalism, which dominated the late 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, famously claimed nature. The trees and the forests and the rivers — these are entities that have a life of their own. Industrial capitalism brought nature into the market dynamic, and nature was reborn. It was called “land,” and it was called “real estate.” That allowed it to be sold and purchased and become the source of profit.

Surveillance capitalism proceeds according to this pattern, but with a dark and unexpected twist. So unexpected, in fact, that it’s taken us quite a while to catch on to what they’ve actually done. Surveillance capitalism claims private human experience for the market dynamic.

It says that private human experience is now a source of free, raw material — just like harvesting wheat or collecting ore from a mountain side. [We are] a source of free, raw material that can be processed into data, and those data can be computed and sold and purchased and owned.

That sequence has created the largest, wealthiest and most powerful companies — like Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Amazon — that the world has ever known. All of that begins with the unilateral declaration that private human experience is ours for the taking.

Ultimately, what surveillance capitalists are trying to do is sell predictions. It’s not only to know our behavior, but it’s to predict our behavior. That’s how they make their money.

Those predictions are not to improve our lives, but rather they’re sold to business customers who have a business interest in knowing what we will do next — because that raises the certainty that they have about how to successfully sell us things or how to reward and punish us in real time in order to get us to behave in a way that serves their bottom line.

You’ve argued before that surveillance capitalism isn’t just about monitoring us, but about changing how we act. How does that happen?

[Companies have] got so much information about us that they’re now learning in experimental ways how to use that information to actually control our behavior and modify our behavior in the direction that suits their bottom line.

Pokémon Go is a game that was incubated in Google for many years. It was staffed by Google executives, run by Google executives, invented by Google people, spun out of Google, with Google remaining a major investor.

Pokémon Go, it turns out, was a game within a game. People thought they were playing this augmented reality game, when in fact the game itself was designed to herd people through the city to service establishments, restaurants and other kinds of places that paid the game for footfall. 

In other words, just as online advertisers pay the companies for click-through, real-world establishments were paying Pokémon Go creators Niantic Labs for guaranteed footfall, actual bodies, real feet in their restaurants, in their bars, in their coffee shops and so forth, including McDonald’s and Starbucks.

This was a large-scale experiment, it turned out, in how to use gamification, rewards and punishments to herd people, modify their behavior, get them to go where you want them to go, where you’re going to make money on their behavior.

What we see is that in order to sell certainty about how people will behave, we are compelled to turn the vast digital architecture on and offline into a global means of shaping how people behave. This is a new kind of power. It means to control our behavior in a direction that fits with their commercial purpose.

There would be quite a lot of people who would look at 20th century capitalism and say, “Yes, maybe they commodified nature.” But for the average person, it’s meant they were richer at the end of the 20th century than they were at the beginning. If surveillance capitalism will keep that trend going, is that not a good thing?

[The commodification of nature] created economic growth for the first time in human history, and economic growth has contributed everything to our civilizations. It has allowed people to be educated, it has allowed the rise of science, it has allowed the rise of health and the eradication of disease. It’s created middle classes.

But we didn’t understand the long-term implications of [industrial capitalism’s] operations for the planet, for our climate, for our environment. Now, we are facing a planetary crisis.

We’ve caught on to it very late because we didn’t have the science to understand — until very recently. Then, the science was confounded by an ugly politics that has impeded our ability as nations to cope with this challenge.

The young activist Greta Thunberg has become known for saying: “The house is on fire.” The planet is, indeed, our house. What I’m saying is that our home is on fire. Society is our home.

We can no longer look forward to a digital future that we can call “home” in a way that we would recognize as something that is consistent with our values of democracy, of individual sovereignty and of human agency.

I believe that we can continue to benefit from economic growth, but with democracy with law and with regulatory regimes. I have not given up. With all of its violence and disappointment, I still believe that capitalism, if correctly tethered to democracy, can be a positive thing for our societies.

Is it naive or is it being optimistic to say that democracy is capable of curtailing surveillance capitalism? 

This is a collective action problem. Our democracies have been on the ropes before. If we look at the Gilded Age, the late 19th century — those companies, the JPMorgans and the Standard Oils and so on, the Rockefellers, the people we now call “robber barons” — they weren’t called “robber barons” back then. They were just barons. It’s in the fullness of time that we turned around and we said, “You know what? They were robbing us.”

I know that we can do it because we’ve done it before. The second thing is that  surveillance capitalism is 20 years old. I consider that something positive. It’s only 20 years old. It’s not like it’s got a century of standing. It’s young. Now we’re learning about it, getting a grip on it and beginning to come together around a new language and a new understanding.

We’re just in time to begin this work. We may not have the two or three decades that we had earlier in the 20th-century, but certainly we have the next 10 years to come together and really begin to understand this.

The neoliberal juggernaut that’s dominated the last four to five decades has run its course. It’s completed its damage. And we’re now going to summon democracy to pick up the pieces and put us back together again.

The interview has been edited for clarity and length.

India’s evolving – and dare we hope, promising – literary award landscape has a brand new entrant. On Thursday, media and publishing group Mathrubhumi announced the institution of the ‘Book of the Year’ award to “honour and celebrate the best in Indian literature”, in New Delhi.

The award, which comes with a cash prize of Rs 5 lakh, will be given to the best work of fiction in English published in the year. The first edition of the prize will be awarded in 2020 during the Mathrubhumi International Festival of Letter which will be held in Thiruvananthapuram from January 30 to February 2. The award is open to Indian writers whose books have been published in the country, whether originally written in English or translated to English from other Indian languages.

The Mathrubhumi media group, which established itself in 1923 with a daily newspaper, currently includes magazines, events, television, radio and book publishing under its umbrella. The group’s Joint Managing Director, MV Shreyams Kumar, claims the prize is a further step in an old mission. “We have been promoting literature since 1933 when we started our magazine Mathrubhumi Illustrated Weekly which was a platform for all budding writers then, as well as now. All the big names of Malayalam literature have grown through this magazine,” he told Huffpost India, adding, “We have also been at the forefront of translating literature from Bengali and Kannada to Malayalam.” 

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While the group has been a key player in Malayalam language publishing, the establishment of a pan-India literary award reveals larger cultural ambitions, which began with the establishment of the Mathrubhumi International Festival of Letters in 2018, featuring sessions with Malayalam authors as well as those from other parts of India and the world. Last year, Shreyams Kumar said, the festival hosted nearly 100 Indian speakers from outside Kerala, and 45 speakers from other countries. “For a discerning Malayali reader, geography is not a barrier,” he said, adding that several books in languages other than English are read in the state. “Mathrubhumi started as a part of the national movement – it’s only natural that we go across India.”

The group has been presenting an annual literary award, the Mathrubhumi Sahitya Puraskaram, since 2001 to recognise the overall contribution of writers to the Malayalam language but its first book-focused English language prize sits in the company of other prominent literary awards for fiction in the country such as the JCB Prize for Literature and the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature. 

India’s newest and third richest literary award for fiction has entered the fray at a time when other literature festivals and awards are going through a funding crisis. Both the Times LitFest Mumbai and the Hindu Literature Festival (which presents the Hindu Literary Award) have reportedly been indefinitely postponed due to a lack of sponsors during an economic slowdown. The Mathrubhumi International Festival, meanwhile, has added an extra day of programming to its schedule in its third edition next year. “Our business model of how we finance the festival is different,” Shreyams Kumar said. “Our number of clients is large – small business groups fund it – so we spread it across. They don’t feel the pinch as much.” Adding that it’s not meant to be a “profit-making venture”, he said that the festival and the literary award are a way to “give back to readers who have made the business group grow.”

It’s a welcome addition to a historically parched space, but the Mathrubhumi ‘Book of the Year’ award appears to have set itself up with some challenges. It has a rather narrow window to select its inaugural winner, to be announced in a little over three months from now. The award will begin inviting submissions from publishers immediately, out of which a selection by a “team of experts” will be handed over to a three-member jury chaired by Shashi Tharoor, who is also a patron of the Mathrubhumi literature festival. Kannada poet and playwright, and president of the Sahitya Akademi, Chandrashekhara Kambara will occupy the second spot while the third jury member is currently being finalised – the prize revealed that it will be a “non-Malayali woman writer”.

Its submission guidelines, much like the frequent criticism leveled against the Booker Prize’s rules, seem to be stacked in favour of big corporate publishers, with a weighted scale in place. The prize will only accept entries from publishers who bring out more than 15 titles in the year. Those publishing between 15 to 50 books will be able to make one submission, between 50 to 100 can enter two titles, and so on, with publishers with a list of over 200 titles eligible to enter four books. Small and independent publishers are likely to suffer with these rules.

Above all, however, as the waning Crossword Book Awards, once among the most prestigious literary awards in the country, and the heavy publicity focus of the sophomore JCB Prize for Literature shows, there’s a lot that goes in achieving the ultimate goal for a literary prize – supporting writers and finding them more readers. We’ve got our fingers crossed.

MUMBAI: In August this year, as western Maharashtra was being ravaged by heavy floods, Maharashtra chief minister Devendra Fadnavis was hundreds of kilometers away, weaving his way through the state’s eastern region, on his much-publicised “Maha Janadesh Yatra”.

The extent of the havoc wasn’t completely unexpected—local politicians, including Ulhas Patil, the Shiv Sena MLA from Kolhapur, had warned district authorities in July, and asked them to release water from dams.

But neither the district nor the state administration took his warning seriously. By the time Fadnavis suspended his yatra, because of the death of senior BJP leader and former external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj, the death toll from the floods had crossed double digits.

When some local journalists from Sangli questioned the chief minister about the government’s inaction, Fadnavis shot back “you’re absolutely wrong”, almost setting off a skirmish at the press conference. 

For those who have closely observed the political career of Maharashtra’s second youngest chief minister—Fadnavis was only 44 when he took office in 2014—this didn’t come as a surprise.

From accusing a Bombay high court judge of bias and then being forced to apologise to disregarding protests to build a controversial Metro car shed, the Fadnavis administration has not played nice too often.

But it seems to have paid off—Fadnavis is the first Maharashtra chief minister in 40 years to complete a full term in office. And with just two days left for the assembly election—Saturday is the last day of campaigning—the BJP looks to be in a confident, comfortable position, while the opposition is still struggling to get its act together. If there are any doubts, they are only about whether the BJP can cross the halfway mark on its own or not. 

Over the past five years, Fadnavis himself has laid out his cards smartly, and some would say ruthlessly. When he took office in 2014, he was not a well-known figure outside his home state. Five years later, the 49-year-old has cut to size any potential rival who could have threatened his dominance within the BJP; weakened ally Shiv Sena’s bargaining power; hit opposition parties where it hurts by luring across influential leaders; reportedly fostered a media cabal more loyal than any chief minister could boast of earlier; and most importantly, despite being from a socially dominant but politically non-significant caste, managed to stay in the good books of both Narendra Modi and Amit Shah. 

The rise of Fadnavis

Fadnavis was just 21 when he was elected to the Nagpur Municipal Corporation in 1992. His father, Gangadhar Fadnavis, was a well-known Jan Sangh leader who was a mentor to many workers who made it big later, such as Nitin Gadkari. After Fadnavis’s father’s untimely death in 1987, Gadkari was among the many leaders who paid back their debt by helping his young son. In 1997, Fadnavis became India’s second youngest elected mayor, taking charge in Nagpur. It was in 1999, when he was an active part of the ABVP and the BJP’s youth wing, that he was asked to contest the assembly election from Nagpur West (his current seat, Nagpur South West, was added after delimitation in 2009). He won the election with a comfortable margin, but his rise to prominence would take some time. 

The Congress-NCP combine defeated the BJP-Shiv Sena alliance in that assembly election to form the government, a feat that was repeated the next two times as well. So Fadnavis worked as an opposition MLA for 15 years.

A law graduate, he had the reputation of a clever politician and a good communicator, but remained in the shadow of senior politicians such as Gadkari, Gopinath Munde and Pramod Mahajan. He may have stayed there for longer if then leader of opposition Eknath Khadse hadn’t noticed him.

Khadse, who was then an MLA from the Muktainagar assembly segment in Jalgaon, played a big part in strengthening the BJP at a time when the party was playing second fiddle to the Bal Thackeray-led Shiv Sena.

While Khadse could effectively target the Congress-NCP government on their rural track record, he had a tough time understanding the nitty-gritties of urban issues. This is where Fadnavis, whose extensive experience with urban management would hold him in good stead during his chief ministership as well, came in.

“At that time, Fadnavis would come across as an extremely humble young politician who was always ready to do as he was told by senior leaders. Khadse noticed that Fadnavis was good in urban issues, so he pulled Fadnavis from the seventh row in the assembly to the second row so that he could help him with some notes on urban issues. This was the first time that the media and the House began noticing Fadnavis,” a close aide of Khadse told HuffPost India on condition of anonymity.

But it would take seven years after Pramod Mahajan’s death in 2006 for Fadnavis’s chance to finally arrive. 

In 2013, Munde, unhappy with then state BJP chief Sudhir Mungantiwar, who was close to Gadkari, wanted a change of guard in the state.

The rivalry between Gadkari and Munde was clear even while Mahajan was alive. Fadnavis had grown close to Munde as Gadkari was famous for not allowing rivals to flourish in his homeground of Vidarbha.

At that time, Rajnath Singh was the BJP president. Munde went to Khadse’s residence along with Fadnavis, said the aide cited earlier, and asked the leader to call Singh and tell him to make Fadnavis the new state president as Mungantiwar’s term was coming to an end.

“Khadse called Singh but just dropped hints that someone was sitting beside him. Singh told him that he would call him after some time. But Munde refused to leave and sat near the phone until Singh called back. When Singh called back again, Khadse had no choice but to tell him to make Fadnavis the next BJP chief of the Maharashtra unit,” Khadse’s aide recalled.

When Fadnavis was made the state president, Gadkari gave a dressing-down to Khadse and told him that this would be his life’s worst decision, added the aide.

Fadnavis, who had been patient for a long time, jumped at the opportunity, burnishing his image as a dynamic, media-savvy politician.

Then, in 2014, after Narendra Modi took over as Prime Minister, both Gadkari and Munde became Union ministers in Modi’s cabinet, but it was Munde’s death which cleared Fadnavis’s way.

Fadnavis managed to get Modi and Shah’s backing ahead of the state elections, and—though he didn’t even have the experience of being a state minister earlier—was made the chief minister, trumping aspirants such as one-time wellwisher Gadkari, whose uneasy equation with Modi worked against him.    

Fadnavis is only the second Brahmin chief minister of Maharashtra. The community forms about 3% of the state population.

“The BJP always chooses its CM from demographically insignificant communities. This achieves two objectives: the dominant group is kept at bay and that person becomes a rallying point for all other communities. After the Maratha morcha, OBCs and others consolidated behind the BJP, as we saw in the local body polls,” said Dhawal Kulkarni, a Mumbai-based senior journalist who has reported on politics in Maharashtra for over 15 years.

The fall of rivals

After Fadnavis took over, he found that he had to contend with the displeasure of the old guard.

One of them was Khadse, who was given the post of revenue minister, but kept making his resentment clear, sometimes saying in public that the chief minister should have been from the Bahujan samaj (majority community).

But Khadse soon found his star on the wane after reports emerged accusing him of corruption and having links with the underworld.

An “ethical hacker” claimed that Khadse had received calls from underworld don Dawood Ibrahim’s wife, a tidbit media and opposition parties were quick to jump upon. People close to him were accused of accepting bribes, and the income-tax department raided his house.

Khadse was soon forced to resign from the Fadnavis cabinet. Later, the hacker was arrested for forgery.

Khadse was not reinstated into the cabinet, and the party has denied him a ticket in the upcoming assembly election. His daughter Rohini is contesting from Muktianagar this time.

There were other aspirants to the CM’s post as well, especially if the BJP decided to change its mind and pick a Bahujan candidate—Munde’s daughter Pankaja Munde, the MLA from Parli, education minister Vinod Tawde and former state party chief Mungantiwar.

A year into the government’s term, Munde, who held the women and child portfolio, faced allegations of corruption in a Rs 206 crore procurement scam, popularly called the “chikki scam”.

Tawde was accused of awarding contracts worth Rs191 crore without mandatory e-tendering.

Munguntiwar, who held the finance and forest portfolios, has been constantly facing criticism, be it for booking a special flight to Tirupati or the controversial killing of Tigress Avni. 

Munde has been under the radar for the most part of her tenure post the allegations. Tawade has been denied a ticket by the party this time and Mungantiwar found his departments facing interference from the CM or his loyalists at every turn.

The one person who is still standing up to Fadnavis within the party is state party chief Chandrakant Patil, who was considered No. 2 in the cabinet as revenue minister. In his debut electoral contest, Patil is facing a tough fight in Pune’s Kothrud. 

“This CM doesn’t trust his own cabinet. He rules the state with the help of bureaucracy and even there, a select few bureaucrats are running the show,” a minister in Fadnavis’s cabinet told HuffPost India on condition of anonymity.

Fadnavis’s office did not respond to repeated requests for comment or an interview.

What’s the track record?

On the economic front, the Fadnavis government’s performance hasn’t been very encouraging.

According to the state government’s own economic survey this year, the agriculture sector is expected to grow at just 0.4 % in 2018-19 against 3.1 % in 2017-18.

The government itself has admitted that over 12,000 farmers killed themselves between 2015 and 2018. Of these, over 4,500 were after the government announced a Rs 34,000 crore farm loan waiver with much fanfare, an RTI application showed.

While the BJP had made farmer suicides a poll plank ahead of the 2014 election, in a recent campaign in the Vidarbha region, the chief minister said that Sharad Pawar’s “sins” were responsible for the deaths.

“Farmers are anguished. Input cost has increased (in the past five years) and has become loss-making… You don’t see a policy or plan to increase farmers’ income. Today, on the eve of the election, cotton is being sold at a 40% lesser price than the minimum support price. The government isn’t saying anything about it,” said Kishor Tiwari, a farm activist and former BJP leader who was appointed by Fadnavis as the head of Maharashtra government’s task force to tackle farm distress. He quit the BJP to join Shiv Sena last month. 

Girish Kuber, the editor of the leading Marathi daily Lok Satta, called the Fadnavis government’s performance on the economic front as “underwhelming”.

“If there are three parameters we want to apply for gauging his performance—political, social and economic—I think the third is the weakest. Maharashtra should have done far better than what we have done (in the last five years). Compared to other states, we are still better, but this is not how Maharashtra has been performing in terms of industry and investment front. Agricultural growth sank. The state has not been successful in attracting major industries.”

Kuber also mentioned the uncertainty over the Foxconn deal, which is now believed to have fallen through.

The Fadnavis administration has also faced significantly large protests between its tenure—a massive farmers’ march, Maratha protests which often turned violent and Dalit protests over the violence at Bhima Koregaon and its aftermath. 

The chief minister has held the home portfolio for the past five years, despite demands from the opposition and even alliance partner Shiv Sena that the state should have a full-time home minister. 

His handling of the Bhima Koregaon protests has led to anger among marginalised communities—last year, the chief minister gave a clean chit to the main accused Sambhaji Bhide. Instead, some human rights activists and lawyers, including Sudha Bharadwaj and Vernon Gonsalves, were booked and arrested for allegedly planning the violence. 

Maharashtra is also among the first states to identify land to build a detention centre for “illegal immigrants”.

But even his detractors agree that Fadnavis is a sharp politician who has deftly handled even situations that could have flared up and affected him politically.

Shiv Sena faced its toughest election for the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation when Fadnavis led the campaign against it in 2017. His party came very close to dislodging Shiv Sena from the BMC for the first time in decades.

The CM campaigned hard and led his party with confidence. The BJP now rules most of the local bodies. The cooperative sector, once dominated by the Pawars, is now speedily shifting to the BJP as most of the Congress-NCP leaders controlling these institutions have joined the ruling party in the last few months.

He has kept the influential Maratha community happy by first promising them reservations and then promising to carry out a court order that allowed him to do so. 

When he was state BJP chief, Fadnavis had promised that his party would take up the issue of granting reservations to the Dhangar community. 

The promise was never carried out and community leaders say they feel betrayed, but are still standing by the BJP. 

Many influential leaders, including Congress’s leader of opposition Radha Krishna Vikhe Patil and NCP leader Udayanraje Bhosale, a descendant of Shivaji, have jumped camp to the BJP.

The political masterstrokes have been boosted by the presence of well-organised, committed cadre on the ground to make sure the party reaps the benefits of welfare schemes.

The media legacy

Many Mumbai-based reporters told HuffPost India that the chief minister has carefully chosen a group of journalists who almost act as his spokespersons.

“There is a Lashkar-e-Devendra gang in Mumbai and in some other cities. You say one word against the CM or the government and these journalists will jump on you,” said a senior journalist based in Mumbai on condition of anonymity.

More than 10 journalists working in various prominent media houses in Mumbai confirmed the existence of such a group.

“Just look into any WhatsApp group of journalists to see how effectively these journalists are acting as the CM’s agents. Nothing negative is tolerated against the CM. The previous government did have interference in the media but that was limited to the editor level. Now, it is at the reporter’s level,” said another Mumbai-based journalist.

Dharmendra Jore, the chairman of the Mumbai Press Club and political editor of Mid-Day, told HuffPost India that many journalists defend Fadnavis on social media “out of love”. 

“When people from Konkan or other parts of the state say something about Vidarbha, we give answers. There are people who know him for the last 35 years, who have seen his political graph and he has also seen us evolving as journalists. Whatever he has earned is through his speeches and hard work and we never had to say something about him,” he said.

Jore, however, said that Fadnavis has never asked them to “plant” any story.

“They call us Lashkar-e-Devendra out of jealousy. They are not his spokespersons but college friends. All journalists from Nagpur have been his friends and are his friends and the friendship is beyond his politics and the position he holds. He is good with everyone,” said Jore.

Fadnavis is also accused of controlling the state bureaucracy.   

He has chosen an IPS officer, Brijesh Singh, to head the state’s information and publicity department. Bureaucrats who find themselves on the CM’s wrong side get sidelined, said an officer based in Pune. 

“The situation is such that bureaucrats are scared to talk on the phone. They speak on WhatsApp calls or use old phones due to the fear of surveillance,” he said on condition of anonymity.

“Fadnavis has turned out to be a master manipulator and has defied all speculations to survive for five years. He has obliterated almost all his competitors which may well lead to the downslide of the BJP because Prithviraj Chavan had operated in a similar manner and the results are there for you to see. Fadnavis’s was the most powerful Chief Minister’s Office after Sharad Pawar’s. He has age on his side, so we may actually be looking at a scenario where he may be pitched for a national role,” said Kulkarni, the Mumbai-based senior journalist quoted earlier.

Modi himself may agree. In an election rally earlier this week, he came up with a “Narendra-Devendra formula” to show his appreciation for the younger man.

“When Narendra and Devendra stand together, then 1+1 becomes 11 and not two,” he said.

Mark Zuckerberg recalled the tense atmosphere on Harvard’s campus after the U.S. invaded Iraq during a 35-minute Georgetown University address where he linked the war to Facebook’s conception.

“I remember feeling that if more people had a voice to share their experiences, maybe things would have gone differently,” Zuckerberg said Thursday in a speech championing freedom of expression. “Those early years shaped my belief that giving everyone a voice empowers the powerless and pushes society to be better over time.”

The tech billionaire’s ardent, if ironic, defence of unchecked political speech comes as Facebook faces intensifying criticism over its role in spreading disinformation as another U.S. presidential election approaches. 

Facebook was spun from an attractiveness-rating website for college students, despite Zuckerberg’s suggestion the platform had a loftier origin. He argued in Thursday’s speech that Facebook should be viewed as a tool for democracy, providing everyone with an ability “to share their perspectives” and contribute to a more “inclusive society.” He gave nonpolitical examples of people using the site to foster community, such as a church group that used Facebook to coordinate hurricane relief.

“People having the power to express themselves at scale is a new kind of force in the world — a Fifth Estate alongside the other power structures of society,” Zuckerberg said, lauding Facebook as a democratic institution akin to the free press and the three branches of government. 

To make his point, Zuckerberg invoked the censorship tactics used by authoritarian countries such as China. He also mentioned civil rights icons Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King, Jr., whose free expression fueled important social movements, 

King’s daughter responded disparagingly to the comparison.

“I’d like to help Facebook better understand the challenges #MLK faced from disinformation campaigns launched by politicians,” Bernice King wrote on Twitter. “These campaigns created an atmosphere for his assassination.”

Facebook provoked sharp condemnation last month when it announced a new policy: The site would not police political ads or politicians’ speech, even if it contained lies and falsehoods. The company refused to remove a video from President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign that claims former Vice President Joe Biden “promised Ukraine $1 billion if they fired the prosecutor investigating his son’s company,” a line prefaced by a directive: “LEARN THE TRUTH.”

Critics say Facebook’s policy will only fuel the spread of misinformation, leading to potentially dangerous consequences for American democracy. To illustrate how the company’s policy encourages lies, Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) ran a Facebook ad falsely claiming that Zuckerberg had endorsed Trump in the 2020 election. 

Zuckerberg addressed the threat of misinformation at Georgetown, saying that his company focuses on “making sure complete hoaxes don’t go viral.”

“We especially focus on misinformation that could lead to imminent physical harm, like misleading health advice saying if you’re having a stroke, no need to go to the hospital,” he said. “More broadly, though, we’ve found a different strategy works best: focusing on the authenticity of the speaker rather than the content itself.”

Investigations into the extent of Russia’s disinformation campaign against the U.S. led Facebook to promote more transparency, implementing rules so people could better understand exactly who posts things they see on the site.

But Zuckerberg has indicated his company will not shoulder the responsibility of moderating content for potentially harmful lies.  

“I know many people disagree, but, in general, I don’t think it’s right for a private company to censor politicians or the news in a democracy,” he said. 

Formula One racer Lewis Hamilton has issued a passionate plea urging fans to adopt a vegan diet as it’s “the only way to truly save our planet”.

The 34-year-old, who is on the verge of winning a sixth F1 world title, shared his feelings about the state of the world in three emotive Instagram story posts, where he said he felt like “giving up on everything” due to his concerns about the environment.

He called on his followers to “research” and “recognise” how what they eat keeps “the meat and dairy industry flourishing and therefore deforestation, animal cruelty, our seas and climate decaying on a daily basis” and added that going vegan “can be done so quickly, all you have to do is put your mind to it”.

His impassioned Instagram story has garnered strong opinions from all corners of the internet. While some fans have praised the racer for speaking out about climate change and the impact it’s having, others have been less than sympathetic, suggesting his career choice and travel habits are not very sustainable.

Hamilton switched to a plant-based diet in 2017 and in September this year helped launch a vegan burger restaurant in London.

“I’m sad right now with the thought of where this world is going,” he wrote in his latest Instagram posts. “Extinction of our race becoming more and more likely as we over use our resources. The world is a messed up place. World leaders either uneducated or don’t care about the environment at all.

“Agriculture farming is the largest pullutant (sic) we currently have by over 50 per cent, far more than our travel industry combined. I’m sad to see so many people, even close friends ignore what is happening daily.

“Education is key and we were taught that eating animal products was good for us but we’ve been lied to for 100s of years.”

Hamilton said it had taken him 32 years to understand the impact he was having on the world, adding he was “figuring out daily” how to “play a better part”. 

“Honestly up until now my life’s had no meaning,” he wrote. “Being a part of the issue is not meaningful. Being part of the solution is and I’m striving to do better.” He signed off emotionally: “I’m going to take a moment away to gather my thoughts. Thank you to those of you who do give a damn about the world.”

Hamilton’s comments do have scientific weighting behind them. Earlier this year a United Nations report suggested switching to a plant-based diet could be one of the most crucial ways we can collectively tackle climate change.

And while the racer has been subjected to abuse because of his social media posts, there are plenty of fans who are fighting his corner.

People have been quick to comment that the racer also has a private jet, although Sky News reported that Hamilton sold it earlier this year.

Meanwhile, Formula 1 says it is taking steps to make a push towards synthetic fuels and reduce carbon emissions in attempts to be more sustainable. 

In August, series chief Chase Carey told Auto Sport: “You’ll see between now and year end the sustainability issue becoming much more front and centre.

“It’s part of our story, and actually something we’ve talked with in private with a number of our partners, and they’re quite excited about it.”

It seems Kris Jenner’s choice of outfit for this year’s Met Gala was not at all appealing to Kim and Khloé Kardashian.

Kim chimed in, “Honestly if I sent this to Kanye [West] he might have a heart attack.”

Continuing on their diss parade, Khloé told her mother that the outfit “is an emergency” and that the 63-year-old is “so lucky you showed us.”

“We literally saved your life,” said Kim earnestly.

Jenner didn’t seem concerned with her daughters’ vetoes and ultimately wore the custom Tommy Hilfiger jumpsuit and coat anyway.

What mama wants, mama gets.

Trevor Noah mocked President Donald Trump’s sons Eric and Donald Jr. Wednesday night for griping about Hunter Biden receiving favoritism because of his family name.

Noah said he could understand why most people would complain about Hunter Biden getting a leg up in life via his last name, but what he couldn’t understand was the Trump children doing it.

Trump Jr. drew ire on Twitter Tuesday after he criticized Hunter Biden for acknowledging in an interview that he would not have acquired certain roles on the boards of companies had he not been the son of former Vice President Joe Biden:

“If there was ever an example of people who got opportunities because of their names, it’s these two,” Noah said of the Trump offspring on Wednesday night’s “The Daily Show.”

The 21st Jio Mumbai Academy of the Moving Image (MAMI) Mumbai Film Festival with Star was declared open on Thursday night at Mumbai’s Rang Mandir auditorium. The opening ceremony for the cinematic extravaganza, which shall continue until 24th October, also introduced its new chairperson, Deepika Padukone.

The red carpet was rolled out with the typical razzmatazz of a Bollywood gala, but walking it were more than the everyday Mumbai celebrities, as the makers behind some of the more niche cinematic presentations screening at the competition, including indie debutantes and breakout directors, took center-stage at the carpet, bringing their films to the glittering nucleus of the country, under the spotlight and into the heart of the mainstream.

The ceremony was hosted by the sharp-witted Soha Ali Khan and attended by Deepika Padukone, Karan Johar, Taapsee Pannu, Vishal Bhardwaj, Kiran Rao, Kalki Koechlin, Kabir Khan, Deepti Naval, as well as international guests such as IMDb Founder and CEO, Col Needham, and filmmakers like Ari Aster and Hany Abu-Assad, who is also the President of the film’s International Jury this year.

The festival also introduced its newly appointed chairperson Deepika Padukone who took up the chair duties for the first time this year.

Speaking about her appointment Deepika said, “Cinema has the power to evoke empathy, foster kindness, and experience innocence. In the age of digital streaming and social media that is slowly but surely isolating us, MAMI binds us without boundaries, inhibitions or fear. As an artist who believes in the power of cinema, we need this now more than ever before.”

Addressing trepidation about her appointment as the chairperson for the Mumbai Film Festival, Deepika further added, “Many believe that I’m too young, too mainstream, too tall, and I am only what I am wearing, but I am here for two reasons. I’m here because I want to learn and I’m here because I want to give back.”

This year the festival recognized the talent and contribution of celebrated actress, artist, director, and photographer Deepti Naval and presented her with the Excellence in Cinema Award.

Taking the stage with Deepika Padukone and Vishal Bhardwaj, an emotionally overwhelmed Deepti thanked the Academy for the honour and said, “I used to wonder for many, many years what it feels like for people to walk on the stage and get all these awards. I didn’t know it felt like this. It’s wonderful.”

As Soha Ali Khan introduced the various juries for all the categories of the Film Festival, a variety of names that ranged from stalwarts of Indian cinema to international film executives, to even school-going children, the sentiment towards approaching the film festival was perhaps best captured by the Founder of The Black List, Franklin Leonard when he was asked about what makes a film truly universal.

Said Leonard, “What makes a film truly universal is its specificity. Tell a story about human beings as they are and the rest of us will recognize our common humanity in them.”

The 21st Jio MAMI Mumbai Film Festival will screen films across numerous venues in the city between 18th and 24th October and will showcase 190 films spread across 49 languages.