While the British royal family has cycled through highs and lows of favorability in previous eras, the past decade brought the Windsors an amount of change and modernization not seen since Princess Diana.

The younger generation of royals worked hard to start conversations about mental health, fully embraced social media, and welcomed its most modernmember into the family in 2018, a hopeful sign of things to come. Though the past few years have particularly bright ones for the royals — with the notable exception of Prince Andrew — things looked bleak for the monarchy not too long ago. 

The ’90s were a terrible decade for The Firm, as the family refers to its senior members who call the shots. Affairs became public, phones were tapped, embarrassing photos surfaced, a fire threatened to engulf Windsor Castle, and multiple couples separated and divorced. The monarchy seemed under siege. 

After the death of Princess Diana in 1997, the royal family’s fairytale exterior was completely shattered. Many believed the queen didn’t respond correctly or swiftly enough after Diana died. And, separately, the monarchy seemed archaic, hidden behind palace walls and in danger of falling even further behind the times.  

But in the years that followed, the positive attitudes about the royals slowly returned, as the younger generation grew up. William went off to St. Andrews University, where he met Kate Middleton and began a well-documented courtship. After graduating, he served in the Army and then in the Royal Air Force. Harry — who made headlines for wearing a costume featuring a Nazi swastika in 2005 — developed a reputation for his raucous partying ways, then entered the military himself and deployed to Afghanistan for two tours.

Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles, née Shand, were also rebuilding. The now-Duchess of Cornwall, who was once one of the most hated people the world and had been blamed for the demise of Charles and Diana’s marriage, made her first public appearance alongside the Prince of Wales in 1999. The two later married in 2005.

For the first time in many years, the scandals were minimal (or at least, more manageable) and the monarchy seemed stable. Just before 2010, President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle — who represented change, hope and modernization in America — met Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip at Buckingham Palace, which led to the half-hug seen ’round the world.

But things ramped up at the beginning of the decade when, after many years of dating (so much so that it earned Kate Middleton the mocking nickname Waity Katie in the tabloids), Prince William proposed.

Below, we look at the decade that was for the royal family, during which Americans fell head over heels for them once again. 

2010 

After eight years of dating, William finally proposed to Kate Middleton in October while they were in Kenya, though the two waited until mid-November to announce the exciting news.

The beginning of the royal rebirth featured a healthy dose of emotion and nostalgia, as the prince proposed with his mother’s sapphire and diamond engagement ring. The dress Kate wore when they shared the news with the public sold out within five minutes, kicking off the “Kate effect” that has continued ever since.

2011

The ring led to a fairytale wedding, which took place at Westminster Abbey on April 29, 2011. Over 1,900 people were invited to the ceremony and hundreds of thousands of fans and well-wishers took over London, where shops were packed with memorabilia.

An estimated 2 billion people watched the nuptials on TV around the globe, cheering on the new Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, the future king and queen. Just a few months after their wedding, the pair traveled to Canada and the U.S. on their first royal tour outside the U.K.

2012

This was a busy year for the Windsors, as the royal schedule was filled with celebrations for the queen’s Diamond Jubilee (which marked the 60th year of her reign) and events related to the Summer Olympics, which were held in London.

The queen made a very well-received cameo during the games’ opening ceremony alongside James Bond (played by Daniel Craig) and her trusty corgis. The appearance was particularly shocking given her general reputation as a stuffy, tradition-bound monarch. It was truly an entrance to remember.

At all of the Olympic celebrations, William, Kate and Harry were a welcome sight, frequently smiling and laughing together. 

Harry, however, might have brought a bit too much fun to the family, as he was photographed in the nude and videotaped drunkenly swimming with American swimmer Ryan Lochte during a debaucherous trip to Las Vegas in August.

But the most exciting news by far came at the end of the year, when Kensington Palace revealed in December that William and Kate were expecting their first child together, drawing months of speculation to a close.

2013  

Prince George is here! The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge announced on July 22 that they welcomed their first child together, a son.

Third in line to the throne, behind Prince Charles and William, Prince George Alexander Louis of Cambridge instantly became the cutest heir.

2014 

Will and Kate brought their little one along on a tour of New Zealand and Australia in early 2014, and royal onlookers used every chance to get a glimpse of Prince George. In September, the couple announced that they were expecting their second child.

Prince Harry remained busy and launched the Invictus Games, a Paralympic-style, multi-sport event, in March.

In December, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge flew across the pond for a short, three-day trip to New York. While at a basketball game between the Brooklyn Nets and the Cleveland Cavaliers, Will and Kate chatted with American royalty: Beyoncé and Jay Z. The two also met with the king of basketball himself, LeBron James.

2015

In March, Prince Harry announced he was leaving the military after 10 years of service. 

Just a few months later, he stepped in to make relations between the Brits and Americans even friendlier. The prince met with first lady Michelle Obama during her visit to Kensington Palace in June to promote her “Let Girls Learn” initiative.

Prince Harry later returned the favor and visited the White House in October to meet with the Obamas and promote the Invictus Games. 

2016

In 2016, royal fervor in the U.S. swelled once again. President Obama met Prince George, the future king of Britain, while the toddler was dressed in a tiny bathrobe. 

The two countries also traded lighthearted barbs over Harry’s Invictus Games, which included another playful cameo from the queen and a goofy “mic drop” moment. 

Harry also followed in his mother’s footsteps, dedicating himself to HIV awareness efforts.

In July, the prince underwent a live HIV test on Facebook that garnered over two million views and later generated a large spike in orders of a free at-home test. In December, during a royal trip to the Caribbean, Harry and singer Rihanna got tested for HIV together, in an effort to de-stigmatize getting tested. 

In May, Harry, Will and Kate also launched Heads Together, one of their most groundbreaking and successful campaigns to date. The program aims “to end stigma around mental health” and continues to be one of the royals’ most well-received initiatives. 

On the personal side, Prince Harry ― who’d had a string of relationships that didn’t last for more than a few years — was rumored to have found love again. In a Grace Kelly twist, it was reported to be with American actor Rachel Meghan Markle. The two were photographed for the first time together in December. 

Meghan was then best known for playing Rachel Zane on the show “Suits,” and their relationship seemed to signal that the monarchy was ready to accept a mixed-race, divorced actor into the mix.

But while most of the family might appeared ready to embrace Meghan — with the obvious exception of at least one minor royal — some of the public was not.

A statement from the prince’s communications secretary in November confirmed that the prince had been dating the Toronto-based actor for some months, and went on to include a stinging rebuke of social media trolls and some in the press for their sexist, racist attacks against Meghan. 

2017

In 2017, Duke and Duchess of Cambridge officially relocated to Kensington Palace after years of being based in Norfolk for William’s role as a pilot with the East Anglia Air Ambulance. 

Just a few months later, the couple announced that they were expecting their third child. Their eldest, Prince George, headed off in September for his first day of school at Thomas’s Battersea. (Princess Charlotte would later join him there in 2019.)

Cambridges aside, it was clearly the year of Harry and Meghan, who were an obsession for royal watchers and the media alike. The two made their first public appearance together at the Invictus Games in Toronto in September.

And after months of speculation, the inevitable and unforgettable happened: Harry and Meghan announced their historic engagement on November 27.

Meghan would be the first American to marry a British royal, and was also a women of color joining the royal family. It seemed like a clear signal to many that the monarchy was modernizing. 

And, as it happened with Kate, the “Meghan effect” — demand for her outfits that caused certain clothing items and accessories to sell out instantly — was real.

Following the announcement, Meghan said she would be leaving acting behind. Considering her lifelong commitment to feminism and humanitarianism, it appeared that this second act might be her best — and most challenging — role yet.

In an unprecedented move, Meghan spent Christmas with her fiance’s family, appearing in photos alongside Will, Kate, Charles, and the queen, among others. 

2018

In 2018, Kate gave birth to her third child, Prince Louis, on April 23. And just a few weeks later, Meghan and Harry married at Windsor Castle on May 19.

Once again, billions of people tuned in, watching celebrity guests Oprah, Serena Williams, Elton John, David and Victoria Beckham and George and Amal Clooney roll in. The wedding itself was a modern event infused with an American spirit, made possible by a gorgeous choir and a rousing sermon that included quotes from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

The royal fervor didn’t die down after that (and neither did family drama involving Meghan’s half-sister and father, Thomas Markle). But in September, another groundbreaking wedding took place: Queen Elizabeth's cousin, Lord Ivar Mountbatten, married his now-husband, James Coyle, celebrating the monarchy's first same-sex wedding. 

In October, the new Duke and Duchess of Sussex announced during a trip to Australia that they would be welcoming their first child together in the spring.

2019

In 2019, the Duchess of Sussex took over patronages from the queen and fully settled into her role as a royal. She and Harry had a particularly exciting spring, with the birth of Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor on May 6. 

The new family of three later embarked on a particularly successful tour of South Africa, which included a poignant moment where Harry walked the same Angola minefields his mother toured in the ’90s.

But despite the royals’ overall success in re-polishing their reputation over the past decade, 2019 was not an entirely rosy year for the Windsors. 

After the Mail on Sunday published excerpts of a private letter Meghan wrote to her father, the duchess filed a lawsuit against the tabloid’s owner. 

Shortly thereafter, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex participated in a candid ITV documentary that detailed their struggles with the press. In it, Prince Harry publicly acknowledged a rift with his brother and Meghan teared up talking about how difficult she’s found the media spotlight, especially after giving birth. The two ended the year by taking a six-week break from royal duties.  

The elder Windors had controversies of their own making. Prince Philip was involved in a car crash with a woman and her 9-month-old baby earlier this year and faced backlash for taking days to apologize to the woman, who broke her wrist. 

Prince Andrew, the longtime black sheep of the royal family, announced he was stepping away from his public role in November. The move came after the media renewed its focus on a 2015 lawsuit filed in the U.S. that accused the prince of rape and alleged that the plaintiff had been trafficked by convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, an associate of Andrew’s. 

2020?

As the queen acknowledged during her annual Christmas Address, this past year was a “bumpy” one for the family, to say the absolute least. Given all this, it’s unclear what 2020 — let alone the next decade — will bring for the royals.

Meghan and Harry’s battle against the British tabloid press will certainly continue but, on a brighter note, the two are rumored to be expecting their second child. 

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There are many factors that define a decade ― news events, works of entertainment, technological advancements, fashion trends and more. Perhaps nothing encapsulates all of these factors more than the words and phrases we use. 

As the decade comes to a close, we rounded up 20 words and phrases that rose to popular use and even entered dictionaries between 2010 and 2019. While many obviously relate to technology, others point to social movements, pop culture events and even food trends.

Hashtag

Popularized by Twitter, “hashtag” was the American Dialect Society’s word of the year in 2012. The word, which refers to the octothorpe, pound or number symbol, entered the Oxford English Dictionary and Merriam-Webster’s collegiate dictionary in 2014. The 2010s also saw the rise of specific hashtag movements like #BlackLivesMatter, #WhyIStayed and #MeToo. 

FOMO

The acronym-word “FOMO” aka “fear of missing out” is emblematic of the kind of anxiety that has boomed in the age of social media. The OED added FOMO in 2013, and Merriam-Webster followed suit three years later.  

Bingeable

The influence of the binge-watching approach to television is evident in the fact that “bingeable” officially entered Merriam-Webster’s dictionary in 2018. Other TV-related terms that became dictionary-official in the 2010s include “hate-watch” and “bottle episode.”

Latinx

This gender-neutral alternative to Latina and Latino joined the Merriam-Dictionary roster in late 2018 and the OED in 2019. The word represents the broadening awareness of gender identity and intersectionality over the past 10 years. 

Self-Care

The millennial interest in self-care was a big movement of the 2010s, so it’s only natural that Merriam-Webster would add that the term “self-care” in 2018. 

Crowdfunding

With the rise of platforms like Kickstarter and Indiegogo, the practice of “crowdfunding” became increasingly common over the past decade ― so much so that Merriam-Webster added the term in 2014. The addition of crowdfunding comes after “crowdsourcing” officially joined in 2011.

Helicopter Parent

Merriam-Webster officially added the term “helicopter parent” to its collegiate dictionary in 2011, though the phrase and general metaphor date back decades further. The 2010s were defined by many parenting debates, ranging from the pros and cons of the “helicopter” approach to the newer concept of “lawn mower parenting.”

Athleisure

Comfortable, athletic clothing like yoga pants became incredibly popular in the 2010s. Thus “athleisure” was added to Merriam-Webster’s dictionary in 2016. On a related note, the comfort-focused “jegging” entered the dictionary in 2015. 

Truther

The OED added the political conspiracy-focused word “truther” in 2015. Merriam-Webster did the same in early 2017, as the U.S. entered an era of truth-doubting terms like “fake news” and “alternative facts.”  

Flexitarian

Many people have started adopting more plant-based diets in recent years, cutting down on meat without fulling eliminating it. The term “flexitarian” entered the OED in 2014 and Merriam-Webster in 2012. Other new food words include the free-food scavenging “freegan,” which entered Merriam-Webster in 2014, “hangry,” which became official in 2018, and the veggie-focused “zoodles,” which also joined in 2018. 

Stan

After countless articles explored the origins of the phrase “to stan,” the OED added the fan-culture term in 2018. Merriam-Webster did the same in 2019. 

Microaggression

This term for a small comment or action that communicates prejudice or hostility toward a marginalized group joined Dictionary.com in 2015, Merriam-Webster in 2017 and the OED in 2018. 

Meme

Although the origins of the term “meme” date back to the 1970s, the word blew up in the 2010s and joined Merriam-Webster in 2015. 

Alt-Right

The rise of the “alt-right” white nationalist movement in the U.S. has been well documented, so it makes sense that the term would reach dictionary status with Merriam-Webster and Dictionary.com in 2017 ― followed by the OED in 2018. 

Ping

“Ping” got a new definition in Merriam-Webster in 2017 when the dictionary added the sense of contacting someone via a brief digital message. 

Glamping

Many a portmanteau increased in use in the 2010s. That includes “glamping” ― i.e. the combinatin of glamor/glamorous and camping ― which joined the OED in 2016 and Merriam-Webster’s dictionary in 2018. 

Dox

The practice of maliciously publishing private information about an individual has become a common form of attack, leading to new legislation. Dictionary.com added the term to “dox”in 2015, and Merriam-Webster did the same the following year. 

Mansplain

The 2010s saw increasing numbers of women pushing back against condescension from men in the workplace and in their personal lives. The term “mansplain” captures this movement, and in 2018, it was added to Merriam-Webster and the OED.

Emoji

The emoji explosion of the 2010s changed the way we communicate with each other, so it’s not surprising that the word entered Merriam-Webster’s dictionary in 2015. Individual emojis have even become part of dictionaries like the OED.

Selfie

People love to point to the rise of “selfies” in the 2010s as an indication of the decline of society. In 2013, Oxford Dictionaries named “selfie” as the word of the year. The following year, Merriam-Webster added “selfie” to its words roster. The word’s connection to social media and self-indulgence is reminiscent of another word that joined Merriam Webster in the 2010s: “humblebrag.” 

NAGPUR, Maharashtra — Ajit Pawar, senior NCP leader and nephew of party supremo Sharad Pawar, took oath as the Deputy Chief Minister of Maharashtra on Monday. This comes just a month after his surprise oath taking with Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Devendra Fadnavis. 

Another noticeable name in the list of MLAs, who were sworn in as ministers on Monday afternoon, is that of Shiv Sena’s Aaditya Thackeray.

The first time MLA from Worli assembly segment in Mumbai, Aaditya took oath as a minister in Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray’s cabinet.

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The first cabinet expansion of this three-party coalition government, which came to power after Sharad Pawar bulldozed an early morning coup by Ajit Pawar on 23 November, took over a month because the allies were negotiating hard for key portfolios.

Former Maharashtra Chief Minister and senior Congress leader Ashok Chavan also figures in the list of ministers who took oath on Monday, but the name of another prominent leader and former Maharashtra CM Prithviraj Chavan is missing. With Congress’s Nana Patole already taking over as the speaker of Maharashtra assembly, Prithviraj Chavan could be made the state president of Congress’s Maharashtra unit.

All four working presidents of Congress’s Maharashtra unit are being inducted into the Uddhav Thackeray cabinet while the current state unit chief Balasaheb Thorat took oath as a cabinet minister along with Uddhav Thackeray last month.

Despite getting the post of the state’s Deputy Chief Minister, Ajit Pawar might miss out on key portfolios. Sharad Pawar has also inducted his loyalist Jitendra Awhad who was instrumental in keeping the NCP MLAs together after Ajit Pawar’s revolt.

Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) chief MK Stalin on Monday shared photos of kolam drawn as a mark of protest against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) outside his home in Chennai. Similar designs were also drawn in front of party MP Kanimozhi’s house. 

‘We don’t want CAA-NRC’ was painted outside Kanimozhi’s house with two kolam designs on the sides, according to The News Minute, because rain would have washed away the rice or lime stone powder which are usually used for the designs. 

This comes a day after at least five people were detained for drawing kolams with anti-CAA slogans in Chennai. A senior police official told PTI they were picked up for holding the protest without permission. 

“We warned them and later let them off,” the police official added. 

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One of those detained, Gayathri, told The News Minute, “Is it wrong to draw kolam? We’re only doing it outside homes and not on public roads. How can this be unlawful assembly? I have the right to express my dissent.” If they don’t like the kolam they can always remove it, she added, “why should they detain us?”

The DMK had also hit out at the state government over the police action, saying the detained persons were only exercising their right to protest. 

DMK sources told PTI Kanimozhi had asked the party’s Women’s Wing members to draw kolams outside their homes with slogans “NO CAA, NO NRC”.

(With PTI inputs) 

A former Delhi police constable, Rakesh Tyagi, was arrested, and later released on bail, allegedly after he released a video on social media threatening to shoot anti-Citizenship Amendment Act protesters at sight. 

The officer, who had retired in 2014, posted a video saying, “It is a direction from the Home Minister, the direction that has come from the DCP... if such a direction has come from the Home Ministry, we will follow it, we will save the Constitution.”

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“If a stone falls on me, I will shoot straight away,” Tyagi, who is dressed in police clothes, says in the video. He also says, “If someone throws a stone at me, I will make Ram Mandir with it.” 

PTI reported that the 43-year-old police constable had taken VRS from the police force in 2014. 

The report said while the Tyagi deleted the video from Facebook, the police came to know about the video through WhatsApp. The cop, who hails from UP’s Baghpat, was picked up by the police from West Delhi’s Uttam Nagar on Friday. 

The Indian Express reported DCP (Cyber Crime) Anyesh Roy as saying Tyagi wore a fake uniform in the video. 

The newspaper also reported that after he got bail, Tyagi posted yet another video where he said, ”“Humne aisi konsi galat baat kardi…. Kuch khaas kaum ke logo ne complaint ki. 10 baje police waale aaye mujhe uthake le gaye… main fir bhi Dilli Police ka samman karta hoon. (What was wrong with what I said? People from a particular community filed a complaint against me. The police picked me up at 10 pm, but I still respect the Delhi police). 

(With PTI inputs) 

Many of the protests across the country against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) have been marked by the protesters reading out the Preamble of the Indian Constitution. 

Critics of the contentious law have argued that by making faith a condition of citizenship, the CAA violates the secular principles enshrined in India’s Constitution. 

As protests continue, on Monday, civil society group Karwan-e-Mohabbat posted a video on its YouTube page where actor Naseeruddin Shah reads out the Preamble to the Indian Constitution, and Carnatic singer T.M. Krishna sings the National Anthem. The 3 minutes, 10 second long video, made up of images from the anti-CAA protests, gives credit to Shah, Krishna and The People of India at the end.

In the description accompanying the video, Karwan-e-Mohabbat says, “in the continuing protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act and the upcoming NPR-NRC, it is once again the time to look back at the diversity of our country, its geography and its people, and our constitutional virtues”. 

You can watch the video here:

Even though the protests were met with police brutality in many areas, especially in Uttar Pradesh, thousands of people have still been braving the threat of arrests as well as the biting cold to turn up at protests. HuffPost India’s Aman Sethi reported last week that the Uttar Pradesh Police had detained and tortured at least five minors as part of the crackdown on protests.

In a lecture delivered in Bengaluru last week, Krishna had asked protesters to get out on to the streets to keep the protests alive, The Times of India reported.

“While there are many ways to protest, right now, do it on the road. You want to write an article, get your laptop out on to the street; you want to sing, do it on the street; you want to scream, scream on the street because that’s the only way we can keep our society alive,” he said.

NEW DELHI — The print shop in Jabalpur, his hometown, is owned by an elderly Sikh man named Kawaljeet Singh, who employs one Akhtar Khan as his graphics designer, said Deepanshu Sahu, a 26-year-old lawyer from Madhya Pradesh. He calls them bhaisahab and bhai. 

When Sahu told them that he was going all the way to Delhi to join the demonstrations against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), Khan waived his fee to design the vinyl sheet Sahu would wear at the protests. He even gave him 200 rupees off on the printing charges. Together, they searched the internet for images of Ashfaqulla Khan and Ram Prasad Bismil, freedom fighters who were hanged by the British colonists in 1927 on 19 December, which happened to be the day of the demonstration in Delhi. 

“He did a good job of designing the sheet. This was important to me because I was planning to only wear the sheet at the protests,” said Sahu in a conversation with HuffPost India. “Akhtar bhai said, ‘You are going to do a good thing for all of us.’”

Days before leaving Jabalpur, Sahu had heard Prime Minister Narenda Modi’s now infamous comment that those protesting against the CAA “can be identified by their clothes.”

The vinyl-sheet costume, designed by Khan and printed by Singh’s shop, would be Sahu’s protest against Modi’s blatant attempt to communalise the dissent against his government’s unpopular law.

“I was hurt by what Modi ji said. When India’s Prime Minister is judging Indian citizens by their clothes and hurting them by his words, I wanted to show him that our clothes don’t matter,” Sahu said. “That is why I wore only the vinyl sheet and stood in the cold in Delhi.”

“If you are going to make a bigoted remark then at least be clear about it. Why is the PM misleading the country with these disturbing messages? That is what hurt me. I felt stirred. I wanted to do something,” he said. “I was going with a message for Modi ji. Jabalpur is far from Delhi. I was going to Delhi to deliver my message so that it would reach Modi ji.″

Sahu paid 500 rupees at the print shop and bought a sleeper class ticket for 497 rupees on the Sampark Kranti Express that covers 900 kilometers from Jabalpur to the national capital in 15 hours. Days after attending protests and demonstrations in Delhi, Sahu travelled by road to West Bengal to join up with a similar demonstration in Kolkata. 

The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its representatives have sought to portray the nation-wide anti-CAA protests as the actions of a disaffected few. Sahu’s long journey suggests the opposite: the demonstrations against the CAA have forged unlikely connections and networked diverse segments of Indian society, united by their resistance to Modi, and his home minister Amit Shah’s divisive agenda.

Sahu, for instance, felt an instant connection in his conversations with the Delhi students he met at Jantar Manta.

“They were confident. I was impressed by people with higher education. Now, I feel like doing my LLM and getting a PhD in Delhi,” he said. “What I noticed was that so many people had read up and come to the protest. They knew why we were all there.”

Sahu’s train was two hours late when it reached Nizamuddin Railway Station on 19 December.  He checked into a budget hotel near the railway station after making sure it had a television with more than one news channel.

The patchy internet network on the train had made it hard for him to watch the news on his mobile phone. He was dismayed to find the Delhi Police had banned demonstrations and shut down the internet service on mobile phones in the city. 

Later that day, the Delhi Police chased student protestors inside Jamia Millia Islamia University, throwing tear gas and beating them inside the campus. The Uttar Pradesh Police attacked students inside Aligarh Muslim University, that same day. 

Sahu was livid at the brutal crackdown on students inside university campuses. The protests in Delhi had been largely peaceful and led by students. He longed to join them. He was stunned at Modi’s characterisation of the protestors. 

The CAA offers a path to Indian citizenship to “persecuted religious minorities” — Hindus,  Christians, Buddhists, Jains and Parsis, but not Muslims — from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan. For many Indians, this new law makes religion the basis for obtaining Indian citizenship and  violates the secular principles on which India was founded.

The new law, its many critics argue, must be seen in the context of a proposed nationwide NRC, an exercise that would identify people living without papers in India. Non-Muslims left out of the register could presumably apply for sanctuary under this new law, but Muslims would suffer. 

The widespread demonstrations against the CAA mark the first time that Indians across the country have taken to the streets in large numbers to protest against the Modi government.

While opposition parties have largely supported the protests, BJP-ruled states have responded with violence — none more so than Uttar Pradesh, where at least 22 civilians have been killed, mostly likely by the state police force.

Sahu says that he is horrified by the videos of the police crackdown in UP, devastated at the loss of life, bewildered by the differing accounts of the violence in the news, and conflicted by what to believe. 

He does have a question about the damage done to private property by policemen in UP, as videos have revealed. If the Yogi Adityanath government is recovering money from people suspected of damaging public property, he asked, who would pay for the deliberate destruction of private property by policemen. 

Sahu finds it disheartening that people he meets only talk about the violence in UP when the conversation turns to protests against the CAA. Nevertheless, he plans to continue with his protests. 

“The peaceful protestors, the students, the youth are the face and back of the protest,” he said. “We are and have to remain the movement.” 

Dodging Delhi Police

In Delhi, Sahu bought a white stick and black glasses to pretend that he is visually impaired to dodge the policemen.The white stick, he reasoned, doubled up as the staff of the Indian flag which he intended to hold at the protest site.

“I was swinging the stick side to side and walking when I saw any policemen. I could not risk being stopped and questioned when I was so close,” he said.

The Delhi Police had stopped metro services on several routes on that day of protests. The baggage scanner inside the metro station, Sahu feared, could have detected the vinyl sheet and the Indian flag in his backpack. He decided to take the bus. 

“I thought if there is any trouble with the police, people will be there to help. I thought someone might even take a video that not just my friends but other people would end up seeing and calling for my release,” he said.

What his friends would think about him leaving to join the protests in Delhi was the question that Sahu pondered the longest over.  He does not support the BJP, they do. He does not believe the negative reports that sections of the media file about the students in Delhi, especially Jawaharlal Nehru University, they do.

“Few are anti-Muslim. Most of them just like Modi,” he said, speaking of his friends. “They are not communal but I think they support Hindutva more.”

It was getting harder to talk politics with friends who did not share his beliefs, Sahu said. They consciously avoided topics that might cause flared tempers and emotions. That is why did not tell anyone about his plan to protest in Delhi. 

“Not everyone talks to everyone about everything these days,” he said. “There are some things that you have to do on your own. I had to do this on my own.”

Jantar Mantar — Awkward?

Sahu says he has political ambitions. He meets with members of political parties like the Congress Party, the Samajwadi Party, the Bahujan Samaj Party and the Aam Aadmi Party when he is in Jabalpur. “I have figured real power is in politics. The way to change things is through politics. I want to use that power for good,” he said. 

But on 19 December, when he went into the public convenience next to Jantar Mantar to change into the vinyl sheet, Sahu felt strangely powerless. 

“Tears came into my eyes as I was removing my clothes and changing into the sheet. I felt unsure of what I was doing. Was I crazy to go and stand without my clothes in the street? Was it going to make any difference,” he said.

The first few minutes after he found a spot at Jantar Mantar were nerve-wracking. He was terrified the women protestors might object to his bare back and legs. He was nervous about the police having the same problem. But as time passed, he relaxed.

“The whole situation felt very awkward in the beginning. There were so many women around. I was really afraid someone would say something. I was afraid the police would say you cannot stand here in this state,” he said. “But then things changed. People came to talk to me, to give food, to give a hug, and to just say thank you.”

Ravish Kumar, the famous NDTV India journalist, interviewed him at the scene of the protest — which was good. But saying the same thing over and over into a host of cameras and camera phones got tiring after a while, Sahu recalled. 

“I don’t think I enjoyed it a lot,” he said. “Everyone asked the same questions. I wanted to say so many things but all they ended up asking was my name and where I’m from and then a line or two about why I am here.”

His parents, who were not aware of his plan, saw him in video clip of Ravish Kumar’s news show which his mother’s friend sent them on WhatsApp. 

Sahu’s father is a farmer who lives with his mother, a social worker, in another district in MP called Narsinghpur. He grew up in Narsinghpur before leaving to study law at Sagar University.

Sahu had expected his parents to be overcome by worry and then get angry. 

“But they seemed more surprised than angry. My mother said, “Why did you not tell us,’” he said. 

Sahu left Jantar Mantar at around ten at night on 19 December. Buoyed by how the day had panned out, he wore his vinyl sheet in the auto rickshaw ride to his hotel near the railway station.  “Even the cold wind felt good that night,” he said. 

Sahu went for the large demonstration at Jama Masjid the next day, and to the protests at Jamia Millia Islamia and Shaheen Bagh in the days that followed. He had planned to file a petition in the Supreme Court before leaving Delhi, but dropped the idea after calculating the legal fees.

The Supreme Court has not stayed the CAA, but has asked the Modi government to respond to the several  petitions that have already been filed against it. The next hearing is on 22 January. 

“Justice will come slowly but it will come, I’m sure,” said Sahu.

Homeward bound? 

Sahu felt the momentum around the protests ebbing in West Bengal when he reached Kolkata on Christmas Day. 

The protest that Sahu attended on Friday had a couple of hundred people, but he enjoyed not having having to worry about getting detained in the state run by Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and the Trinamool Congress. 

“It felt very different from Delhi where I felt anxious all the time. There was no fear of getting arrested or detained in Kolkata and that felt good,” he said.

As he headed home to Jabalpur, where the Congress government has imposed Section 144 in state, Sahu wondered how long the movement against the CAA and NRC would endure. He was also preoccupied with Modi’s recent claim of there being no detention centres in India.

Assam, the only state to have carried out the NRC, has six detention centres, constructed when the Congress government was in power in the state and at the Centre. The BJP government is building more in Assam and in other states. 

Sahu wants to visit a detention centre to see what it feels and looks like. He believes every Indian citizen should. 

If he ever makes it to Assam, Sahu imagines taking photos of a detention centre and sending them to the PM with a message — “PM Modi, you are the biggest beneficiary of India’s democracy. Please be secular.” 

After decades of watching cardiganed mothers and grandmothers in film and TV clutch their pearls at the thought of an orgasm (ahem, Diane Keaton in “Something’s Gotta Give”), single older moms are finally starring in unabashed, quivering sex scenes that would make the leading ladies of yesteryear blush. From “Mrs. Fletcher” to “Gloria Bell,” this year, Hollywood began to celebrate older mothers enjoying intercourse without shame — and, even more amazingly, without strings attached.

Why did it take us so long to get to this point, and what ignited the shift? In short, the slow torching of the patriarchy and the power of women everywhere reclaiming their own narratives, including their sexual journeys. It used to be that once women had kids and reached middle age, they were seen as having fulfilled their societal obligation and therefore sex was no longer necessary — a myth that was also perpetuated on screen. It’s why most older mom characters, regardless of marital status, were depicted as though their libidos had been depleted many years prior or that looming menopause had stolen their sex drives. Even more frustrating, any erotic urges they did have would be played for laughs, like in last year’s comedy “Book Club” (which, coincidentally, also starred Keaton).

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We see the shift on “Mrs. Fletcher,” as Eve (Kathryn Hahn), a divorcee, begins to reinvest in her sexual appetite through porn and erotic fantasies. Though porn has long revered the sexuality of older women, watching that finally shift over to the cable TV space is a radical pivot toward a freedom that women like Eve were never afforded in the past. Her son has just gone to college and she learns to refocus her attention on her own needs, including what turns her on.

It’s a common path for empty nesters like Eve who have spent so many years caring for their kids that they don’t even know where to begin with understanding what pleases them — or if it’s even what turned them on before they had kids.

Cyndi Darnell, a globally renowned sexologist, explained that this turning point in moms’ lives is about giving themselves the permission, as Eve says herself at one point, to explore the parts of themselves that they were taught were reserved for a man’s pleasure and not their own.

“They’re finding themselves desiring, not just desirable,” Darnell said. “[These women] are asking themselves, ‘What do I want sexually?’ ‘What might interest me?’”

And contrary to some pop culture depictions, single older moms aren’t all looking for someone else to settle down and make a life with. Just like their younger peers, some just want to have companions that they can count on to satisfy their sexual hunger. To that end, the season of “Mrs. Fletcher” culminated with Eve finally reaching her climax in a titillating threesome with her friend Amanda (Katie Kershaw) and Julian (Owen Teague), a much younger man with whom she flirted all season long.

“The narrative was always, ’When you’ve found the right man and you love him and he’s proven his worth to you, then you can open your legs to him,” Darnell said. “Whereas now it’s, ‘Is he going to fuck you the way you want to be fucked?’”

It’s the question that every single older mother is — or at least should be — beginning to ask herself, especially now that monogamy and heteronormativity are also being challenged. Women have always wanted to have great sex, however and with whomever they want. It’s just that now characters are finally expressing that onscreen — where their sexual pleasure was rarely thought of before.

Not all single older moms are struggling to reconnect with their eroticism and willing to try an orgy like Eve, though. Still, it’s refreshing to see them simply depicted as women who desire rich relationships where they can connect with someone on a physical level. But unlike what was depicted in the 1978 film “An Unmarried Woman,” in which a woman navigates the dating scene after her husband of 16 years leaves her, today characters like hers are looking for love and good sex.

Mothers like the titular character in this year’s indie film “Gloria Bell,” played by Julianne Moore, want to vibe with a partner emotionally, spiritually and sexually.  That’s exemplified in a beautifully natural scene with Arnold (John Turturro) spooning Gloria in bed.

It’s utterly absurd that erotic scenes like those in “Gloria Bell” and “Mrs. Fletcher” are so revolutionary. For Jordan Wiggins, a sexologist and neuropathic doctor, that’s because women are too often seen as either mothers or sexual beings, not both. 

“There’s this underlying belief that being a mom means not being sexual,” she said. “It’s a message I find from the media that portrays sex as only for young people or procreation. Then you become this dried up old prune. We don’t get to see what that evolution is like throughout a lifetime.”

With dating apps and other non-traditional forms of romance at our fingertips, older moms are now looking online to find their next partner and creating profiles that compel them to describe themselves and their desires in their own words — often for the first time in their lives.

“Evil,” a CBS show, deserves props for featuring Sheryl (Christine Lahti), a grandmother proudly swiping for partners on Tinder. Even more noteworthy, she gets to have an incredibly steamy sex scene (so hot it literally caught on fire) where her boyfriend — who is the literal devil, played by Michael Emerson — pins her down to a bed. It’s obviously heightened for the horror genre, but the fact that Sheryl’s sexual agency is as prominent as her desire to support her daughter and take care of her grandchildren is profound.

“There’s now a shift towards ‘and,’” Wiggins says. “You’re a mom and a CEO, a mom and someone that enjoys sex. So, I think we’re starting to explore what it means to be a whole person, not just one-dimensional older women like we used to see on TV.”

It only took a while for us to get here, but we’re finally in an era when older moms aren’t coquettish characters giggling at the mere utterance of the word “sex.” Eve, Gloria and Sheryl are fictional heroines leading a new feminist movement that includes older women actually having sex on screen — and climaxing, which is most important. Because they deserve it.

The India Meteorological Department (IMD) said Delhi is set to experience its coldest day in December in 119 years on Monday. 

The temperature recorded by the Safdarjung laboratory at 2:30 pm was 9.4 degrees Celsius, according to PTI.

Dense fog engulfed the national capital on Monday with at least 16 flights getting diverted and four cancelled. Around 30 trains were also delayed. 

The weather office has said severe cold weather is likely to remain over northern India for two more days, according to NDTV.

In an update, Delhi Airport’s official Twitter handle said, “the general visibility is slightly improving at Delhi Airport”. In an earlier tweet, it had said that flight operations were affected due to the dense fog situation.  

The pollution level in Delhi was also high with he air quality index (AQI) at 448 at 9.38 am. 

The IMD had issued a red-coded warning for the national capital for Sunday as the minimum temperature recorded in Lodhi Road area was 2.8 degree Celsius.

(With PTI inputs) 

With the pop of the cork, a cascade of bubbles and a clink of glasses, drinking sparkling wine is a dramatic event that lends itself to celebrations. Around the holidays, Americans drink more sparkling wine than ever: Sales increase more than 200% from Christmas to New Year’s, according to Nielsen.

Not sure which kind of bubbly to fill your glass with? We asked wine experts to explain the differences between three popular types of sparkling wine: Champagne, prosecco and cava. It comes down to where and how they’re made.

Champagne and cava undergo the exact same fermentation process.

To be called Champagne, sparkling wine must be made in the Champagne region of northeastern France from Pinot Noir, Meunier and Chardonnay grapes via a process called “methode champenoise,” a two-step fermentation that includes in-bottle fermentation.

Grape juices are blended and then fermented to turn into alcohol. The wine is bottled to trap carbon dioxide, which forms bubbles. Once the mixture is in the bottle, Champagne-makers add yeast and sugar, and the wine is fermented a second time, which allows the right amount of carbonation to form and flavors to develop, according to Richard Vayda, director of wine and beverage studies at New York’s Institute of Culinary Education. Then, the wines are disgorged, a process called “le remuage” that coaxes yeast and sediments out of the bottle. Bottles are then corked and caged. Some are left to age.

Most cava, which hails from the Penedes area of Catalonia in northeastern Spain, is made similarly, also with in-bottle fermentation. In Spain, the traditional cava-making process is known as “método tradicional,” Vayda said.

Traditionally, cava is made from xarello, macabeo and parellada grapes, but some may contain pinot noir and chardonnay. 

Prosecco is made faster, which is why it’s cheaper.

Prosecco comes from the Veneto and Friuli-Venezia Giulia regions in northeastern Italy and is made mostly from the glera grape using a bulk method called Charmat, Vayda said.

Grape juices are blended and fermentation begins. For the second fermentation, bubbles are trapped in a large pressurized tank. It’s then filtered to remove any impurities and bottled.

The Charmat process is faster and cheaper than the process used to make Champagne and cava, which is why prosecco tends to be less expensive, said Christina Sherwood, a North American Sommelier Association-certified silver pin sommelier and wine director at Granville Restaurants in Southern California.

But, Sherwood said, good sparkling wines can be found at all price points. She recommends spending a bit more on sparkling wine for a special occasion that you’ll drink straight versus when serving mimosas, since you’ll be diluting them with orange juice anyway.

There are differences in flavour and bubbles.

Flavour-wise, prosecco tends to be lighter: “very fresh, super-fragrant, typically fruity and flowery,” Vayda said. Its bubbles are lighter than those in cava or Champagne.

Cava has more citrus notes and hints of pear or quince, but more savory, mineral flavors and less fruity sweetness, he said. 

Champagne, depending on the maker, could be on the lighter or heavier side, with citrus or mature apple flavors and a yeasty tone. It’s also usually more acidic, Sherwood said. 

Champagne’s bubbles tend to be finer and more persistent, since it’s produced using higher pressure, Vayda explained.

Across the categories, some sparkling wines are sweeter than others, Sherwood said. That’s because more sugar, referred to as dosage, is sometimes added before the wine is bottled. 

Sparkling wine tends to belower in calories than other types of wine, but the sugar content is something to note.

“The one thing to keep in mind is the level of residual sugar — some of these beverages will provide more sugar than others,” said Ginger Hultin, a Seattle-based spokesperson for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics and owner of ChampagneNutrition. 

Sparkling wines are labeled with the terms “brut,” “extra brut” or “sec” (dry) when they have less residual sugar, and they’re labeled doux (sweet) when they have more, Hultin said. 

Here’s how to get the most out of your bubbly of choice. 

Maintaining the flavour of a bottle of sparkling wine depends on how it’s stored, both before and after being opened, Sherwood said. She suggests storing Champagne, prosecco and cava in the refrigerator but to avoid drinking them too cold.

“That’s true with any white wine, even red wine,” Sherwood said. “If you have wine that’s cold, as it starts to warm up, you’ll actually start to be able to taste the flavors a lot more intensely. Especially if you’re drinking something nice, don’t drink it too cold.”

Removing the wine from the fridge about 10 minutes before serving is a good rule, she said. For leftover wine, she suggests getting a special pressurized bottle stopper to keep it bubbly.

Drink the sparkling wine soon after you buy it, or it will lose flavour, Sherwood said, explaining that Champagne and other sparkling wine is aged to achieve its distinctive flavour and to be at its peak for drinking.  

“If you want to buy a really great bottle of Champagne to commemorate a really special occasion, go out to your best liquor store or wine shop and buy it then,” she said. “Don’t save something for 20 years because likely you’re going to kill it.”  

After a less than perfect reception back in 2015, Ubisoft’s Rainbow Six Siege has gone from strength to strength. Over the years it has incorporated user feedback and even won over fickle markets like India where Rainbow Six Siege now has a rabid and vocal fan base. While it isn’t as popular or pervasive as the likes of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive or PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, in a country obsessed with shooters it’s managed to carve out a successful niche.

With the likes international companies like Lenovo, the ESL (Electronic Sports League), and even local outfits such as The Esports Club investing in the Indian Rainbow Six Siege ecosystem with regular tournaments, this has only increased. However there’s no bigger testament to this than Ubisoft’s creation and inclusion of Kali, a playable Indian character.

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HuffPost India spoke to the team at Ubisoft Montreal about what went behind the making and inclusion of Kali in Rainbow Six Siege as well as yes, that choice of name.

Though before we get to that, we had to ask, what made the studio decide to go with an Indian operator in the first place?

“When selecting countries of origins for future Siege operators, we always consider several different parameters,” Maxime Vial, Product Manager at Ubisoft Montreal said. “First and foremost, we look at the regions of the world we want to explore, the type of stories we want to tell. To create compelling characters, the team needs to be excited about working on them. Obviously, we try to balance things out, so we don’t revisit countries we’ve already been to too often.”

“Then we look at the countries that would have players most excited. In the case of India we know Rainbow Six Siege is extremely popular and has a growing and loyal audience who are regularly playing the game competitively and casually, and we are aware that having local operators is an element of the game our fans love,” Vial added.

That said, it wasn’t without its challenges.

“We did a lot of research into the Indian army, navy, and special forces, which is when we discovered that women aren’t currently allowed to serve in combat roles,” Rainbow Six Siege Scriptwriter Leanne Taylor-Giles explained. “It helped us understand how someone like Kali would form her own company, the challenges she would face in doing so, and what her motivations might have been.”

With that in mind, the team enlisted the help of its local counterpart — Ubisoft India.

“For the cultural aspects, we worked closely with our colleagues from the Ubisoft studio in India who went above and beyond in answering our questions and providing insight – for example, they were the ones who calculated Kali’s birthday based on her name and birthplace, which of course isn’t how it’s usually done for other operators,” Taylor-Giles said. “They were invaluable to our process and we were very lucky to have their input.”

During this process, one of the names that was suggested was Kali, also the name of the Hindu goddess worshipped to this day. Religion is a sensitive issue, more so when paired with video games, so we had to ask what was the reason behind choosing Kali.

“The name immediately appealed to us, but of course we were aware of its connotations and that it could be troublesome culturally,” said Taylor-Giles. “In the end, we checked with our colleagues from the Ubisoft studio in India and when they said the use of the name should not pose a problem, we decided to go with it.”

The next step was to flesh out Kali’s backstory. As Ubisoft Montreal discovered, Indian women aren’t allowed into active service in the army, navy, or special forces. This resulted in the team considering to portray her as a businesswoman.

“We were aware of very successful and entrepreneurial Indian women in business, but Kali is in a league of her own, both in age and industry,” Taylor-Giles said. “So we used these existing success stories as our reference, but gave her a younger, more militaristic angle, which makes her unique in her culture and in the world at large.”

The uniqueness extends to her arsenal. With most combat in Rainbow Six Siege usually being at close-quarters, the team decided to kit Kali out with the first bolt-action sniper rifle in the game. This in itself proved to be quite the task. Reason being, developers have to ensure balance—the thankless job of making a new addition to a game different and fun yet not so overpowering that it turns off players from trying it out.

“We made several iterations around the ‘post-shot’ timing [experimenting with making it faster and slower], as well as tweaking the recoil to come up with something balanced for both Kali’s needs and the needs of the game,” said Gaelle Roberts, Project Manager on Rainbow Six Siege.

“The size of the rifle was also the centre of several debates: it needed to look futuristic and impressive enough for a weapon of that caliber while also making sure it wouldn’t get ridiculously long. Finally, we introduced the strongest zoom we have in Rainbow Six: Siege; it goes from 5x to 12x. Again, we had to make sure it was not too strong, not too painful to play with, nor overpowered with the long lines of sight it can create.”

It’ll be interesting to see if Kali becomes a regular pick amongst the Rainbow Six Siege faithful. Perhaps, future operators like with Kali, will involve the input of Ubisoft’s other studios (which total 44 globally) from various parts of the world to collaborate and create a diverse roster of characters.

The conversation shifts to Rainbow Six Siege’s pricing and availability. Recently, Ubisoft dropped the price of Rainbow Six Siege to Rs. 499 from Rs. 999. To many, Siege is seen as an alternative to the super popular Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. While the Valve-published title went free-to-play six years after release, is Ubisoft considering a similar move?

“There is no current plan for R6S to become a free-to-play game,” Vial said. She also said the game continues to be accessible due to programs like free weekends — which as the name suggests, allow you to download and play the game for the weekend without paying as well as leaning into the local ecosystem with “local experiential events that take place across India.”

On the topic of accessibility, Ubisoft has been a vocal proponent of cloud gaming to the point where CEO Yves Guillemot has openly speculated that the next-generation of consoles will be the last. With that in mind, it’s odd that Rainbow Six Siege is only on GeForce Now — Nvidia’s cloud gaming platform and not on others like Google Stadia.

“We are of course monitoring the evolution of the video games industry and cloud gaming is today one the biggest trend in the industry,” said Vial. “Ubisoft is working closely with actors of this sector and has already several game on Google Stadia for example. Our goal is to be where our players are, so we currently are evaluating all possibilities to make Rainbow Six Siege available on as many platforms as possible, including cloud gaming.”

Finally we had to ask what the teams plans were for the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X, the upcoming consoles from Sony and Microsoft respectively. With both companies ensuring backwards compatibility it means Rainbow Six Siege should be playable day one on both next-gen devices. Vial left us with this.

“As we already mentioned, Rainbow Six Siege is coming on next-generation consoles, but it’s too soon for us to share any details on this. We are excited to see the potential of these new machines.”

In the words of 16-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg: “People are already suffering and dying from the climate and ecological emergency, and it will continue to get worse.”

In the past decade, the climate crisis and its fatal consequences have deepened. Temperatures rose around the globe, ice caps melted, sea levels rose and record-breaking hurricanes, floods and wildfires devastated communities.

The United Nations released report after report detailing the heightening emergency of human-caused global warming and warning world leaders to take dramatic and swift action to avert catastrophe.

Here are seven figures that show just how dire the climate situation grew this decade alone.

The past five years were the hottest ever recorded on the planet

Globally, the past five years, from 2014 to 2018, all had record-breaking temperatures, with reports from NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration showing the hottest year ever as 2016, followed by 2017, 2015, 2018 and 2014.

These recent peak temperatures followed decades of warming around the globe. Higher temperatures are linked to a range of dangerous natural disasters – including extreme floods, hurricanes and deadly wildfires – and deaths.

Since 2016 alone, at least 50% of coral reefs in Australia’s Great Barrier Reef – the largest coral reef in the world – have died amid the rising heat. Humans aren’t far behind: A study published in January found that more than a quarter of a million people may die each year as a result of climate change in the decades to come.

While reports for 2019 won’t be released until early in 2020, this year has already experienced several record-breaking months. June, July and September were the hottest June, July and September ever recorded on Earth.

Four of the five largest wildfires in California history happened this decade

Wildfires worsened in California in recent years, with hotter temperatures and dry conditions often combining with high winds to create a longer fire season with more destructive blazes. Scientists have linked the worsening fires across the western US to climate change.

Among the five largest wildfires in the fire-prone state, four happened this decade alone. The largest ever in the state, the Mendocino complex fire of July 2018, blazed through nearly half a million acres.

What’s more, seven of the 10 most destructive fires in California have occurred since 2015; and the deadliest ever fire in state history took place in 2018: the Camp fire, which killed 85 people and burned down nearly the entire town of Paradise.

“I’ve been in the fire service for over 30 years, and I’m horrified at what I’ve seen,” California fire officer Jerry Fernandez told HuffPost in October 2017 amid the Tubbs fire in Napa and Sonoma, which killed 22 people and turned block after block of houses in Santa Rosa to ash.

Six Category 5 hurricanes tore through the Atlantic region in the past four years

The scientific community – including experts at the US government’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) – has long warned that man-made climate change influences extreme weather events. Scientists found that climate change has likely increased the intensity of hurricanes, particularly in the north Atlantic region, albeit not the frequency of the storms.

When Hurricane Dorian slammed into the northern Bahamas earlier this year as a Category 5 storm, it decimated entire communities and flooded 70% of Grand Bahama, an island of some 50,000 people. It also became the sixth Category 5 hurricane in the Atlantic region in the past four years – along with record-breaking Hurricane Lorenzo in September, Hurricane Michael in 2018, Hurricanes Irma and Maria in 2017, which killed thousands in Puerto Rico, and Hurricane Matthew in 2016, one of the strongest, longest-lasting hurricanes of its kind on record.

And Category 5 hurricanes are not the only ones that wreak havoc on communities. Hurricane Harvey, which landed in 2017 as a Category 4, broke the continental US rainfall record, dumping more than 50 inches of rain in parts of Texas and killing more than 80 people. Scientists said climate change made the storm worse, with rain associated with the lethal storm at least 15% stronger due to global warming.

The previous decade of the 2000s also saw a high number of Category 5 storms, including Hurricane Katrina in 2005. However, this decade had the most consecutive years of Category 5 hurricanes, with the catastrophic-sized storms hitting each of the past four years.

Arctic sea ice cover dropped about 13% this decade

Ice sheets are melting and glaciers are shrinking in “unprecedented” ways, according to a 2019 report from the UN. A widespread shrinking of the cryosphere – or the frozen parts of the planet – has left large stretches of land uncovered by ice for the first time in millennia. And sea level rise is accelerating dramatically as all that ice melts.

Since 1979, when satellite observations first began, Arctic sea ice cover has dropped by about 13% each decade, according to the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Late this summer, the Arctic reached its second-lowest sea-ice coverage on record.

In August, officials in Iceland held a funeral for a glacier that melted away amid rising temperatures.

Researchers with the IPCC warned that coastal communities were the most vulnerable to many “climate-related hazards, including tropical cyclones, extreme sea levels and flooding, marine heatwaves, sea ice loss and permafrost thaw.” About 680m people currently live in areas that would be impacted by such hazards, which the UN noted often have the least capacity to deal with climate change.

Floods with a 0.1% chance of happening in any given year became a frequent occurrence

With more heat in the atmosphere came more rainfall, and with more rainfall came more floods. But these weren’t just any floods; they were torrents so enormous that they were classified as having only a 1-in-1,000 chance of happening in any given year – forcing the scientific community to reconsider what they call these increasingly frequent events.

Flooding associated with Hurricane Harvey was one of those “1,000 year” events, meaning there was only a 0.1% chance of such a deluge striking in 2017 based on the century of flood data researchers have to work from.

The likelihood of such flooding was hard for people to grasp given how many other “1,000 year” floods had already occurred in recent years. Back in September 2016, when five of those floods had already hit the US that year, experts pondered whether rapidly rising global temperatures had rendered the current flood-prediction model useless.

“We may, in other words, already have shifted so far into a new climate regime that probabilities have been turned on their head,” Scott Weaver, a senior climate scientist with the Environmental Defense Fund, wrote at the time.

Studies at the start of the decade more or less predicted the phenomenon. In 2012, researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Princeton University found that by about the year 2100, what we called “100 year” floods – ones that have a 1% chance of occurring in any given year – would need to be reclassified as 1-in-20-year or even 1-in-3-year events.

There were more than 100 “billion dollar” climate disasters, double the number in the decade before

A HuffPost analysis of data on the costliest droughts, floods, storms, cyclones and fires in the US this decade offered a grim look at how expensive it became for the country to continue with business as usual.

In the last 10 years, America experienced at least 115 climate and weather disasters with losses exceeding $1bn (about £762m) each, according to data from the NOAA up to and including October 8, 2019.

That’s nearly double the number of such events that took place in the US during the previous decade, when the NOAA tallied 59 events that caused at least $1bn in damage. There were 52 such events in the 1990s and 28 in the 1980s. That’s as far back as the NOAA’s data – which is adjusted for inflation – goes.

Of the five most expensive billion-dollar events in the NOAA’s records, four took place this decade. The most expensive disaster of the 2010s was Hurricane Harvey in 2017, which caused an estimated $130bn (about £99.1bn) in damages. It’s followed by Hurricane Maria at $93bn (£70.9bn), Hurricane Sandy at $73bn (£55.7bn) and Hurricane Irma at $52bn (£39.6bn).

The devastating California wildfires in 2017 and 2018 were also the two most expensive disasters of their kind from the last four decades. The 2018 fires – which include the one that burned Paradise, California, to the ground – totalled $24bn (£18.3bn) in damage, while the 2017 fires that scorched the state’s wine country caused $19bn (£14.5bn) worth of destruction.

Meanwhile, we pumped a record 36.7bn tonnes of carbon dioxide into the air in 2019

Global carbon emissions quadrupled since 1960. After emissions steadied from about 2014 to 2016, they then rose again in 2017 and have been climbing since.

Carbon emissions reached a record high in 2018 and then again this year – when scientists estimated that countries worldwide spewed more than 36.7bn tonnes of carbon dioxide into the air. The rise was spurred in part by increased output in China and India, according to a study from researchers for the annual Global Carbon Budget.

This bleak news came amid a series of reports released this year urging a dramatic cutback of carbon emissions to avoid the worst effects of climate change.

We’re ending this decade on track to warm a catastrophic 3.2C by the end of the century

Like pretty much every other climate report from this decade, an emissions assessment the UN released at the end of 2019 came with a dire warning. According to a study of the so-called emissions gap – a marker of the difference between the amount of planet-heating gases countries have agreed to cut and where the current projections are headed – global temperatures are on pace to rise as much as 3.2C above preindustrial levels by the end of the century. That’s more than double what scientists predict is enough warming to cause irreversible damage to the planet.

To change that fate, the next 10 years will be crucial. The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned last autumn that humanity has just under a decade to get climate change under control. But as grim as the report is, it reaffirms that making such sweeping changes – however unprecedented such a drastic adjustment may be – is still possible.

Between October 2009 and November 2019 the amount of carbon dioxide gas in our atmosphere – as measured by the Mauna Loa observatory in Hawaii – rose from 384.43 parts per million (ppm) to 410.27 ppm, representing a nearly 4% increase, to the highest level the planet has seen in three million years.

“This is no longer a warning – we are now experiencing the impacts of climate breakdown on a daily basis,” said May Boeve, chief executive of international climate nonprofit group 350.org.

Some experts and policymakers are instead leaning heavily on new technology to dig us out of a climate disaster. But it’s controversial and, in many cases, untested. Machines that suck the carbon out of the air are being developed, and it would be theoretically possible to reflect sunlight from space away from the earth to ease warming. Other ideas include seeding the oceans with iron filings to bury carbon dioxide for generations along with pumping sulphates into the atmosphere to mimic the impact of volcanic dust that blocks sunlight.

Illustration: Damon Dahlen/HuffPost; Photos: Alamy/Getty Images

“Farewell To...” is an end-of-decade series that explores some of the biggest cultural trends of the last 10 years. HuffPost’s culture team says bye to the celebrity feminist litmus test, so long to lily-white and mostly male literary institutions, RIP to the movie star and more.

Vampires: mysterious, manipulative, bloodthirsty, cold creatures of the night or — as the last decade illustrated — our pretty teenage boyfriends. 

Throughout the late 2000s and 2010s, sparkly, “vegetarian” bloodsuckers made their way into the zeitgeist in the form of morally conscious “manpires” like Edward Cullen of “Twilight,” Bill Compton of “True Blood” and Stefan Salvatore of “The Vampire Diaries.” But how could a monster once seen as repulsive morph into something so beautiful?

According to experts, particular adaptations of the undead are conjured up as a way to address public needs and process not only current events but also social injustices. Whereas the 1980s and ’90s vampire craze — consisting of everything from “The Lost Boys” (1987) and “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” (1992) to “Interview With the Vampire” (1994) and “Blade” (1998) — was thought to be fueled by the HIV/AIDS epidemic and “the forbiddenness of blood,” as podcaster and author Eric Nuzum noted to HuffPost, real-life crises led to this decade’s initiation of a more liberated vampire.

Nuzum, who studied vampire lore for his 2007 book, “The Dead Travel Fast,” said updated versions of these monsters cycle in when we don’t know how to confront something as a society or when we need to find a metaphor to help us understand a situation. In his view, the recent vampire trend was ignited by the financial crisis and perhaps sustained by the divisive nature of our political and social environments.

“In 2007 and 2008, we’re finding out about all this fiscal malfeasance and the inability of the government to protect us. The world was becoming a very scary place, filled with people who’ve done bad things. So we kind of leaned into the vampire ... a fantastical creature with supernatural powers who can confront the forces of reality,” Nuzum said. “Sometimes the most telling parts of the vampire story aren’t the vampire. It’s everything that happens around them. That’s where you really see the cultural knitting happening between reality and fiction.”

Sincethe literary phenomenon ofBram Stoker’s “Dracula” in 1897, vampires have been a fixture in popular culture. But as the 1931 “Dracula” film or the 1922 classic “Nosferatu” presented gothic horror tales about murderous nocturnal fanged monsters, the adaptations of the 2010s relied on relatable, humane vampires —who lounge in meadows and sparkle in the sun — to propel the genre. These iterations speak directly to people who feel like an outsider — be it through their sexuality, economic status, race or gender — and give them a character to relate to. 

John Edgar Browning, a vampire theory scholar and professor of liberal arts at Savannah College of Art and Design, told HuffPost “the vampires we saw with, and since, the Vampire Renaissance were, and are, more free to be.”

“I’m not saying that vampires today are gayer or more sexually liberated; it just matters less to us where they are putting their fangs,” Browning said. “Vampires are us, in a manner of speaking, so how we regulate them is how we regulate ourselves. Freer vampires ― and monsters ― are a sign of a healthier culture.”

When the HBO series “True Blood,” based on the “Sookie Stackhouse” books, premiered in 2008, for example, audiences were introduced to the progressive world of Bon Temps, Louisiana, where vampires attempted to exist peacefully among mortals thanks to a synthetic blood concoction called TruBlood. The vampire-human romance between Bill (Stephen Moyer) and telepathic waitress Sookie (Anna Paquin) explored abstinence and indulgence, while other relationships on the series dissected themes of sexuality, exclusion and intolerance. The show became somewhat of a fantasy allegory for the queer rights movement before it ended in August 2014, less than a year before same-sex marriage was legalized in the U.S. 

“It took fiction to make the vampire palatable,” Browning said. “Whereas centuries ago vampires served as conduits through which we could express fear, in fiction they assumed the twofold role of fear and desire ― a different conduit for a different time. Today we’re still using vampires to help us express fears and forbidden desires, only now, more often than not, vampires are helping us fight fear and prejudice and liberate in others a host of desires that greater society is finally willing to accept.” 

If “True Blood” made the vampire digestible for mature audiences, “Twilight” gave young adults an outlet to express their own wants and needs. When Stephenie Meyer’s book series began in 2005, a mascot for the vampire boyfriends was born in Edward Cullen,a “fantastically beautiful” member of the undead who lives on animal blood and has the porcelain skin of a 17-year-old Nicole Kidman. “These are the vampires you can take home to meet your parents,” Taekia Blackwell, the chief operating officer of fan convention organizationMischief Management, told HuffPost.

Edward further entranced the adolescent demographic when the five-part film series premiered in 2008, starring Robert Pattinson as the stand-in for the pleasures and perils of teenage desire, a vampire who adamantly fights the urge to kill, and be intimate with, the one mortal he’s in love with, Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart). Unlike “True Blood,” virginity is paramount in this made-for-tweens tale, but despite its conservative approach to sex, Nuzum noted that “Twilight” made that mix of fear and desire accessible to young girls who were “confronting the world as adult women for the first time and all the bullshit that comes along with it.”

“Real life is scary,” he said. “And you want to live in a fantasy place, even for a moment, that shows there’s a way above it and through it.” 

Stefan Salvatore (Paul Wesley) of The CW’s “The Vampire Diaries” was another manpire who not only captured the attention of the YA audience but illustrated the drive to be and do better. Stefan, a character from L.J. Smith’s 1990s book series, fought every day to follow a moral code in light of his indelible lust for blood. He gravitates toward Elena Gilbert (Nina Dobrev), a high school student grieving the loss of her parents, but his dark past as a “ripper” and “blood-a-holic” makes it difficult for him to maintain self-control. Although he tries to live on animal blood, he eventually steals blood bags from the hospital and spirals back into addiction. Still, his desire to protect Elena and her friends from his race ultimately outlasts his thirst for blood, making him one of the “redeemable” vampires of the 2010s.

“I think our modern pop-culture vampire just makes it a little less intense and more relatable,” Blackwell said of the allure of the ethical vampire and its rise to prominence. “The danger is lessened by the conscience.”

These stories clearly resonated with viewers, who were not only escaping the daily grind but also ingesting material that spoke to the larger themes of discrimination, hate and love. “True Blood” ran for seven seasons while “The Vampire Diaries” aired for eight. And moviegoers flocked to the theaters to see Edward and Bella fight for and defend their fanged family in dreary Forks, Washington. The final installment of the “Twilight” saga, “Breaking Dawn - Part 2,” made almost$830 million worldwide, and the film series as a whole garnered $3.3 billion. 

And we’d be remiss not to mention the countless vampire movies that came out in the 2010s, including “Let Me In” (2010), “Fright Night” (2011), Byzantium” (2012), “The Only Lovers Left Alive” (2013) and “A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night” (2014). By mid-decade, audiences seemed to lose interest in the genre, with the Johnny Depp-fronted “Dark Shadows” (2012) and “Dracula Untold” (2014), starring Luke Evans, failing to get high marks at the domestic box office. The zombies of “The Walking Dead” and the dragons of “Game of Thrones” soon took over. Now witches are having their moment with shows like “Sabrina” and “Charmed.”

“Hot vampires are kind of like the skinny jeans of monsters. I wouldn’t say they’ve dwindled or disappeared, but they’re definitely not at the forefront of fashion or as talked about as they once were,” said Shanyce Lora, the senior marketing manager of Mischief. “Monsters really have cycles in pop culture.” 

Ian Somerhalder, who played Stefan’s morally conflicted vampire brother Damon Salvatore on “The Vampire Diaries,” is not giving up on the lore just yet. His new Netflix series fits into the overcrowded genre, but instead of focusing on glittery, wrinkle-free undead beings,“V Wars” addresses vampirism through climate change and revives scary, toothed fiends. Based on the comics by Jonathan Maberry, the series follows scientist Dr. Luther Swann (Somerhalder), whose best friend (Adrian Holmes) is a victim of a fast-spreading genetic mutation after a millennia-old bacterium is unknowingly exhumed in Antarctica. As far-fetched as it sounds, “V Wars” drops the romantic, kindhearted vampires ― or “bloods,” as they’re known in the show ― and focuses in on the social and environmental effects that exacerbate an epidemic. 

“Having done 171 episodes of ‘The Vampire Diaries,’ I acquired some skill sets that allow me to understand the genre in a really profound way,” Somerhalder told HuffPost duringa recent Build Series interview. “This genre is amazing. It stands the test of time; it transcends generations and demographics, and it can be quite a lesson because, at the end of the day, vampires are the story of the outsider, the ostracized, the alone.” 

Similar to experts’ comments about international crises and their connection to on-screen iterations of vampire stories, Somerhalder explained that cancer is an allegory for his new project, which addresses tentpole topics such as diversity, disease and border control. If he had it his way, the actor, director and executive producer would want “V Wars” to come off as ”‘28 Days Later’ meets ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ by way of ‘Walking Dead.’” 

“What happens when there are so many bloods that airlines can’t fly anymore?” Somerhalder said. “What happens when there’s a new mortgage crisis because the banking world is starting to fall apart because millions of people are sick? What happens when telecommunication companies can’t function? When society starts to fracture? These are all big, amazing thematics we can’t wait to tell.” 

The series premiered on Dec. 5, andaudiences are responding well to its premise, but time will tell if it ushers in another wave of vampirism. 

No matter how oversaturated our cultural landscape may be with monsters today, they’ll never truly go away. Vampires will just rip those stakes out of their hearts, steer clear of holy water and adapt for a new time. Over the last 120 years, audiences have seen these beings go from pointy-eared goblins to chiseled Adonises. They have murdered innocent bystanders and tackled deer for nourishment. But again, these stories are not necessarily about the vampire itself ― they address larger themes that relate to the current struggles of today’s world. And that’s what keeps them relevant. 

“Vampires and zombies belong to that class of monster we call ‘the undead,’ and whoever could keep the undead down, for very long anyway?” Browning said. “A resurgence of fang and decaying matter is, I suspect, on the horizon ― who better to help fight bigotry.”

SRINAGAR — The Jammu and Kashmir administration on Monday released five political leaders who were under detention since August 5, the day when the Centre announced abrogation of Article 370 and bifurcation of the state.

The five leaders released belong to the National Conference and the PDP, who had been under preventive detention, officials said. 

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The leaders included Ishfaq Jabbar, Ghulam Nabi Bhat (NC), Bashir Mir Zahoor Mir and Yasir Reshi (PDP), they said.

Reshi is considered a rebel PDP leader who had openly revolted against then chief minister and PDP patron Mehbooba Mufti.

On November 25, two political leaders — Dilawar Mir of the PDP and Ghulam Hassan Mir of the Democratic Party Nationalist — were released by the new Union Territory administration.

Sharon Stone’s basic instinct drove her to Bumble for romance, but the dating app temporarily rejected her.

The actor tweeted Sunday night that Bumble had closed her account after “some users reported that it couldn’t possibly be me!” She also posted the official notice she received.

“Hey @bumble, is being me exclusionary?” she wrote. “Don’t shut me out of the hive.”

Hours later, a Bumble rep informed Stone that her account had been unblocked and promised her it wouldn’t happen again. “Thanks for bearing with us and hope you find your honey,” Bumble editorial director Clare O’Connor quipped.

But in the hours that Stone was excluded from the dating platform, Twitter users had some humorous takes on her Bumble struggle.

Stone, a 61-year-old mother of three, was linked to real estate mogul Angelo Boffa in 2018 but told People in October of that year that she didn’t mind not having a partner. 

“I think somewhere in the back of your mind you think maybe one day you won’t be a single parent,” she said at the time. “Then, eventually you realize, I think it’s better. I’m no longer hoping for someone.”

It’s the end of a decade. Between 2010 and 2020, the world changed. In 2010, I still remembering browsing DVDs in bookstores, looking for director’s cut and bonus scenes. And now we binge shows that an algorithm decides on our behalf. 

2010 began promisingly. Sure, there was Salman Khan’s Dabangg, but there was also Band, Baaja, Baarat, Udaan and Peepli Live to offset its toxicity and normalisation of abuse. As we moved ahead, a variety of new voices dismantled old Bollywood ― filmmakers such as Zoya Akhtar, Shakun Batra, Gauri Shinde, Abhishek Chaubey - cemented their standing in the industry and introduced bold narratives to the tired and tested Bollywood viewer.

If Anurag Kashyap dazzled us with his two-part epic, Gangs of Wasseypur, Batra’s Kapoor and Sons, a love story of a dysfunctional fam, proved that Karan Johar’s idealized family construct also had cracks he was capable of seeing. Like, who imagined that we’d get gems such as Kahaani and The Lunchbox, Masaan and Piku?

While these are obviously some iconic titles, there are films that don’t fall in any clear category (sometimes neither, sometimes both) and remain in a perennial grey zone. They could be commercial hits, they could be critical hits, they could be neither. But they are films that carry artistic integrity, a commitment to originality and a brave desire to dismantle established norms and write new rules.

Below is a list of films that dared to dream and fulfilled a very important function of cinema: stirring discourse. Some people love these films, some hate them, some grudgingly extend them their respects. They inspire a variety of emotions barring just one: indifference. 

11. Go, Goa, Gone - 2013

Raj and Krishna DK’s horror comedy, Go Goa Gone, is a film that deserves a zombie universe of its own (if Rohit Shetty’s horror films can have one then why not this?). Irreverent and trippy, with a hilariously on-point performance by Saif Ali Khan, the screwball-comedy slash slasher-film-satire got both the humour and the aesthetic right.

“Are you really Russian?” Anand Tiwari’s Bunny asks a blonde-haired Saif. After taking a momentary pause, he replies, “Delhi se hoon, Bh***od.”

Classic.

Nearly all the performances (including Kunal Khemu’s) were sharp but the winner of the movie was - the writers. There’s genuine spunk and wit in Raj and DK’s writing, the kind that’d make Edgar Wright give a smirk of approval.

10. Shaitaan - 2011 

A hyper-stylisted thriller that functioned as a cautionary tale on the excesses of youth, Bejoy Nambiar’s Shaitaan flaunted a decidedly noir aesthetic and complemented it with a dark wit that’d have made Kubrick proud.

Assembling a motley bunch of debacuhced youngsters who are condemned to a night made of nightmares, Shaitaan introduced the industry to the talents of Neil Bhoopalam, Gulshan Devaiah, Shiv Pandit and Kirti Kulhari. Released in 2011, Shaitaan marked the beginning of dark Bollywood - not that dark films weren’t made earlier - but Nambiar’s film exposed the precariousness of the privileged Indian youth at a time when softball campus capers were still the norm and Ishq Wala Love would be an accepted form of poetry.

Its wild, hallucinogenic visuals introduced a new form of storytelling with Prashant Pillai’s trippy soundtrack changing the score of house parties forever.

9. A Death in the Gunj - 2016

Konkona Sen Sharma’s directorial debut takes us to the quaint vacation home of the Baskshi’s in McCluskiegunj, Jharkhand. The apparent construct of a well-to-do family soon begins to untwine as complex interpersonal family dynamics come into the fore. Caught in the centre is Shutu (Vikrant Massey), a recluse who’s often at the receiving end of jokes inflicted on him by his overbearing cousin Nandu (Gulshan Devaiah) and Vikram (Ranveer Shorey).

Sen Sharma’s command over the mood and atmospherics is commendable. She manages to paint a portrait of a family vacation by way of a horror movie: even when nothing appears to be happening, there’s always a sense of impending doom. Sagar Desai’s haunting score and Sirsha Ray’s melancolic frames capture the moral decay in an ostensibly regular household where toxic masculinity and gendered roles may not be very apparent but exist nonetheless. It’s a terrific debut by a terrific actor, unafraid to go into spaces that Indian families often pretend don’t exist.

8. Lootera - 2013

Vikramaditya Motwane’s Lootera is a fever dream. It’s a doomsday romance directed with such scale, finesse and ambition, it almost feels that Varun (Ranveer Singh) and Paki’s (Sonakshi Sinha) love story has folklore origins. Which isn’t entirely inaccurate because the film is an adaptation of O Henry’s short The Last Leaf, written almost a century ago. 

After years, Hindi cinema gave us a love story worth cherishing, one where the silences speak more than the dialogue and leaves carry more weight than the branches they’re on. Watching the film felt like wrapping yourself with a thick blanket during a Delhi winter, a warm and giddy, sitting-by-the-fireplace-while-it-snows-outside experience.

Lootera deviates from every conventional Bollywood trope and yet carries the aura of being a classic, the kind Guru Dutt would perhaps approve of. It features a remarkably understated Ranveer Singh and a beautifully vulnerable Sonakshi Sinha, a sweeping score by Amit Trivedi and haunting images worth wallpapering. 

It’s a story that makes you weep silently, sad and defeated in the knowledge that the love stories we root for the most are the ones destined to fail.

7. Delhi Belly - 2011

Abhinay Deo and Akshat Verma’s Delhi Belly really went out with it. A dark comedy unlike any mainstream Hindi cinema had seen (I for one, haven’t seen a man going down on a woman in a Hindi film. Definitely not answering a call during the act), Delhi Belly was a riot, a no-holds-barred adult fest that treated sexual humour with the dignified vulgarity it deserved.

From a peppy soundtrack (Ram Sampath) and zingy one-liners, Delhi Belly sped through the vast and serpentine lanes of the Indian capital, introducing us to delightful characters and their not-so-delightful escapades.

With stellar performances by Imran Khan, Vir Das, Shehnaz Treasury and most importantly, Vijay Raaz - oh my god Vijay Raaz - Delhi Belly’s success meant that Indian comedy had finally cum-of-age. A success like it was never repeated, hell, we never saw another Delhi Belly, further cementing its unique position in recent film history.

And orange juices were never the same again.

6. English Vinglish - 2012

A middle-aged woman protagonist being the center of the narrative is as rare in Bollywood as a... woman director at the helm of a film. But these are exactly the patriarchal and sexist notions that Gauri Shinde set out to counter in her delightful and affecting drama, English Vinglish.

Starring the late Sridevi in a role that only she could pull off, English Vinglish is a sparkling gem, a film that tugs at your heartstrings and inspires a smile on your face. About a homemaker who experiences a radical freedom and late self-awakening, English Vinglish is story that most of our mothers relate to and a shame that warrants our collective guilt. 

The strongest aspect of Shinde’s stunning debut was how it presented attitudes of casual sexism, snobbery and male entitlement as normal, everyday occurrences that appear, well, normal. Instead of becoming a moral sermon, it became a story about reclaiming power, tolerance and the right to dignity. A coming-of-middle-age, if you may. 

5. Fan - 2016

In Fan, a superstar is confronted with the worst perils of his own myth: an obsessed fan. A pretty simplistic, King of Comedy-inspired premise, sure. But what makes Maneesh Sharma’s drama subversive and inventive is that both star and fan are played by Shah Rukh Khan. There’s a sneaky, meta joke here: is the film arguing that perhaps Shah Rukh Khan is his own biggest fan? Peppered with high-octane chase sequences and genuine wit - Pehle fan star ke peeche bhaagta tha ... ab star fan ke peeche bhaagega - Fan is an unsettling exploration of the dark side of fame and obsession, themes the leading man is all-too familiar with.

It’s a boldly philosophical adventure that, while condemning the horrors of stalking and unrequited affection, invites the viewer to ruminate about how fictional stars are, more often than not, a disappointment in reality and that cinematic idols are best relegated to fictional universes. The film didn’t quite work commercially but remains Khan’s most daring performance: one where he successfully segregates the fan and the star and yet, in some standout scenes, manages to confuse us into guessing who’s who.

4. Bombay Velvet - 2015

Revisiting Anurag Kashyap’s bittersweet love letter to Bombay of yore is like opening an old wound: it still pains. And yet, it’s hard not to marvel at the sheer ambitiousness of Bombay Velvet, which was primarily a love story: between a street fighter and a jazz singer, between a sleepless loner and a city of dreams, between a filmmaker and an art form, between Kashyap and a jazz pianist he spent one memorable New York summer with, who the film is dedicated to.

With Bombay Velvet, Kashyap was sanctioned more money than he knew how to spend, he appointed two top stars, and an entire city was erected in a village in Sri Lanka - you had to see it to believe it - under whose weight an American studio’s Indian arm would nearly crumble. Not unlike its eventual fate, there remains an air of fatalistic tragedy about Bombay Velvet: it’s fantasy noir, exceptionally well-performed and has a climax that alone is worth sitting through the preceding chaos.

3. Ship of Theseus - 2013

Anand Gandhi erupted on the indie scene with this gutsy mindbender, a film that investigated individual belief systems and how they crumble under deeper intellectual scrutiny and, at times, when faced with mortal peril.

Through three intersecting storylines, a monk resistant to the idea of medicine (he’s been fighting against Big Pharma that experiments on animals), a blind photographer who feels she’s lost her intuitive sense of aesthetic after getting a cornea implant, a stock broker involved in an organ-harvesting racket, Ship of Theseus posed troubling questions of existentialism while offering no easy answers.

It’s a film that shifted the visual grammar of filmmaking in India, a kind of a prestige indie project that broke away from the echo chambers of film festivals and became part of mainstream discourse. Visually resplendent (Pankaj Kumar), Ship of Theseus, despite its didacticism, made potent points that provoked debate around independent choices and our wider responsibilities. It’s minimalist aesthetic was a sharp contrast to the traditional Bollywood colour palette, popping out as one of the bravest films of the decade.

2. Haider - 2014

At a time where militant nationalism has turned into a genre unto itself, it’s worth remembering Vishal Bhardwaj’s Haider and celebrate the fact that it even secured a release. A reimagination of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Bhardwaj chose to recontextualise the classic in military-occupied Kashmir and anchored his narrative through the perspective of a Kashmiri youth.

Other than a few docus, mainstream films set around the troubled valley often uncritically reinforce the State’s doctrine. Haider subverted the State-sanctioned narrative, compelling viewers to confront the horrors inflicted by the Indian army on the locals.

Depicting scenes of torture, the disillusionment of the Kashmiri youth with India, and even picturing a song about Kashmir’s unmarked mass graves, Haider is perhaps the most important film of the past decade, a film that chronicles the difficult political reality with the rawness and authenticity that it deserves.

Today, Bhardwaj, who’s vocally criticised BJP for its majoritarian politics, would’ve been branded a Pak-loving anti-national-urban-naxal-commi for making a film like Haider. And yet, despite being made half a decade ago, it remains more urgently relevant, incisively mirroring and simultaneously condemning the polarising time we live in. 

1. Jagga Jasoos - 2017

Anurag Basu’s Jagga Jasoos - with a career-best-non-plagiarised album by Pritam - injected Bollywood’s tired conventions with a refreshing new language, one excavated and improvised from the forgotten cemeteries of old Hollywood musicals. Basu audaciously played with form and theme and presented a Bollywood spectacle unlike anything Hindi cinema had witnessed before.

It was a project marred with delays and negative press and word on the street suggested that Basu was on edits weeks before the film’s release day but when the film dropped, it was received by many cinephiles with the wide-eyed wonder reserved for theme parks and underwater sojourns. Featuring Ranbir Kapoor as a stammering boy on the search for his missing father, Jagga Jasoos turned the quest into a delectable ride, the kind that made adults yearn for the bittersweet nostalgia of childhood.

Shot by Ravi Varman, who referenced European artists such as Rembrandt and van Gogh to compose the film’s evocative frames, Jagga Jasoos is pure cinematic poetry, a dazzling, blindingly gorgeous love letter to the art of film, one that isn’t afraid to tests the limits and the whims of cinema as it traverses and trains its romantic lens on the splending landscape of Bengal and Manipur, South Africa and Thailand. A truly remarkable film that deserves all your respect. And a repeat viewing.

Honourable mentions:

Love, Sex aur Dhokha (2010)

Saat Khoon Maaf (2011)

Shanghai (2012)

Dedh Ishqiya (2014)

Titli (2015)

NEHTAUR, Uttar Pradesh — The Uttar Pradesh police shot 20-year-old Mohammed Suleman dead in the afternoon of December 20. At midnight, his father was called to the closest police station to discuss funeral arrangements.

Suleman’s corpse was found by his family at a busy intersection in Nehtaur, a bustling urban settlement in Bijnor district, shortly after the state police trained their guns on a crowd of mostly Muslim men raising slogans against the controversial Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA). The demonstration in Nehtaur was part of hundreds of similar protests across the country.

Immediately after his death, Suleman’s family took his body to Bijnor’s district hospital, where the corpse was held by the police pending a post-mortem. Suleman’s post-mortem would be conducted in the early hours of December 21, a police officer told his father Zahid Hussain, but the body would be released to his grieving family on the condition that he be buried immediately and at a spot far away from Nehtaur, where Suleman and his family lived. No friends or mourners could be called for the funeral, and the abbreviated ceremony would be conducted under strict police bandobast.

“The police said, ‘You are rioters, you will cause a riot at the funeral’,” said Suleman’s elder brother Shoaib, who accompanied his father to the police station. “They said, ‘Just dig a hole anywhere and bury him.’” Suleman’s family had to patiently explain their death rituals to the disinterested police force.

A little after 7 am on December 21, Suleman’s body was loaded into a police vehicle and accompanied by a police convoy that navigated the circuitous backroads from Bijnor to a cemetery in a village called Baghdad Ansar, where his grandmother lived.

On the same night, another desperate family from Nehtaur was conducting a similar negotiation with the police. Anas Hussain, the 21-year-old father of an 8-month-old child, had been shot dead when he stepped out of a narrow alley and into the path of a bullet most likely fired by the police.  Here too, the police were refusing to hand over the body until the family chose a spot far away from Nehtaur.

Eventually, the police brought the body to a cemetery in a village called Mithan, and stood guard over the body as Anas’s brothers dug a grave, as Anas’s father heated water to wash his son’s body, as Anas’s uncle organised a wooden frame to lower the corpse into the grave. 

“Most of our family wasn’t allowed to see Anas one last time,” said his father Arshad Hussain, his eyes welling up with tears.

Police Brutality

At least 19 people have been killed in Uttar Pradesh’s brutal crackdown on demonstrations against the controversial Citizenship Amendment Act. The act, which makes religion a basis for deciding the citizenship status of refugees, has been criticised for violating India’s secular Constitution. UP’s Chief Minister Ajay Singh Bisht, who calls himself Yogi Adityanath, has justified the violence and has said his administration will take “revenge” against those demonstrating against the act. 

The visible violence, arson, and vandalism of the Uttar Pradesh police force, vividly captured by television channels, has been accompanied by an orchestrated attempt to erase all traces of deaths caused by the state police with a justified reputation for impunity.

The most evocative instance of this erasure is the state administration’s refusal to allow grieving families a moment to mourn their children killed in the course of police action. The police’s refusal to allow proper funerals for Suleman and Anas in Nehtaur follows a pattern across the state, as can be gleaned from similar accounts from Meerut, where at least five men were killed in police firing.

Viswajeet Srivastav, Additional Superintendent of Police Bijnor, confirmed that the families of Suleman and Anas were instructed to bury their children away from the village as the situation in Nehtaur was still volatile.

“The families gave their consent,” Srivastava told HuffPost India, adding that the midnight post-mortems had been conducted at the request of the families — a claim the families deny.

Last week, Bijnor Superintendent of Police Sanjeev Tyagi told The Indian Express that Suleman was killed in self-defence, after he shot a policeman Mohit Kumar with a country-made pistol

“When Mohit got close to Suleman, the latter opened fire with his country-made pistol. A bullet hit Mohit’s stomach,” said Tyagi. “In reply, Mohit also fired from his service pistol and the bullet hit Suleman’s stomach.” However, Tyagi confirmed to the Express that the police did not recover the pistol with which Suleman allegedly shot Kumar. Suleman’s family, in the meantime, insist he had no such weapon.

Memory And Forgetting

What remains of a young man after his body has been lowered into his grave? 

In Mohammed Suleman’s home, his sisters — none of whom could attend his secretive funeral choreographed by the UP police— handled his possessions with tenderness and sorrow.

There is a hand-written timetable charting out the hectic day of a student preparing for competitive exams for government jobs: a two hour slot from 5:00 AM to 7:00 AM “to offer Namaz, Home Work, Take Bath”; an hour and a half each for English, Science, Math and Reasoning; two hours for coaching homework.

There is a thick file containing all of Suleman’s report cards, starting from the Green Wood Convent School where Suleman went to kindergarten, right up to an admission application for Jamia Hamdard, where he had hoped to do a B.Tech in computers. 

There is a shelf in his bedroom stuffed with notebooks and registers.

There is a photograph of his corpse, with a neat bullet hole a few inches below his heart, that young men surreptitiously pull up on their phones.

“I don’t understand why the media doesn’t describe him as a student. They keep saying he was a “protestor’,” said Arshad, Suleman’s father. “But my son was not in at the protest, he was simply coming home from Namaz to continue his studies.”

It is right there in his daily timetable: “1:20PM to 2:30 PM — Namaz, coming home and lunch.”

That fateful day on December 20, 2019, Arshad said, Suleman did go to Namaz, and was coming home for lunch when he was struck by a policeman’s bullet. But there will be no tombstone in Nehtaur to mark the brief life and violent death of Mohammed Suleman. 

Those who wish to remember him, and pay their respects, will have to travel an hour to Baghdad Ansar. Many in Nehtaur will simply forget that there once lived a man called Mohammed Suleman, who wrote English in a neat cursive hand, who loved his parents, who was shot dead by the police on December 20, 2019.

Looking to make 2020 your happiest, most fulfilling year yet?

If your mental and emotional wellness took a backseat in 2019, there’s no better time than right now to prioritize it. (If anything, it’ll make the election year just mildly more bearable.) Your mood affects everything in your life ― your relationships, your work, your self-care ― so improving it should be at the top of your goal list.

That might feel like a huge and lofty task, but small, actionable habits can help you get there, according to experts. Below are the most common happiness tips therapists recommend. Maybe they’ll sound challenging or unrealistic (more on that later), but maybe they just might change your life.

1. Conquer one anxiety

Give yourself a motivational benchmark to start conquering your biggest fears this year.

“Single out the goal of selecting an anxiety that is holding you back, and thoroughly commit yourself to obliterating that fear,” said Forrest Talley, a clinical psychologist. “Hold nothing back in your assault; treat that fear as though it is enemy number one.”

Perhaps you’ve been worried about signing up for a half marathon. Maybe you’re afraid to reach out to book agents because you don’t want to be rejected. Perhaps you’re fearful of having a difficult conversation with a toxic friend or family member and you’re putting it off. Set the goal, pick a reward you’ll get when you complete it, then get to it.

“The thing to keep in mind is that very often happiness is found just on the other side of a doorway guarded by our anxieties,” Talley said. “And the new year is a great time to start kicking down some doors.”

2. Lock down a sleep schedule that works for you

You may think you’re doing OK on sleep, but take a closer look at your schedule. Are you really getting optimal hours? Are you maintaining relatively the same bed time every night?

“Getting a [consistent] good night’s sleep is vital; chronic sleep deprivation is a huge problem, especially for those who work late or are extremely busy,” said Joanna Konstantopoulou, a psychologist and founder of the Health Psychology Clinic. “It’s not just the 40-hour marathons without sleep which can be detrimental to your psychological health, but simply losing an hour or two on a regular basis can have a significant impact on your mind and well-being.”

That last bit is important. If you’re constantly shaving off an hour here or there ― thinking you can get by on five hours a night ― it’s time to reevaluate that sleep schedule.

“Start with small steps by giving yourself a sensible and realistic bedtime,” Konstantopoulou said. “Try to go to bed half an hour before your usual bedtime and stick to it. Evaluate this new habit every day by having a journal and writing down your progress.”

She noted that this new routine will improve your memory, reduce anxiety, and “transport toxins out of the brain” to potentially prevent chronic illnesses. 

3. Find one small self-care act that works for you and prioritize it

Pick a you-centric activity and engage in it regularly, said Elena Touroni, co-founder of The Chelsea Psychology Clinic.

“The most impactful mental health goal a person can set is the commitment to balance workload and responsibilities alongside activities that bring them a sense of well-being and enjoyment,” she said. “When there is an imbalance in what we’re giving out to the world, and what we’re taking for ourselves, that’s when our psychological resources get depleted.”

Her suggestions to get you started? Try beginning each day with a five-minute mindfulness meditation session. Want to go further? “Go to therapy to unravel a lifelong pattern, get a personal trainer, or make time for reading,” she said. “This commitment can be broken down into specific and concrete goals, depending on your personal preferences, but it all comes down to making self-care a priority.”

4. Spend 10 minutes a day outside

Go for a walk during your lunch break, spend a few minutes drinking your morning coffee outside or pick up running. It doesn’t even have to be for a long period of time.

“This year, resolve to spend less time inside and more time outdoors in natural settings,” said Michael Brodsky, a psychiatrist. “Research in multiple countries show that spending time in green spaces can lift your mood and relieve anxiety in as little as 10 minutes.”

5. Regularly practice a simple mindfulness exercise

“Many of us spend our days worrying about the future or ruminating about the past, thus, missing a great deal of what is happening in the here-and-now,” said Anna Prudovski, the clinical director of Turning Point Psychological Services. 

Making an effort to be more present “increases the sense of well-being, promotes vitality, heightens our awareness, helps train our attention, improves the quality of our work, and enhances interpersonal relationships,” she said. Sounds pretty nice, right? “Be more present” can feel a little vague, so here’s how you can get started:

Each day, spend five minutes noticing your surroundings and how you feel. Do this by naming five things you see, four things you can physically feel, three different sounds you hear, two things you can smell, and one thing you can taste. It’s OK if you point out something far away from you. Then take a second to label how you’re feeling in the moment (like, “I’m frustrated,” “I’m bored,” or “I’m excited”). This is known as a grounding exercise, which experts say helps with anxiety.

6. Say nice things about yourself

Roseann Capanna-Hodge, pediatric mental health expert and psychologist, suggested an adjustment to your everyday vocabulary, both in your thoughts and out loud.

“Instead of always focusing on the negative, flip your dialogue to only positive outcomes. For example, instead of saying, ‘If I get that job,’ switch it to, ‘When I get that job.’ Those subtle changes in using positive language helps to change your mindset to a glass half full instead of a glass half empty.”

You can also increase your positive thoughts by stating one thing you like about yourself when you look in the mirror each morning. Cheesy, but worth a shot.

7. Give up or cut back on one unhealthy habit

We know when things are bad for us, which can cause stress. You can curb that by reducing them or giving them up entirely, said Sarah C. McEwen, a cognitive psychologist. Think activities like high alcohol consumption or excessive caffeine consumption.

Getting those things in check “will all help to manage stress levels,” McEwen said. 

8. Find a physical activity you love

“Exercise plays a large role in mental health,” said physician Jena Sussex-Pizula. “While studies are ongoing, a review article found consistent beneficial effects of exercise on depressive symptoms across multiple studies.”

How often? McEwen suggests 30 minutes a day if you can. “This [amount] has been shown to produce the most benefit for improving mood and reducing stress levels,” she said.

The most important part is finding something you enjoy. It doesn’t matter if it’s pilates, martial arts, spinning, running, dancing or lifting weights ― just make sure the activity is something that excites you.

9. Try meditation

Haven’t jumped on the bandwagon just yet? Now is as good a time as ever. McEwen suggests meditation for those who want to improve their level of stress resilience.

“A mindfulness meditation practice will have a tremendous positive effect longterm,” she said. “I recommend allocating at least 30 minutes daily, which can be divided into morning and evening.”

Feeling intimidated by the concept? McEwen suggested trying a local class or an app like Headspace, Waking Up or Insight Timer. 

“Research has shown that the regular practice of meditation can actually improve your health because it lowers the negative effects of not only high cortisol, but also high cholesterol and high blood pressure,” she said. “Other great benefits of regular meditation include mental clarity and focus, improvement of memory and overall higher level of mental performance.”

10. Stop negative thoughts in their tracks

“Our thoughts are not always reality,” said Judy Ho, a clinical and forensic neuropsychologist and author of ”Stop Self Sabotage.” “And we need to get into the routine of challenging them and changing our relationships to our thoughts.”

You can do this by asking yourself a simple question when you’re beating yourself up. Next time you have a negative thought, ask yourself: Does this completely and accurately capture what’s going on?”

Ho said from there, you can transform the thought using one of two tactics. One is called “yes, but” and one is called “labeling.”

“‘Yes, but’ involves recognizing a not so great thing, and [adding] something that is positive or shows progress,” she said. “Example: I did eat three cupcakes while trying to cut down on sugar, but I have been doing a great job with healthy eating and can start fresh tomorrow.”

And as for labeling, try mentally recognizing or acknowledging that the thought you’re having is toxic. According to Ho, this “takes the wind out of the sails of a negative thought and reminds you that a thought is just a mental event, and nothing more.”

11. Invest in a quality relationship

“If you want to have good long-term mental and physical health, you need to first see if you have meaningful, loving relationships,” said clinical psychologist Kevin Gilliland. “Who knows you better than anyone and who do you know better than anyone? Have you invested in that relationship by staying in touch and talking on the phone (not just texting)? And when was the last time you got together?”

Gilliland suggests picking one person close to you this year, and planning to spend quality time together.

“If we’re not careful, we will end up giving our best in places that aren’t good for our mental health,” he said. “Study after study finds that loving meaningful relationships are good for our mental and physical health.”

12. Read self-development books

“Read at least one book on someone you admire, and how they have dealt with the struggles in their life,” Gilliland said. “There are a lot of ways to learn about your mental health, from therapy to self-help to the lives of other people.”

You can pick up many tips and find a lot of inspiration in these motivational books, whether they’re memoirs or expert-backed advice. Need a specific suggestion?

“I have so enjoyed Bruce Springsteen’s autobiography and recent album ‘Western Stars’ where he talks about his struggle with depression and family issues,” Gilliland said. “It’s powerful and encouraging ... You can’t help but see yourself in some of his stories, he can paint with words like very few people can. It’s a wonderful way to learn about your mental health without feeling like its work.”

13. Cut back on your social media use

So often we view people’s highlight reels on social media. This can lead to feelings of inadequacy in our own lives, according to experts. And given that research shows spending too much time online is linked to poor mental health, now’s the perfect time to cut back.

“External validation is temporary; it’s difficult to maintain the pressure to chase ‘likes,’” said therapist Jennifer Musselman. “Build your self esteem from competence of something important to you, and by being of service to others.”

14. Set better boundaries

Did you find yourself feeling chronically overwhelmed and stretched thin in 2019? Time to reel that in and make more space for you by setting boundaries.

“This one is more important than people realize, and they have way more control than they realize,” Gilliland said. “If you don’t want to go, then don’t go!”

Consider: Is it something you think you “should” do? If so, then why? In the words of a popular therapist joke, stop should-ing yourself. Set those boundaries to thrive in 2020.

15. Make a progress list each week

Expecting perfection guarantees you’ll feel like a failure at least part of the time, and can lead to serious anxiety.

“Learn the art of progress, not perfection,” Musselman said. “We are setting ourselves up for failure from the get-go [when we expect] to ‘have it all’ perfectly balanced. In other words, we will always feel like we are failing.”

From “doing it all” as a mom to building your entrepreneurial business to perfecting your talent, it’s time to let go of that expectation that things are always going to be perfect. Instead, try writing down the incremental improvements you made each week. Celebrate small successes that eventually will lead to big ones.

16. Allow yourself to be sad

We experience a range of emotions for a reason: They’re necessary to our overall well-being. Research even shows that crying can feel incredibly therapeutic.

Musselman said in order to truly feel happy, you need to “stop chasing happiness.” That can lead to more feelings of inner peace and calm, which of course, can lead to a more improved mood.

So embrace times when you feel disappointed, angry or sad instead of trying to rush through them.

17. Get a therapist if you’re able to do it

If you were trying to get in physical shape and had no idea where to start, you might turn to a coach or personal trainer. Mental health works the same way.

There are so, so many benefits to seeing a therapist. And there are affordable options, too: Attend group therapy at a local mental health center, seek free options in your community, opt for a sliding-scale psychologist, find a provider through your health insurance or try an app like Talkspace to get started.

“Getting a therapist in 2020 would be a good goal if you need a therapist and have been putting it off,” Talley said.

18. Write in a gratitude journal

Practicing gratitude “is so essential for a full and happy life,” Talley said.

Instead of allowing your brain to go to a place of anxiety and stress, Talley says to arm yourself with grateful thoughts. Writing them down helps.

“If you wake up and focus on that which you have to be grateful for, your brain becomes better at finding even more [gratitude],” Talley said.

19. Turn your phone off

It’s been shown in many studies that too much tech time can negatively impact mental health.

Become less available via text and email so you don’t feel emotionally tethered to your phone, and spend more time off your devices. Opt for screen-free activities ― especially at night ― that help you disconnect from certain social and work stressors.

“While it’s unclear if sedentary screen time is a marker for or risk factor for depression (as all that has been shown is a correlation), there appears to be a consistent association of increased screen time in patients with depression and anxiety,” Sussex-Pizula said.

20. Reduce food shame and stress through mindful eating

Have thoughts around food, calories, dieting, etc. been weighing on you in 2019? Lisa Hayim, a registered dietitian and founder of food therapy program Fork The Noise, said it’s time to kick this to the curb.

“When we feel nervous, scared, anxious, or even unsure of what to eat or how much, our stress hormones begin to fire,” she said. “Our sympathetic nervous system becomes activated, and we’re no longer making empowered decisions.”

Does this sound like you? Are you constantly thinking about what a food choice might “do” to your body?

“Breathe. Your body knows what it wants and how much it wants, when it wants it,” she said. Listening to it is called intuitive or mindful eating: enjoying whatever you want and taking cues from your body when it’s hungry and full.

“Decreasing stress around food choices is not just good for the body, it’s good for the mind and the soul,” Hayim said.

Ready to increase your joy? Join our “Happy New Year” challenge. HuffPost editors will be put these tips to the test throughout January 2020 to see if they really make a difference. We’ll also publish new stories all month about the pursuit of happiness. Keep checking back on HuffPost Life for updates and share what happiness habits are working for you at wellness@huffpost.com.