In The Buzz Cut, we bring you a round-up of all the weird, controversial, and wonderful stories we’ve been reading all week.
Indian politicians, Instagram reels, Dua Lipa. The unexpected union of these three things involves politicians (like Arvind Kejriwal and Yogi Adityanath) posting reels with Lipa’s Levitating playing in the background. Elections in the time of a pandemic are more focused on a social media presence — you know, to tap the young voter base. Gives a whole new meaning to “You want me, I want you, baby.”
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The Indian food culture has a longstanding romance with roses. From faloodas and Rooh Afzas to biryanis and pilafs, the fragrance has permeated memory and taste. But no story about a romantic tryst with roses is complete without mentioning Nur Jahan, who made the rose oil popular then — and now.
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A right-wing U.S. politician this week termed a television program “little gay demons” for wanting to collaborate with singer Lis Nas X. The artist has been “treated like a fad in human form,” but his music and ideas may be a good reason to believe he is indeed the future of pop.
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Nicki Minaj is known for many things — the swollen balls kerfuffle is her latest marker. The singer’s fraught relationship with the media is framed as her war with the truth. That may not be the case: “If Minaj is to be interpreted as a truth crusader, her crusade is primarily in service of her own personal truth, which often doesn’t square with the objective truth.“
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What is better than a love story? A love story anchored by dead bats. Love blossomed over excavations and biopsies, across historical buildings, temples, and subterranean caves. This story of two Indian researchers and conservationists is also a ballad of India’s “Bat Woman and Bat Man.“
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Superhero girlfriends aren’t thought to be the best female role models. But this defense of Lois Lane, the romantic interest of Superman, is worth mulling over. “I was struck by how much space she dared to take up. And just like that, I had a champion of my own.”
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A German biologist solved a century-old mystery of where species come from. The answer curiously came from the study of crows, whose grey plumage hardly inspire creativity. But they represent a “seamless needlework of evolutionary change.”
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A writer’s friendship with Kurt Cobain is a story of empathy, vulnerability, love, peace. Mostly, befriending a rockstar is a story of tragedy too: “Dealing with the death of someone you know is always difficult and strange, but that difficulty and strangeness is vastly compounded when the person was a public figure.“
