How Sabyasachi Mukherjee built India's biggest luxury brand

The fallible one: Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah never shies away from taking on the RSS and the BJP over their brand of hindutva. He reiterates that the Congress follows the Mahatma’s version that is inclusive. Recently, during the ‘Gandhi Bharata’ event in Belagavi, Siddaramaiah reminded the audience that Gandhi was a devout Hindu and the BJP was trying to wrongly portray him as “anti-Hindu”. He recounted that Gandhi’s last words when he was shot by Nathuram Godse was “Sri Rama, Sri Rama”. The crowd corrected him that it was “Hey Ram”. The CM nodded in agreement | Illustrations by Jairaj T.G.

Eternal atonement: Nand Gopal Gupta, better known by his moniker Nandi, is Uttar Pradesh’s minister of industrial development and he hails from Prayagraj. Whenever a high profile guest visits the Kumbh Mela grounds to take a dip at the Sangam, Nandi is by his side, taking his own dips. The joke is that Nandi has washed off the sins of many a lifetime in the Triveni and he will end up creating a record for the highest number of dips.

Parading a new look: K.S. Arun Kumar, state council member of the CPI(M)-affiliated trade union CITU, is widely recognised as the party’s spokesperson on television debates. At a recent meeting in Kochi, he was assigned the responsibility of leading the parade of the party’s 15,000-strong ‘red volunteers’. But when he turned up for the parade in the red and khaki uniform, most comrades failed to recognise him—he had shaven off the beard he had been sporting for two decades. Interestingly, some party leaders even took potshots at him for flaunting the new look.

Philosophical fashion: If anyone can make playfulness co-exist with a kind of sombre darkness, it is Rahul Mishra, whose Spring/Summer collection at the Paris Haute Couture Week was inspired by Carl Sagan’s meditative essay, The Pale Blue Dot. Mishra, who is as much a philosopher as he is a designer, made a statement on the insignificance of mankind against the vastness of the universe with his structured skirts and flowing silks with celestial motifs. As he said, “We are the custodians of life’s meaning.” The couture week took off with shows by Schiaparelli and Dior. With many Oscar hopefuls on the lookout for red carpet gowns, design houses are putting their best high-heeled foot forward | Getty Images

Gates, unfiltered: Everyone knows about the wizard who dropped out of Harvard to start a software company that revolutionised personal computing. (In case you’re from outer space, we are talking about Bill Gates.) But how many know about the kid who did LSD? Or the one who asked a girl on a date after telling her that he’d dialled the phone with his toes? It might have been one of the worst pick-up lines ever (up there with Joey Tribbiani’s ‘How you doin’), but if you want to know whether the girl took him up on the offer, check out Gates’s memoir, Source Code, that hits the stands on February 4 | Getty Images

Third time lucky?: It seems Pakistani actor and police officer Dodi Khan is in the business of “love enforcement”. He is reportedly carrying on a torrid affair with reality TV star Rakhi Sawant, who recently revealed that a third marriage to him is on the cards. “He is my love,” she said. “We love each other. He is from Pakistan. I am from India, so we will have a love marriage.” Some have called her publicity hungry, but when it comes to her marriage, it seems she wants all nosy parkers to back off. “Everybody is very worried about my wedding,” she had shared on social media. “I can marry whenever I want, whether in India, Pakistan, China, Bhutan, America, London or Canada. Live and let live.” Something that is not easy when it comes to her, since Sawant’s truth bombs tend to be tabloid gold | AP

Music & mayhem: Lady Gaga is living proof that the biggest threat to fame is fame itself. The singer, who is coming out with her seventh album—Mayhem—on March 7, says that it started as her facing her fear of returning to the pop music that her early fans loved. She added that working on new music felt like “reassembling a shattered mirror: even if you can’t put the pieces back together perfectly, you can create something beautiful and whole in its own way”. The powerhouse performer is no doubt pop royalty, but perhaps what takes her charm to a different level is her vulnerability—evidence that beneath her three Oscar nominations and one win, 13 Grammy wins, humongous fan base (who call themselves the Little Monsters) and own beauty range (Haus Labs), she is human like the rest of us | Getty Images