No war, no peace: Is India's military ready for the new normal?

Man and child: At the Congress Maha Panchayat in Kochi, Rahul Gandhi met the party’s recently elected local body representatives in Kerala. V.D. Satheesan, the state’s leader of the opposition, used the occasion to deliver a fiery appeal to fight “fascism” without compromise. But Satheesan’s attempt to galvanise the cadre fell flat—for nearly half of his speech the attention was on “Rahul ji”, who was taking a selfie and sharing chocolate with a boy who had climbed on to the stage. After all, the fight against fascism could wait | Illustrations by Job P.K.

Location matters: Arguing before the Supreme Court on liquor shops near the highways, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta noted that while rules prohibit boards announcing such shops, there were workarounds. Apparently, a plain arrow sign was enough for discerning buyers. Mehta then decided to add punch to his narrative with a joke: a beggar sat in front of temples, mosques and churches, but earned little. One day, he was advised to sit near a liquor shop. He tried it and each customer gave him Rs100, prompting a profound reflection: “God, if you live here, why do you give another address?”

Lawmakers, rule breakers: After an MP smoking inside Parliament prompted outrage and a warning from Speaker Om Birla, Bihar has now served up its own version of the same entitlement. JD(U) MLA Anant Singh was caught on camera smoking inside a hospital, inviting public backlash. Different setting, same assumption: rules are for other people.

Toon on top: Disney’s Zootopia 2 has become Hollywood’s highest-grossing animated film ever, earning $1.7 billion worldwide. The sequel, which premiered last November, is now the ninth-most successful Hollywood film globally, just behind the likes of Avengers: Endgame and Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Directed by Jared Bush and Byron Howard, Zootopia 2 takes forward the story of the bunny-and-fox duo Judy Hopps and Nick Wilde, voiced by Ginnifer Goodwin and Jason Bateman. Previously, the record was held by Inside Out 2, which made $1.69 billion in 2024. But worldwide, Zootopia 2 is still behind China’s animated film Ne Zha 2, which earned $2.2 billion last year | Getty Images

Standing taller: It is not often that 6’5” is ‘not tall enough’. But that was the challenge the makers of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, which premiered on January 18, faced, despite casting a giant of a man for the lead role. Peter Claffey, 29, a former rugby player, is an imposing presence by any standard. But the character he plays in the Game of Thrones prequel, Ser Duncan the Tall, is canonically around seven feet tall. Instead of technology, they went with technique to raise his height, through multiple low-angle shots framing him against the sky. While the first episode tricks you into seeing a seven-foot titan, the illusion may be hard to sustain. But, if the premiere is any indication, Claffey’s towering performance may more than make up for the lack of a few inches.

Annie gets a facelift: Pradip Krishen’s restored 1989 film In Which Annie Gives It Those Ones will premiere at the upcoming Berlin Film Festival (February 12 to 22). The film’s screenplay was written by Arundhati Roy based on her experiences in architecture school. The campus comedy went on to win two national awards for best screenplay and best feature film in English. Roy collaborated with Krishen for their third film together—Electric Moon—in 1992, before going on to win the Booker Prize for her debut novel The God of Small Things in 1997. Shivendra Singh Dungarpur, director of the Film Heritage Foundation that restored the film, called it “irreverent and idiosyncratic”, authentically capturing the “student milieu of the ’70s” | Salil Bera

Throwback to 2016: The year 2026 may have just begun but all the talk on social media is about another year—2016. The pre-AI charm and retro aesthetic of that year has given rise to the viral ‘2026 is the new 2016’ trend. In the first week of 2026, searches for 2016 jumped by 452 per cent on TikTok and #2016 crossed 37 million posts on Instagram. After Hailey Bieber, Kylie Jenner, Alia Bhatt and Ananya Panday, it is Sonakshi Sinha’s turn to endorse the trend. Starting with her action journey in the film Akira to meeting her favourite actor Will Smith to being on a magazine cover every month that year to performing at the Global Citizen Festival in Mumbai just before Coldplay, Sinha certainly had an eventful 2016. Here’s wishing her an even more auspicious 2026 | AFP