Once upon a gloomy winter afternoon in Delhi, I took a trip to a bookstore to cheer myself up. When I found a stack of 10-15 small, squarish black paperbacks there, I knew the trip was a success. As their short titles (Personal Stereo; Egg; Dust; Sock) drew me in, I saw that the books belonged to a series called Object Lessons, published by Bloomsbury. Each book, just about a hundred pages long, is written by a different author each time. Telling fascinating stories of things we’d otherwise think of as mundane, they blend philosophy, nostalgia and cultural history in a most delightfully intimate yet universally relatable way. I highly recommend collecting some of these for your personal libraries. —Vangmayi Parakala
Darren Walsh likes a good pun. He’s not afraid to share some with the public either. The British writer, director and voice artist can be seen on the streets of UK dishing out free puns as part of his Instagram (@darrenwalshpuns), YouTube and TikTok series Jokes On The Street. The format is simple: Walsh politely asks passersby if they like puns. If that’s a yes, they then give him a topic, after which Walsh pops up with an impromptu pun. They mostly hit the spot. It’s nothing out of the extraordinary. Many people tend to ignore Walsh but those who hear him out, leave with a fun memory for the day. With more than 100,000 followers on his Instagram handle, the puns are clearly working. Here’s one for you from a recent video of his—a pun on “skunks”. “I do have a joke about it... but it stinks.” —Nitin Sreedhar
Ryuichi Sakamoto was dying of cancer when Monster was being made. He couldn’t manage an entire soundtrack, but he contributed two piano pieces to this film (running in select theatres) by Hirokazu Koreeda, one of the most highly regarded directors in the world. The five other tracks are from his albums, mostly delicate works for piano, including the transcendent hibari from Out Of Noise. Sakamoto died in March 2023, making this film—about two troubled young boys—an emotional big-screen farewell to Sakamoto, who is known for his eclectic compositions. Besides his vast repertoire of solo and group work, the composer had created indelible soundtracks in Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence, The Last Emperor and The Revenant. —Uday Bhatia
True Detective: Night Country, the fourth season of the critically acclaimed anthology crime show, is a testament to the joys of slow watching: waiting for each weekly episode to land and spending the time in between analysing, rewatching, reading fan theories and consuming endless videos breaking down the previous one. It helps that the show, set in a small mining town in Alaska just as winter darkness descends, lends itself to this beautifully. There are several mysterious crimes central to the season’s storyline, seemingly supernatural elements, as well as its own mythos, with myriad Easter eggs and possible throwbacks to the show’s iconic first season, which all need to be decoded. The HBO show (helmed by Issa López, starring Jodie Foster and Kali Reis as the titular detectives) is streaming on JioCinema in India. —Shrabonti Bagchi
