Mixed Shots

Thousands of families have been forced to shift to temporary shelters as floodwaters inundated large tracts in the first wave of monsoon floods in Assam

No Mandarin In This Mukku

The violent face-offs between the Chinese and Indian armies is causing repercussions as far as Kerala. After the incident, the people of China Mukku (literally China Junction) want to change the name they got stuck with seven decades ago. Like every other problem contemporary India faces, some have traced its antecedents to Nehru. Legend has it that when India’s first prime minister visited Konni gram panchayat in Kerala, he noticed a sea of red flags in a communist stronghold. He apparently saw red and asked whether it was a China junction. That, supposedly, was the genesis of the anti-national name, which residents are now trying to dissociate themselves from.

DeadWood’s d-day

What do you do when your child is not particularly bright? Well, some doting parents feed them Horlicks, some almonds and some marry them off to wooden effigies. The latter was the fate of a man in Ghurpur, Uttar Pradesh. His father Shiv Mohan explains, “I have nine sons; eight of them are married. The ninth is not intelligent and has no property. So I got him married to an effigy.” We can’t wait to see what progeny this unique union will produce. Now if only all parents were as realistic about their darling offspring’s prospects!

Moonshot for a Lunar loo

Space travel can be quite a shitty affair—literally so. After all, you wouldn’t want your excretions floating like feathery seeds in zero-gravity spaces. Thankfully, space shuttles come equipped with toilets. But NASA is hoping to cut costs with a compact WC that weighs less than half of the toilets in use. As an incentive, they have launched the Lunar Loo Challenge with prizes worth Rs 26 lakh. If NASA’s Artemis Moon mission is successful, a man and woman will land on the moon in 2024. And hopefully, they won’t have to stock up on adult diapers.

Ki Khaike GI Banaras Wala

Gone are the days when any lowly stuffed betel leaf could masquerade as the king of paans—the Banarasi paan. For it is soon going to get the Geographical Indication (GI) tag, which will not allow people outside the region to appropriate the product and provide an impetus to exports. The Banarasi paan is not a lone ranger, however. It is in the august company of Banarasi langra mango, Barabanki handlooms, Adamchini rice and Muzaffarnagar jaggery—among the 26 products in Uttar Pradesh that are set to receive the coveted GI tag.

Illustrations: Saahil, Text by Alka Gupta and Syed Saad Ahmed