@leomessisite is in India on a three-day tour, visiting Kolkata, Hyderabad, Mumbai, and New Delhi. It’s the perfect moment to revisit how a Pakistani man born in Bhopal helped Argentina win their first World Cup. If you happen to meet Messi, you tell him this story. Thread. 1/18 To unearth the personal accounts for this immensely interesting story, we spoke to Ijaz Chaudhry, an eminent sports journalist with roots in both Pakistan and the UK who has written, reported and spoken in several prestigious sports newspapers and on TV/Radio channels. (2/18)

The newly-reignited debate over Vande Mataram fanned by opportunistic political actors has again dragged a century-old cultural conversation into a culture war. But long before today’s noise, Rabindranath Tagore had already thought deeply about the song.

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Vande Mataram began as a poem in Bankim Chandra Chatterjee’s novel Anandamath (1882). Its early life was literary and regional, an invocation to a mother-figure rooted in Bengal, but it quickly became a political war-cry in the anti-colonial movement. 2/20

Urban India is furious at IndiGo.

If only it was this angry when millions of migrants were walking home on foot.

Thread. 1/18 For a country that prides itself on moving fast, India was strangely unprepared for the week in 2025 when IndiGo—the airline that had become shorthand for middle-class mobility—simply stopped working. 2/18

Simone Tata, the visionary who transformed Lakmé into India's leading cosmetic brand, passed away yesterday in Mumbai. She was 95. We recount the remarkable story of how Goddess Lakshmi inspired the most well-known cosmetic brand of India. 1/16
Photo by Bikramjit Bose. The story begins in India in the 1950s, a nascent democracy that was unavoidably going through growth pains. Reportedly, the Nehru administration had realised that Indian women were spending a lot of money on imported cosmetics. 2/16

This is one of the most significant pieces of furniture in India’s modern history. If furniture could speak, this one would tell the story of a hero’s last stand.

A short thread. 1/11 This sofa set was recovered from the ill-fated Palm Lounge at the Taj Mahal Hotel, Mumbai, during the 26/11 terrorist attack, bearing a total of 13 bullet marks.

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Legendary actor Dharmendra passed away yesterday after a brave battle. He had been receiving treatment at Mumbai’s Breach Candy hospital.
Did you know that the tune of this song from 'Anupama' (1966) was actually composed 4 years earlier for another film? #DharmendraDeol 1/9 Hrishikesh Mukherjee drew from his cousin's real-life story for the titular character in 'Anupama'. In an interview with The Indian Express, he shared, "My aunt died during childbirth, my uncle turned to alcohol, and he couldn't bear his daughter. " 2/9

Somewhere on the north side of the 6200 block of Hollywood Boulevard lies a Walk of Fame star with a single name: Sabu.
Who was he?

He was a boy from Mysore, the son of a mahout, an elephant trainer.

How did he end up in Hollywood? Read on 1/14 He was Sabu Dastagir: Born as Selar Sabu in 1924 in Mysore state.

This is an incredible story of a mahout boy from Mysore who won a DFC in WWII and was inducted in Hollywood Walk of Fame.

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In the late 1920s, a young Indian woman boarded a ship bound for Germany to do her PhD. Her name was Irawati Karve. And she was about to take on one of the most dangerous ideas of her time.

Thread. 1/12 Her academic supervisor in Berlin, Eugen Fischer, was a leading figure in medicine and physical anthropology — and a member of the Nazi Party. His influence ran deep. Even Adolf Hitler read his textbook while in prison and used those ideas to build the Nazi racial doctrine. 2/12

Remembering Asrani, the man who made us laugh even in a film drenched in blood and revenge.
But behind his iconic “Angrezon ke zamaane ka jailor” act in Sholay lies an unlikely inspiration - a secret photoshoot in Germany nearly a century ago. Thread 1/17 To understand that connection, we must first talk about a man named Heinrich Hoffmann. He was a photographer, but not an ordinary one. He was Hitler’s personal photographer, propagandist, and one of his closest aides. 2/17

As Diwali lights up homes across India, Bengal and the East mark the night with worship of Goddess Kali. But here’s a story few remember. Over a century ago, she was the face of a swadeshi cigarette brand. Long before the Marlboro Man, we had our own Gutsy Goddess. 1/19 This curious chapter of India’s commercial and political history came to light through an exquisite lithograph advertisement we spotted few years back inside the Calcutta Gallery at the Victoria Memorial Hall. 2/19

Taj Mahal is back in the news again. This time, not for love, but for all the wrong reasons. But decades ago, it made headlines for something far stranger. Because once, a man almost sold the Taj Mahal. The unbelievable story of Natwarlal — India’s greatest conman. Thread 1/17
Mithilesh Kumar Srivastava — better known as Natwarlal — was born in 1912 in Bangra, a small village in Bihar. His father, a railway station master, introduced him early to the world of documents, seals, and signatures. 2/17

The Cathedral of the Sacred Heart near Connaught Place in New Delhi is one of the city's oldest Christian establishments which have a strange connection with your favorite coffee drink, the Cappuccino.

Read on. 1/17 Who would have thought while sipping Cappuccino at a café in Connaught Place that their cup of coffee would have a strange bond with a church just a few miles away at the junction of Bhai Vir Singh Marg Road and Bangla Sahib Road. 2/17

What connects the American Civil War to Durga Puja in Bengal?

It's the nostalgic toy cap guns. The story of the cap gun is stranger than it looks.

Thread. 1/14 If you didn’t grow up in Kolkata, you might have missed it — the streets during Durga Puja once alive with kids firing toy cap guns, little puffs of smoke and crackles everywhere. A vivid pre-social media ritual of childhood, with a fascinating origin story.
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Four years ago in Kerala, sixteen strangers walked into the Russian House in Thiruvananthapuram. They were from different districts, different walks of life. But they all carried one name that bound them together.

Gagarin. Yes, Gagarin.
So, What brought them together? 1/16
The name needs no introduction, or does it?

On April 12, 1961, Yuri Gagarin became the first human to journey into space. For the world, it was history. For a section of Kerala’s left-leaning families, it was inspiration strong enough to echo in their children’s names. 2/16

Long before she was a global icon, Mother Teresa walked the streets of Kolkata, and when she had nowhere to go, the city’s iconic Kali Temple opened its doors. On her birthday, we remember the unlikely home that started a journey of compassion that changed the world. Thread 1/19 When Mother Teresa began her work in Calcutta in 1948, she had almost nothing of her own. She wore a plain white cotton sari with a blue border and carried little more than conviction. 2/19

Why does sugarcane taste so sweet in India today? India’s sugarcane wasn’t always this sweet. The reason it tastes the way it does today goes back to the stubborn brilliance of one woman who fought prejudice, doubt, and even war. Thread.

1/19 Janaki Ammal was born in 1897 in Kerala. At a time when most girls were expected to marry early, she chose science.

Botany became her world.

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Open a Crayola box today and you’ll find hundreds of shades. But if you grew up in the 80s or 90s using Crayola art supplies, you might remember a crayon called Indian Red. And then, one day, it just disappeared. What exactly happened?
1/14 To answer that, you have to travel way beyond the Crayola factory in Pennsylvania…
all the way to a small town in Kerala, India.
In 1807, a Scottish man named Francis Buchanan was surveying the region for the East India Company.
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This year, a controversy broke out over a scene in Kesari 2. It allegedly misrepresented one of Bengal’s greatest freedom fighters, Khudiram Bose, by calling him Khudiram Singh. To understand why that name matters, we have to take a train to a small station in Bihar. Thread 1/19 The station has two platforms and is located in Samastipur district, part of the East Central Railway’s Sonpur division. To understand why the name mix-up hurt so deeply, we have to look beyond cinema. This small, unassuming train station may hold the answer. 2/19

Rahul Gandhi’s startling claims of voter list fraud have sparked intense debate over India’s election integrity. Nearly a hundred years ago, a small West African country experienced one of the most extraordinary election frauds in history. What exactly took place? Thread 1/18
In 1927, Liberia went to the polls. On paper, it was just another general election. In reality, it would become a masterclass in how far those in power will go to hold on to it.
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Mujib’s 1974 Lahore visit was a watershed moment in Bangladesh and subcontinental politics. Hoping to gain recognition from Pakistan and China, he tried to distance Bangladesh from Indo-Soviet axis. But that it would bring greater doom never crossed his mind. Thread. 1/17 Mujib's decision to attend the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) summit in Lahore in March 1974 - trading Pakistan’s diplomatic recognition of Bangladesh for dropping the trial of 195 heinous Pakistani war criminals - opened the flood gates of conspiratorial politics. 2/17

When a plane crashes, the world demands answers. The recent Air India tragedy left millions searching for truth. But, when all goes quiet, one device speaks: the black box. A device nobody wanted until it started telling the truth. Thread on the birth of the Black Box.
1/15 Today is Dr. David Warren’s birthday – a fitting day to remember the man behind the “black box.” It’s hard to believe now, but his life-saving device almost never meant to be built. It’s remarkable that something so essential to safety was buried under layers of red tape. 2/15