I occupy super-woke circles and work in a liberal office where I get periodic reminders to check my privilege. But years of higher education have not been able to entirely erase the prejudices and biases over fair and dark skin that I grew up with.

The Chennai water crisis has been a wake-up call for many Indians. Those of us who lived somewhere comfortably between “sab chalta hai” and “jugaad” are now a seriously conflicted lot, worried about the future of the planet. If this spurs us into action, eco-anxiety might not be such a bad thing.

If you grew up with The Lion King soundtrack, it’s never going to leave you. Back when I was a five-year-old, I used to drive my mother crazy with the Zulu chants from “Circle of Life”. Today, I do the same to my girlfriend when our morning alarm doesn’t do the job.

Rendezvous with Simi Garewal will be back soon and even in this talk show-saturated climate, I’m waiting with bated breath for the return of the queen. The old-fashioned talk show was not bogged down by any “revealing” rapid fires, instead Garewal’s spotless white couch was more like that of a therapist.

Anyone who’s seen When Harry Met Sally as many times as I have will tell you this: its genius evolves and matures as you (hopefully) do. Maybe, when you realise you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you really do want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible. But men and women can be friends. The sex part doesn’t always get in the way. Does it? Oh, who the hell knows.

I began my first job as a presenter for Yuva Bharati, the AIR’s “youthful” section, in the late ’90s. The studios were nothing like the zany spaces of Tumhari Sullu but more like retro bunkers from a sci-fi movie set. And there were massive BBC books that guided us on how to pronounce Beethoven and Tchaikovsky.

The last month has been about the World Cup and Wimbledon and it all ended with an ultimate showdown on Sunday. But now that it’s over, how long will we continue to dissect the two greatest games of our time? What do we do with our evenings?

It’s 2019 and yet in some of the year’s biggest scripts, actresses continued to play second fiddle. Save for Gully Boy’s Safeena, most of them were devoid of a personality. In one of the highest grossers of the year, Kabir Singh, Preeti exists only to get exploited, and in Kesari, we still don’t know if Parineeti Chopra is a ghost or a memory.

The smiley is a wily one. It is truly a tool of subversion. If deployed effectively, it is the magic wand that has the power to circumvent.