A list of good reads

• Tishani Doshi offers a lyrical elegy to a year of loss—that included the death of her dog.
• Manu Chandra looks back at a year that changed our relationship to food—and then changed it right back!
• The Observer asks: Is ‘Bridgerton’ really progressive when it comes to race?
• An absolute must-read: Snighdha Poonam and Samarth Bansal in RestOfWorld uncover how frighteningly easy it is to buy detailed personal information on someone in India.
• Scroll has a delightful excerpt from Krish Ashok’s ‘Masala Lab’—which uncovers the alcohol lurking in everyday foods.
• Ranjit Lal in Indian Express pens a funny essay on the married lives of birds.
• New York Times has a trendspotting piece on a subject close to our heart: working from bed.
• Why are so many parents in Disney movies either dead or missing? Hopes&Fears investigates.
• Speaking of parents, you must read Garry Kasparov’s tribute to his mother—who died on Christmas Day.
• Christina Dhanaraj in Times of India offers a thoughtful pushback to our romanticisation of friendship.
• Before we went on break, everyone was talking about Andy Mukherjee’s essay titled ‘Why I’m Losing Hope in India’. Kiran Kumbhar in The India Forum is in the exact same place but for very different reasons. His essay offers a valuable corrective to some of Mukherjee’s blindspots.