One: Put away your crassly emblazoned LV bag or flashy streetwear. We’re all about ‘quiet luxury’ and ‘stealth wealth’—which is everywhere from fashion magazines to TikTok. What’s that you ask? Here’s Vogue’s take on it:

It’s less austere than minimalism but more polished than “normcore.” It’s Sienna Miller in ‘Anatomy of a Scandal’ meets off-duty Olsen twins; it’s a battered Hermès Kelly bag or a Max Mara investment coat thrown over an ancient pair of vintage jeans. Confused? We admit that it’s not an easy aesthetic to pin down, and it’s more of a mood than anything else, but if we know one thing, it’s that “quiet luxury” is a look that will stand the test of time, as it’s essentially a synonym for elevated basics.

Translation: It’s the tricky art of looking like money—without the help of in-your-face luxury brands. Yes, this is the very definition of ‘rich people problems’. A popular example: the subtle flex of Kendall’s $625 cashmere baseball caps in ‘Succession’ (see: lead image). OTOH, here’s what The Atlantic says about the cap (and the trend): “It’s much like the rest of what the character wears: as boring as it is expensive, perfect for a guy with a lot of money but few ideas of his own.” Lol!

Two: Sticking with what’s new: the hottest trend in fitness is called ‘primal movement’. US gyms are now offering classes that involve getting down on all fours—and hopping around like a bunny or crawling like a bear. Or you can imitate apes, donkeys, crabs and even scorpions. Like so:

And here’s why this is good for you:

Ground moves such as crawling, rolling, squatting and kneeling, also involve transferring weight and controlling the centre of gravity with balance, which we need to efficiently get around in daily life and avoid being dog tired. The workouts require minimal or no equipment, which makes sense since animals have none.

You can see a more complex routine here. Nope, aping apes ain’t easy. (Wall Street Journal, splainer gift link)

Three: We can’t do justice to Joyojeet Pal’s lengthy thread on Niranjan Pal—the lesser known co-founder of Bombay Talkies along with Himanshu Rai and Devika Rani (the popular series ‘Jubilee’ is based on their story). What’s astonishing about Pal is not his movie career—but the wild anti-British plots he cooked up with his buddy Vinayak ‘Veer’ Savarkar in London. Yup, that’s the founding father of Hindutva. You can see him and Savarkar together at the India House—which was the hotbed of suited-booted revolutionaries:

This included the plan to assassinate Lord Curzon—which, well, ended in the murder of his aide instead. Savarkar was eventually arrested and shipped off to the Andamans despite Pal’s not-so-competent efforts to break him out of prison. It included a jailbreak staged on a ship in Marseille—all of which ended in farcical failure. 

Despite these high-risk adventures, Pal went on to become a successful playwright in London—and eventually returned to India to start Bombay Talkies in 1934. Joyojeet’s thread is filled with wonderful details—many of which will surprise you. The bit about Savarkar starts here—but you can read it from the very beginning, as well.