Stormy affair: Odisha families rush to name newborns after cyclone Titli

Stormy affair

Several families in Nayagarh, Ganjam and Jagatsinghpur rushed to name their newborn daughters Titli because they were born either before the cyclone's arrival in Odisha or after it made landfall. This is quite in contrast to what happens in many other countries. According to the US Social Security Administration, once popular baby names such as Katrina, Sandy and Andrew have lost favour in the United States after they were attached to hurricanes and storms that caused death and destruction.

Work and play

Twitter broke into a storm after pictures of Union minister Harsh Vardhan sitting on a throne, complete with costume and makeup, playing Raja Janak in a Ramleela went viral. While many saw nothing wrong in a minister participating in Ramleela, others questioned the timing given the high pollution levels in Delhi. “Today morning Delhi's pollution is 8x higher than normal and the Union minister is busy doing Ramleela stage naatak," said a Twitter user, while others urged the minister of environment, forests and climate change in the BJP-led NDA government to concentrate on his “real job”. Some even voted him the “most hardworking” minister.

This is not cricket

Janata Dal United (JDU) Rajya Sabha member RCP Singh announced last week that soon, the party will organise cricket, football, volleyball and kabaddi tournaments in Bihar. The tournaments will be named after Mahatma Gandhi, Jayaprakash Narayan and Ram Manohar Lohia. To start with, the party will first organise a cricket tournament that will be named after Lohia in which separate teams of men and women will take part. The Opposition Rashtriya Janata Dal lost no time in accusing Chief Minister Nitish Kumar of utter “disregard for icons” and for “digressing from socialist ideals”. RJD national vice-president Shivanand Tiwari quoted Ramachandra Guha’s book, A Corner Of A Foreign Field: The Indian History Of A Foreign Sport, as evidence of Lohia’s distaste for the game. When there was no immediate reaction from the JDU, some surmised the CM might be rummaging through Guha's book looking for an answer.