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Time of India
4 days ago
- General
- Time of India
Redditor shares 41-year-old letter dad wrote to maternal grandfather asking for marriage blessings; netizens melt with awe and respect
In an era where DMs and emojis often replace emotions, a Reddit user recently brought the internet to a standstill by sharing a heartwarming gem from the past — a handwritten love letter from 1984. The letter wasn't just any confession of love; it was a respectful plea from a young man to his would-be father-in-law, asking for his daughter's hand in marriage. Forty-one years later, the romance, humility, and emotional sincerity in that letter have resonated with people across generations. From Delhi to Raipur, with Love The Redditor, posting in r/indiasocial under the title 'Found 41-year-old letter written by my dad to my maternal grandfather seeking his permission for a love marriage🤣' , revealed that their parents had met during their university days in Delhi. The father, a Delhiite, was then a government employee. The mother hailed from Raipur, Chhattisgarh, and their love had quietly blossomed through student years. But what truly elevated the father's commitment was his decision to learn Chhattisgarhi — his beloved's mother tongue — just to write a letter to her father. A powerful gesture that set the tone for the respectful courtship to follow. 'Jai Johar, Sadar Pranam…' The letter opens with a traditional tribal greeting — 'Jai Johar' — and quickly transitions into a heartfelt confession of love. 'I know that reading this letter might bring you anger and a lot of questions,' the young man begins, showing remarkable emotional intelligence. He then goes on to lay out his credentials — an honest man from a respectable family with a steady government job — before making a solemn promise: 'If your daughter lives with me, she will never have to face any trouble or sorrow.' There's no dramatic flourish, no poetic metaphors, just a plain, honest plea — a mark of integrity that netizens couldn't help but admire. 'Your answer will decide the direction of my life,' he signs off, in a line that reads almost like the climax of a love story that was patiently waiting to unfold. You Might Also Like: Elderly man painting wife's nails on train is the purest thing you will see today: 'Love like this doesn't age, it deepens' Found 41-year-old letter written by my dad to my maternal grandfather seeking his permission for a love marriage🤣 by u/Rich-Arrival-1427 in indiasocial A Love Worth Waiting For It took six years of being in a relationship and three more of convincing their families, but the couple eventually tied the knot — the man at 30, the woman at 25. This year, they celebrated their 40th wedding anniversary. The letter, yellowed and frayed with age, surfaced like a love fossil — proof that persistence, respect, and a little bit of Chhattisgarhi can go a long way. Internet Reacts: 'Mad Respect', 'So Touching' The post quickly went viral, with Redditors reacting with a mix of awe, amusement, and nostalgia. 'Mad respect to your father,' one user wrote, while another joked, 'I think the deal was sealed at 'Government job'.' Yet another user confessed, 'So sad I'll never be loved with this intensity.' Some were floored by the thoughtful cultural nod in the salutation: 'I love that your father starts the letter with 'Jai Johar'. Love the tribal pride.' Others shared their own family anecdotes — letters for movie money, college rants, and the lost art of writing to be understood, not just seen. The Redditor confirmed that the letter had indeed worked: 'Grandpa got convinced to talk to my paternal grandparents and my dad. Next year, they got married.' You Might Also Like: Aishwarya Rai's latest Instagram post expresses her love for Abhishek Bachchan, though it's from a movie In an age of swipes, speed dates, and viral trends, this letter stands as a testament to a different kind of romance — the kind that bows before parents, writes in unfamiliar tongues, and waits years to be accepted. It's not just a love letter; it's a cultural artifact reminding us that some stories — no matter how old — still have the power to melt hearts.
Hindustan Times
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Hindustan Times
Musician Vineet Singh Hukmani on being a new Punekar, making a song on the city: I love Pune, it's my home
I shifted to Pune 10 months ago. However, since I would visit the city so often for work, it always felt home,' says singer Vineet Singh Hukmani, who is now a proud Punekar. As someone who was a Delhiite, why did he choose Pune as his new residence? 'The city is just the right size, hence everything creative related to music, art, new cuisine, etc. is very reachable. It has a great buzzing mix of cosmopolitan and traditional culture. People here balance these facets without effort. Also, quick connectivity to Mumbai and Dubai, where I do most of my production work is a bonus,' says the musician, who has expressed his love for Pune through a new single, titled My New Home Pune. He adds, 'It was a spontaneous creation of gratitude for the warm welcome that I have received from the wonderful people in Pune. Home is where the heart is, where the song in your heart comes out freely and where the people around you understand and appreciate that sentiment. The song is about that warmth and affection for this new chapter of my life. I love Pune, my home.' Since it's his first year in the city, it also marks his first Maharashtra monsoon. Is he excited? 'Pune is so green and has excellent air quality around this time of the year. There is no better time to write music than when you see raindrops trickling down your window. Also, I plan go on a road trip soon,' says Vineet. Ask him about the music scene of Pune and if he has noticed any stark difference between Delhi and Pune in terms of music sensibilities, and Vineet says: 'Pune allows me to be more global in my approach and yet the local sentiment does not take away from that. Delhi has a strong Punjabi music culture and a lot of Sufi too and while that is good, it can be too dominating, for me, sometimes, since I am not known for being a 'Punjabi' singer. Pune, on the other hand, accepts the 'English/Hindi' singer-songwriter in me more easily. I also find Pune open to more global genres and after this song about Pune, I am embarking on a swing jazz album and a reggae album. Both these creations have been easier for me as this city has a certain chill vibe about it.' But does he miss Delhi at all? 'Well, sometimes I do miss the food but my new friends in Pune are ensuring I am well fed. When you leave a city, you carry the good memories of that in your heart and that helps you become more confident in the new place you need to settle in. Life is about experiences and the north has given me a lot for which I am grateful,' he ends.
New Indian Express
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- New Indian Express
‘Dilli Dark' is a film about the outsider syndrome and some really dark horses
Michael Okeke, the protagonist of the film Dilli Dark, is young, dark-skinned and African. He smarts as Delhi looks at him as an outsider, and then realises that the outsiders are already here—as neighbours, in history books, and in the subconscious of every 'Delhiite' who got here before he did. It is not personal, it is a reflex. As his friend Debu says: 'It's not ok, just the way it is.' Debu (played brilliantly by actor-writer Shantanu Anam, a Delhi boy), for instance, as a Bengali, will always be suspect in the eyes of his north Indian landlord for his non-vegetarianism. Mansi (Geetika Ohlyan, who played the cop with tantrums in Soni) the godwoman's life will always be precarious in the city until she attracts big-league devotees and gets a spot on the slick chat shows. As for Yakut, the Abyssinian lover of Razia Sultan, whom Debu suggests Okeke adopt as role model, he was top gun only for a while when he had the heart of Delhi's queen and roamed around with her on a big white horse. Dilli Dark is Dibakar Das Roy's first feature. He has directed films in various formats. And he may well turn out to be a worthy inheritor of Dibakar Banerjee's mantle of being the director par excellence of 'Delhi films' —Khosla ka Ghosla, Oye Lucky Oye, LSD, and so on. He has the potential. His sense of comedy is spot on; he now only needs to make his storytelling and character-building more layered. Dilli Dark created quite a buzz on the festival circuit last year, and is set to have its release in Delhi theatres this weekend.
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Business Standard
20-05-2025
- Climate
- Business Standard
Delhi weather: Why IMD keeps predicting rain but the heat won't quit
On paper, Delhi was supposed to have a 'pleasant day' on Tuesday (May 20). The India Meteorological Department had issued a yellow alert — thunderstorms, dust storms, some strong surface winds, maybe a touch of lightning. But as any Delhiite could tell you, the city felt more like a 'tandoor.' A blazing, suffocating heat wrapped the capital, and even the winds did little more than shuffle around the hot air. Pleasant? Not by a long stretch. It's not just a one-off mistake either. Time and again, the IMD has struggled to forecast Delhi's weather with any meaningful accuracy. From missing sudden storms that blow roofs off metro stations to underestimating rainfall that paralyses entire cities, India's official weather agency finds itself repeatedly caught off guard. And that begs the question: after more than 150 years of operations, why is the IMD still struggling to get it right? How often do IMD forecasts go wrong? On May 2 this year, Delhi was battered by a torrential downpour — 77 mm of rainfall in a single day, the second-highest May total since 1901. It was the wettest day in over eight months. And yet, not even a whisper of this made it to the IMD's forecasts the night before. On June 28, 2023, an unpredicted storm dumped 91 mm of rain on Delhi in a single hour. The agency had warned of 'light to moderate' rainfall. What came instead looked like the start of a monsoon apocalypse — flooding roads, disrupting traffic, collapsing infrastructure. The story repeats across the country. In December 2023, Tamil Nadu was devastated by heavy rainfall that killed at least 10 people. Once again, the IMD failed to forecast the intensity of the storm. Its Director General, Mrutyunjay Mohapatra, later admitted that while rain had been predicted, the storm's ferocity caught the department off guard. A warning was only issued in the early morning hours—too late for most to prepare. Ironically, the IMD is globally respected for its monsoon modelling. It uses the Dynamical Model, a complex climate system-based tool involving ocean-atmosphere coupling, and has recently integrated data from the high-performance computing system Mihir, one of India's most powerful supercomputers. Why did India start forecasting weather in the first place? The story of India's weather forecasting woes begins not today, but nearly a century and a half ago. Founded in 1875, the IMD's first mission was to crack the code of the monsoon. Back then, it wasn't just about rain. Famine stalked the land, and agriculture was wholly dependent on monsoon rainfall. The British colonial government saw meteorology as a matter of life, death and revenue. The IMD's first meteorologist, Henry Francis Blanford, tried to connect Himalayan snow cover with monsoon rainfall. His successor, John Eliot, added data from Australia and the Indian Ocean. But no matter how many charts they drew or patterns they spotted, the forecasts still failed to prevent famines. In 1899–1900, more than a million Indians died in a famine that Eliot had confidently predicted would not come. In 1904, Sir Gilbert Walker took the reins. A statistician by training, Walker introduced the idea of global pressure patterns—including what we now call the Southern Oscillation, part of the El Niño system—into monsoon prediction. He identified 28 variables that seemed to influence rainfall. But even then, forecasting was more art than science. How accurate are IMD forecasts today? India's seasonal monsoon predictions, vital for both agriculture and the broader economy, have historically had limited precision. Over the past 20 years, the IMD has achieved an average accuracy of just 42 per cent for its initial monsoon forecasts. That means in 14 out of 24 years since 2001, the actual rainfall deviated by more than five percentage points from the early forecast—making it statistically less reliable than a coin flip, according to a Hindustan Times analysis. That said, IMD's forecasting reliability has improved over the last five years, with fewer large deviations than in the past. The IMD's official monsoon outlook carries a standard error margin of ±5 per cent. For instance, the 2025 forecast anticipates rainfall at 105 per cent of the Long Period Average (LPA), allowing for this range. In recent years, the IMD has enhanced its precision for short-range and extreme weather forecasts by 40–50 per cent, largely due to high-resolution numerical models and AI tools. What models has IMD used and replaced? For nearly a century, India's monsoon forecasting relied on tweaking statistical models. In 1988, a new power regression model introduced by Vasant Gowariker promised more accurate forecasts using 16 parameters. But over time, many of those predictors lost relevance. The model failed to predict droughts in 2002 and 2004, and confidence in it eroded. From 2007, IMD began using ensemble statistical forecasting—blending multiple models to generate a more accurate estimate. Between 2007 and 2018, the average forecast error dropped from 7.94 per cent to 5.95 per cent of the LPA. That's progress — but still not precision. What are the latest forecasting systems IMD is using? The real shift came with the launch of the Monsoon Mission Coupled Forecasting System (MMCFS) in 2012. Unlike statistical models, MMCFS integrates data from oceans, land and atmosphere to simulate monsoon behaviour. In 2021, a multi-model ensemble (MME) system was added, incorporating forecasts from climate centres in the US, Japan and other countries. The rationale: if one model fails, maybe five together won't. Since these upgrades, IMD forecasts have become more accurate—at least on paper. The government claims that seasonal rainfall forecasts now have 21 per cent less error than those issued in the 1990s and early 2000s. But public confidence remains low. Ask someone in Delhi when they last trusted an IMD forecast, and you're likely to get a sarcastic shrug. Why are extreme events still so hard to predict? Part of the issue is scientific. Thunderstorms and cloudbursts are inherently difficult to predict. They form quickly, behave erratically, and require ultra-high-resolution data. For such events, IMD relies on nowcasts—forecasts issued just 2–3 hours in advance. But systemic constraints persist. Countries like the US and UK have long benefited from dense weather station networks, rapid data transmission and vast computing power. India is still catching up. Under Mission Mausam, the IMD has increased its radar capacity from 26 to 39, with plans to scale up to 126. Doppler radars are being installed nationwide, and a new high-density mesonet—automated local weather stations—is being rolled out in major cities. New tools like microwave radiometers and wind profilers are also being introduced. How does IMD compare to international weather agencies? Unlike the US National Weather Service or the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, the IMD often struggles with clarity and urgency in communication. Alerts may go out late at night. Warnings often lack actionable detail. And public trust—once lost—is hard to win back. In July 2023, Bengaluru received 132 mm of rain in under four hours. The IMD had issued only a 'moderate rain' alert. Lakes overflowed, tech parks shut down, and people were seen kayaking through flooded streets. Compare that with the Netherlands—one of the most flood-prone countries—where smart drainage systems are linked to forecasts, adjusting pumping capacity in real time. At its core, weather forecasting is not just a scientific challenge. It's a public service. Getting it wrong isn't just embarrassing—it's dangerous.
Time of India
15-05-2025
- Sport
- Time of India
Why is Boycott Delhi Capitals trending on X? Fans slam DC for signing Bangladeshi pacer Mustafizur Rahman amid Indo-Pak tensions
After a brief suspension due to heightened tensions between India and Pakistan, IPL 2025 is officially resuming on May 17. However, the mid-season break has thrown team plans into disarray, especially with several overseas players uncertain about returning. One of the teams impacted is the Akshar Patel-led Delhi Capitals, who have confirmed that explosive Australian batter Jake Fraser-McGurk will not be available for the remainder of the tournament. To fill the gap, the franchise initially named Bangladeshi pacer Mustafizur Rahman as his replacement. But the move has sparked criticism online, with calls for a boycott against the franchise. Why are the Delhi Capitals under fire? Following the IPL's temporary halt on May 9, the BCCI permitted franchises to make fresh signings to cover for unavailable overseas players. Delhi Capitals, in need of a solid addition, opted for Mustafizur Rahman. However, shortly after the announcement, the left-arm pacer clarified via social media that he would not be joining the IPL, instead prioritizing Bangladesh's upcoming ODI series against England. While Rahman won't be featured in the league after all, Delhi Capitals are now facing online backlash simply for considering a Bangladeshi player during a time of heightened geopolitical sensitivity. Many fans believe that Bangladesh has shown open support for Pakistan during the ongoing tensions with India and view Delhi's move as tone-deaf and poorly judged. The outrage has taken over social media, where the hashtag #BoycottDelhiCapitals is now trending, with one user writing, "As a Delhiite, I can no longer support @DelhiCapitals. The franchise's support for players from a country known for its anti-India stance, including backing Pakistan, is unacceptable to me. #BoycottDelhiCapitals." As a Delhiite, I can no longer support @DelhiCapitals. The franchise's support for players from a country known for its anti-India stance, including backing Pakistan, is unacceptable to me. #BoycottDelhiCapitals Another user mentioned, "How can they pick players from a country where anti-India voices are growing and open support for Pakistan exists???" As a Delhiite, I will not support on Delhi Capitals!How can they pick players from a country where anti-India voices are growing and open support for Pakistan exists???#BoycottDelhiCapitals A third user tweeted, "Shame on Delhi Capitals! Bangladeshis hate Indians & they openly support Pakistan and did so many things against India, but this shameless franchise signed Mustafizur Rahman, a Bangladeshi player, in IPL." Shame on Delhi Capitals ! 😡 Bangladeshi hates Indians & they openly supports Pakistan and did so many things against India, but this shameless franchise signed Mustafizur Rahman a Bangladeshi player in REMOVE THIS PLAYER #BoycottDelhiCapitals "Their continued support for players from a nation with a clear anti-India stance — including open backing of Pakistan — is deeply disappointing," a fourth user tweeted. As a proud Delhiite, I can no longer stand by @DelhiCapitals. Their continued support for players from a nation with a clear anti-India stance — including open backing of Pakistan — is deeply disappointing. #BoycottDelhiCapitals Check out some more reactions below: What a shameful act by @DelhiCapitals to give a place to Kangalus in their team?Why would you allow a Bangladeshi to play in your team knowing that Delhi already facing the issues of illegal immigrants & what happened with Hindus in Bangladesh?#BoycottDelhiCapitals —I hate to say this or for that matter politicize this, but has Delhi Capitals management lost it?Why are we getting a pacer from Bangladesh, especially knowing what's the current geopolitical climate there? This is absolutely ludicrous.#BoycottDelhiCapitals I was supporting @DelhiCapitals from the day they signed KL Rahul and throughout the tournament but signing a player from enemy country is disgusting, i hope they never win IPL in future. They did same for Steve Smith once.#MustafizurRahman #BoycottDelhiCapitals YES BOYCOTT ❌🚨✊These Bangladeshi players have anti-India sentiments and support Pakistan. Are Delhi Capitals not getting IPL players.❓❓#BoycottDelhiCapitals Meanwhile, DC, who are still in the race of playoffs, are awaiting confirmation from key overseas players like Mitchell Starc, Faf du Plessis, and Tristan Stubbs, who are uncertain due to Test commitments. To stay updated on the stories that are going viral follow Indiatimes Trending.
