TRIGGER WARNING: This article contains references to death.The Bengali entertainment industry is mourning the loss of Rahul Arunoday Banerjee, popularly known as Rahul. The 43-year-old actor was shooting for the Bengali television show ‘Bhole Baba Par Karega’ in Digha. According to Anandabazar Patrika, the actor drowned in the sea in Talsari and was rescued by technicians after some time.He was rushed to a hospital in Digha around 6 PM, where doctors reportedly declared him dead on arrival. Preliminary reports suggest drowning as the cause of death, although the exact circumstances surrounding the incident remain unclear.Bhaskar Banerjee, who plays another character on the same TV show, told Anandabazar that the entire unit had gone to Talsari for the shoot. According to him, Rahul went into the sea after pack-up. When he did not return for a long time, the team went looking for him.Actor Diganta Bagchi, speaking on behalf of the Artists’ Forum, told Anandabazar that Rahul had gone to the sea after the shoot wrapped. He added that Rahul was still alive when he was rescued by technicians, but was declared dead after being taken to the hospital.Arunoday Banerjee, better known as Rahul, made his stage debut at the age of three with his father Biswanath Banerjee’s theatre troupe, Bijoygarh Atmaprakash, in the play ‘Raj Darshan’. Since then, he had performed in hundreds of stage shows, both with his father’s troupe and with Theatron.Alongside theatre, Rahul ventured into films and television, gaining his breakthrough with the TV show ‘Khela’, where he played the role of Aditya. He later became a household name with the Raj Chakraborty-directed film ‘Chirodini Tumi Je Amar’.He was also known for his performances in projects like ‘Zulfiqar’, ‘Na Hannyate’, ‘Byomkesh Phire Elo’, and ‘Academy of Fine Arts’, among many other notable works in his career.In recent years, he launched his own podcast, ‘Shohoj Katha’, which received praise and recognition.On the personal front, he was married to actress and co-star from ‘Chirodini Tumi Je Amar’, Priyanka Sarkar. The couple separated in 2017 but reunited in 2023. They have a son, Shohoj Banerjee.

NEW DELHI: The BJP’s Delhi unit on Sunday intensified its attack on the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), accusing its leaders of misogyny and demanding an apology from senior AAP leader Saurabh Bharadwaj over remarks allegedly made about girls, as the political row escalated on social media ahead of upcoming elections.In a post on X, the BJP’s Delhi account said, “Five days have passed… But Saurabh Bharadwaj ji, you haven’t yet apologised for the vile statement you made about Delhi’s daughters?” It added, “Making such shameful remarks against little girls and shamelessly sticking to them shows just how vile and low the AAP’s mindset is.”BJP’s Delhi account had earlier, in a lengthy post on X, accused AAP leader and the party of having a “misogynistic approach” while claiming that the BJP government is working day and night to empower women. The remarks come in response to a statement attributed to Bharadwaj, as the BJP said, “Unemployed leader Saurabh Bharadwaj said yesterday, the government will give bicycles to those girls, and we will have them campaign for Akhilesh ji in UP. We will hand them brooms.”Citing AAP leader Saurabh Bharadwaj’s words, it said, “This vile statement from Saurabh Bharadwaj shows that every leader of yours is misogynistic.” The post also targeted AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal, saying, “Kejriwal had Swati Maliwal beaten up in the CM’s residence while he was CM. When he himself was in Tihar on corruption charges, he did make Atishi CM out of compulsion, but didn’t let her sit on Kejriwal’s chair; it remained vacant.”It further added, “We’ve seen before how your other leaders, be it Somnath Bharti who abused and behaved indecently with a TV anchor on live TV, or other AAP leaders – the bigger they are, the more misogynistic they are.”The party contrasted its position with that of AAP, saying, “On one side, the BJP government is working to educate daughters, to give them wings, to encourage them, while on the other side, leaders like your Saurabh Bharadwaj are mocking them. Have some shame!”

Just one in three Indian schoolchildren has adequate stamina, with only 34% meeting aerobic fitness benchmarks — the weakest among all indicators — according to a report evaluating over 1.4 lakh children across 333 schools in 112 cities. The findings highlight poor cardiovascular endurance, weak muscle strength, and disparities across school types, even as overall fitness levels recover steadily after the Covid-19 slump. The report presents a mixed picture: while flexibility and core strength show relatively strong outcomes, the overall fitness profile remains uneven.Aerobic capacity is the most alarming weakness, with just 34% meeting healthy standards. This reflects low cardiovascular fitness and limited ability to sustain physical activity. “The main reason children are underperforming in aerobic abilities is rising obesity, which is becoming more common every day,” said bariatric surgeon Dr Sanjay Borude.

Just 34% of them have adequate stamina

Beyond endurance, upper and lower body strength remain consistently poor across age groups and regions. Lower body strength is a particular concern, indicating issues with balance, mobility, and overall conditioning.Dr Aashish Contractor, director of rehabilitation and sports medicine at Sir HN Reliance Foundation Hospital, linked these trends to environmental and behavioural factors. “During childhood, the capacity for physical activity is the highest, but one of the biggest barriers today is the lack of open spaces and access to sporting facilities,” he said. “At both a family and institutional level, physical exercise cannot be treated as an afterthought -it must be an integral part of a child’s daily routine.”In contrast, flexibility (70%) and core strength (87%) show better outcomes, suggesting some aspects of fitness are being maintained. The findings are part of the 14th Annual Health Survey released by Sportz Village. Public school students outperform private school students in five of seven fitness parameters. The gap is most visible in endurance metrics like aerobic and anaerobic capacity, suggesting higher daily physical activity among public school children. This may be linked to more opportunities for free play and movement.However, lower body strength remains weak across both systems, indicating structural gaps. Diet may also play a role. “Another reason for lack of strength is inadequate protein intake. Diets, especially vegetarian ones, may not always provide the necessary protein required for muscle development,” Dr Borude said. Gender differences are also evident. Boys perform better in aerobic capacity and lower body strength, indicating stronger endurance. Girls show healthier BMI levels and better flexibility, suggesting better body composition and joint mobility. Despite these differences, poor aerobic fitness is common across both groups.Regionally, western India performs best across most indicators, ahead of the North, East, and South.However, no region reports a majority of children meeting endurance benchmarks, underscoring the nationwide scale of the problem. The report tracks a sharp pandemic-related decline in fitness. Levels dropped from 70.5% in 2020 to 56.2% in 2022 due to school closures, reduced activity, and increased screen time. Recovery has since been strong, with levels rising to around 85% by 2025 after schools reopened. “Since the pandemic, I have observed in my patients that they have become more conscious of their health and have a better understanding of how to preserve it,” Dr Borude said.Children with more than 80 physical education sessions annually perform better across all parameters. “From a preventive healthcare perspective, structured physical education and sports are critical,” said Dr Ranjani Harish, senior scientist at the Madras Diabetes Research Foundation.“Regular physical activity improves cardiovascular health, controls body weight, enhances insulin sensitivity, strengthens bones and supports mental well-being.”She added that these benefits reduce long-term risks of diseases like diabetes, heart disease, hypertension, and obesity. “Schools play a central role in shaping lifelong health behaviours. Children who are physically active early in life are far more likely to remain active as adults,” she said.Emphasising urgent lifestyle changes, Dr Contractor recommends a “steep reduction in ultra-processed foods and controlled and regulated screen time.”

TOI’s magical musical Tesseract can be viewed as that rare star, which visits once every few decades. But unlike the ones that burn bright and vanish, this one sticks around, quietly glowing long after. In minds, hearts, and souls.A paradox opened the evening. In a week when Timothée Chalamet offered a hair-brained cultural provocation – that opera and ballet are “obsolete,” that “no one cares” – Tesseract answered not with a clapback, but with choreography: an elegant, assertive inclusion of ballet so ravishing it felt less like rebuttal, and more like revelation. Meera Jain’s curatorial genius, perhaps unwittingly, reframed legacy as living organism, not museum piece, placing ballet where it has always belonged: in the bloodstream of the present. Art demonstrates what argument cannot.The evening’s spell began at the threshold: interstellar music seemed to bend the hallway into a time tunnel, and a gallery of headlines and archives unfolded like a living prologue: premonitory whispers that we were entering a theatre of multiple dimensions.Within minutes, I lost the ordinary measure of time; three and a half hours dissolved with the hush and rush of a lucid dream. Trays full of treats and a bevy of beverages from the redoubtable kitchens of Indian Accent helped too.I am writing after days of reflection and dreaming: reflecting like the shards and mirrors of the Man in the Mirror sequence, dreaming like Sophia, whose journey and her alter ego’s formed a double helix of identity. Their oscillation was so seamless I often felt the protagonist flicker between two bodies of light, two musics of intention; a quiet triumph of performance craft and directorial design.Satsang: Association with truthWhat lingered were not effects but after-effects: layers that adhere to the mind’s inner surfaces and keep releasing meaning. That peeling and unpeeling has not stopped. My spirit felt stirred; my imagination conscripted; new quadrants of thought opened, new coordinates for feelingrevealed. The production felt like a transmission channeling the long arc of Meera and Samir Jain, their thoughts, their values, their hospitality to courage…not as signature, but as atmosphere.

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Even when the show vaulted into spectacle, what gleamed most was restraint: the discipline that makes technology serve emotion, not smother it; that lets light reveal rather than blind; that turns movement into syntax rather than ornament. The press, surprisingly, got this right. They called it immersive, interdisciplinary, and a philosophical theatre event rather than a mere extravaganza.However, unsurprisingly, they missed out on seeing and feeling beyond the obvious. Forgive the metaphor, but Tesseract was the most exquisite narcotic for the soul. The benevolent kind, the satsang kind. It had the unmistakable charge, vibrations, and high, of a congregation gathered to listen for truth, to dwell in the company of those who have made a life of seeking it. In this sense, the show became a civic ritual: a room of seekers aligning, for a few hours, around questions that are older than the nation-state and younger than each new dawn.It entered my sleep the way good art does – in rapid succession of dreams and visions, and it stirred the REM wilderness Samir Jain once nudged me to research; a reminder that inner archives can be as unruly (and as luminous) as outer ones.And then that finale: like Kairos’s origami, each crease and fold converged until the very idea of the tesseract revealed itself; not as a stunt, but as the geometry of a thought (and truth) that had been quietly forming all night. The eye for detail was relentless. The section on beauty and art, in particular, pinned me to my seat with its tenderness; it was an aria about what makes us human, and why the aesthetic is not indulgence but oxygen. It connected with such elegance to everything I know of the Times of India Group, of satsang, and of Evoke… a skein of beliefs, mythologies of meaning, turned into a theatre of belonging. Spotlight: Shining light on the truthThe stagecraft, from sets, to lighting, and automation, was cutting-edge in the only way that matters: ideas first, then electronics. Having worked closely with Meera Jain, I know her appetite for the frontier; the cutting edge.This went further – it felt pioneering: rooted in Indian ethos, yet speaking fluently to the world; interweaving journalism’s archive with theatre’s alchemy and technology’s sleight of mind. The show assembled global expertise and integrated live performance with large-scale LED, ARenvironments, illusion design, and a sweeping sound architecture… the kind of interdisciplinary rigour that does not imitate “international standards,” but sets them.Threaded through it all was an Indic grammar of courage: the old vow that truth is not a decree but a discipline. Our epics remind us that the boldest journeys are often into ambiguity, and that to “know” is not to arrive but to abide in inquiry. And I found myself wondering – heresy though it may be to a masthead I love – whether TOI’s line might graduate from “Let Truth Prevail” to “The Geometry of Truth.” After all, what is “prevail” if the unasked question is ‘what is truth?’, and ‘who gets to officiate it?’ A quest into Kairos’s origami-like geometry invites us to seek, to question, to listen, to platform polyphonies of approach and opinion. That feels like the paper, and the production, Iwitnessed: “Ekaṁ sat viprā bahudhā vadanti.”Stardust: Tryst with truthIf there is a roadshow destiny, Tesseract must meet it. Tour the country. Cross oceans. Reach for the stars.May Act 2 bloom into Part 2, with the “future of the planet” chapter dilated into its own deep meditation. Imagine a movement from archival intelligence, which we now shorthand as artificial intelligence, into an epoch of planetary intelligence; where biodiversity, species empathy, and human-animal kinship are re-lit as central plotlines rather than footnotes.The rare and inspirational ability to take the personal, make it political, and then sublimate it into art, too, is why Tesseract moved me so much: it insisted that love scale into responsibility, and pain transform into purpose. As a work of language and light, Tesseract oscillates between surrealism, pop art, and Kafkaesque narratives, visuals, motifs.It is a composograph of cosmic intelligence; its architectonic, symbolic, haptic, figurative elements gather into a grammar of awe-someness. It is a show tinged with the aura of spiritual reverence and multi-sensorial engagement.It is saturated with and by illusion and illumination; pulsing with a transcorporeal rhythm and murmur that recalls the oldest theatre there is: the human body and mind convincing itself it can hold more truth than yesterday.And then the ending… the sprinkling of stardust. In Meera Jain’s opening invocation of her son and grandson, the evening disclosed its lineage: pregnant with poise and panache; and yet, nine months of gestation for a vision like this feels, in hindsight, inevitable. A theatre-child born of travel, agency, care, curiosity, beauty, empathy, love, and familial imagination.Not perfect, but pure. Not bound, but beautiful. Not tangible, but true.

Panaji: The All India Football Federation (AIFF) has asked accounting firm KPMG to “prepare comprehensive comparison tables evaluating the feasibility and key aspects of the two bids” for the Indian Super League (ISL) and Federation Cup, the two most important domestic men’s football competitions.According to sources, purely on numbers, AIFF is in favour of Genius Sports’ bid that totals approximately ₹2,130 crore for commercial rights of the two competitions, for the next 20 years. The London-headquartered company will offer $7 million or Rs 64.4 crore annually in the first year with 5% annual increment. The federation is guaranteed of approx. ₹12.4 crore annually in “administrative fees” if Genius gets the nod.The second bid of ₹36.6 crore is from FanCode, the federation’s marketing partners for ISL this season.“The executive committee members were happy with the three bids (including one from Capri Sports for women’s football competitions) and we’ve informed them that it’s better to send it to the general body for approval,” AIFF deputy secretary general M Satyanarayantold TOI. “Since this is an important matter, we want the (general body) members to have the final say.”As per AIFF Constitution, any arrangement for a period longer than four years and/or arrangement exceeding amount of Rs. 5 crore “must be approved at an AGM/SGM by at least 75% of members present and eligible to vote.”“The ISL clubs wanted to speak with the bidders and we are more than happy to allow that, to ensure greater clarity and transparency in the process. Whatever queries the clubs have will be addressed directly by the bidders,” said Satyanarayan.A day prior to the executive committee meeting, ISL clubs had urged AIFF not to take any “binding decision” on the new long-term commercial rights holder. The clubs cited lack of meaningful opportunity to evaluate the bidders since the Request for Quotations (RFQ) document was shared with them just 12 hours prior to the bids being opened.Club officials have a bitter-sweet feeling of the bids, given that they will get a share of the revenue only after the commercial partner recovers the investment“If Genius Sports has bid Rs 64 crore, 20% of this amount will straightway go to AIFF as administrative fees. The rest is left for Genius to spend on commercialising the league. Once revenue starts coming in, the model states that Genius can recoup their investment first (of Rs 64 crore), and post that, whatever is left, is split in 60-30-10 ratios (between the clubs, commercial partner and AIFF).“For clubs to see any form of revenue, Genius has to bring back Rs 64 crore worth of revenue. If the commercial partner does not recoup its initial investment, then the tender terms allow them to move that loss into next year’s targets. Apply the same (principle) to Fancode and the threshold for FanCode is much lower since they have bid only Rs 36 crore,” explained a senior club official.AIFF officials said they have asked experts from KPMG to evaluate the two bids and submit a report. One of the big four accounting firms, KPMG was on board to prepare the RFQ.