The Arthashastra volume is all red-and-blue glory. To reading, and looking your best
Representation Pic
We recently tried out a new mobile phone stand and came away impressed with the sheer number of purposes that we could use it for. The collapsible stand is around 20 cm when retracted and close to 100 cm when fully extended, and also has a retractable tripod base, which lets one play with a lot of levels, as per the height of the subject. Over a span of two weeks, this writer used it for video calls, taking timed selfies and recording videos. The actual mobile holder can also be bent forward and backward, letting us experiment with angles as well. A great accessory for self-sufficient content creators.
It also has an inbuilt light, but we weren’t too impressed with it, as we found it too dim and the battery runs out quickly. Best to use in well lit environments and depend on the automatic light adjustment that most mobile cameras have today.
Into the world of online comics
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For anime enthusiasts who also love to read manga, comics, and just about any kind of graphic novel, these apps will come in handy when on the go. There’s Webtoon, which features over one million comics across genres such as Fantasy, Romance, Sci-fi, and Thriller, with detailed artwork and interesting stories. You can subscribe to comics you like and you’ll get regular updates when new episodes are released. The best part is that it’s completely free, and yet there are no ads at all. Some episodes are even set to music, adding to the immersive experience while reading. Tapas is another app serving free-to-read comics, but the range of stories is lesser and is mostly geared towards romance and fantasy. And if you want desi stories, log onto Pratilipi, one of the highest-ranked storytelling platforms for Indian content. We love the range of language options available—Hindi, Marathi, Bengali, Gujarati, and Tamil. However, there is a limit to reading free episodes—you can either subscribe to the app for Rs 99 a month, or watch a video ad every time you want to catch a new episode.
Gilt-edged editions to gift your loved ones
What's a more perfect gift for the season than a hardcover, gilt-edged edition of a book, all glossy and glamorous? We came across new reprints of Little Women and Arthashashtra (Fingerprint), and we couldn’t stop running our fingers over its spines and thumbing the pages. These tomes are the original, much loved stories in a newer, aesthetic, collectible editions that can be gifted to a loved one, or simply add gravitas to your shelves. In the Little Women’s turquoise-coloured edition, a black-and-white picture of Louisa May Alcott greets the reader at the first chapter and a blue-ribbon bookmark threads through the pages. The Arthashastra volume is all red-and-blue glory. To reading, and looking your best.
Berry cute
It's the time of year when the nights grow cold and the winter berries sprout. Apart from the joys of consuming the sweet red berries, you can also sport them as a fashion accessory that’s fresh. The Crochet Diaries, an indie crochet platform, has bite-sized earrings for the berry-minded. We love the incredibly realistic-looking strawbs—there are small white seeds interspersed in them, too! Pair them with an all-white dress or a deep matching red fit, and you’ll be all set for Mahabaleshwar. Sejal, the crochet crafter, also makes stuffed bunnies, totes, flowers, and scrunchies, if you’re the type to surround yourself with crochet.
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Learning to navigate your 20s
The Psychology of Your 20s is a podcast packed with tips and advice for young adults navigating the rough, stormy road that is adulthood. This writer came across this pod on a dark winter’s night and lapped up the one-hour episodes when she couldn’t sleep. The episodes deal with problems that beset you in your quarter-life or thereabouts, ranging from emotional eating to obsessively thinking of your ex-lovers (and the psychology behind being an eldest daughter). The dose of wisdom that the podcast dashes out is based on science. For example, in the emotional eating episode, host Jemma Sbeg breaks down why humans tend to gravitate towards carb-rich, oily snacks and crunchies or sweet sugary bites when stressed or anxious. Emotional eating is eating for reasons other than hunger, she tells us, but it’s time to retire the over-used cliche of “eating your feelings”. There are also episodes on why Taylor Swift is adored so obsessively, why we overshare, and why we replay conversations in our head, over and over.
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