The Juggernaut

Long before the Internet went into overdrive with spotting peak detailing in Aditya Dhar’s Dhurandharfranchise, Yash Raj brought us globe-trotting spy ventures, from Salman Khan-starrer Ek Tha Tiger (2012) to Shah Rukh Khan’s Pathaan (2023) to, most recently, Hrithik Roshan’s War 2 (2025). The films are part of a well-oiled franchise, headlined by male superstars who even show up in cameos in other spy worlds.

It was June 22, 1986, and Argentina’s Diego Maradona was playing for his life and his country in Mexico City. Weaving through towering English defenders, the 5’ 5” Maradona approached the penalty box, jumped, and punched the ball into the net with his left hand. Seconds later: “GOALLLLL!” Cheers drowned out protests from English fans. The referee said he didn’t see Maradona’s fist touching the ball, an illegal move. The goal stood.

Suraiya Ali Khan had never been to Venice when she booked her trip to Alleppey in 2017. But she had heard the comparison — “Alleppey is the Venice of India” — often enough that it had done its job. “Knowing I could experience something as close to Venice in India was a very attractive option,” she told The Juggernaut.

“I am Peter Parker,” Aditya Patil, a 23-year-old who works in IT in Mumbai but moonlights as Spider-Man, confessed to The Juggernaut. At nights and on weekends, he switches out his thick glasses and hides a mop of black hair beneath a custom-made Spider-Man suit. He’ll scale a wall or crawl on top of a bus, the city his backdrop as his cameraman dutifully captures every shot. Sometimes, the cops are less than amused. “‘Bro, why are you doing this stuff?

When his father was growing up in Triolet, Mauritius during the 1960s, “no one sold dholl puri in the streets,” Navneesh Ramessur told The Juggernaut. After Mauritius, a tiny island nation in the Indian Ocean, won independence from Britain in 1968, people experienced widespread poverty, malnutrition, and unemployment.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve heard “Bangladesh,” the 49-second track that’s taken over your feed and probably your sanity.

In the spring of 1782, men walked the streets of Philadelphia chanting the name of an Indian king who lived over 8,000 miles away. His name was Hyder Ali, the ruler of the Kingdom of Mysore, a place many Americans couldn’t find on a map. Yet, the name was painted across the stern of a small sailboat headed for war.

Are elephants predators or protectors? In mythology, elephants represent divinity, wisdom, and good fortune. Yet, the residents of one Nepali village nestled near a forest believe wild elephants are out to destroy them. They have nightly patrols, joined by a member of the Kinnar, or third gender, community. They even put up an electric fence to keep elephants out. Forests are viewed as dangerous, because that’s where the elephants roam. But what if the villages are entirely wrong?

“If she’s being nice to me, she’s into me.” That’s the assumption that many South Asian men hold about women, Devika Mittal, a sociology professor at the University of Delhi, told The Juggernaut. “You do have this idea…that a man and a woman can be friends,” she said. But on the other hand, she said, men can also judge women for the crime of merely talking to them. Men tend to think “either she’s interested in me, or her character is not good,” she observed.

When Tejaswita “TJ” Bhardwaj agreed to meet Skye Gillson’s family near the Navajo Nation outside Gallup, New Mexico, she had a feeling she was in for something big. “You’re going to have to butcher a sheep,” Gillson, then her college friend, warned her gleefully. “My aunties are going to make you work in the kitchen.” “Dude, I’m vegetarian,” Bhardwaj replied, mortified. “I don’t do that.” Instead, she arrived to find no sheep in sight.