Sharmi Adhikary

Mother of a Bright Boy! Senior Journalist and Film Columnist. Lover of sarees, movies and wit. Proud Bharatiya. Staunch Hindu.

[THE SKIN DOCTOR @theskindoctor13]

During 26/11, while Mumbai watched the terrorists and the carnage, another battle was unfolding inside Cama Hospital.

Nurses and staff quietly protected hundreds of pregnant women and newborns as armed terrorists tried to turn Hospital into a slaughterhouse.

Yet for nearly two decades, the spotlight remained on the attackers and the attacks, while the heroes who saved lives that night were largely forgotten.

That is what makes the upcoming film #BharatBhhagyaViddhaata important. The film shifts the spotlight from those who spread terror to those who protected lives, the ordinary people who displayed extraordinary courage when duty demanded it.

And going by the trailer, @KanganaTeam delivers what may be one of her most powerful performances in years. As Anjali Kulthe, she captures the terror, vulnerability, and quiet courage of an ordinary nurse caught in unimaginable circumstances. The fear in her eyes, the tension on her face, and the determination to protect her patients despite overwhelming danger make her portrayal feel deeply authentic and emotionally gripping.

In an age of cynicism and endless outrage, stories like this remind us what true courage looks like. Not politics. Not ideology. Just ordinary people who chose duty over fear when it mattered most.

"Hum important nahi hai... jo hum karte hain woh important hai."

That one line beautifully captures the spirit of the unseen heroes of Cama Hospital.

[Govind KS @govindksaji]

A beautiful writeup by @MMimigd on #KhadimaTheCaregiver

https://t.co/1jNAB7DbxB

[Sharmi Adhikary @MMimigd]

What migrant workers face in West Asia

[Organiser Weekly @eOrganiser]

Film Review of Khadima: Deadly Dehumanisation

An award-winning short film screened at the 18th Habitat Film Festival exposes the rampant human rights violations under the problematic Kafala system prevalent in the West Asia that refuses to get the so-called activists talking.

Writes: @MMimigd

https://t.co/6v0WLvjkRu

[Dr Poornima 🇮🇳 @PoornimaNimo]

A schoolgirl was raped in Kolkata, after she took lift in a car. She was given a drug laced chocolate and then raped by two men and later blackmailed on the basis of a video.

In which state did the incident occur ???
West Bengal.

On what date ???
April 17th 2026.

Who ruled WB at that time ???
TMC, Mamata Banerjee.

The frightened girl filed the FIR on May 20th 2026.
Who is the CM of WB now ???
Suvendu Adhikari

So who will intelligent Sagarika Ghose blame ??
The BJP, of course !!!

Voila !!!!

[Sharmi Adhikary @MMimigd]

@KashmirStory @RatanSharda55 Aap awwal number ke gadhe ho! Kripya apne paise se land khareedke clubbing kijiye!

[Sharmi Adhikary @MMimigd]

@SwiggyCares The issue just got sorted. Thank you.

[Sharmi Adhikary @MMimigd]

@instamart_it since when have you started taking money for a particular product but not delivering it?

#badserviceofinstamart

[Sharmi Adhikary @MMimigd]

@greatbong @crispeconomiX My colleague is 24 and she is severely woke, with zero knowledge about real politics. Whoever is anti-Modi is an inspiring figure for her. I'm amazed at her lopsided logic that she presents with such brash confidence!

[Sharmi Adhikary @MMimigd]

@monidipadey @punarutthana Calling @swastika24 an actor degrades the very profession itself! She is a bed warmer at best, of equally disgusting men!

[Sharmi Adhikary @MMimigd]

These evil humans should never be spared!

[Sann @san_x_m]

Her name was Shubha Shankaranarayan.

She was 21 years old, a law student in Bengaluru. She was in a relationship with Arun Varma, her 19 year old college junior. Her father did not approve and arranged her engagement to someone else.

On November 30, 2003, Shubha got engaged to B.V. Girish, a 27 year old software engineer. His family celebrated. His future seemed set.

Three days later, Shubha called Girish and suggested they spend some time together before the wedding. She proposed dinner and then a stop near HAL Airport to watch planes take off from the viewpoint on Inner Ring Road. He agreed.

While Girish stood looking at the runway, three men attacked him from behind with a motorcycle shock absorber. Shubha stood nearby and screamed at the attackers to stop, pretending to be shocked.

Girish suffered severe head injuries. He died in hospital the next morning.

His family filed a police complaint. At first, investigators found nothing. Girish had no enemies, and suspicion did not fall on Shubha because the engagement had happened just days earlier.

Then police reviewed the engagement video. Shubha appeared unhappy and disinterested throughout. Her expressions did not match someone who had just gotten engaged.

Investigators dug deeper. They discovered that Shubha had made 73 phone calls and exchanged numerous messages with Arun Varma on the day of the murder.

When confronted with the evidence, she confessed.

The murder had been planned even before the engagement. Shubha wanted to be with Arun Varma, so she, Arun, and two hired men planned to kill Girish.

Girish had been engaged for just three days.

In July 2010, all four were convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment. The Karnataka High Court later upheld the verdict. In 2025, the Supreme Court also upheld all four life sentences.

The Supreme Court observed:
"Shubha chose a tragic and unacceptable route to address her personal issues, which led to the loss of a young and innocent life."

He went to watch planes take off with his fiancee.

He never came home.

Repost this. Some stories should never disappear.

[Sharmi Adhikary @MMimigd]

Two of the most hypocritical voices being @AnirbanSpeaketh and #Parambrata . @swastika24 is just cringe... the lowest grade at that!

[Sudhanidhi Bandyopadhyay @SudhanidhiB]

Not ONE but WHOLE Bengal Tollywood including Parambrata Chakraborty unitedly campaigned against BJP. This was the most famous song— Nijeder Mawte Nijder Gaan that they uploaded in 2021 for TMC to amplify amongst all. BJP won't go for any vendetta but nothing is really forgotten.

[Sharmi Adhikary @MMimigd]

@ananyashasau No bribe at all. Passport made two years ago.

[Sharmi Adhikary @MMimigd]

@FrustIndian No this isn’t an apology and this 'better late than never' thesis shouldn't count for a rabid hatemonger like her! She needs to be shown her place!

[Sharmi Adhikary @MMimigd]

@Manik_M_Jolly Cringe!

[Abhijit Majumder @abhijitmajumder]

Mamata Banerjee’s Cosplay Comes From Deep Cultural Insecurity As The ‘Unintellectual’ Bengali.
~ My Piece In ⁦@CNNnews18⁩ https://t.co/3aEKG9DA69

[Sharmi Adhikary @MMimigd]

Fascinating!

[Parimal @Fintech03]

The name sounds British, but it is actually a purely Indian acronym. In 1952, a 55 yr old grocery store owner from Nagpur named Keshav Vishnu Pendharkar decided to shut down his shop, pack up his family of 10 children, & move to Bombay. He wanted to create a chemical-free, swadeshi alternative to the foreign cosmetic brands that were ruling post-independence India.

He started his business in a tiny, cramped godown in Parel, Bombay. He named his company after his father: Vishnu Industrial Chemical Company. V-I-C-C-O. There was no British Lord or foreign laboratory. It was just a middle-aged Marathi man & his sons working out of a shed with a dream to revive ancient texts.

Keshav Pendharkar’s brother-in-law held a basic degree in Ayurveda. Together, they huddled over ancient scripts & formulated a tooth-cleaning powder made from 20 rare herbs & barks (including Babool, Bakul, & Neem).They called it Vajradanti.

In the 1950s, urban Indians were rapidly switching to chemical, white, sweet-tasting toothpastes imported by MNCs like Colgate. When the Pendharkers tried to sell a brown, astringent Ayurvedic powder, shopkeepers laughed them out of their stores. Keshav & his sons refused to surrender. They literally walked the streets of Bombay, going door to door to hand out samples, educating people on how chemical foam was destroying their gums, & manually building their empire 1 household at a time.

In 1971, Keshav passed away, & his son, Gajanan Pendharkar, took over. Gajanan looked at the skincare market & saw it was utterly dominated by colonial-legacy snow creams like Afghan Snow, Pond's, & Nivea. All of them were stark white. Gajanan decided to launch a face cream containing Turmeric (Haldi) & Sandalwood oil. When the product launched, shopkeepers panicked. They screamed, "Baap re! If women put this on their faces, it will turn them yellow!" Nobody wanted to buy a yellow cream because the world had been conditioned to believe that beauty products had to be white.

The Pendharkars weaponized the traditional Indian wedding ritual of Haldi-Chandan. They sent salesmen into the markets armed with handheld mirrors. The salesmen would manually apply the cream onto the shopkeepers' faces right then & there to prove it absorbed completely into a vanishing base, leaving a glow w/o any yellow stains. If you remember the iconic jingle: "Vicco Turmeric, Nahi Cosmetic, Vicco Turmeric Ayurvedic Cream"... you should know that those words were not just a clever marketing tagline. They were a battle cry born from a massive legal warfare.

In 1975, the Central Excise Department of India dropped a bombshell on Vicco. They insisted on classifying Vicco Turmeric & Vajradanti as "Cosmetics." If classified as cosmetics, the govt could levy a crippling 105% luxury tax on the products, which would have priced Vicco completely out of the market & forced them into bankruptcy. The Pendharkars refused to pay. They argued that their products were manufactured under a formal Drug License & were Ayurvedic Medicines (Drugs), which attracted significantly lower taxes.

This was not a minor dispute; it turned into a historic, grueling 25 yr legal battle. The case climbed all the way up to the Supreme Court of India. While battling global giants in the market, the family spent their resources fighting their own govt in courtrooms for ~3 decades. Finally, in the 2000s, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Vicco, legally decreeing that their products were indeed medicinal, cementing the truth of their tagline forever.

How did a homegrown brand from a Parel godown become globally famous? Through sheer marketing brilliance before the internet existed. In the 1980s, South Asian immigrants abroad were obsessed with watching Bollywood movies on rented VHS video cassettes. Gajanan Pendharkar realized this & started buying ad space directly inside the video cassettes distributed globally.

Long before foreign networks recognized Indian brands, families in the US, UK, & Middle East were singing along to the Vajradanti jingle before their favorite movie started.

Despite controlling a multi-million dollar empire, the house had only 1 giant mega-kitchen. Every single meal was cooked in massive industrial-sized pots, & the entire family sat on the floor together to eat. Gajanan believed that if the family broke bread separately, the business would fracture into pieces.

In the early decades, the sons & grandsons who worked for Vicco did not get individual corporate salaries/luxury allowances. The company took care of all household expenses centrally. If a family member needed a car/a dress/a medical trip, it was cleared by the family elders, ensuring that personal greed could never overtake the company's mission.

Vicco did not survive because it was backed by British capital/Western tech. It survived because an Indian family was willing to go door to door with brown tooth powder, rub yellow cream onto skeptical faces, & spend 25 yrs in court defending the scientific validity of Ayurveda. The name might sound like a colonial legacy, but the blood inside the tube is Sampoorna Swadeshi.

[Sharmi Adhikary @MMimigd]

@RoseTint4 @coolfunnytshirt Priyanshu's career, which kickstarted fabulously, was sabotaged by the Khans and their cronies who felt rather threatened.

[Sharmi Adhikary @MMimigd]

@MahuaMoitra @sayani06 and @sagarikaghose are to Bengal what vinegar is to milk! So they should just zip up before commenting on anything pertaining to the state! Period!

[Sreemoy Talukdar @sreemoytalukdar]

Those Bongs virtue-signalling on Garga's arrest.

You should have been vocal when Prof Ambikesh Mahapatra of Jadavpur University was arrested for forwarding an email that had a cartoon satirizing Mamata Banerjee.
You should have raised your voice when Priyanka Sharma, a BJP worker, was arrested and slapped with non-bailable charges for sharing a meme of the then CM.
Where were you when Roddur Roy, Tuhun Mondal, Sharmistha Panoli were arrested for their social media posts?

Please spare us the raging hypocrisy. Learn to accept that subalterns also have a voice, and they have spoken.

[Sharmi Adhikary @MMimigd]

If there is one column that you have to read today, this delightful one penned by @kamleshksingh should be it!

West Bengal Election Results: Bengali Shaadi Mein Abdulla Deewana - India Today https://t.co/AAdTN6lNc6