Prasanna Pandarinathan

Author/Photographer/Artist/Former Model.Based in New York and India

[Mark Slapinski @mark_slapinski]

It is okay to be Jewish.

It is okay to attend your local synagogue.

It is okay to celebrate Hannukah.

It is not okay to use white phosphorus on civilians in Gaza and Lebanon.

[Prasanna Pandarinathan @pressynathan]

This must have been so much fun!

[Prasanna Pandarinathan @pressynathan]

Geoffrey Bawa gave architecture a kind of quiet poetry. He’s definitely one of my favorite architects.

[SHAV★ @shavnyuy]

Geoffrey Bawa turned an abandoned horse stable into one of the most studied residential conversions in Asian architecture. This is how.

The Horagolla House began as an abandoned horse stable on a family property. Bawa visited the site, stood and studied it, then agreed to convert it. Over four years in the 1980s, he remodelled the stables with restraint into a double height living space.

The stable hall became the living room. Verandas looked out over garden courts. Trees were planted around the perimeter on Bawa’s advice, Hora, Kotang and Kohombo. Burma teak sourced from old houses across the island. Clay pots. A salvaged Dutch door that Sunethra and Bawa famously competed over at the same antique dealer.

Bawa rejected the imposition of preconceived forms onto a site. Every project began with the land; its trees, its light and its climate. The building followed. That philosophy produced homes that feel inevitable rather than imposed.

He is widely regarded as the father of tropical modernism in Sri Lanka and the Horagolla House is one of the clearest examples of why.

Horagolla House, Sri Lanka. Geoffrey Bawa. 📷 Ashish Sahi

[The New York Times @nytimes]

Breaking News: The Justice Dept. is planning to drop charges against India’s richest man, Gautam Adani, after a lawyer for the billionaire made an unusual investment offer. https://t.co/08sl331XCJ

[Prasanna Pandarinathan @pressynathan]

💗🕊️🕊️

[Gabriele Corno @Gabriele_Corno]

An Unconscious Bluebird On The Road... His Loyal Partner Never Left, And Thankfully
Help Came In Time...

[Sandeep Manudhane @sandeep_PT]

3 hours before this humongous roadshow, he asked citizens to cut fuel use.

[Prasanna Pandarinathan @pressynathan]

Kudos to Vijay for doing this.

[DeKoder @DeKoderAI]

In a significant political gesture, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister C. Joseph Vijay met former CM M.K. Stalin at his residence after taking oath.

Vijay was warmly welcomed by Leader of Opposition Udhayanidhi Stalin and M.K. Stalin himself, marking a softer political tone after a fiercely contested election campaign.

The meeting is being seen as an important signal of political civility and continuity in Tamil Nadu’s changing political landscape.

#TamilNadu #Vijay #MKStalin #UdhayanidhiStalin #TVK #DMK #TamilNaduPolitics #ThalapathyVijay #TNPolitics #Elections2026

[Prasanna Pandarinathan @pressynathan]

True that

[Rajdeep Sardesai @sardesairajdeep]

A Qs for those living outside Tamil Nadu: would any other major state welcome as chief minister in today’s India someone whose full name is Chandrasekaran Joseph Vijay . What TN has shown today, may India do tomorrow: respect our unique multi-religious, multi-cultural diversity and give everyone a fair shot at their dreams. ⭐️👍

[Prasanna Pandarinathan @pressynathan]

Hahaha

[Ramesh Srivats @rameshsrivats]

Now that Vijay has got the support of 118 MLAs, the Governor is going to send him back to do KYC, get copies of their Aadhaar cards and PAN cards, and get a small video from each confirming their consent (file size < 5MB).

[Prasanna Pandarinathan @pressynathan]

Where Have Modi’s Rivals Gone? India Under One Party https://t.co/MUZedCqbN7 via @NYTimes

[Massimo @Rainmaker1973]

How life changed

[MP Arizona☀️🏳️‍🌈💙🌵🐕🐕‍🦺🫂💦🏜🐟🌴🎙🌎🌻♍️🌊 @AzPetrich]

A man blinded by a flag about to step off into emptiness might be Banksy's best work ever.

[Prasanna Pandarinathan @pressynathan]

hahahaha

[Spencer Althouse @SpencerAlthouse]

Aziz Ansari just appeared as Kash Patel on SNL, and they went innnnn on him

"I'm a trailblazer. I'm the first Indian person to suck at their job. Everyone says Indian people are smart, hardworking, incredibly intelligent. I prove without a shadow of a doubt that we can be just as incapable and incompetent as the whites."

[Prasanna Pandarinathan @pressynathan]

🫶🏼🫶🏼 https://t.co/kmex3KjQu3

[Prasanna Pandarinathan @pressynathan]

Shameful!

[Darab Farooqui @darab_farooqui]

Look at this map.

Nagpur 45°. Ahmedabad 44°. Prayagraj 43°. Delhi 42°. The entire country is a single dark red mass. This is not a heatwave. This is a country that was told its forests were fine.

And this is April. Not May. Not June. The hottest months have not even arrived yet.

The past few days have been hell. So I did what I always do when something bothers me. I went looking for answers.

What I found was a policy con job that has been running for over two decades.

But before I explain what happened, let's clear some definitions.

A garden is not a forest. An orchard is not a forest. A plantation is not a forest.

A forest is a living system. Soil, water, fungi, insects, birds, mammals, decades of accumulated complexity, specific to its land and climate. It cannot be designed. It cannot be harvested. It regulates water, cools land, shelters hundreds of species. It takes decades to become what it is.

You can plant a forest. But it will take decades to become one.

In 2001, India's forests were disappearing. The Indian state, led by the Vajpayee government, faced a choice. Protect what remained, or change what the numbers said.

It chose the numbers.

The Forest Survey of India quietly changed the definition of what a forest means. Any land with 10% tree canopy cover and more than one hectare in area was now a forest. Your mango orchard. A coconut plantation in Tamil Nadu. A tea garden in Assam. Lodhi Garden in Delhi.

All forests, on paper.

The FSI will tell you that 10% canopy cover follows international norms. The FAO also uses 10% as its threshold. But the FAO's definition comes with a crucial exclusion that India's FSI quietly dropped. 

The FAO explicitly states that fruit tree plantations, oil palm plantations, olive orchards, and agroforestry systems are not forests. The World Bank says the same. India adopted the number but discarded the exclusion. 

It took the cover of international legitimacy while gutting the standard that gave it meaning.

The government will also tell you this was never hidden. That it was publicly stated in every report, disclosed in Parliament. That is technically true. But a disclosure buried in a technical government document is not transparency. It is the appearance of transparency. 

I did not know any of this until I went looking. Neither do most Indians whose forests, whose land, whose air this directly concerns. The con is not in what was hidden from experts. It is in what was never explained to the people it was done to.

This is not a technicality. This is the con.

It was a trick as old as power itself. If you cannot fix the problem, fix the measurement.

For ten years after 2001, Congress governed India. Two terms, two environment ministers, including Jairam Ramesh, one of the more serious ones. They saw the numbers. They knew what the numbers meant.

They did nothing.

Because the lie was convenient. India looked good in international climate negotiations. The fiction of a greening India served everyone in power, so everyone in power kept it. Congress did not create this lie. It simply chose, year after year, to live inside it.

The BJP is different.

When they returned to power in 2014, they came with something Congress never had. An absolute majority, and no coalition compulsions. They did not merely inherit the lie. They built on it. And in 2023, they legislated it.

The Forest Conservation Amendment Act of 2023 removed legal protection from "deemed forests." Forests that existed outside the official definition but were ecologically real. 

Forests that Adivasi communities had lived in and depended on for generations. Forests that cooled land, held water, sheltered species. They were not on the right list. Since the amendment, forest destruction on Adivasi land has accelerated. 

The people who knew these forests best, who had protected them longest, now watch them being cleared. Legally.

CONT++

[Martina Navratilova @Martina]

If you don’t have a problem with this, you are the problem

[Yinka Ogunnubi @yinkanubi]

If you have not watched the BBC documentary on the killing of children in Gaza, I would implore you to please watch it. They documented over 160 cases. 95 of the children were shot in the head and chest.

If this doesn't trigger you, nothing else will.

https://t.co/i5Mp4ZV9HR

[Joy Ayscue @ayscue_joy]

@em_Lazzy Here is the documentary: https://t.co/BI8ZkyUPX1

[Lazzyyyyyy @em_Lazzy]

The BBC just released a documentary on Israeli snipers shooting children in the head.
168 cases. 95 shot in the head or chest. Over two-thirds under age 12.
This has been happening since October 2023.
It is now April 2026.

[Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani @NYCMayor]

We are spending at least $500 million a day to bomb Iran.

Imagine how many teachers we could hire, how many public housing units we could build, how many bridges and roads we could fix, if we spent that kind of money on improving life for working people?