Meher Aftab Part 1: The Flag That Doesn’t Wave The sun hung over the capital city of Ruvana like a bloated wound, casting a hazy orange over the skyline of glass ministries and concrete ghosts. Somewhere between the Parliament dome and the military cantonment, truth had gone missing. And Naveen Rahatkar, senior political correspondent for The Varshana Ledger, was beginning to smell its corpse. He sat in the pressroom of the Central Secretariat, watching the white-and-saffron flag of the Republic of Varshana flutter on the giant LED screen. Outside, the real flag was limp, unmoving despite the breeze. Symbolic, he…
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Tanya Mehra Part 1: Swipe Left on Sanity Mehul Mehta was the kind of man who walked into cafés with the confidence of a founder but paid for coffee with borrowed Paytm credit. On the second Tuesday of February, as the Koramangala sun turned everyone into sweating overachievers, Mehul stood outside BeanBag Labs, a co-working space that smelled like ambition and stale sandwiches. He adjusted his Zara-but-says-Gucci blazer, turned to his reflection in a glass door, and whispered, “Today, destiny gets an upgrade.” Inside, Tara Jacob sat hunched over her laptop, surrounded by four open coffee cups and a fifth…