RD Recommends: Main Vaapas Aunga, Disclosure Day and More

From long awaited returns to buzzy new releases, the entertainment world is overflowing—in the best way. Your watchlist is growing, your TBR pile is teetering, and there's more to choose from than ever. Consider this quick, curated guide to what's worth your time right now. 

Main Vaapas Aunga

Directed by: Imtiaz Ali

Written by: Imtiaz Ali, Nayanika Mahtani

Starring: Naseeruddin Shah, Diljit Dosanjh, Sharvari, Vedang Raina

Music: A. R. Rahman

Now streaming on Netflix

In 2024, Imtiaz Ali returned to form with the biopic Chamkila, where he also reunited with composer A. R. Rahman. The duo has teamed up again for Main Vaapas Aaunga, a nostalgic, plaintive love story. On his deathbed, an eccentric old man (Naseeruddin Shah) requests his devoted grandson (Diljit Dosanjh) to take him to Sargodha, across the Indo-Pak border. The reason? It is where he met his first love, around the time of the Partition in 1947. Vedang Raina and Sharvari play younger versions of these two characters, à la Ali’s previous film Love Aaj Kal. Now streaming on Netdlix, the film emerged as a sleeper hit during its theatrical run owing to its heartrending tale of a love lost to the horrors of Partition, and its compelling performances—particularly that of Shah, who has never been better.

Disclosure Day

Directed by: Steven Spielberg

Written by: David Koepp, Steven Spielberg

Starring: Emily Blunt, Josh O'Connor, Colin Firth, Colman Domingo, Wyatt Russell

Available to rent on Amazon Prime Video

Any new Steven Spielberg release is a major event. But there is every reason to be excited about Disclosure Day, for it sees the master returning to his roots with his pet theme: the interaction between humanity and aliens. With films like E.T., Close Encounters of the Third Kind and War of the Worlds, Spielberg changed the way we perceive aliens. Disclosure Day is a thriller that follows a meteorologist (Emily Blunt) and a cybersecurity expert (Josh O’Connor) who discover that the government has been lying to the public and hiding the truth about an alien invasion. Together, they must decide if the Earth would really be better off knowing the truth. The film’s strong supporting cast includes Colin Firth, Colman Domingo and Wyatt Russell.

The Death of Robin Hood

Written and Directed by: Michael Sarnoski

Starring: Hugh Jackman, Jodie Comer, Bill Skarsgård

The English folktale of ‘Robin Hood’, the archer-outlaw who robs from the rich and gives to the poor, has been a Hollywood staple for ages. Sean Connery, Kevin Costner and Russell Crowe have all portrayed the iconic character over the years—most recently, Welsh actor Taron Egerton played Robin Hood in a 2018 film with Jamie Foxx as his trusted confidante Little John. In The Death of Robin Hood, Hugh Jackman plays an aged, wounded version of the outlaw. Even as he narrates his life marked by violence and loss, a mysterious woman (Jodie Comer) cares for him, dresses his wounds and offers him an unlikely path to redemption.

Uprising by Tahmima Anam, Penguin Random House India

Bangladeshi-born British writer Tahmima Anam burst on to the literary scene in 2007 with her debut novel A Golden Age, which won Best First Book at the 2008 Commonwealth Writers’ Prizes. Over the next two decades, novels like The Good Muslim and The Startup Wife proved that Anam’s early success was no flash in the pan. Uprising, her latest novel, is set on an isolated island lair of the dreaded Amma, a prostitute-turned-madam who runs the place with an iron fist, buying and selling women and in-carcerating their children. The novel follows Kusum Khan, an educated young woman who falls into the clutches of Amma’s traffickers—and ends up leading her fellow prisoners in a rebellion against Amma’s tyrannical rule.

Just Being by Romila Thapar, Seagull Books

One of independent India’s greatest and most prolific historians, Romila Thapar is the author of dozens of books (textbooks as well as general interest titles) and the architect of JNU’s Center for Historical Studies who has educated generations of young Indians about their past. In her memoir Just Being, the 94-year-old looks back on her life and career, from growing up in British India, studying in London and starting her research at archaeological sites across the country. Written with economy of prose, Just Being contextualises Thapar’s work within the larger forces shaping historical and academic discourse in India.

Angel Down by Daniel Kraus, Titan Books

Angel Down, awarded the 2026 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, is one of the most unconventional novels to win the award. Set towards the end of the First World War during the Meuse-Argonne offensive, the novel follows a group of five misfit American soldiers as they encounter a literal angel on a French battlefield, her wings trapped in barbed wire. As they try to hide her existence from Major-General Reis, their greedy and cruel commanding officer, they each realize they need the angel to fix something in their lives, but their wishes come with a rather inflexible price. Unusually, Angel Down features unattributed shifts in voice—a technique more common in Hindi, Bengali or Malayalam literature-in-translation.

Kafkaesque: Ten Great Writers Translate the Twentieth Century by Maïa Hruska, translated by Sam Taylor, HarperCollins UK

When Franz Kafka died at age 40, he was a relatively unknown German-language writer with few takers outside of his native Prague. After his passing, however, writers and translators across the world rescued him from obscurity. Kafkaesque is a collection of essays about some of Kafka’s first translators, and how they translated this remarkable writer’s oeuvre. We see how the young Primo Levi, who had learnt German from his jailers at the Auschwitz concentration camp, battled traumatic flashbacks and sleepless nights to render Kafka’s stories in Italian. Jorge Luis Borges translated Kafka into Spanish at a time when his eyesight was fading, and he was functionally blind by the time he finished. Filled to the brim with riveting stories like these, Kafkaesque is a paean to the act of translation, and to the transformational power of literature itself.

Twenty Thousand Hertz Podcast

Streaming on Spotify

As a person with diagnosed audio-sensitivity, I have always been fascinated by what makes certain sounds pleasant over others, so the Twenty Thousand Hertz Podcast had me hooked from day one. What makes some songs ‘earworms’? How do large tech firms decide notification sounds? How did the team behind the new Harry Potter series create an entire audio-scape of church bells, bad spells and other ‘magical’ paraphernalia? If you’re immediately invested in these questions, Twenty Thousand Hertz Podcast is for you.

Teen Taal, Aaj Tak

Streaming on YouTube

Today, more and more people are receiving their information from podcasts and independent YouTubers. In that vein, Aaj Tak’s Teen Taal is one of those ‘staple’ news podcasts to which you can anchor your media consumption. Usually, it is a group of three Hindi-speaking journalists running the show—currently it’s Kamlesh Kishore Singh, Kuldeep Mishra and Asif Khan. The trio digs into the hot-button issues of the day with humour, wisdom and a touch of the absurd. As a Bihari in Delhi, I am always grateful to hear the distinctive UP–Bihar drawl that marks Teen Taal.

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