The Best From The World Of Entertainment And Books: Coolie, Mother Mary Comes to Me, Amar Chitra Katha 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 list your quick, curated guide to what’s worth your time right now.

Coolie

Released on August 14

August 2025 marked 50 years of the career of one of India’s most enduring superstars — the seemingly ageless and invincible Rajinikanth. And his latest release, the action thriller Coolie, ushered in the festivities with a bang. Coolie, a throwback to the cops-and-smugglers action movies of the 1970s and 80s, was directed by the Tamil wunderkind Lokesh Kanagaraj (Kaithi, Vikram, Leo) and set in the world of gold smuggling.

As is the norm for the contemporary ‘pan-India’ film, the supporting actors were plucked from film industries all across the country — Nagarjuna (Telugu), Upendra (Kannada), Soubin Shahir (Malayalam) and, of course, Aamir Khan (Hindi). 

Wednesday Season 2

Streaming on Netflix

Veteran director Tim Burton is often credited with popularizing Goth aesthetics in Hollywood, via films like Edward Scissorhands and Beetlejuice. Burton’s latest project involves one of the most Goth-flavored I.P.s out there — The Addams Family, by cartoonist Charles Addams. Wednesday focuses on the famously spooky family’s young daughter Wednesday Addams (Jenna Ortega), a precocious aspiring novelist who shows early signs of clairvoyance, just like her mother Morticia (Catherine Zeta-Jones) did as a young girl. In order to help her control her nascent powers, her mother sends Wednesday to Evermore, a boarding school for kids with superhuman abilities. The show’s second season sees Wednesday returning to Evermore, where a new evil is rising, one that threatens not just the school but Wednesday’s family as well.

Special Ops Season 2

Streaming on JioHotstar

Special Ops, an espionage thriller created by the Bollywood director Neeraj Pandey (Baby, A Wednesday), is one of the few Indian streaming shows to have built a solid, devoted fanbase. The show follows the adventures of Himmat Singh (Kay Kay Menon), a former RAW spy-turned-spymaster. Nearing retirement, Himmat Singh uses his formidable intellect and extensive network of contacts across the world to fight covert battles on India’s behalf. Cunning, ruthless and yet possessed with a moral compass of sorts, Himmat is one of the most compelling characters to come out of Indian streaming, and Kay Kay Menon’s brilliant performance is one of the big reasons behind the show’s popularity. In the second season, Himmat is up against a young, tech-savvy mercenary known as ‘The Collector’ (Tahir Raj Bhasin), who’s hellbent on crippling India’s financial system.

Mother Mary Comes to Me by Arundhati Roy, Penguin Random House India

Arundhati Roy’s Mother Mary Comes to Me is the Booker-winning author’s much-anticipated memoir about her late mother Mary (the title refers to a line from The Beatles song Let It Be), an educator and women’s rights activist who passed away in 2022. Although Roy’s nonfiction credentials are impeccable, this is the first time she has applied her talents to the memoir format. She remains hyper-aware of the fact that dispassionate observations and ‘writerly distance’ can go out of the window when it comes to writing about family. “Even more than a daughter mourning the passing of her mother,” Roy writes, “I mourn her as a writer who has lost her most enthralling subject.”

Alice Sees Ghosts by Daisy Rockwell, Bloomsbury India

Alice Sees Ghosts is an original work of fiction from Daisy Rockwell, one of the world’s pre-eminent translators of Hindi literature and winner of the International Booker Prize. This is her second novel after Taste (2014). In this book, the protagonist Alice’s grandmother lies on her deathbed amidst a generous dose of family drama courtesy Alice’s alcoholic mother. As she is processing her feelings about all of this, Alice is haunted by a spectral vision, one that whispers long-buried stories about the family. As the supernatural phenomena prompt Alice to travel to India in search of answers, her psychiatrist fiancé Ronit grows increasingly wary of her growing obsession, even has he is himself drawn closer and closer to the spiral of unravelling secrets.

Abundant Sense: Rahim — Selected Dohas by Chandan Sinha, Westland Books

Abdul Rahim Khan-i-Khana (1556-1627), usually referred to with the mononym Rahim, is one of the most-quoted poets across the Hindi-speaking parts of the country. As one of the navaratnas in king Akbar’s court, Rahim was a man who led many parallel lives: warrior, administrator, translator and, of course, a poet who composed over 250 remarkable couplets or dohas. Although he was surrounded by wealth and power for a majority of his life, Rahim had an unusually keen perspective on the working-class life, as evidenced by his poetry. This volume brings together translations of over half of the dohas Rahim composed across his lifetime. Chandan Sinha’s rendition of these couplets in English focuses on the integrity of the original meter, rhyme scheme et al.

Love Language by Ali Sethi, on Spotify

Over the last few years, the Pakistani writer and singer Ali Sethi has become one of the most-streamed South Asian musicians in the world. Sethi and Shae Gill’s superhit track Pasoori (from the show Coke Studio Pakistan) is one of the most-viewed YouTube videos of the decade, and its soundscape showed off Sethi’s fusion talents. In his first-ever solo studio album Love Language, Sethi continues to string together musical influences from around the world and combining them with Hindustani classical music in increasingly artful ways. The playful Rocket Launcher carries the unmistakable signature of Afrobeat music. The track Tera Sitam sees Sethi at his mellifluous best, combining Bollywood-style lyrics and plunging melodies with a trip-hop production style reminiscent of bands like Massive Attack and The Cocteau Twins.

Amar Chitra Katha audiobooks, on Audible India

Amar Chitra Katha (ACK), the iconic Indian publisher of comic books based on mythological, biographical and folk narratives, is converting its extensive catalogue into the audiobook format. Audible India is now hosting English audiobooks from the ACK collection and across the next couple of months, audiobooks in Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Bangla et al will be added to the collection. ACK titles like Krishna and Mirabai (both painted by the noted artist Yusuf Lien aka Yusuf Bangalorewala) have long been considered classics from the aesthetic and storytelling points of view. Hopefully, these audiobooks can introduce yet another generation of children to the treasure trove of tales that is Amar Chitra Katha.

The Protocol: A Podcast by The New York Times, on Spotify

The question of transgender children’s rights, specifically with respect to gender-affirming medical care, has been a red-button issue in American politics over the last decade or so. President Donald Trump’s second term has seen the rapid polarization of discourse in this context—Trump declared that there are only two genders and that gender is fixed and immutable, while a majority of medical professionals and peer-reviewed scientific journals around the world disagree. In the six-part NYT podcast The Protocol, we hear from transgender children, their parents and an array of highly qualified doctors, lawyers and policy experts. Views from across the spectrum are represented—but nobody, regardless of their views, is allowed to spout unscientific, unproven stuff without challenge. No matter where you stand on this issue, The Protocol is a highly valuable information-resource.

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