LOUNGE LOVES

Things to watch, read, hear, do—and other curated experiences from the team

AN ANDROID IN SPACE

Every version of Android brings with it an Easter egg, a hidden feature inside the phone’s settings (go to “About device” and then “Android version”). Finding the Easter egg is like a treasure hunt. Down the years, there have been many memorable Android Easter eggs—the modified Flappy Bird game in Android 5.0 Lollipop, for instance—but Android 14 takes it out of this world. Themed around space, the new Easter egg shows the Android 14 logo as a space mission patch floating among stars. When you tap the logo repeatedly, followed by a long press, your phone vibrates—almost like the launch of a spacecraft—and the screen moves to a hidden game where you control a tiny spacecraft as it floats around in space. The game also shows you the spacecraft’s coordinates, velocity and information on the nearest star. Try it out yourself. —Nitin Sreedhar

A HIGH FASHION DRAMA

Fashion label Balenciaga has raked up so many controversies in the past few years, it’s easy to forget the man who lent his name, and life, to make it one of the most storied couture labels we know. Disney’s biographical series, Cristóbal Balenciaga, which premiered in January, corrects that. With Alberto San Juan in the titular role, the Spanish series has managed to draw the reclusive designer out from the curtain he loved hiding behind. The show, aided by a fleet of stunning dresses, also feels like a crash course in fashion history. What I enjoyed most were the quiet moments that show Balenciaga bent down poring closely over the stitches of a dress.

—Mahalakshmi Prabhakaran

ANGELS AND DEMONS

Ihave been a fan of British author Janice Hallett’s mystery novels since her first, The Appeal, came out in 2021. Hallett has now written her fourth novel, The Mysterious Case

Of The Alperton Angels, using the same style: the “found footage” mystery where the reader pieces together a crime and its investigation using seemingly disjointed emails, letters, newspaper clippings, text messages and other epistolary material. Alperton Angels has a dogged journalist and true-crime writer looking into the case of a cult that imploded around 20 years ago in mysterious circumstances, including several deaths and the disappearance of a baby. The book is a bit tough to get into at first, given the lack of exposition, but it’s a delicious challenge for the crime nerd. —Shrabonti Bagchi

BALM FOR A SCRATCHY THROAT

There is no denying that winter in the National Capital Region has been particularly brutal this year. The chill, combined with high levels of pollution, resulted in bouts of cough, which simply refused to go away. I spent most of this winter in a quandary as the usual home remedies of turmeric milk and kaadha, made with spices and herbs, didn’t alleviate the scratchy throat. Then in the beginning of February, I discovered Makaibari’s white peppermint bark tea, which I had forgotten about, in the kitchen cupboard. Made with organic white tea grown in the estate of Makaibari in Darjeeling, the tea contained hints of peppermint, which is believed to soothe a sore throat. Since February, I have been sipping away on this comforting concoction, alternating between the tea and kaadha, and the cough is finally showing signs of bidding adieu. —Avantika Bhuyan