When the Kesharwani family in Jabalpur, India, decided to expand their home back in 1994, they pondered what to do about the giant fig tree growing in their garden. Rather than cut it down, they decided to build a four-storey house around it.

Today, the Kesharwanis’ residence is one of the most stunning sights in Jabalpur – a concrete villa with a giant tree trunk growing through its multiple stories and thick branches coming out through the windows, walls and roof. Yogesh Kesharwani, whose parents built the house 25 years ago, said that the fig tree is about 150 years old but still blossoms into leaves and fruits every year. Even though they have to navigate around its thick trunk when moving through the house, the Kesharwanis have gotten used to it and even grown to consider it a member of the family.

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An Indian businessman who allegedly staged a stupid plane hijacking hoax to get his wife fired by the airline so they could spend more time together was recently sentenced to life in prison.

Birju Salla, the 38-year-old scion of a wealthy family of jewellers based in Mumbai, became the first person to be sentenced under India’s strict Anti-Hijacking Act of 2016. The funny thing is that he never actually intended to hijack a plane, all he wanted was to get his beloved  fire so they could spend more time together. He told the court that by printing a hijacking threat and planting it in the toilet of a Jet Airways plane, the airline would close its Delhi operation and fire his younger wife, so she would be forced to return to Mumbai where they could be together more. Things didn’t work out quite as planned…

Birju Salla’s troubles began when, during his frequent flights from Mumbai to Delhi, he fell in love with a Jet Airways customer care executive. They began having an affair in 2017, but the businessman quickly became frustrated with how little time they spent together. He felt that her job was always getting in the way of their love, so in July of 2017 he secretly married her – although he was already married and had two children – and asked her to move to Mumbai with him. She refused, and that’s when he allegedly hatched a ridiculously stupid plan to get her fired.

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Going on a hunger strike doesn’t sound like the most effective way to win back lost love, but it worked in the case of one Indian man who camped outside his ex-girlfriend’s home and refused to eat until she agreed to marry him.

Ananta Burman, a young man from India’s West Bengal region had been in a stable relationship for eight years, but recently, his girlfriend, Lipika, simply cut off all communication, refusing to answer his phone calls and WhatsApp messages, as well as blocking him on social media. Ananta figured that something was wrong, so he did some digging and learned that Lipika’s family had agreed to marry her off to another man. Realizing that he had little time before he lost Lipika forever, the young man decided he had to do something extreme to get her back. So on Sunday he camped out the girl’s house in Dhupguri and went on a hunger strike.

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A homeless artist in the Indian state of Kerala spends most of his days decorating concrete walls and buildings with beautiful murals he paints using only plant leaves, mud, charcoal and natural pigments.

Everyone knows him as Raju, but that’s not his real name. Judging by his dirty clothes and unkempt beard, you’d think he was just one of the many street dwellers in Kollam City, Kerala, but he’s actually an insanely talented artist. For at least 8 years now, Raju has been entertaining the people of Kollam by painting beautiful murals on whatever clean concrete walls he can find, using plant leaves as paint brushes, and plant saps, mud, charcoal and natural pigments as paint.

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An independent candidate from the Indian state of Punjab managed to make himself known around the world after a video of him crying and telling a reporter that he only received 5 votes in the recent Indian general elections despite having 9 family members went viral on social media.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi got a resounding victory in India’s general elections, which ended last week after some 600 million people across the country cast their vote. But another important thing happened: Neetu Shutteran Wala, a relatively unknown politician who ran as independent in the city of Jalandhar, had a meteoric rise to meme status. In an interview with a local reporter, Shutteran Wala broke down in tears as he revealed that despite having nine family members, he had only received five votes. Asked if that meant that not even his family voted for him, the emotional politician said that he doesn’t blame his relatives, but election fraud.

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The Indian Army is being mocked after recently tweeting that one of its mountaineering teams spotted mysterious footprints of the mythical Yeti in an isolated mountainous area between Nepal and Tibet.

“For the first time, an #IndianArmy Mountaineering Expedition Team has sited Mysterious Footprints of mythical beast ‘Yeti’ measuring 32×15 inches close to Makalu Base Camp on 09 April 2019,” the official Twitter account of the Indian Army tweeted a couple of days ago. “This elusive snowman has only been sighted at Makalu-Barun National Park in the past.” Humans have been searching for proof of Yeti’s existence for centuries, but so far it’s all been debunked by science. So why is the Indian Army tweeting about Yeti, and more importantly, why does its tweet imply that it actually exists?

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Pawan Kumar, a 25-year-old Indian man from Uttar Pradesh, chopped off his index finger with a meat cleaver in desperation, after accidentally voting fro the wrong candidate in India’s national election.

Kumar became an overnight sensation, first in India, and then globally, thanks to a viral video of him with a bandaged index finger after he reportedly cut part of it off as self-punishment for voting for the wrong candidate. The young Dalit told reporters that he wanted to cast his vote in favor of SP-BSP-RLD candidate Yogesh Sharma, but got confused by the party symbols, and ended up voting for the ruling Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) instead. He couldn’t live with his mistake and decided to chop off his finger in desperation.

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A group of 75 female volunteers from India’s Odisha state has spent every day of the last 20 years patrolling a 75-hectare forest to protect it from woodcutters and timber smugglers.

In 1999, the eastern state of Odisha was ravaged by a supercyclone. People lost their homes, their crops and had to go without food or clothing for several days. But many in Gundalba, a small village in the Mahanadi delta of Puri district, realized that the only reason they were still alive was thanks to a forest and mangrove area that had shielded them from the brunt of the devastation. They knew they had to protect it at all costs, but with all the men busy rebuilding the village after the supercyclone, the task of watching over the forest fell to the women. They quickly formed a vigilante group and  have been taking turns patrolling the forested area in search of timber smugglers and woodcutters for the last 20 years.

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Poppy farmers in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh are forced to guard their fields day and night in a desperate attempt to fend off large groups of opium-addicted parrots who get high off the narcotic effects of poppy seeds.

Scattered rains have already affected poppy production in Neemuch district, but farmers here say that the increasing number of opium-addicted parrots that pillage their crops on a daily basis are making things even worse. Using loudspeakers and firecrackers to keep the birds at bay has failed and the farmers’ appeals to local authorities have fallen of deaf ears, so people have no choice but to guard the poppy fields day and night. But even so, the birds still come to get their fix dozens of time a day.

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A 27-year-old man from New Delhi, India, wants to take his parents to court for bringing him into this world without first asking for his consent.

Raphael Samuel is an anti-natalist, a person who believes that people should abstain from procreation because giving birth to sentient beings without asking for their consent is morally wrong. Samuel doesn’t have anything against children or life itself, he simply believes that a life form which has not given its consent to live should not be brought into the world and thus to be subject to the hardships of life. Because he considers himself a victim of life without “forced life”, the young Indian plans to take his parents to court.

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Two teenage sisters in India were recently honored for their grit and determination after it was discovered that they disguised themselves as boys for four years in order to keep their father’s barbershop open after he became ill.

Jyoti Kumari, 18, and her 16-year-old sister, Neha, from Banwari Tola, in India’s Uttar Pradesh state, took over their father’s barbershop in 2014 after he suffered a severe paralytic attack that left him bedridden. The girls were only 13 and 11-years-old at the time, but the barbershop was the family’s only source of income, so they had to do something to put food on the table. At first, the barbershop was closed, but as the family savings evaporated, Jyoti and Neha reopened it and started running it themselves. But things didn’t go well at first, as some men were skeptical about having girls shave their beards and trim their mustaches, while others treated them badly. So they started disguising themselves as men.

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Gourav Mukhi went from being celebrated as the youngest goal scorer in the history of the Indian Super League to being suspended for six months, after authorities found that he wasn’t actually 16-years-old, but 28.

Mukhi’s troubles started back in October, when the Jamshedpur FC striker scored a “historic goal” against Bengaluru FC. Not only was it a crucial equaliser for his team, but it made him the youngest scorer in the history of India’s soccer league. He was only 16 at the time, or at least that’s what his documents showed, but all the attention made people look at him more closely, and some started expressing doubts about his age online. It didn’t take long for evidence of his deceit to come out, as only three years prior, he had been suspended from the National U16 Football Championship, for being much older than he claimed. So if he was older than 16 three years ago, how could he be 16 now?

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Every day, hundreds of tourists and devotees visit a shrine in Shivapur, a small village about 180 km east of Mumbai, in India, to witness a controversial “miracle” known as the Levitating Stone of Shivapur.

The Shrine of Qamar Ali Darvesh, a Muslim Sufi Saint who lived about 700 years ago, features an ancient stone that reportedly weighs 154lbs (90kg). Lifting this stone off the ground would normally require a lot of strength, but according to believers in the Levitating Stone miracle, it’s possible for a set number of men to lift it up over their heads with only their index fingers, but only after shouting Qamar Ali Darvesh’s name. This phenomenon has fascinated Indian Muslims for centuries, but many believe it’s nothing more than a gimmick.

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A 65-year-old woman from a village in India’s West Bengal has allegedly spent every day for the past two decades submerged up to her neck in the waters of a nearby lake, due to an unknown disease.

Before getting into this strange story, I have to disclose the fact that it is unverified. It went viral in Russia (of all places) last month, and I’ve been trying to find a credible source ever since. Unfortunately, I’ve had no luck. Apart from dozens of Russian news sites and a few dubious English blogs, I have found no mention of this woman anywhere. Normally, I wouldn’t even have bothered writing about something like this, but what really intrigued me about this story is that it comes with a video of this woman siting idly in a lake, all by herself, as other people look on from the shore. There’s definitely a story here, I just don’t know if it’s the one I’ve found. So if you’re reading this and can provide any credible insight about this news story, I’d love to hear from you. Anyway, here’s the Russian version:

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Authorities in the Indian state of Goa are encouraging farmers to adopt “cosmic farming” by chanting Vedic mantras to their fields for 20 days in order o improve the quality and quantity of their crops without the help of chemical fertilizers.

Promoting organic farming is definitely commendable, but the approach of Goa’s Ministry of Agriculture is questionable at least. According to several news reports, authorities in the Indian state are currently promoting cosmic farming as an alternative to conventional agriculture. This requires farmers to chant ‘Vedic mantras’ to their fields for 20 days, which is supposed to help attract the energy of the universe into the field and help the seeds sprout faster and ultimately provide better yields.

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