Yearend special: Sunday Times ‘honours’ newsmakers who spiced up 2025

Sunday Times ‘honours’ the newsmakers who spiced up 2025. We hope the awards are taken in the spirit in which they’re given

Chance pe Dance AwardTo Shafali Verma who unexpectedly waltzed into the Women’s T20 World Cup squad as an injury replacement, scored a match-winning 87 runs off 78 balls and took two crucial wickets in the final




Portfolio Diversification AwardTo Smriti Irani for effortlessly slipping in and out of her roles in the saffron parivar and the Virani parivar

Kaam Sutra AwardTo the L&T Chairman for his suggestion that people should work 90 hours a week, preferably also on Sundays. His rhetorical “how long can you stare at your wife?” was the icing on the workaholic cake

Hawa Hawaii AwardTo IndiGo, which seems to think taking people for a ride is the same as flying, and that additional pilots will appear from thin air to ensure new rest time rules can be met

Oppn-heimer AwardTo Rahul Gandhi for promising bombs, hydrogen bombs, and then some, on electoral roll ‘fraud’, only to be dismissively defused by the electorate of Bihar

GPS AwardTo the vandals who threatened comedian Kunal Kamra but couldn’t figure out how to find him.

“Abhi Tamil Nadu kaise pahunchega bhai,” asked the befuddled goons

Mission Impawsible AwardTo the courts for ordering that all of Delhi’s stray dogs should be inside animal shelters within eight weeks. Thankfully, the order was toned down on appeal

Seeta-Geeta AwardTo diabetes drugs that are pulling off a splendid double role as weight-loss stars. Why sweat it out when some pills can do the heavy lifting?

Stung Parivar AwardTo the Lalu clan which took the Bihar election rout all too personally and drove sibling rivalry up several notches

Hum App Ke AwardTo the communications ministry for being so concerned about our cyber security that it insisted on preloading the Sanchar Saathi app on all new phones. Knowing how careless we can be, it even ordered that the app couldn’t be deleted till carping critics forced it to withdraw the order

Omkara AwardTo Saif Ali Khan who proved he’s ‘sabse bade ladaiya’ by fighting off the thief who broke into his house in Mumbai. And then hailing an auto to the hospital. Who said nawabs can’t be down to earth?

Light Year AwardTo Bengaluru traffic , which astronaut Shubhanshu Shukla discovered on his way to a tech summit in Silicon City. “You can reach space faster,” he said, and all of the city nodded in agreement

Bungee Jump AwardTo Jagdeep Dhankhar’s health which apparently nosedived so dramatically that he had no option but to hang up his boots as Vice President

Deja Woe AwardTo the Congress in Karnataka , where the game of musical chairs threatens to become a franchise reboot of the MP, Punjab and Chhattisgarh sagas


Comeback Nitish Kumar: Tossing aside a familiar opponent and a new challenger, Kumar became Bihar CM for a record 10th term

Himesh Reshammiya: Packed stadiums and the return of his trademark cap marked the comeback of ‘Lord HR’, as both millennials and GenZs gave in to ‘Capmania’

Akshaye Khanna: His career as a main lead might have never taken off, but 2025 cemented his status as Bollywood’s new favourite baddie. Not only did he star in two of the year’s most successful releases, but also dominated social media with memes

Kiran Desai: After nearly 20 years, her much-awaited novel ‘The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny’ arrived —and immediately shot into the Booker shortlist

Kyunki Saas Bhi Reboot: The sanskaar-laden soap, which broke TRPs and made Smriti Irani a household name, returned to TV screens with nearly an unchanged cast

Shein: Five years after its ban, the Chinese fast-fashion giant made a quiet re-entry in partnership with Reliance Retail

Goodbyes

Ro-Ko: A year after withdrawing from T20s, India’s star cricketers Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli retired from Test cricket too in a move that surprised both fans and foes

Rohan Bopanna: The 45-year-old tennis player, one of only four Indians to win a Grand Slam, hung up his boots in Nov, bringing an end to a career spanning over 20 years

BluSmart: The EV cab-hailing app promised cleaner mobility. But it found itself caught in murky waters after allegations of fund diversion forced it to suspend operations

Real money gaming: A new law proved to be a blow for apps like Dream11 and MPL, which relied on monetary stakes in games such as poker and rummy

Skype: The app, which once connected friends and relatives across continents, was shut down, as Microsoft shifts attention to its cooler cousin, Teams

MIG-21: The country’s once iconic and controversial Soviet fighter jet took its last flight after six decades in the sky
Select The Times of India as your preferred source on Google Search