Messi, Ronaldo, Vinicius ignite America, electrifying as Maradona and Zidane? Let’s See.
Digital-Stadium Combined Audience in the Americas shatters records as we saw in celebrations at Times Square, New York and in an LA Bar.
Football, despite the many odds now, somehow brings people together across the world. Yes, there are issues here and outside, but the Americas and its people have broken all audience records for any football World Cup. The 2026 Edition has shattered Global Television and Streaming records, and Fan numbers in Stadiums, despite hiccups. In India and in Bangalore, on-demand streaming and digital replays have overwhelmed Live TV owing to the time zone factor. While the need to get away from frictions in recent times, the simultaneous desire for something GRAND and POSITIVE, some RELIEF from the negativity of life and the growing love of football’s artistry and artists definitely explain the huge audience numbers here, Messi, Ronaldo and Vinicius with their hat-tricks and braces have also lighted up the Americas, though we’re waiting to see if they can re-create the magic, madness and obsession of the 1986 Maradona and the 1998 Zidane. Some excitement is on its way, says Dr. Praveen Grama from Seattle, USA.
In The News
Raghu Dixit will be performing on August 8 at Phoneix Mall of Asia, 7 pm, to mark 25 years of The Raghu Dixit Project. The concert will feature contemporary, country and folk.
Director Anurag Kashyap’s highly anticipated new film, Bandar, is now on in theaters. Bobby Deol has received acclaim; the film is said to be intense, engaging, grounded and gripping.
Something to think about
Money is not a motivating factor. Money doesn’t make me play better. The real engine is the simple act of playing football, the same feeling I had as a child in Rosario.
There are more important things in life than winning or losing a game.
-Messi
The Many Hues
Raghu Dixit will be performing on August 8 at Phoneix Mall of Asia, 7 pm, to mark 25 years of The Raghu Dixit Project. The concert will feature contemporary, country and folk.
Football, despite the many odds now, somehow brings people together across the world. Yes, there are issues here and outside, but the Americas and its people have broken all audience records for any football World Cup. The 2026 Edition has shattered Global Television and Streaming records, and Fan numbers in Stadiums, despite hiccups. In India and in Bangalore, on-demand streaming and digital replays have overwhelmed Live TV owing to the time zone factor. While the need to get away from frictions in recent times, the simultaneous desire for something GRAND and POSITIVE, some RELIEF from the negativity of life and the growing love of football’s artistry and artists definitely explain the huge audience numbers here, Messi, Ronaldo and Vinicius with their hat-tricks and braces have also lighted up the Americas, though we’re waiting to see if they can re-create the magic, madness and obsession of the 1986 Maradona and the 1998 Zidane. Some excitement is on its way, says Dr. Praveen Grama from Seattle, USA.
Pic Credits : HiT The Music Magazine and gunsnroses.com The concerts are being organised by BookMyShow. More information and tickets on the Guns N’ Roses website. (https://gunsnroses.com/?ref=hitmusicmag.com) SOME OF THEIR OTHER TOURS IN 2026 Berlin Antwerp Paris Singapore Toronto Vancouver 2026 MEMBERS OF THE BAND…
IN THE DARK LIES THE UNRESTRAINED VOICE OF THE MYSTIQUE Pics Credit : @gigmanmedia THE KAYAKA ENERGY The term and concept Kayaka is derived from the Kannada word for work” or “dignity of labor” and celebrates themes of social justice, equality, and working-class perspectives. The…
Pixxel World, Some lovely notes
ICONIC ROCK BAND GUNS N’ ROSES COMING TO BENGALURU, GUWAHATI, NOV 14, 17
Pics Credit: HiT The Music Magazine and gunsnroses.com
RAW ENERGY ANTHEMS TO A NEW GENERATION OF FANS Guns N’ Roses will return to India for two shows this November, bringing their rock anthems to Bengaluru and Guwahati, HiT The Music Magazine has reported.
The concerts are scheduled for November 14 at Nice Grounds in Bengaluru and November 17 at Khanapara Grounds in Guwahati.
The visit marks the band’s second visit to India in two years. Their 2025 comeback show ended a 13-year absence from the country.
Formed in Los Angeles in 1985, the band burst into the mainstream with their 1987 debut Appetite for Destruction, an album now regarded as one of the most influential debuts in rock history. It remains the 18th best-selling album of all time in the US.
The band followed with the simultaneous release of Use Your Illusion I and Use Your Illusion II in 1991.
Their catalogue has sold over 100 million units worldwide. The band was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in May 2024 for Appetite for Destruction, and continues to draw 34 million monthly listeners on Spotify, making them one of the most-streamed rock acts globally.
The current lineup features Axl Rose on vocals and keyboards, Duff McKagan on bass, Slash on lead guitar, Dizzy Reed on keyboards, Richard Fortus on rhythm guitar, Isaac Carpenter on drums, and Melissa Reese on keyboards. Known for marathon three-hour-plus shows, their live reputation is built on the same raw energy that defined their early years.
The India dates follow an extensive 2025 tour across Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and Latin America, and come alongside the release of two new singles: ‘Nothin‘ and ‘Atlas.‘ The tracks mark the band’s first new music since 2023 and signal a renewed creative phase.
The November 14 show in Bengaluru will take place at Nice Grounds, a venue that has hosted several international acts.
The November 17 date at Khanapara Grounds in Guwahati marks Guns N’ Roses’ debut in the Northeast.
Guns N’ Roses’ had earlier toured India in 2012. The band’s songs, like ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine,’ ‘November Rain,’ and ‘Welcome to the Jungle‘ remain staples on playlists worldwide.
The concerts are being organised by BookMyShow.
More information and tickets on the Guns N’ Roses website.
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Authors | Editors
Prashanth G N
Bangalore
Prashanth G N is An Author, Journalist, Columnist, Strategist in Frontier Technologies, has been a Communications Advisor and is an Academic with a Master of Philosophy in Sociology from the University of Hyderabad. He is a Science Fellow, IAS-MIT, Massachusetts, Robert Bosch Fellow, Geneva, Copenhagen, Dublin, Torino, UGC Fellow, worked at The Times of India, International Business Times, The Hindu, The Deccan Herald, Talk, and at The Indian Express. This journey offered him opportunity to travel and meet exciting people across the world including US, Europe, SE Asia, Asia Pacific and S Asia.
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Dr. Praveen Grama
Seattle
Dr. Praveen Grama, a Texas A & M PhD, having moved on after admission to the prestigious IIT-Kanpur, is now Lead Aircraft Structural Engineer at Boeing, Seattle. His exemplary, sustained research and sharp problem-solving capability in Aviation naturally won him the ‘Boeing 787 Engineer of the Year’, and 'Meritorious Inventor Award' at Boeing for crucial inventions in finite element modeling. Praveen holds 3 major Patents and 1 Trade Secret, knows plenty about aircraft engines, wings, airframes, fuselage and what not. He’s also very well-versed in football having played at school, music, food and films from multiple cultures and has travelled across the length and breadth of the world from Moscow to Melbourne via Bangalore, his natural pit stop! His Phd work on super-elasticity, modeling and materials is vital and fundamental to aircraft dynamics and operations. It's a matter of saving lives.
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Shantheri Mallaya
Bangalore
Shantheri Mallaya is a senior journalist with over twenty years in writing, editing, leading editorial teams, leading discussions and thought leadership in technology. A driven person, she puts in her energy to anything she does. She has worked with some of the world's best-known media and consulting conglomerates and has briefly been an entrepreneur and is a global traveller.
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Pradeep Narasimhaprasad
Bangalore
Pradeep, a Techie, has worked in top-flight global companies and has travelled the world from Mexico to Moscow, Finland to Vietnam and everything in between and brings a phenomenally rich perspective on the beauty and pleasure of those geographies and the little things we can learn back home. He is attached to the Radio which is where he began listening to songs from all over the world. He is of the conviction that discipline and fitness gives you space to focus on things you like.
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Giridhar Khasnis
Bangalore
Bengaluru-based Giridhar Khasnis is a senior art writer, curator, columnist and author of Kannada micro-fiction. A former banker, he has written more than 1,200 articles on art, literature, photography and world cinema for leading newspapers and magazines. Alongside his writing, he has pursued photography and photo-collage for over five decades and has curated sixteen art exhibitions. Khasnis served as a jury member for the Tasveer-Toto Photo Awards in 2013 and 2014, and in 2017 he was invited to participate in the International Curator-in-Residence Programme in South Korea. His solo photography exhibition, ‘Of Silence, Solitude and Slow Time,’ was presented in April 2019 at Gallery Manora in Bengaluru.
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Uma Shankara Sharma
Bangalore
Uma Shankar Sharma has a diverse and multi-faceted pedigree. His father Chandrashekar Sharma worked in the film domain with greats like Dr Raj Kumar, Dr Vishnuvardhan, Kalyan Kumar, Uday Kumar, and the charming Shankar Nag to name just a few and hence Uma’s understanding and insight into the lives of these film greats is rich. Uma has also been creating platforms and spaces for great musicians for very long which includes artistes like Parveen Sultana, Trilok Gurtu, Santoor wizard Rahul Sharma, Flautist Rakesh Chaurasia and many other renowned personalities. Uma has also been an entrepreneur, having launched firms in different verticals and has the experience of building something on his own. He has also worked at highly reputed global conglomerates like American MNC Applied Materials, picked up learning and development and Human Resource Management expertise there and managing multiple operations at the other MNC Tata Tele Services. He later went into Marketing for a reputed global Neuroscience company articulating the need for neuroscience technologies for patients in the domain of healthcare. Uma has also been articulating the needs of renowned foundations and corporate companies in the media and strategizing their operations through rich Public Relations experience. He has seen it all – journalism, Public Relations, Media Consultancy, Concert and Artiste Management communications, HR, Management Information Systems, Project Management entrepreneurship, L and D, music, cinema, dance and more.
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Coby Mathew
Barcelona
Coby’s a highly driven Journo, a native from God’s Paradise, Kerala, who’s part of global conglomerates now and while he loves literature, film and writing of many hues, he never misses an opportunity to drive, which in itself is a pleasure especially if you have good roads, pleasant weather and light rain, especially in Europe. He’s been in London, that energetic locale where everyone in the world comes to. Coby has been writing on a variety of domains that cover automotive, defence, politics, tourism, and cultural matters. He has the remarkable significance to grasp in an instant that which is valuable and priceless and can articulate this in seconds in crisp grammar that is so easy to read. His capacity to read widely and sustain endless curiosity ensures he’s at the cutting-edge of thought and ideas.
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Garud Iyengar
Columbia, New York
Garud Iyengar, Avanessians Director of the Columbia Data Science Institute, New York and Professor Columbia University and Stanford University Phd, and featured and appreciated by The New York Times is one of US and Columbia University’s meteoric, inspirational and exciting intellectuals, hailing from a Malleswaram home in Bengaluru. Garud’s research paper has been recognized among 50 landmark papers shaping 50 years of Operations Research. The paper is “Robust Dynamic Programming.” To mark its 50th anniversary, the senior editors of the leading journal, Mathematics of Operations Research (MOR), selected 50 landmark papers – one from each year – highlighting advances in the field over five decades. Garud Iyengar, Tang Family Professor of Operations, Industrial Engineering and Operations Research, Columbia University, has also been an Amazon Scholar, Professor at Bangalore’s National Center for Biological Sciences, Associate Professor, at London Business School, and Professor, at Rockefeller University, New York, and Co-creator of a Coursera MOOC on Financial Engineering and Risk Management reaching thousands of students, Editor in Chief: Foundations and Trends in Optimization, and the holder of two prestigious US patents – Systems and methods for providing robust investment portfolios, and another, Determining load reductions in demand response systems. Garud Iyengar has been collaborating with the world’s leading thinkers, researchers, academics, industry pioneers and students in all of these domains, launching initiatives in institutions that have taken solid root and been path-breaking. Before getting to Columbia, Iyengar built an impeccable and flawless academic legacy – a B.Tech in Electrical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology – Kanpur, and an MS and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the iconic Ivy League, Stanford University. Alongside the positions he holds now, he has been a long-standing Simons Visitor at NCBS Simons Centre for the Study of Living Machines, NCBS, Bengaluru. Iyengar has also been awarded the coveted and prestigious CAREER Award of the National Science Foundation and earlier, the President’s Gold Medal at IIT, Kanpur. Garud Iyengar scored a perfect 10/10 CGPA all four years while pursuing B.Tech at IIT-Kanpur. This is a man always looking at what others are up to and what he can learn from them. His is an open mind that absorbs every idea, emotion, and affection to enrich himself – a great lesson for the millions aspiring to be in exciting careers and do exciting things in the one life we all have. Garud Iyengar has been scaling it all up these years – optimisation across diverse domains, mathematical strategies and applications, computational finance, biology, communication and information theory, risk and supply chain management, dynamics and memory of physical sensors processing information, thermodynamics of molecular sensing, cost of molecular memory during signaling, asset allocation, asset pricing, simulation, labour platforms, power networks, financial engineering, applications in diverse fields such as machine learning, systemic risk, operations management, sports analytics, and now the big thing, Artificial Intelligence. When in Bengaluru, the pit-stop at his Malleswaram home is natural – where he loves his thaiyar sadam (curd rice) with oorga (pickle) apart from our very own rasam or pulka with dal, or shavige paaisam (vermicelli sweet). Iyengar also loves making his own piping hot cappuccino with all its steam, fixes great vodka, brings veggies on his own, and makes absolutely crisp dosas. He doesn’t miss out on Bhagathram’s jamoons, samosas and kachoris, with their tangy sweet and chilli chutneys on Bengaluru’s Commercial Street. He also finds time for Fleetwood Mac’s and Stevie Nicks’ scintillating number, Thrown Down, looking down onto the sparkling Washington Bridge, a jewel in the night, over the Hudson River in Manhattan, Riverside, with a whiskey in hand – and then Beethoven and Mozart on the one hand and Carnatic magic on the other. He also loves jazz and Harlem where it all happened is something he has a grip on, rock, classical - western and Indian, American folk, Blues, Gospel (Aretha Franklin), and then ofcourse our own Lata Mangeshkar, Mohammed Rafi, Bhupen Hazarika among so many. Iyengar doesn’t also miss out on New York’s famed Broadway musicals and theatre – whenever an outstanding one comes up – most are!
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