The year gone by, decoded by Shuma Raha.
Now a year old in India, Amazon's cool, AI-powered personal assistant has given Indians the experience of voice recognition, music-on-demand, and even some home automation.
According to Amazon, Indians say 'I love you' to Alexa once every minute and ask 'Will you marry me?' every three minutes.
On retina-scorching display at the celebrity weddings of Deepika Padukone-Ranveer Singh, Isha Ambani-Anand Piramal and Priyanka Chopra-Nick Jonas.
Oh, and Britain's Prince Harry got hitched to commoner Meghan Markle -- but with a shocking lack of over-the-top razzle-dazzle.
And they called it a royal wedding!
The bovine ruled, cow vigilantes rampaged and politicians 'cow'-towed, scrambling to please with promises of cow ministries, cow shelters and boosting the business in sacred cow urine.
Chinese researcher He Jiankui claimed to have produced the world's first genetically altered babies (twin girls), spurring a huge ethical and moral debate.
Made-in-India shows such as Mirzapur and Sacred Games blasted you with super-salty cuss words.
It was mind-bending stuff and, really, quite educational.
The tech giant stood discredited after news broke that it had given political consultancy Cambridge Analytica access to the personal data of 50 million FB users.
India's Supreme Court finally decriminalised homosexuality.
After Narendra Damodardas Modi made it his signature gesture of warmth and charmth towards world leaders, Rahul Gandhi, too, had a stab at a high-profile hug.
He embraced the PM in Parliament, and social media went wild.
At this rate, the hug could replace the handshake in 2019.
Tripura Chief Minister Biplab Deb informed us that there was Internet in the time of the Mahabharata.
It figures.
After all, didn't our ancients fly aeroplanes and do plastic surgery?
Jackets matter and you know where you stand depending on whether you call yours a Nehru jacket or a Modi jacket.
Much hot words were exchanged over whether the former was being egregiously rebranded as the latter.
As in Brett Kavanaugh, who was confirmed as a lifetime judge of the US supreme court even after a credible witness testified that he had sexually assaulted her as a teenager.
Lynch mobs murdered people on suspicion of being cattle smugglers or child lifters.
And at times politicians bestowed love and garlands on men who lynched.
Which hit India and took down powerful men.
Women showed they would no longer be silent victims of sexual violence.
Given to places such as Allahabad (Prayagraj), Faizabad (Ayodhya) or Mughalsarai (Deen Dayal Upadhyay Junction).
It's also called cultural cleansing, Indian style.
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The kind directed at vocalist T M Krishna and actor Naseeruddin Shah because they spoke against majoritarian hate.
Happily, lots of Indians came out in their support.
Sanjay Leela Bhansali's film on the Rajput queen of legend was finally released -- with some cuts, but at least with everyone's nose and head intact.
A man was jailed for weeks for making a quip about the erotic sculptures of Odisha's Konark temple.
It shows we do like comedy, but only if it's black.
Sridevi, Anthony Bourdain, Stan Lee, Aretha Franklin, Annapurna Devi, Neil Simon, Tom Wolfe and many more cultural icons who left us in 2018.
We got the world's tallest -- Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel's mammoth 182 metre statue built at a cost of Rs 29.9 billion.
Er, so what if we haven't solved poverty and rural distress?
It's the Oxford dictionaries's Word of the Year because it reflects the current cultural ethos.
Pithy abuse applied to anyone who is not rabidly right-wing.
After its star turns in Veere di Wedding and Lust Stories, a taboo was broken, albeit with laughable clumsiness.
Women of all ages won the right to worship at Kerala's Sabarimala temple.
But a bitter religio-political battle rages on to stop them from doing so.
US President Donald John Trump separated children from families of illegal immigrants, Amit Anilchandra Shah called Bangladeshi immigrants 'termites', and across Europe, migrants were made increasingly unwelcome.
Aka trolls or bullies or nasties who hunted in packs on social media, spewing hate, issuing death threats and badmouthing women.
The Shah Rukh Khan starrer has lived up to its name: It's come to nought at the box office.
