In early June 2001, I started receiving anonymous calls from someone who sounded like he could not be more twenty-two years old. He never told me his name and every call was to inform me about his hacking achievements. Sometimes he would say he had hacked websites in other countries or institutions to show how vulnerable they were to cyberattacks. I could tell he was passionate about establishing himself in the digital world the way I wanted to make it big in journalism, and I felt a strange sense of connection to him.

Though none of this was printable, I nurtured him as a source, anticipating that he would be useful to me some day. Neither of us insisted on meeting each other, but we kept in touch over the phone and at times discussed his motives for hacking.But what brought us closer was something beyond my wildest imagination.

One evening, a call on my office landline became a turning point for my career. It was him. But his voice sounded different. There was a mix of excitement, fear and anxiety in his tone, and it was obvious that he had done something big. “I hacked the Mumbai Police’s website,” he said.

I said, “Abey, bahut marenge tereko, tu ghar pe bola kya” (They will beat the hell out of you. Did you tell your family)? I had hoped he was kidding, but he replied, “You think this is a joke? I am very serious. Go to their website and you will see that their homepage is disrupted.”

I immediately logged in and saw that the homepages of two sites – cybercellmumbaicity.com and www.ccicmumbai.com – displayed the Information Technology Act and other laws pertaining to IT Act violations. He wanted to call out the cops for letting their guard down.

The young ambitious journalist and the idealistic young citizen in me were in a tussle. This would be my biggest scoop till date if I reported it. I was torn between writing about it and reporting it to the police. He probably sensed my indecisiveness because he hung up saying he would call back in fifteen minutes.

I rushed to my editor’s cabin and discussed the story with him. We decided to persuade the caller to meet and I would record the interaction on a phone camera. I would also carry a pen camera as I anticipated that he wouldn’t let me take his picture. We would take a call later on whether to identify him or not.

I went back to my seat and waited for his call; I wasn’t sure if he would call me back. But exactly fifteen minutes later, the phone rang again. This time, he sounded more confident. I made my request to meet him, but he hung up, thinking that it was a set-up for the cops. Before he could cut the call, I managed to tell him, “I am as hungry for this story as you are for glory in the cyber world, so please have faith in me and give me an opportunity to meet you once.” But he did not give in.

I lost my cool and banged the phone down, startling the entire office. “What’s wrong with you?” a colleague sitting next to me asked in an irritated tone. I preferred to ignore her and walked out for a break.

At that time, it felt like I had lost the one opportunity to kick-start my career. I was most upset that I had not been able to convince him.

When I returned, a colleague told me that someone had called and left a message that he would call back again in a few minutes. “Did you ask his name?” I asked. The caller had just replied saying that it was an important call. I heaved a sigh of relief. It had to be him. And I was right. The hacker called me back.

“I am talking to you only on one condition. You will not mention my name. I want you to come alone near Kabutar Khana in Dadar. I will see you in exactly one hour,” he said, referring to the pigeon-feeding square in Mumbai’s central neighbourhood.

“But how do I recognise you? Can I have your number?” I asked.

“Once you reach the spot, I will give you a call and give you further instructions,” was his reply.

It seemed like he had learnt his moves from films. I informed the office and rushed to Dadar without wasting any time. It took me less than half an hour to reach the spot. I kept looking at the people passing by and saw him in every young boy that walked past me; I even tried to make eye contact with some.

Exactly an hour after the last conversation, I got a call on my mobile number from a landline number. From where I stood, I could see three public call office (PCO) booths, of which two were busy. One was occupied by a middle-aged man while the other had a younger boy. I was sure the latter was the one I was looking for.

On hearing my response, he cut the call. The young boy also put down the phone. The boy then began walking straight in my direction. As I raised my hand in greeting, someone tapped me on my back and said, “I am the one you are looking for.”

I turned around and saw a six-foot-tall plump boy standing behind me. He was wearing a green T-shirt with beige three-fourth pants. He kept looking around shiftily to make sure there were no cops nearby. I assured him and asked him to relax. “Let’s go to a more secluded place and talk, this spot is not safe,” he said and led me towards one of the smaller lanes in Dadar.

He still refused to tell me his name. “I am going to be Dr Neurkar for you, you don’t have to know my real name. Let’s keep it that way,” he said. I learnt later that his pseudonym was inspired by Dr Neurkar of G-Force, the world-renowned hacker.

Though he was extra cautious about scanning our surroundings for danger, he missed the pen camera in my shirt pocket. At that time, the pen camera was not very common.

Once we sat down outside a shuttered shop, he revealed a few more details about himself, telling me his larger circle of friends was also responsible for hacking the Mumbai Police’s website.

“And your motive?” I asked him.

“What kind of training are these officers getting when they cannot protect their own online properties? How will they protect the sites of others? Only passing the Indian Police Service exams is not enough for these guys, they should also be aware how to prevent cybercrimes in Mumbai. They must keep up with the times. The agency that is fighting for justice for the victims of cybercrime has to first secure itself,” he explained.

“If you notice the trends in the US and European countries, crimes on the Internet are far more complicated. We only want them to take this as a lesson,” he said, as if he was doing some kind of service to the police department.

“If you notice the trends in the US and European countries, crimes on the Internet are far more complicated. We only want them to take this as a lesson,” he said, as if he was doing some kind of service to the police department.

The hacker said that he was part of a thirteen-member team called G-Force.

Other members on the team were Da Libran, Lil_dvil and The_anaylizer, all of whom were Indians. Seven of the members were Pakistani nationals while the remaining two were Russian. All members were in constant touch with each other over the Internet and worked as security advisers to companies abroad. “Have you considered sharing this with the police?” I asked.

He snubbed me and said, “Do you think they would agree that the team that is manning one of the first cybercrime cells in the country is incapable of handling the cases? They would never do that,” he added.

“Any fear of consequences?” I asked.

“I have to take this gamble. If the police force is sporting enough to take criticism and improve their ability to deal with what is anticipated in the future, it will benefit the city,” he said.

After chatting for almost two hours, the hacker sensed that I could be trusted. He agreed to get in touch in the next two or three days. But the deal was that he would call on my landline and start with the secret code: “Dr Neurkar of G-Force.”

Gauging that he was comfortable talking to me, I requested him to give me a photograph of himself without revealing his identity. Though he refused flatly initially, he agreed after I persisted. He allowed me to take a picture where his back was to the camera. “Boss, I am taking a big risk trusting you. I hope you will not break my trust,” he added. He was still unaware that our entire conversation was being recorded.

I was in two minds now. The innocence I had seen in his eyes made me feel guilty about exposing his identity, but my newspaper had given me clear instructions to get him on tape. Sometimes my profession demands things that the heart doesn’t support. I reached office and sat at my desk. It was now very close to the deadline and my editors worked with me to figure out how to position the story.
They bombarded me with questions. “How did the interview go?” “Who is this man?” “How old is he?” Had I managed to catch him on camera? I connected my pen camera to the computer to view the footage. Strangely, the video had not been recorded due to a technical snag, but I still had an audio recording.

My editor yelled at the top of his voice when he found out what had happened. “Useless, ch****a, g****u! You missed the golden chance. What is the point of running the story now? We don’t have a face for the man who is throwing a challenge to the cops to come and arrest him,” he said.

The pressure was mounting as the deadline approached.
I thought I would lose my job soon after beginning my career. After a minute of pin-drop silence, I gathered courage and told my city editor, Lajwanti D’Souza, that I had a photograph of the man’s back.

“Okay, let me talk to him (editor) and figure things out,” she said and walked into the editor’s cabin. After a brief chat, she came out and hurried towards me. We would carry the story with the photograph. When I called the cops for their side of the story, they maintained that their in-house hackers had penetrated the site for an experiment. This did not explain the changed homepage, a classic hacker trademark. The police also claimed that the hacking was over, but the site hadn’t been fully restored till early next morning.

When the story broke, it was everywhere. Every newspaper had reported the news about the police website being hacked, but we outshone the others with the interview of the hacker. I still remember that a senior reporter from a rival newspaper who I could barely stand approached me to offer his congratulations. However, he tried to mask it by talking about the layout of the story and not the content.

In just a few hours of the issue reaching the newspaper stands, I was chased by almost every news channel and multiple police officers who wanted to know where they could find the hacker. I received close to a hundred calls, inquiring whether I would share the number of the hacker.

Senior officers of the Crime Branch, who usually made me wait outside their cabins for hours for one quote, called up and requested that I visit them for tea. A deputy commissioner of police, who I had known for a while, wanted the hacker to surrender and asked me to convey the message to him.

But I was firm. I had betrayed the hacker enough and could not expose him any further. He had not wanted publicity. His “social service” was highly misunderstood by the police, as he had anticipated.

The cops were under tremendous pressure to trace the guy.
The Cyber Cell traced the hacking to an Internet café in Dadar. They arrested the owner, Pradeep Yadav, and a hardware engineer, Jagdish Sabnis, who had no clue about the hacking. In those days, the cafés maintained no records of visitors, making it more difficult for cops. The city also had no CCTV surveillance.

I was sure the cops would have no option but to tap my personal numbers. After a while, I decided to use only the office landline phones as it is difficult to receive permission to tap landlines of newspaper organisations.

Soon after the story was published, I was advised by my office legal team to stop communicating with the hacker. Almost a week after the story broke, the hacker called me on the landline. “Dr Neurkar of G-Force. The two arrested have nothing to do with the case, they have been framed,” he said.

The police had claimed that they had concrete evidence against the duo and that one of the accused had already confessed. The two arrested were detained under various sections of the Information Technology Act and several sections of the Indian Penal Code. They faced a minimum sentence of three years.

“I called the senior police inspector of the Cyber Crime Cell, IM Zahid,” the hacker continued.

“Why would you do that?” I asked.

“I asked him, ‘Pakad rahe ho ya nahin’ (Are you going to arrest me or not)?” he replied.

“What! Are you out of your mind?” I said.

He gave me Zahid’s cell phone number as proof and then abruptly disconnected our call. We published another story about him, claiming that he had mocked the cops about arresting him. The day the story was published, the pressure on the cops increased.

It turned out that this call would set off Neurkar’s downfall. He had dared to do something that even hardcore criminals and gangsters would not think of doing.
In a closed-door meeting, the then joint commissioner of police, Bhujangrao Mohite, involved other units of the Crime Branch in tracing this man. This meant that almost half a dozen police units were desperately looking for him. The officers were instructed to find him in a week’s time. It was a matter of prestige and every officer in the unit wanted to be the one to solve the case.

Three computer experts, part of the Mumbai Police’s advisory committee, were also called in: Internet guru Vijay Mukhi, and ethical hackers.

In less than a week, the Crime Branch cracked the case and arrested Anand Ashok Khare, then 23, alias Dr Neurkar and Mahesh Subhash Mhatre, also 23, alias Da Libran. Khare had dropped out of a telecom engineering programme and was a Cisco-certified network associate, while Mhatre was a software programmer.

DISCLAIMER: Excerpted with permission from The Anatomy Of A Sting: An Inside Look Into Undercover Operations, Bhupen Patel, Penguin Books.

People in different countries speak different languages-and sometimes these languages have words that cannot be translated into English.

Did you know that in Japanese, there is actually a word for pretending not to be at home when someone rings the doorbell?

Yes, you read that right. 

Join author-illustrator Rituparna Sarkar in finding the joy of new words in different languages that you always hoped would exist in English!

Here are some quirky words from around the globe to add to your repertoire:
 

Before you plan anything else for your best friend’s wedding, you plan their bachelorette. Before all the crazy wedding jazz begins, you need the limitless fun, endless gossip and memories of a lifetime with your girlfriends. And some pina coladas by the beach.

And when it comes to deciding where to have all the madness, the clock stops ticking beyond Goa. But I’m sure we’re all tired of Goa being the one-stop destination for everything.

But we have brought you destinations in Asia, that are as cool as Goa, or maybe even better, for the perfect laid back or the party-all-night girls’ trip. Check them below- 

 Startups are the talk of the town today. Every startup we know of today specialises in a certain kind of solution delivery – e-commerce, tech, creative marketing, and what not. But what if, and hear us out loud, what if there is a startup claiming to be your one-stop solution for ANY DESIRE, ANY WISH, out-of-the-blue, that you want to be fulfilled? What if this startup claims to be your own personal genie, barring any limitation as to the number of wishes?

So be it! Literally. Tathaastu – the larger-than-life startup that is committed to delivering you happiness at any cost!

Missing toilet seat, enough grades to get admission into the topmost university, social media addiction issue, wedding drama, fulfilling a dead father’s wish of donating four blue bottles of Pepsi – name it and all at Tathaastu has got your back no matter what.

It’s a common story. Nothing special about mine, except that it takes place in a palace. An ageing wife gives up her figure for the sake of the kids and never gets it back. She has pride of place in the household, but she’s humiliated in her absence by mistress after mistress, weekly. 
Like this new one, an authentically fair-skinned north Indian, no talcum powder needed. He must have been thrilled to find her that far south. He always had a taste for fair skin, flying his aerial chariot past the Himalayas to scavenge for milkmaids. Some of the girls he brings home look as white as albinos, with bizarre, sea-coloured eyes and hair the colour of dandelions. 
How could I have ever satisfied, all by myself, with this one body made of nutmeg and sunset, ten husbands in one? Even one king would have kept a quota of co-queens and concubines. With Ravana, multiply that by ten. 
Multiply by ten, too, a woman’s pleasure in his arms and arms and arms. One night, two whole years into our love, he finally felt close enough to me to show me his heads. He locked the door, clasped his hands, chewed his lower lip. He couldn’t bear to look me in the eye. ‘Ravana,’ I said, ‘tell me what is wrong.’ He said he wanted to show me his real form, but he feared my reaction. I said he could take off his face like a helmet and show me the head of a donkey, and I would kiss him on the lips. 
Weeping with shame and hope, trusting me and me alone—none of the others; only me—he brought them all out. They slid out of his neck and lined up like books on the shelf of his shoulders. When they had all emerged, the row curved a little, extending well beyond his shoulders. They stayed together, against gravity, by the same miracle of physics that suspends a brick arch. He explained to me later how every head exerted a force on the ones next to it, and how the two bookend heads were conjoint at the earlobes. 
I kissed each face on the mouth because they were all his. He was Brahma’s great-grandson. The trait of four heads had gotten amplified in him, thanks to the fresh infusion of his mother’s demonic blood. I knew—and he knew, after those ten true love kisses—that what he felt for his other women wasn’t love. This was love: Me luxuriating on my back, arms straight overhead, feet flexed; him turning himself so his leftmost head kissed my hands and his rightmost kissed my feet, and the heads in between kissed every other part of me. The arms came out a few minutes later. Several of his hands hadsixth, seventh, sometimes eighth digits—at the ends of his spider legs, smaller spiders. His twenty hands stroked all my skin at once, no part of me neglected. Loving Ravana in that form, I touched pleasure’s ceiling. My body’s sum total of nerves could take in, at one time, no sensations more numerous or more intense. Beyond that bliss lay moksha. I was yoked to him forever. 
 I wonder if this latest beauty, Sita, knows what she is missing by holding out. So many mistresses have come and gone, and my silly jealousy doesn’t get any better. Why be jealous at these transients when I stay on? She is holding out on him, and that inflames his desire. 
She lifts her face from her hands and gasps at my dark face and arms. 
‘You have nothing to fear from me, Princess Sita. I am Mandodari, Queen of Lanka.’ I wait. ‘No matter, you don’t have to stand.’ 
‘Is he here?’
‘You mean my husband?’
‘Yes.’
‘You were expecting a visit from him?’
‘Dreading one, more like it.’
‘You have nothing to fear from him.’ My eyes devourher 
face with envy. Unplucked eyebrows, peeling sunburn on her arms, and she is still exquisite, like some illiterate village girl on a mountain path. ‘Of course, you know that. You seem to have gained a great deal of control over him.’ 
‘I live here in constant danger.’ 
‘Of what? Mosquito bites?’ I don’t like how she talks up her plight. 
‘Of your husband.’ 
‘My husband? Has he so much as kissed you? Answer me.’ 
‘No.’ 
You held out, you made all these self-destructive requests, went on hunger strikes—and hehonoured all of your requests. He didn’t touch you. A man as impressive as he is . . . You should be ashamed.’ 
‘Ashamed of what?’ 
Playing innocent, is she? Ravana would never force her— it would humiliate him—so she knows she is safe, knows she can play games. 
‘Let’s talk about something else. Do you have any children, Sita?’ 
She doesn’t answer me.
‘I have two. Indrajit and Akshaye.’‘Why are you here?’
‘I wanted to see you. I know he took a considerablerisk 
bringing you here. I had to see what you looked like.’ ‘You have no idea what kind of risk he took.’ ‘You are well worth it.’ ‘Help me escape.’ 
Her audacity stares me in the eyes. ‘Escape? But this is paradise compared to where you were before.’ 
‘I don’t care about the pretty scenery. Help me get back home.’ 
What is her game here? She confuses me, not just with her words but her frenzied look. ‘Why would you want to leave Lanka?’ 
She shakes her head in disbelief and frustration. ‘Because I’m being held here against my will!’ 
‘I will not allow you to spread false stories about my husband.’ 
‘You know he kidnapped me, right? He threw me over his shoulder and flew off with me.’ 
‘A man as impressive as Ravana doesn’t need to kidnap women, married or unmarried.’ 
‘How is he so “impressive”? He visits me every so often and tells me the stories behind his scars. I’m not impressed.’ 
‘That jawline of his,’ I say defiantly. ‘The symmetry of his face. Admit it.’ 
‘You know what else is symmetrical? Karma. A bad king with a strong jawline will end up getting punched in the face by a good king with a strong arm. Karma is coming for him. Rama is coming for him.’ 
‘I think I will leave now, Princess Sita.’ 
‘Why did you come here in the first place? You can’t possibly be happy about my arrival here. You came here to see your latest competitor for the king’s time. His new obsession.’ 
‘Don’t flatter yourself. He is not obsessed with you.’ 
‘Does he visit you every afternoon? Does he spend two hours talking at the wall of your disregard? I don’t say a word to that boastful demon. “I beat Indra.” “I captured the Seven Sages.” Do I care? I’d catch a nap, but I don’t trust him.’ 
‘How—how rude!’‘Look there. More fresh flowers.’‘Roses,’ I whisper, by reflex.
‘I keep them to feed the deer. How many times has he 
betrayed you, in all your years of marriage?’
‘All your years? I stroke reflexively the places where I havecoloured my greys. Do I look so old?
‘This once, Queen Mandodari, why not betray him? And better yet, by betraying him, you’ll be saving Lanka. If you don’t care for that cause, consider how you’ll be saving your marriage, too. Because if I don’t get out of here and back to my husband in time, you’re going to end up a widow.’ 
‘Rama has no reason to harm my husband. You came here of your own will, after all.’ 
Sita rises to her feet, flushed and feigning indignation. ‘That is not true!’ 
‘My husband offered to take you up in his sky chariot— none of you young girls can resist it—and you agreed. Everyone in Lanka knows it. As soon as you got here, you insisted on holding out. What are your demands, anyway? Do you want him to make you First Queen of Lanka in my place? Keep waiting. It’ll take more than a mouthy Indian slut to oust me!’ 
‘Lanka is yours to rule over, you credulous idiot. Those are all lies! Who’d you get them from? Ravana?’ 
‘It’s common knowledge!’ I resist the urge to slap her effrontery; she has a feral look and a murky unwashed smell, and I fear my hand might end up bitten. ‘You were stuck in that cottage after your husband dragged you along into fourteen years of exile! You two were only married for what—two years? Not enough time to have a baby. If you’d had one, you could have forced Rama to let you stay back, for the baby’s sake, in the palace. But you didn’t have a choice, did you? Naturally, you were thrilled when a rich, six-foot-seven stranger offered to whisk you away. No one blames you for that. It’s this perverse holding out that strikes everyone asbase and scheming.’ 
‘I had a choice. I chose to join Rama in exile, just as Lakshman did. My sister was going to come, too, but Lakshman begged her not to—he feared she might divide his devotion. No, Mandodari. The only place I got dragged to was Lanka. Your husband abducted me. And he’s going to get his comeuppance soon. Nobody’s safe from karma!’

NOTE: This excerpt is published in collaboration with Penguin Random House.

She started her career with Ekta Kapoor’s now infamous show Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi and has grown not just as an actor but as an anchor and a show host as well. She has also participated in reality shows like Bigg Boss, dance reality shows like Jhalak Dikhlaa Jaa, Nach Baliye and Zara Nachke Dikha. However, it is her role as Naagin and her recent treatise with Star Plus in Qayamat se Qayamat Tak that brought to light her excellence as an actor. 

Not to mention, millennial girls, like me, also look upto her for her style statement and choice of outfit.

Karishma Tanna knows how to carry herself not just for an award show, or a photoshoot, but her casual is also sexy and classy and something we would like to steal! 

Take a look:  

Have you ever wondered why the weather starts to warm up in the month of February? Well, it is the month of love.

It is that time of the year when restaurants are coming up with new deals to bank on all the love and money that these couples are ready to shower on each other and many gift stores are thinking of ways to mind money.

Meanwhile, every committed girl or boy is wondering in his or head how do they make the day special for their partner. While picking a place to eat or excuse to bunk work is easy, what’s most challenging is to think of a gift for the partner, and more so if the partner is health conscious. He or she would neither eat chocolates nor drink wine or love that heavy brunch kind of date.

So, what do you gift such a partner? Take a look:

This year was all about weddings… and PUBG. Wherever you look, you’ll see people going crazy for this game. And it isn’t just kids, but adults too. 

But the couple I am about to introduce to you, took their love for PUBG to another level. They call it “adventurous new-era pre-wedding PUBG Saga!” 

Forgetting the old school pre-wedding drama, this couple, Sonali Bomble and her beau Aakash Jain had a PUBG-themed pre-wedding photoshoot. The photos were clicked under the name Harsh Salvi Photography. 

Sounds amazing, isn’t it? Well, the photos are even better. 

She became popular for her individuality, for expressing her opinion. She is Netflix’s favourite Radhika Apte. 

Simple yet classy with a dressing style that has an edge to it, here is why we want to steal Radhika Apte’s style: 

She has been gracing the hoardings on the highways as the hot and intelligent Editor-in-chief of Investigator.com, in Amazon Prime’s recent release 4 More Shots Please. She is none other than actress Sayani Gupta, who plays the role of Damini Rizvi in the show.

But, in this article, we won’t talk about how beautifully she plays the role of the Editor-in-chief of a media website or how rightfully she questioned ethical journalism, but how stylish she is and why we think every girl should #StealHerStyle: