14102026-LSTL-01.qxd 10/13/2026 10:20 PM Page 1 c m y b TRIBUNE Idol returns Life Indian Idol winner Abhijeet Sawant returns to Indian Idol Legends Return, reuniting with Amit Sana and Himesh Reshammiya for nostalgic performances celebrating the show’s musical legacy. LUDHIANA | WEDNESDAY | 14 OCTOBER 2026 From a wartime bear cub to a boy’s beloved teddy, the story behind a century-old literary classic NiveditaGupta O N August 24, 1914, at a rail siding in White River, Ontario, a young army veterinarian named Harry Colebourn stepped off a troop train and bought an orphaned black bear cub from a hunter for $20. His regiment was bound for a training camp in Quebec, then for a war in Europe, and a bear cub had no obvious place in either. He named her Winnipeg, after the city he had adopted as home, and smuggled her aboard anyway. Winnie, as the men soon called her, became the unofficial mascot of the Second Canadian Infantry Brigade. She sailed for England on October 3, 1914, and trained alongside the soldiers on Salisbury Plain. In the winter of 1914-15, with orders to deploy to France, Colebourn could not take a bear into the trenches. So, he left her at London Zoo. He visited whenever he had leave. By the time he was demobilised, Winnie had become one of the zoo’s most popular residents. Colebourn let her stay, and formally donated her to the zoo in 1919. Meanwhile, Christopher Robin Milne, the son of the writer AA Milne, received a teddy bear from Harrods on his first birthday. He called it Edward. A few years later, once he began visiting the real Winnie at the London Zoo, he renamed his bear after her and Playing Sister Aruna Veteran actress Micky Singh is stepping into the international spotlight with A Mosquito in the Ear, the IndoAmerican feature directed by Nicola Rinciari and starring Jake Lacy and Nazanin Boniadi. For Micky, however, it was the story and the character of Sister Aruna that drew her to the project, rather than the prospect of working on a Hollywood production. “I was the most excited about the story. The fact that it was a Hollywood film and what that meant has honestly sunk in only after the release. When I was told what the film was about and what my role — Sister Aruna — was, that excited me more than anything else,” she says. The film was completed in just twenty days, an experience Micky describes as a testament to the production’s rigorous preparation. “We went on to make the movie in twenty days, and that is what is so incredible about the way this project was handled. The professionalism was at its peak. So much homework had been done so perfectly by the production and direction teams.” Winnie-the-Pooh turns 100 then borrowed a second name, Pooh, from a pet swan that appears in his father’s earlier poetry collection When We Were Very Young. Milne wrote him into a set of stories built around a bear “of very little brain”. The character’s first Anubhav Singh Bassi’s comedy video crosses 100 million views Breaking Bad star RJ Mitte dies at 34 Actor RJ Mitte, who played Walter White’s son on hit crime drama Breaking Bad and used his experience of living with cerebral palsy to advocate for disability rights in Hollywood, has died at 34. Mitte reportedly died by suicide in Texas on Monday. The actor’s final public appearance was with Breaking Bad co-star Luis Moncada at the Balloon Fiesta in Albuquerque. — PTI WHAT’S HOT play A ISTOCK Anubhav Singh Bassi’s Cheating has crossed 100 million views on YouTube, becoming the first standalone long-form stand-up comedy video by an individual comedian in India to reach the milestone. The lawyer-turned-UPSCaspirant-turned-comedian has made audiences laugh out loud with his anecdotal humour and effortless storytelling. Released on YouTube in April 2019, Cheating drew from Bassi’s own college experiences, recounting how he and his friends planned “samuhik cheating” during exams. Talking about this achievement, Anubhav Singh Bassi said, “I never thought that this video would be such a big hit and people would relate to it so much. I just can’t believe that even after seven years, people are loving this video in the same way.” Are you still love chandigarh G AURAV KAPOOR brings his new stand-up show Bunty to Panchkula, drawing on brutal honesty and sharp relatability that’s built him over a million followers across YouTube and Instagram. Indradhanush Auditorium, Panchkula, on October 25. panchkula mohali BUNTY ARRIVES FAVOURITE Korean spot in town, serving Chinese, Korean, Nepalese and Tibetan food — the thupka comes highly recommended. King Chinese Bowl, sector 68 Mohali. What explains the hold Pooh still has, a hundred years on? The stories lean on a deliberately plain vocabulary and a title character who openly distrusts long words, which may be part of why they travel so easily across languages and ages. Kathryn Aalto, who has written a literary history of the real Hundred Acre Wood, argues that “Pooh survives because the books are genuinely good,” not merely because of nostalgia or merchandising. There may be a simpler explanation too. Pooh’s world has almost no adults in it, no deadlines, no ambition, nothing more urgent than a stuck door or a missing tail. In a year when so much news is about speed — how fast everything is changing, how fast machines can now write or draw or decide, a book with nothing more pressing than a honey shortage might be popular simply because it is the opposite of all that. Cheating creates history Working alongside Jake Lacy and Nazanin Boniadi proved equally memorable for Micky, “Jake and Naz were such down-to-earth, humble people. Not for a minute did I feel that I was acting with international celebrities who have such a massive body of work behind them.” She recalls spending considerable time with both actors while shooting their scenes together in Goa. For Micky, the opportunity to work on an international production also reflects a broader change in the way Indian actors are being represented in global cinema. She believes Indian performers are increasingly being cast on merit. “I would say it’s a very small world, and Indians are now getting cast as characters. They are no longer caricatures. This is happening because of auditions, people are being selected on merit.” Alongside A Mosquito in the Ear, Micky’s body of work spans acclaimed Hindi films and OTT projects, including Sirf Ek Banda Kaafi Hai, Metro... In Dino, Modern Love Mumbai, Duranga 2, Out of Love 2, Made in Heaven 2 and Perfect Family. KING CHINESE BOWL his now-familiar shape. Milne’s original 1926 text, not Disney’s version, entered the US public domain on January 1, 2022, ninetyfive years after publication. Free of copyright, it Timeless appeal ISTOCK Veteran actress Micky Singh opens up about making her international feature debut eat print appearance came a year before the book, in the short story The Wrong Sort of Bees, published in 1925. The full collection, Winnie-the-Pooh, followed on October 14, 1926, with EH Shepard’s illustrations giving the bear was promptly turned into a slasher film, Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey, and has since come up in wider arguments about what AI systems can freely train on and generate. Milne, a veteran of the Somme who had returned from the war with what would now be called post-traumatic stress, found in the Hundred Acre Wood a register far gentler than the one he had lived through. He had written poetry, mysteries and West End plays, and wanted to be remembered for the range of that work rather than for one children’s book. The toys that inspired the stories left England too. Christopher Robin, increasingly uneasy with a fame he had never asked for, gave his original bear and four of the other animals to his father’s American publisher, EP Dutton, partly to help promote the books in the US. They have been on public display at the New York Public Library since 1987. A wartime vet’s practical decision not to abandon an animal he couldn’t keep became, by a string of accidents, one of the most translated books in the English language. The centenary is already being marked worldwide — new editions from the original publisher, an exhibition in London, events from Winnipeg to Kansas City, and now New York. MARBLE PAINTING U NLEASH your creativity with the unpredictable patterns of marble painting, experimenting with colours and textures in a fun session. It’s on October 18 at the Olive Cafe and Bar, Chandigarh. c m y b virgin? Some questions refuse to go away, and who knows that better than Salman Khan?In a promo shared on Tuesday, Karan Johar was seen asking Salman again: “Are you still a virgin?” The exchange brought back memories of the actor’s earlier appearance on the show. The new season of Koffee With Karan will stream exclusively on JioHotstar, from October 14. — ANI ViRosh in awe of Vijay With the release of their film Ranabaali just days away, actors Rashmika Mandanna and Vijay Deverakonda paid a courtesy call on Tamil Nadu Chief Minister C Joseph Vijay. The two shared pictures from the meeting on social media, along with mes- sages praising the actorturned-politician. “From fangirling over him to having the opportunity to work with him to today admiring him for the CM he is, his journey is nothing short of incredible!” posted Rashmika. — PTI