Present Tense is The Swaddle Team's stream of consciousness response to the world's madness.

This week, The Cut ran two pieces that, together, show that the masks are off and nobody really cares about all that gender stuff anymore. One story, about people's reaction to the lenient P. Diddy verdict (not guilty of sex trafficking, guilty of "transportation to engage in prostitution") showed that MeToo might be dead. Another was about Brad Pitt's carefully controlled PR rehabilitation strategy while promoting F1, making everybody forget about the allegations of physically assaulting Angelina Jolie and their children. He's basking in the glow of being a real star, one of the OG ones, in Hollywood. It's so passé to talk about feminism these days. The people are craving the return of movie star aura.

Speaking of movie star aura, Deepika Padukone is getting a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. This is great news, considering she got there ahead of all the men we tend regard as the last superstars in India. But when is her next movie coming out? The last time she was in the news, it was because a director threw a fit about her professional boundaries and replaced her with a younger and more agreeable actor.

Meanwhile, many people are dissing Lauren Sánchez Bezos for her dolce-vita style wedding to cartoonishly rich billionaire Jeff Bezos. For some reason, her appearance on Vogue's digital cover, her Sophia Lauren-inspired dress and her overall bridal vibe aren't sitting very well with the hoi polloi, and a lot of prime digital real estate was dedicated to dissecting why her look felt off. While all this was happening, Jeff Bezos' empire, Amazon, was included in a list of companies that are enabling genocide, in a UN report prepared by Francesca P. Albanese, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

Yesterday, we also got a little teaser announcement of the upcoming Ramayana movie. Yes, another one, and this one has a collab between A.R. Rahman and Hans Zimmer. It is being promoted as "history" and it has a lot of cool VFX plus a first glimpse of Ranbir Kapoor as Ram. The budget of this project is over 800 crore rupees (it would be easy to look this up and give you the exact number, but there is a point after which it makes no difference whatsoever). Here's a random list, in no particular order, of other things that cost around 800 crore rupees:

• The Indian Government's Mission Vatsalya, a scheme to protect vulnerable children, was allocated 1,500 crores in the 2025-2026 budget. That's a little less than two Ramayana movies. But that's assuming Part 2 is still in the 800 range, which it could very well exceed.
• The PM Employment Generation Programme, meant to support women's entrepreneurship, got a budget allocation of INR 862.50 crores this year. That's approximately one Ramayana.
• The The Saksham Anganwadi and Poshan 2.0 schemes have a budget of INR 490.98 crores. That's half a Ramayana.

To recap: Brad Pitt got a PR makeover, Diddy may or may not go to jail, Deepika Padukone got a star she has to pay for while still negotiating overtime and compensation in her projects, people want to eat the rich but they need to first talk about how Lauren Sánchez's wedding dress could've been better, and it takes union budget levels of money to make a single movie these days. All very cool developments!

Here are two neutral-positive things to make up for all that. Lorde has a new album called Virgin that's got nice reviews. Uorfi Javed won the first season of Traitors India, along with Nikita Luther. Go girl power! Or something like that.