In partnership with
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the weekly chai
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APRIL 17-24, 2026
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THE AKSHAYA EDITION
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01 · Global Wires
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🌍 Global · Energy
The Strait Reopens. Oil Drops 12% in a Single Day.
Iran declared the Strait of Hormuz "completely open" today alongside a ten-day Israel-Lebanon ceasefire. Brent tumbled to $89, WTI to $83, and markets hit all-time highs on the news. The war is not over. The pressure valve, for now, is.
CNBC
Bloomberg
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🇮🇳 South Asia · Economy
Nine Million Indian Families in the Gulf Exhale a Little.
The UN had warned this week the conflict could push 2.5 million people in India into poverty. Gulf remittances account for 38 percent of India's $135 billion annual inflows. With the Strait opening and airlines restarting, the immediate pressure eases. The rupee, however, is trading near 92.5 to the dollar, its weakest level in over a year, and a reminder that the damage is already in the ledger.
The Tribune
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✦ The Scene · Culture
Lara Raj Wore a Bindi to Coachella. The Main Stage Came With Her.
Coachella Weekend 2 runs April 17–19. Lara Raj, a twenty-year-old Tamil American from Connecticut and a member of KATSEYE, is the first Indian-origin artist signed to HYBE, the label behind BTS. She performed bindi on, bangles on, no apologies. For every brown kid who was told to wipe it off before school, this one landed.
Dazzlerr
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02 · Money Moves
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✦ Akshaya Tritiya · Sunday, April 19
The Most Auspicious Day to Buy Gold Arrives This Sunday. At a Record High.
Akshaya Tritiya, literally "the third that never diminishes," falls this Sunday. Tradition holds that even a small purchase on this day carries the full weight of the occasion. This year, gold is near its highest price on record, and the queues will still form. The case for gold as a long-cycle cultural asset was never built on any single price. We wrote about it last year when nobody was paying attention. The argument has not changed. Only the number has.
Our Gold Story From Last Year →
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Not financial advice. Your advisor. Always.
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03 · Living Well
· Dance, Science & Culture
Your Body Has Been Moving to the Same Math for 2,000 Years.
When researchers used motion-capture to track a Bharatanatyam dancer, they found perfect circles, triangles, and spirals in every movement. All 108 of them. Those 108 movements were codified in the Natya Shastra, six thousand verses written around 200 BCE, and then carved into the stone walls of the Chidambaram temple in Tamil Nadu, a choreography textbook in granite, still legible after 900 years.
The rhythm is math too. A 7-beat song fills with steps of 3 and 4. A 2013 study found the golden ratio, 1.618, in the human stride. Your foot lifts off at 61.8% of every step you take, and it has done so your entire life. A trained Bharatanatyam dancer takes that same built-in proportion and amplifies it across 108 movements, each one tracing shapes that were set down in writing two millennia before the tracking software existed.
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"Every human stride has two parts. The ratio between them is 1.620. The golden ratio is 1.618. Your body has been doing this your entire life."
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Chai Words · Daily Cultural Puzzle
A new cultural word, phrase, or concept every day.
Train your 3rd culture brain in 60 seconds.
Play Today's Puzzle →
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04 · Play By Play
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🏏 IPL 2026
Rajasthan on Top. Defending Champs Still Winless.
Rajasthan Royals lead the table. Kolkata Knight Riders, last year's winners, haven't won a game. The tournament has a way of humbling whoever arrives with the most to prove.
ESPNcricinfo
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⛳ The Masters
Rory Did It Again. Back-to-Back Green Jackets at Augusta.
Rory McIlroy beat Scottie Scheffler by one shot to defend his title, joining Nicklaus, Faldo, and Tiger as the only players to win Augusta in consecutive years. Three majors still to play this season. He is chasing something none of us have seen.
Masters Leaderboard
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🏀 NBA Playoffs
OKC Best in the West. Detroit Runs the East.
Oklahoma City finished 64-18. Detroit, a team at the bottom of everything two years ago, took the East at 60-22. Playoffs tip off Saturday.
ESPN
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05 · Menu
Raw Mango Chaat Bowl
For the week warmth finally meant something other than wool. No stove. Two pantries. Five minutes.
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Dice one raw or just-ripe mango and combine with one can of rinsed chickpeas, half a red onion thinly sliced, and one diced cucumber. The ratio is yours.
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Dress with one teaspoon chaat masala, half teaspoon cumin, a long squeeze of lime, and salt. Add a pinch of Kashmiri chili if you want color without heat.
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Top with fresh mint, a handful of crushed puri or tortilla chips for crunch, and a spoon of plain yogurt if you have it. Eat cold or at room temperature.
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The season finally arrived. The bowl should match. Serves 2.
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06 · Editor's Pick
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Usha Vance Storytime
The Second Lady has a kids' storytime series on YouTube; short episodes, each featuring a guest and a story worth reading aloud. Genuinely charming, under ten minutes each, and exactly the kind of thing worth bookmarking for a child in your life.
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Where
YouTube ·
Episodes
4 and counting ·
Rating
All Ages
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Watch the Series →
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The Cosmic Chai
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Root Down · This week's energy
Aries season burned bright. Now Taurus asks what you're building with the ash.
The Sun moves into Taurus on April 19. Mars and Jupiter conjunct in Cancer all week, amplifying everything emotional and tied to home. More is not more this week. Depth is.
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✦ Read your full sign →
Dates for the Diary
| Apr 17 | Thingyan: the Burmese New Year and water festival ends today. One of the oldest new-year traditions in Asia, celebrated by washing away what the old year carried. |
| Apr 19 | Akshaya Tritiya + Sun into Taurus + NBA Playoffs: three huge things land on the same Sunday. The day for gold, the season for building, the bracket that decides everything. Nothing accidental about any of it. |
| Apr 22 | Earth Day: 56 years and counting. The one observance no culture has to translate for another. |
| Apr 23 | World Book Day: costs nothing, holds everything. Put something in someone's hands today. |
If someone in your life needs this,
their inbox is waiting.
☕ Share the Chai
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Someone just spent $236,000,000 on a painting. Here’s why it matters for your wallet.
Late last year, a Klimt sold for the highest price ever paid for modern art at auction.
An outlier sure, but it wasn't a fluke. U.S. auction sales grew 23.1% in 2025. The $1-5mm segment even grew 40.8% YoY.
Now, the S&P, teetering on all time highs, just posted its worst quarter since 2022, oil was up 94% (briefly), and Moody's puts recession odds at 48.6%.
Each environment is unique, but after dot-com, post war and contemporary art grew about 24% annually for a decade. After 2008, about 11% for 12 years.
It’s also had near-zero correlation with the S&P 500 since ‘95.*
Now, Masterworks lets you invest in shares of artworks featuring legends like Banksy, Basquiat, and Picasso.
$1.3 billion invested across over 500 artworks.
Net annualized returns on sold works held 12 months+ like 14.6%, 17.6%, and 17.8%.
Shares can sell quickly, but my subscribers can skip the waitlist:
*Investing involves risk. Past performance is not indicative of future returns. See important Reg A disclosures at masterworks.com/cd.
