Crossword for Thursday 3 September 2026

Across

1. 1. The harvest festival Kerala just celebrated
2. 5. A set of shelves in the storeroom, say
3. 9. The monk-politician from Northern India known for his affinity for bulldozers
4. 10. This district was the birthplace of the short-lived Din-i Ilahi movement
5. 11. Stadium in India sharing its name with the biblical garden
6. 12. One of the three statistical tools used to find the middle of a set of values
7. 13. (Hindi) Any weighty religious volume
8. 15. The extent of something, or to resize it
9. 18. Steep it or "spill" it - either way, it gets stronger
10. 19. Instagram's answer to X, for one?
11. 21. One bar of the cage inside you
12. 22. Adorable
13. 25. Antacid since 1852, also the secret to a fluffy dhokla
14. 26. The 1999 film where a beret-clad Anil Kapoor performs with an Aishwarya in white
15. 27. Common word before -ning and -ring, and one of them hangs off it
16. 28. Slender

Down

1. 1. ___ Hoye!
2. 2. The gesture humorously attributed to Indians by reel makers
3. 3. We are in the early years of the ___ of Artificial Intelligence
4. 4. What singles are ready to do (it rhymes)
5. 5. Sanskrit's first poem is about him
6. 6. Claude, Codex and Vinod - each one is this
7. 7. A rugged box for transport, either wood or plastic
8. 8. A national park in central India, or a blue-skinned god
9. 14. If an actor acts, then ideally a reactor?
10. 15. The onscreen spirit that kept the men of Chanderi indoors at night
11. 16. "____ ka maal", the household verdict on anything that breaks within a week
12. 17. _____ Brewing Company, Bengaluru brewpub with roots in a partly namesake American town
13. 20. Having two parts
14. 23. ___ Chi Walking, a form of "moving meditation"
15. 24. Indian ___, also known as the chilbil tree