A crossover no-one saw coming.

That’s how many in India are describing Microsoft founder and philanthropist Bill Gates’ appearance in an iconic Hindi TV drama with actress and former federal minister Smriti Irani.

Mr Gates appeared on Thursday night’s episode of Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi (Because the Mother-in-Law Was Also Once Daughter-in-Law) to talk about maternal and child health with Irani.

The Gates Foundation has been working on curbing infant and maternal mortality for years with governments in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar – the two northern Indian states with huge populations that are also among the most disadvantaged regions.

Government data shows a significant improvement in maternal and child health indicators over the years, including in the two states. But in a country steeped in patriarchy, challenges remain.

In such a scenario, experts say messaging becomes extremely important to keep the drumbeat going to change norms and to make people more aware of the need to take care of their girls and mothers.

And to do that, Mr Gates perhaps couldn’t have chosen a better platform than Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi.

First launched in July 2000, the series had a very successful long innings with several thousand episodes that were broadcast almost daily on Star Plus for eight- and-a-half years before it was discontinued, says Shailaja Bajpai, columnist and Readers’ Editor for Print new site.

In July, 25 years after it first hit the screens, Kyunki… returned for its second innings.

Indian audiences found the show, based on the complex domestic relationship between Irani’s character Tulsi and her mother-in-law, riveting. The trials and tribulations of the dutiful new bride had families reorganise their daily routines to ensure they didn’t miss out a single episode.

Irani’s character was – and is – at the centre of this story of the fictitious Virani family. In the first season, she played a young woman who fell in love with and married the scion of a wealthy family.

A quarter of a century later, Tulsi is middle aged, her children are all grown up and she is about to become a ma-in-law herself.

But the battles she’s fighting now are still with jealous and misguided family members and the drama – and the melodrama – of the original season remain in abundance, Ms Bajpai says.

“If you take away the gadgets, the mobile phones and the laptops, essentially remove all the window dressing, it’s still the same story. It’s just been updated.”

But, she adds that one thing that’s different now is that the social messaging has increased. “I think that’s because it fits her profile more. She served as the minister for women and child development so the show now talks about divorce, child and maternal health and other socially-relevant issues.”

The four-minute-long segment with Mr Gates starts with the Microsoft founder greeting her in American-accented Hindi – “Namaste Tulsi-ji,” he says, asking her if he’d said it right?

“Yes, absolutely perfect,” she beams.

The call comes after Tulsi is seen in a viral video at a godh-bharai (baby shower) dishing out health advice to an expectant mother.

Tulsi’s son, who’s posted the video, tells her that he had tagged Mr Gates, wondering if he’d be willing to talk to Tulsi on a video call. “He’s accepted,” he squeals with delight.

Tulsi initially seems a bit nervous. “What will I say to him? I only do video calls with you all or your father about grocery shopping,” she says.

But once the laptop is fired up and Mr Gates comes in vision, Tulsi comes into her own, explaining the reason for the “traditional” ritual.

“We come together to bless a young expectant mother, we wish her lots of good health,” she says.

“We tell women how essential it is to look after their health, their nutrition and diet. We tell them to follow the doctors’ instructions and go to a hospital for their delivery.”

The two agree that “when mothers are healthy, children thrive and the world can make significant progress”.

In a statement to the BBC, makers of the show JioStar Entertainment said the show was using storytelling to spotlight critical issues around maternal and child health.

“We believe that storytelling can do more than entertain, it can inform, inspire and drive awareness on issues that matter,” JioStar’s Sumanta Bose said.

“By weaving topics of social significance into our narratives, we aim to create impact that reaches beyond the screen and brings about a meaningful difference in people’s lives,” he added.

The release says that Mr Gates will appear in three episodes of the show.

In its second innings, Ms Bajpai says, the show has had to compete with a multitude of other offerings on OTT platforms and hasn’t found the same resonance with the audience.

But Mr Gates’ unexpected cameo seems to have brought it back into the limelight – for now at least.

A promo of the episode received more than six million views on Instagram alone in less than a day, with thousands of comments echoing a sense of surprise and amusement.

“What is this multiverse,” said one comment which was liked by more than 17,000 people. Another said: “It’s so cringe but I also love it so much.”

Michael Smuss, a survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto in Poland who resisted the Nazis, has died aged 99 in Israel.

He joined the ghetto uprising as a teenager in 1943, helping to make petrol bombs. Taken prisoner, he survived concentration camps and a death march before the end of World War II.

After the war, he became an artist and Holocaust educator. The embassies of Germany and Poland in Israel paid tribute to him on social media.

“He repeatedly risked his life during the Holocaust, fighting for survival and helping other prisoners in the Warsaw Ghetto – even after he was captured by the Nazis and deported to concentration camps,” the German embassy stated on X.

The Polish embassy said Smuss “lectured youth on the history of Polish Jews and expressed his memories through art. His legacy endures.”

The Polish embassy and the Holocaust Educational Trust, a UK charity, called Smuss the last surviving fighter of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. However, in 2018, Israeli officials and international media, including the BBC, reported that Simcha Rotem, who had just died aged 94, was the last surviving fighter of the uprising.

Last month, Germany’s ambassador to Israel awarded Smuss with the German Federal Cross of Merit, in recognition of his contribution to Holocaust education and promoting dialogue between the two countries, the embassy said.

“Thousands of people, especially young people in Germany, have learned from his testimonies.”

Smuss was born in 1926 in the Free City of Danzig, a city-state that is now Gdansk, Poland. He later moved to Lodz before being deported to the Warsaw Ghetto with his father.

Hundreds of thousands of Jews were crammed into the ghetto, where they faced poverty, starvation, disease and cold.

Since Smuss spoke German, he was taken outside to work in a factory repairing and repainting helmets, he recounted in a video recorded for the Sumter Museum in the US in 2022.

He joined the Jewish Resistance in the ghetto, and he and others started stealing as much paint thinner as possible to make petrol bombs.

“We filled up bottles which were put up on the roofs of all the houses close to the entrance of the ghetto with the expectation that once they’re going to come, we’d be throwing them down”, he said.

On 19 April the Nazis came to empty the ghetto, an enclave in Warsaw created by the Nazis to segregate and persecute Jews. The resistance fought back with weapons they had exchanged for warm clothes from Italian soldiers who had been sent from Africa to the Russian front.

The resistance, which Smuss called “the greatest uprising in this war against Germany”, lasted 28 days.

“It was very rough… no shower, no food. They were burning up, liquidating one house after another, full of smoke burning in your eyes,” he said.

He described thousands of bodies lying in front of houses and “the smell of gas and decomposed bodies”.

He, among some others, was taken prisoner on 29 April.

They were put on a train to the Treblinka extermination camp. As he witnessed people dying on the journey, “my heart became a stone”, he said.

Along the way, the train was stopped by employers looking to retrieve workers that had been taken from their factories. Another German came looking for experienced workers, and Smuss offered himself and those he knew.

“When we left on the train to Treblinka, I was sure that my life was over,” he told The Jerusalem Post earlier this year. “But when the train came to a halt, I felt with all of my being that on this day I was not going to die.”

He was moved and endured forced labour at other camps, and finally a death march to Dachau, before his Nazi captors fled incoming American troops.

He told The Jerusalem Post that his father was killed trying to escape one camp, while his mother and sister, who had been able to stay in Lodz, survived.

Smuss initially returned to Poland, but then moved to the US, where he worked, studied and started a family.

After experiencing trauma symptoms, he moved to Israel in 1979 alone to seek help, where he took up art and educating others about the Holocaust.

He is survived by his wife.