Home | Shoba Narayan

Pongal South Indian breakfast on a banana leaf

About Pongal for The Guardian UK

Books, Food, Food and Faith, India

Pongal is comfort food for south India’s harvest season. Is is both a harvest festival, which starts today, and the rice and dal breakfast dish eaten to mark its arrivalShoba Narayan

Food and Faith flies out to the world

Books, Food and Faith

Shoba Narayan approaches faith through perhaps its most primal and nourishing aspect: food. She partakes of sacred food in shrines across India and writes about the intimate yet powerful connection between food and faith.

Interview with The Dalai Lama

Profiles, Spirituality

Where I sit with His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama for an hour and ask him about life, love, meditation, wisdom and ageing. His Holiness is a person like no other in today’s world. Statesman, Nobel Laureate, spiritual leader of the Tibetans who view him as God, or at least the manifestation of Avalokiteshvara, the...

photo-credit-virginia-rodrigues-2048×1636

Profile of a dancer: Malavika Sarukkai at the top of her game

Arts, Profiles

Dance is a beautiful and holistic way to access Indian culture. Here is a profile of a dancer at the top of her art. Twenty minutes before the world premiere of her latest production, The Battle Within, Malavika Sarukkai, ‘India’s greatest living dancer’ according to pre-eminent art critic B N Goswamy, stands alone in her green...

Project LooM: celebrating Indian handloom

Handmade, Luxury

Project LooM celebrates and showcases Indian handcrafted (handloom) textiles. Through words, videos and photos, we shine the light on the people, processes and places that are connected with the handloom textiles that Indians wear. So far, we have covered Kanchipuram, Chanderi, Jamdani, Khadi and Gujarat's weaves.

The Milk Lady in Paperback

Books, The Milk Lady of Bangalore

This beautiful cover is of my book, The Milk Lady of Bangalore, which is about cows and why they are important in Hindu-Indian culture. The French edition is also out and called, La Laitiere de Bangalore.

The world’s best jasmine perfume

Travel

Can India be the source of the best jasmine extract in the world? I travel to the jasmine fields around Madurai in South India to find out. Marrakech-based perfume legend, Serge Lutens once told me that the raw materials for most perfumes came from India. “Indian and Arab cultures have a deep-rooted tradition of perfume,”...

What's cooking, Gaggan Anand?

Food, Profiles

The 39-year-old chef’s Bangkok restaurant Gaggan, which claimed the top spot in the list of Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants for the third time in a row, is all set to close in 2020. Shoba Narayan brings to you a taste of his new avatar