Column: The Good Life: for Mint Lounge
Words
Thank you, Sriram, for the phrases. I wonder who the people in the photo are. My heart beats ‘pada-pada’ Around India, you find duplication of words, from mada-mada in Tamil to balle-balle in Punjabi, as a national trait Shoba Narayan Recently, at a family wedding in Madurai, I listened to a rather mind-bending conversation. It occurred to me that it was a fairly typical conversation in all Tamilian weddings. Let me just recount it for you and then explain context. Here is a typical scene at a Tamil wedding. Everyone is extremely busy, acting extremely busy. This intensifies as it [...]
The pink-skinned banana flower is a luxury for Mint Lounge
The pink-skinned banana flower is a luxury You have to be family to be served banana flower Shoba Narayan Updated: Fri, Nov 23 2012. 05 21 PM IST I am cooking banana flower today. It is a good-looking if shy vegetable, hiding its offerings under pink, smooth skin. Peeling a banana flower requires patience and if you are lucky, community. Joint families are best for this vegetable because it invites sitting around and gossiping. Women in the proverbial ancestral home will sit on the ground in a circle and painstakingly remove the kallan or stigma along with the pink outer skin. The next [...]
What’s your writing routine
I love Brainpickings. Friends frequently forward stuff to me and many times, it is essays from that site. Today, my friend, Sriram, sent me this link from Brainpickings about writers' routine. When I read and re-read The Paris Review interviews, usually when I need discipline or inspiration, I almost always turn to the writing routine section. This piece has it all in one place. Save it and read it when the writing muse sags.
Social media for The National
How did you spend your Sunday? How much time were you on your computer? Like I am now. Did you talk to people? Or did you type at them? It bothers me. Plugged in and 'alone together', conversation is a chore Shoba Narayan On hot summer afternoons, when the dragonflies wilt and sweat glistens like dew on brown skin, young Indian girls gather in villages and towns to play indoor games. They sit on cool mud floors and play “seven stones,” a game in which one pebble is thrown in the air and the other stones picked up in sequence [...]
Should I stay or should I go? How an Indian family decided to return home
Excerpt in Quartz, the digital arm of The Atlantic Monthly, one of my favorite magazines. EX PATRIA Should I stay or should I go? How an Indian family decided to return home Shoba Narayan November 17, 2012 Dressing up for an Indian party in New York was, for me, a complicated exercise fraught with rules and miscues. Dressing up for a party at Zahid’s house made it doubly so. On the one hand, I didn’t want to seem too Indian, dressed like my mother in a traditional sari and dime-sized bindi. On the other, I didn’t want to show up [...]
Carnatic and Western Classical Part 2
Dear Bijoy: Thanks for your missive on Bach, the fugue and the music of the Renaissance period. I found them to be very interesting. What is mordent? What are grace notes and trills? Is the below one piece or a compilation http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tro_gaczCxw&feature=related Why do you think western music was able to diverge into the harmonic path, while Indian music continued on the gayaki path that you talk about? Is it because Indians didn't think "instrumentally?" Ok, my turn. I am not an expert in Carnatic music so I will tell you what I know. Also, my tutorial will meander [...]
Conversation between Carnatic and Classical Part 2
Dear Bijoy: Thanks for your missive on Bach, the fugue and the music of the Renaissance period. I found them to be very interesting. What is mordent? What are grace notes and trills? Is the below one piece or a compilation http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tro_gaczCxw&feature=related Why do you think western music was able to diverge into the harmonic path, while Indian music continued on the gayaki path that you talk about? Is it because Indians didn't think "instrumentally?" Ok, my turn. I am not an expert in Carnatic music so I will tell you what I know. Also, my tutorial will meander unlike [...]
When the Lotus blooms
Just read "When the Lotus Blooms" by Kanchana Krishnan Ayyar. Loved it. If you want a glimpse of the TamBrahm ethos of yesteryear, read this book.
Navrasa in an ikebana arrangement for Mint Lounge
Thank you, Malathi-aunty. Navras’ in an ikebana arrangement The ladies behind this ancient art Shoba Narayan First Published: Thu, Nov 15 2012. 08 07 PM IST Veena Dass, one of the foremost exponents of the art in India, will be a speaker at the ikebana conference in Delhi. Photo: Pradeep Gaur/Mint RELATED Muhammad said that if you have bread in one hand, you should have a flower in the other because one feeds the body and the other feeds the soul,” says Veena Dass, one of the early Indian exponents of ikebana, the Japanese art of flower arrangement. We [...]
How to write
I get so much mail asking for tips on how to write that I decided to make a post of it. Usually, each email sits in my inbox for days. I can't bear to delete them because I've been where the writer of the email was. I can't bear to reply to them because they are too vague, too general. Hereafter, I plan to send a one-line email reply pointing to this post. If you want to be a travel writer, realize that it is getting very hard because editors have their network of trusted writers and usually give assignments [...]