Column: The Good Life: for Mint Lounge
Food- North Indian versus South Indian for Silkroad, Dragonair/Cathay Pacific’s inflight magazine
This appeared in Silkroad magazine's Feb 2012 issue North Versus South Indian Food
About Vishnu for the Yoga Journal
About Vishnu in the Yoga Journal Super Man Vishnu lives in luxury, but this Hindu god will abandon his opulent ways to take human form and save the world from evil. By Shoba Narayan In Indian films known as "god movies," Vishnu and his consort Lakshmi, the pale-skinned goddess of wealth, are shown living in absurdly luxurious surroundings, wearing golden crowns, glittering jewelry, and silky robes, and surrounded by clouds of fragrant incense. But Vishnu is known as the preserver of the good, and in keeping with that role, he repeatedly assumes human form and goes forth to rid the [...]
Parvati Power: for Yoga Journal
Yoga Journal Parvati Power This Hindu goddess, consort of Shiva, proves that dignity and smarts prevail. By Shoba Narayan Parvati is one face of the divine female energy, often called Devi (the shining one) or Shakti (power), that many Indians worship as the power above all deities. The goddess is personified in many forms, including Saraswati, goddess of learning and consort of Brahma, and Lakshmi, goddess of fortune and consort of Vishnu. Parvati came into being when a female demon was terrorizing the world, smug in the knowledge that only a son of Shiva could kill her. But Shiva had [...]
About female goddesses for the Yoga Journal
Thanks, Nora Isaacs, for sending me these links in the Yoga Journal. Wrote these pieces a long time ago. Didn't know they existed. Quite Contrary Kali is both a fierce warrior and a compassionate mother goddess, reflecting the range of behavior available to us all. By Shoba Narayan Many of the female deities in Hindu mythology are powerful and full of contradictions. The goddesses Kali and Durga are perfect examples of this: They mix fierce destructive power with maternal protectiveness. Durga, often shown riding a tiger, is one of the names given to the consort of Shiva. When one of [...]
Bespoke Flowers: Mint Lounge
Columns Posted: Thu, Feb 9 2012. 7:54 PM IST Earth laughs in flowers All over the world, people are moving towards handmade, handcrafted local objects—made to measure and customized right in front of your eyes The Good Life | Shoba Narayan I am at a flower market in New Delhi en route to dinner at a colleague’s home. I want to take some flowers for my hostess, Anita, but everywhere I see, there are strings of bright yellow marigolds. Where are the cut, long-stemmed roses or Oriental lilies? I want a big bunch of yellow roses, I tell the vendor [...]
About Starbucks
Starbucks has to wake up and smell the coffee in India Shoba Narayan Café Coffee Day, an Indian coffee chain, will offer serious competition to Starbucks, which aims to open 50 outlets by the end of the year. Aijaz Rahi / AP Photo Feb 5, 2012 There is a great line in the movie When Harry met Sally, in which the hero differentiates women as "high-maintanence" or "low maintenance," and proceeds to tell the heroine she is a "high-maintanence who thinks she is a low-maintanence". Coffee lovers in India are high-maintanence drinkers of the brew who think they are low-maintanence. [...]
About Jitish Kallat and Reena Saini Kallat for Mint Lounge
Columns Posted: Thu, Feb 2 2012. 7:45 PM IST Walking the art talk with the Kallats Jitish and Reena are charming and polite—to me and to each other. They don’t interrupt and listen intently to each other as they describe their 18-year-old relationship, seven-year-old son and the trappings of fame and wealth that have come to them The Good Life | Shoba Narayan I am trailing artist-couple Jitish Kallat and Reena Saini Kallat through the white-cubed maze that is the India Art Fair in New Delhi. By the time you read this, the fair would have finished. My goal is [...]
About the comfort of rice: for The National Abu Dhabi
My Life: Shoba Narayan on rice Shoba Narayan Feb 1, 2012 People want different things on a cold winter night: a piping hot bowl of soup or the seductive richness of, say, foie gras. I crave steaming hot rice. It could be Malaysian nasi lemak, Saudi Arabian kabsa, Iranian pilaf, Pakistani biryani, Indian tamarind rice, Qatari or Kuwaiti majboos. I don't fuss as long as the main ingredient is earthy rice. For Asians, rice is the equivalent of American chicken soup. Said to be cultivated since 6,000 BC in the middle Yangtze valley, rice feeds two-thirds of the world's [...]
Final Presentations
I request all of you who are doing your presentations next Monday and Tuesday to keep it under 10 minutes. Because there are so many of us, I have no choice but to ensure that people keep within their time limit, or else I have to reduce the grade. A suggestion: rather than presenting a lot of ideas in your talk, you can put it all in the powerpoint that we will upload. In each presentation, just speak about THREE points. Three of the major concepts. We can get the details when we view the powerpoint presentations. This is how I [...]
Role Playing
I enjoyed our session today! Thanks to all who had the courage to come up today. I realize that the later candidates will have the advantage of our feedback and I will factor that in while grading you. In other words, the people who came up today have a handicap. Based on today role-playing, the class came up with some feedback which I have posted below. Feel free to add. 1. Ask open ended questions to draw them out. 2. Try to relax even though the situation may be tense. This shows in your body language. 3. Try mirroring you [...]