Column: The Good Life: for Mint Lounge
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 [...]
About the India Art Fair for Art in America
A piece for Art in America India Art Fair Gains Major Dealers, Courts Collectors by shoba narayan 01/24/12 "Once you exceed 100,000 people, it's not a numbers game anymore. It's about bringing high quality collectors in," says Neha Kirpal, 31, founder of the India Art Fair, explaining to A.i.A. her strategy for the fair's fourth edition, which takes place at the NSIC Grounds in New Delhi, Jan. 25–29. Last year, some 128,000 people visited the fair—that's London's Frieze and Art Basel Miami Beach combined, by some estimates. This year, 91 galleries from 19 countries have signed up to show at India's largest-and only-contemporary art [...]
Why art needs to speak a simpler tongue: for Mint Lounge
Here is the piece in Mint Columns Posted: Fri, Jan 27 2012. 9:51 PM IST Why art needs to speak a simpler tongue The India Art Fair is in full swing; and Delhi feels like it is at the centre of the universe. This is the trick that geography plays. When you are part of an event, part of its intellectual mindspace, you get drawn into its “reality distortion field” The Good life | Shoba Narayan One of the questions facing all organizers of large events in light of what happened in Jaipur is this: How much of a broad [...]
About the India Art Fair for The National Abu Dhabi
Here are some of the articles that I wrote about the India Art Fair. Curators and gallerists put finishing touches to 2012 India Art Fair Shoba Narayan Jan 25, 2012 Iranian art seems to be, if not the flavour of the event, at least a point of interest at the 2012 India Art Fair (IAF), where more than 1,000 art works from 91 galleries will be shown. Contemporary Iranian art from the Anupam and Lekha Poddar Collection will be unveiled at the fair's closing party on Sunday. Curated by the Tehran-based graphic designer and curator, Amirali Ghasemi, the invitation-only event, [...]
The poetry of War Horse for Mint Lounge
The poetry of a horse on the move About sculpture, horses and Sayaka Ganz's work. This one is for Dhruv and Noor 4 min read . The Good Life | Shoba Narayan Pappu is nuzzling my neck. He smells of hay and heaven. His hot breath fills my nape as he nudges my tussar silk dupatta aside. The material must tickle his nose because he does something I’ve rarely seen horses do: He grins. “Hrrummph," he neighs and takes a playful bite of my shoulder. “Ouch," I reply and step away. [...]