Column: The Good Life: for Mint Lounge
Holistic Health Care
Between nature and the laboratory, a cure for all our ills Shoba Narayan Dec 12, 2010 As healthcare debates rage on throughout the world, a heartening event is occurring in my hometown, Bangalore. Backed by state and central governments, the fourth World Ayurveda Congress is being held in the sprawling Palace Grounds. More than 5,000 delegates are expected to attend and present papers. The main goal, according to the organisers, is to figure out a way to integrate alternative medicine (they prefer to call it "traditional" medicine) with mainstream health care. China has attempted something similar with its own [...]
Savings tips for household help
In the new year, a savings tip for hired help Shoba Narayan Dec 19, 2010 It is that time of year when many of us are thinking about Christmas and year-end bonuses for those who help us. Most of us deal with household staff the way Lee Kuan Yew ran Singapore: as a benevolent dictator. We tell them what to do; teach them skills that will improve their work; and try to take care of them and their families. What we don't do is train them on how to improve their own lives; not because we don't want to [...]
Energy, Onions, India
All focus on energy for India but no heat to cook curry Shoba Narayan Dec 26, 2010 next previous Horamavu village seems like an odd place to take stock of the year, but it is in this little hamlet just outside Bangalore that I meet Nagappa, a fruit seller. I am in Horamavu to find a boarding kennel for Inji, my Labrador, during the Christmas holidays. My vet tells me about this woman who takes in strays and also boards pets for a fee. So, here I am, in the dusty lanes of this tiny village, bordered by lily [...]
Tourism Bedside Manners
Tourists appreciate bedside manners and smart service Shoba Narayan Jan 2, 2011 next previous So where did you go for New Year's? For much of Asia and indeed the world, it would have been the Middle East. According to a report by Deloitte entitled Hospitality 2015: Game Changers or Spectators, the Middle East has much to gain from emerging trends in the travel and tourism sector, thanks to 150 million new travellers from India and China and a continued expansion of the highly lauded Middle Eastern airlines such as Etihad Airways, Emirates Airline and Qatar Airways. The Gulf states, particularly [...]
Collaborative Consumption
The wisdom of collaborative consumption Shoba Narayan Jan 9, 2011 European cities such as London have come up with bike-sharing programmes subsidised by advertisements. BLOOMBERG next previous Go to photo 0 Have you ever opened your wardrobe and discovered it is full of clothes but you have nothing to wear? Economists have a term for this. They call it depreciating value of assets and there are several methods, "straight-line" and complicated, to calculate the depreciation of vehicles or electronic goods. The psychological reason behind depreciating value has to do with the old biblical injunction against coveting. We all [...]
Mother in law
The problem with the mother-in-law Shoba Narayan Jan 8, 2011 Two women who love the same man is hardly the recipe for a friendship. I speak not of extramarital affairs or bigamy, but of the relationship between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law. In India, where I live, this misunderstood, maligned "saas-bahu" relationship dominates the collective psyche. It is the stuff of television soap operas and is as much an emotional cliché as the stepmother is in the West. Men have it easy in this respect. Their relationship with their in-laws is somehow not as fraught as a woman's. Sure, some men [...]
Why do Arabic rhythms sound so sweet to Indian ears? for The National Abu Dhabi
Why do Arabic rhythms sound so sweet to Indian ears? Shoba Narayan Jan 18, 2011 A cousin of mine in Kuwait tells me that Bollywood music is de riguer at her parties these days. Apparently, her Arab friends love it. Coincidently, I reveal, there seems to be a reverse musical migration taking place, with Arab music increasingly influencing Bollywood's music composers. Take Ya Ali, the hit song from the Hindi film Gangster. It has Turkish, Arabic and Afghan versions. The Hindi tune was plainly lifted from these originals. Another Hindi song called, Kaho na kaho, is a straight copy of Amr [...]
Starbucks Compromise
Compromise may prove to be key for Starbucks in India Shoba Narayan Jan 23, 2011 next previous I have to admit that when I heard Starbucks was coming to India, my heart sank. It's not that I don't like their coffee. I do. I think calling sizes "venti" and "grande" in the English-speaking US is pretentious, but it has turned out to be a successful marketing move. I like Starbucks' stores — the smell of coffee, the deep armchairs and the spiky-haired waiters. While living in New York, I pretty much wrote all my feature articles settled on the purple leather [...]
Matchmaking Tiffin
My Life: Indian matchmaking takes a tiffin or two Shoba Narayan Jan 29, 2011 My husband, Ram, and I met over tiffin and tea one rainy afternoon in November 1991. We had an Indian arranged marriage, and as was the custom our horoscopes were matched, our families met and deemed each other compatible, and finally my parents invited him (and his parents) home to have tiffin and tea, and oh, by the way, to meet me. Tiffin, in this case, consisted of sojji and bajji, which are to Indians what scones and finger sandwiches are to the English. Sojji [...]
Succession Wipro
When succession becomes a major family concern Shoba Narayan Jan 30, 2011 "Save for the public sector and multinationals, India is full of family businesses," says Professor K Ramachandran of the Indian School of Business in Hyderabad. In India, the Tatas, Godrejs, and Mahindras are large business families whose progeny run the conglomerates. While this looms large in the public consciousness, it does not seem to have impacted their earnings in any significant way. Wipro is an anomaly, mostly because it operates in the IT environment where professionally run firms are the norm. The software giant's founder, Azim Premji, has [...]