Column: The Good Life: for Mint Lounge
Rosemary, Geeta and the future of banking
Rosemary, Geeta and the future of banking
Big City Brews
Big City Brews PDF here It is Saturday night and the Biere Club in Bangalore’s tony Lavelle Road is humming. Young IT professionals down pints of handcrafted ale, lager, wheat and stout beers, all made in-house. “Bangaloreans enjoy their beer and we thought that it was about time that beer got its due in this city,” says the young and chic Meenakshi Raju, who along with her brother, opened the Biere Club a few months ago. The Rajus belong to a family that is in the hospitality business. “My father and uncles all own hotels [...]
Family Life for The National
A column I write for M magazine, the weekend supplement of The National, Abu Dhabi. My life: Riding the waves of family life Shoba Narayan Jul 20, 2011 When you live in a foreign land as an immigrant or an expat, you are often haunted by thoughts of home - the sights, smells, sounds, friends and family. As an Indian, I missed that nebulous construct that we call home when I lived in the US for close to 20 years. I missed the thundering monsoon rain, the smell of jasmine, the taste of samosas and the touch of my mother. [...]
About ice-cream for The National
I wrote this piece over six months ago when Bangalore was hot, hot, hot. They publish it now Icecream for The National here and pasted below Amid a rainbow of flavours, I am still frozen in the past Shoba Narayan Jul 19, 2011 On a hot day in Singapore not long ago, a friend took me to an ice cream shop that she had been raving about. Island Creamery presented us with a smorgasbord of flavours - milo, chendol, teh tarik and others. But something was missing. What happened to plain old vanilla? As any child today knows, the ice [...]
Delhi Airport
Delhi airport's new terminal has nice bathroom entrances. I always wonder how to make iconic signs both accessible and yet creative. Here in the airport, they have screen printed large size images of Indian women in traditional garb at the entrance to show which bathroom the women have to enter. Right next to her is a kurta clad man. I wonder if they have represented all the states and their distinctive attire-- kerala's mundu, punjab's salwar kameez-- and jewelry. typing this from a freely available outlet at the airport alongside three giggling nine-year-old who are thrilled to bits that they [...]
Father’s Day column for The National
A piece I wrote for The National. Happy Fathers Day! Father’s Day Is being a father to a son different from being a father to a daughter? Shouldn’t be, right? After all, one of the central premises of parenting is to treat all your children with the same amount of love and affection. “You both are like my two eyes,” my mother used to say to my brother and I when we asked her which of us was her favorite. “How can I pick one over the other?” It is a common theme. We parents bend over backwards in our [...]
Pho-bidden Fruit: for this website
My French neighbour has introduced me to some of the coolest places in Bangalore. Is there something wrong with this picture, or is it just how it is? Expats come to Bangalore and discover the city in a way that many of us who have lived here for years don't. I have never been to City Market, its flower market, on a Lalbagh walk with a naturalist, and that musical fountain near the planetarium (the last one is not on my to-do list). So anyway, Elisabeth and I were shopping for that oxymoron that is common in furniture shops these [...]
Confessions of a cross-carrying immigrant
Very old piece. Suddenly resurfaced here and on Rediff below. Confessions of a Cross-Carrying Immigrant Shoba Narayan January 4, 2000 I am an immigrant. I straddle cultures, juggle identities, and carry labels. The INS calls me Resident-Alien, the IRS calls me Permanent Resident, Americans call me Indian, Indians call me Non-Resident Indian, surveys call me Asian-American, and job applications ask if I have a Green Card. I got my Green Card last year. The process took two years and cost about $ 5000. I spent hours filling forms that the INS routinely sent back asking for more documents, yet another [...]
Nadir Godrej Profile for Discovery magazine, Cathay Pacific.
This ran in Cathay Pacific inflight magazine, Discovery. And the publication date, May 2011. Nadir Godrej Profile
The trouble with teenagers
I hope my daughter doesn't read this. For The National. My life: The trouble with teenagers Shoba Narayan May 18, 2011 Updated May 18, 2011 5.12pm At a party recently, I asked a close friend what I considered an innocuous question. "How is Vivek?" I asked, referring to her son who had just graduated from Brown University and had returned home. "I don't know how to talk to him anymore," my friend replied forcefully. "He is 22 years old and still hasn't decided what to do with his life. He wants to take a year off to figure it out. [...]