Column: The Good Life: for Mint Lounge
Nagging is Easier
Subtle persuasion? Sometimes nagging is just easier Shoba Narayan Aug 25, 2011 I am studying Russian-style arm-twisting with a group of Bangaloreans who want to clean up this city. How to get people to stop dumping their rubbish on the road? How to get more people to recycle? Arm-twisting or persuasion is an art, but now - thanks to numerous studies - also a science. You can get people to do what you wish simply by modifying your message. One woman became the best-selling salesperson on a television channel by modifying her last line from, "Please call. Our operators are waiting to speak to you", to "If you [...]
A harbinger of hope for Kolkata’s poor
This ran during the Ramzan-Eid season in The National, Abu Dhabi
For Mint Lounge India on Delhi nightlife
A Phantom and Other Nocturnal Animals 5 min read . Updated: 25 Aug 2011, 10:01 PM IST The Good Life | Shoba Narayan There is one thing that we Bangaloreans mourn: the 11.30pm curfew by which the bars and restaurants close. To watch Delhiites revel way past our curfew time gave me Delhi-envy I got Delhi-envy at 1.43am on a soft summer night when I met a man called Honey. The evening began at 10pm at an art gallery opening. Hotelier Priya Paul (whom I had first met a week ago) and [...]
Three in Biotech: for Silkroad, Dragonair, Cathay Pacific
Three in Biotech We interviewed her at Biocon and photographer Mallik Katakol came with an "umbrella" to focus the light on her to shoot her for this piece and the other Work/Life that I did on her.
For Cathay Pacific Magazine on Architecture
Why Bangaloreans care so much about old buildings and neighbourhoods.
When Housewives March for Mint
For a while now, I have been focusing on what writers call the "telling detail," where you observe something but pick out the detail that is new and unusual. In this piece, it was the housewife telling her Maharaj to make dal, sabzi, roti, and then breaking off to yell, "Saaku Saaku, lanja saaku." or "Enough, enough, bribes, enough." When the housewives march Cults become movements by accident. The tipping point comes when the housewives get out on the streets Shoba Narayan Freedom Park in Bangalore is far away, geographically, from the Ramlila maidan in New Delhi. But on this [...]
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 [...]