Column: The Good Life: for Mint Lounge
Sleepovers for The National M magazine
I am part of a rotating group of columnists who write for The National's M magazine. My editor, Rick Arthur has the courteousness of a Southern gentleman but having never met him, I don't know if he is American or not. A teenage daughter's sleepover can fray a mother's nerves Shoba Narayan Last Updated: Feb 23, 2011 My 14-year-old daughter, Ranjini, wants to go for a sleepover. This isn't a simple proposition in my household. I am generally against sleepovers. This, I believe, is an Eastern attitude, and comes from the tradition of joint families, with all their incestuous complications. [...]
Monsoon Diary in Florida
Author Shoba Narayan stands as a shining example of the writers’ axiom: Write what you know. Her just-published first book, “Monsoon Diary: A Memoir With Recipes” (Villard, $22.95), recalls the Indian-born writer’s childhood, her struggle to convince her parents to send her to a U.S. college and her arranged marriage. Narayan will make two appearances in Fort Myers on Saturday to read from, and autograph copies of, her book.
My First Podcast
Charlotte visited from Boston and inspired me to do something that I have long been wanting to do. Aditya Mhatre of Indicast told me to set it up at archive.org I recorded the piece using Apple's built in Garage Band program. Didn't have a mike or any of the other audio set ups so not sure of the sound quality. Both Charlotte and I were nervous and I guess it shows. But I am pretty kicked about recording my first podcast and hope it will be the first of many. Thank you, Aditya Mhatre of The Indicast Podcast Network. Check [...]
Labour Reform for The National
In this week's column, I interviewed labour reform expert, Manish Sabharwal about the future of employment in India. You can see the piece by clicking here India must remove shackles to achieve true labour reform Shoba Narayan Last Updated: Feb 27, 2011 A few months ago Manish Sabharwal, the chairman of TeamLease Services, India's leading staffing company, was in Rajasthan for a job fair. As always, long lines of young men and women stood, resume in hand, wanting to be hired for a job - any job. One of the young men pleaded that he needed to work to support [...]
Feedback Section
Dear Class: A word about my blog. I have included my teaching stint at IIM because I am proud of the caliber of the students who I taught. Two, I wanted to document it. And three, it is a way of marketing the course for next year's IIM batch. So far, only one student had privacy concerns which I am sensitive about. If any of you have issues about this class being on my blog, please let me know at the wine dinner and I will make the section "private." As we near our term, I have three requests for [...]
Project Details
Dear Class: The final project submission is on April 28th from 9 to 2. Sandeep is organizing the line-up. Each of you will get ten minutes to make a presentation on your project. Two questions came up. 1. The final presentation : Will you be rating / assigning marks based on the same? 2. Is a final report required or the content prepared for the 10 minute presentation would suffice? As Malcolm Gladwell says in "Blink," you can figure out a lot about a person in just a few seconds. So yes, the final presentation is everything. I will be [...]
About the Course
This is how the course was presented to the Executive Post Graduate Program (EPGP) at IIM-Bangalore. Companies spend enormous amounts of money each year in soft skills training. Many have realized that in additional to core competencies, employees need to improve their Emotional Intelligence Quotient (EQ). Consider this scenario: you are hosting a client dinner to initiate an important project or deal. Executives from Europe and the U.S. have flown in. You have hired a private dining room at a luxury hotel. Food and wine are in place. There will be no business presentation; no obvious talk of deals. Instead, [...]
Future of private equity in India may be a pipe dream
The business column I write for The National every week is really tough for me. This week was no exception. I learned about private equity 101 and talked to about half a dozen players in Mumbai and Bangalore. No one would speak on the record and it was all very interesting. I turned in the piece after my deadline and Rupert, my editor, tried to be gracious about it. Next week, I start again. Here is the link Future of private equity in India may be a pipe dream Shoba Narayan Last Updated: Feb 20, 2011 Last week, after a [...]
EdelGive Social Innovation Honours
Last week, I attended an event that was very inspiring. I was part of a jury that judged about a dozen humanitarian organizations to figure out which ones to support. The whole thing was organized by Vidya Shah (wife of Edelweiss founder, Rashesh Shah), a lovely grounded woman from Dharwad. The others in the jury were Zia Mody (very irreverent and funny), Mala Ramadorai (wife of ex-TCS chairman Ramadorai) who has the sweet voice of the singer she is, Roopa Kudva of Crisil, a journalist, Kalpana Sharma, Chandra Iyengar (ex- Home Secretary, Maharashtra) who knew a lot about these NGOs, [...]
Can you survive a year without shopping?
My latest Mint piece is a topic that I have been thinking a lot about. Can you show affection without buying people things? How to use the most precious thing we have-- time-- to tell the people we care that we care about them.