Column: The Good Life: for Mint Lounge
The dramatic and soulful orchestra men: for Mint Lounge
Listen to Mendelssohn while you read this piece The dramatic and soulful orchestra men What exactly does an orchestra conductor do with his eyes closed? Shoba Narayan First Published: Thu, Sep 27 2012. 06 00 PM IST The Symphony Orchestra of India’s last show of the season is on Sunday. If you are lucky enough to live in Mumbai, I hope you can catch the performance. They are performing a concert of orchestral operatic favourites which—although not a personal favourite—is sure to be good. Opera is hard for listeners steeped in Indian classical music, mostly because the singing sounds [...]
It’s never too late to get your hands on wet clay: for Mint Lounge
I loved writing this piece because I love clay and pots and ceramic arts It’s never too late to get your hands on wet clay Working with your hands in wet clay is a sensual experience Shoba Narayan First Published: Fri, Sep 14 2012. 07 14 PM IST An artist at Pottery Town, where 45 families make a living out of clay. Photo: Aniruddha Chowdhury/Mint RELATED Excerpt | The ‘desi’ mutation Mastering the art of giving Mastering the art of giving In the words of the daughter-in-law Clad in a blue housecoat—what else—Nethra, the artist, is painting a 2ft-tall clay [...]
Are Foundations neccessary?
Mastering the art of giving The hundi model - or writing significant cheques in an ad hoc and anonymous fashion - is the worst way to donate your money Shoba Narayan Posted: Thu, Sep 6 2012. 8:47 PM IST I blame it on the hundi; and the Bible. “But when thou doest alms,” says the Bible in Matthew 6:3, “let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth.” This was before the Indian Revenue Service invented the 80G tax exemption; incentivising donors not just to give with both hands but also announce the size of their [...]
Memories and cupcakes for Mint Lounge
Customized cupcakes and south Indian tiffins The old and the new coexist in Chennai today in a way that warms the cockles of its erstwhile inhabitants. Madrasis have turned cosmopolitan but still retain their mordant wit The Good Life | Shoba Narayan In the early 1980s, if you said “cupcake” in Chennai, guys would have assumed you were talking about a pretty girl, possibly a voluptuous one—like Helen, Jayamalini or Silk Smitha. As for cups, in my household, they were kept aside for servants who sipped their coffee rather than poured it down their throat without touching the lips using [...]
ArcelorMittal Orbit: The sprinter and the marathon man: for Mint Lounge
The sprinter and the marathon man The ‘ArcelorMittal Orbit’ is a flight of fancy that arose from a fit of bravado - a product of using time and circumstance wisely The Good Life | Shoba Narayan Posted: Fri, Jul 20 2012. 1:15 AM IST Its genesis is serendipitous enough to be the stuff of Shakespearean farce. London’s motormouth mayor Boris Johnson runs into steel tycoon Lakshmi Mittal in a cloakroom during the 2009 World Economic Forum. Johnson corners Mittal, whom he is meeting for the first time, and describes his plan for a giant erection at the centre of the [...]
Shazia Mirza
Mirza takes on all the taboos about Islam and flips them around as jokes. She tells us what we are thinking, with a punchline
What after you have seen 1,000 moons? for Mint Lounge
What after you have seen 1,000 moons? Life for many of us is not about artistic genius or business impact. It is about small pleasures, rich relationships and the ability to make peace with your soul The Good Life | Shoba Narayan Posted: Fri, Aug 17 2012. 8:32 PM IST In the last six months, I have participated in five sathabhishekams-as 80th birthdays are called in my community. Milestone events help you mark time and take stock. For the Hindu 80th birthday, the date is usually fixed after the person has seen 1000 full-moons. Both my father and father-in-law celebrated [...]
Why you should drop your culinary crutches– for Mint Lounge
Why you should drop your culinary crutches For professional restaurateurs and chefs, introducing the element of surprise is tricky because the spontaneous creativity that leads to surprise goes against the cardinal rule of a restaurant kitchen: consistency The Good Life | Shoba Narayan Two years ago, Olive Beach, a restaurant in Bangalore, made a special tasting menu for a group called The Bangalore Black Tie, of which I am a member. Typically, these are off-menu dishes that the chef specially crafts for the group, paired with wine. Each member pays a fixed price. What was unusual about this meal was [...]
Sherbets: drinks of an Indian childhood for Mint Lounge
This coming Saturday is Mint Lounge's Summer Special issue. I wrote a column on cooling summer drinks, which, I discovered is already up on the site. So am posting it here. Columns Posted: Thu, Apr 5 2012. 8:12 PM IST The cooling draught There is no better summer drink that the traditional Indian sherbet from your childhood The Good Life | Shoba Narayan When my Chinese room-mate got acne on her face, she ate a porridge made of green mung beans. Soaked mung beans are considered cooling foods in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). They support the yin earth and disperse yang heat. Indian Ayurveda, [...]
Music and Art for Mint Lounge
Tuning in to change 5 min read . Updated: 30 Mar 2012, 09:17 PM IST The Good Life | Shoba Narayan Artist Sudarshan Shetty and I are sitting on the steps of the Pushya Mahal ghat in Thiruvaiyaru town and chatting. The river Cauvery, so resonant to us south Indians, is flowing in front of us. Flowing is an overstatement. There are islands of sand in between large puddles of water. This discernment has percolated down to Srinivasan. I first met her in New York over 10 years ago. She came for [...]