The Good Life2020-09-12T08:40:35+05:30

Column: The Good Life: for Mint Lounge

509, 2015

Can wine be described well? for Mint Lounge

September 5th, 2015|Columns, Drink, HT Media, Mint Lounge|

KRSMA Estates has invited me to a tasting of their wines next week, and frankly, I am a little nonplussed. Robert M. Parker, the influential American wine critic, once described a Haut-Brion as having “a sweet nose of creosote, asphalt…” and an array of berries. Having never tasted asphalt, and having no idea what a creosote is, this description is absolutely useless to me.

2208, 2015

Are you listening to the Kodaikanal rap?

August 22nd, 2015|Arts, Columns, HT Media, Mint Lounge|

The old woman in Palani—down the hill from Kodaikanal-- was trying to recruit me to be a movie extra.  Muniamma looked like a rock star.  She was about 80, with weathered skin about the colour of a coffee bean.  She was clad in a soft white cotton sari sans blouse in the fashion of village women in Tamilnadu. Muniamma’s recruitment strategy was fool proof.

2507, 2015

Memories are made of buttermilk for Mint Lounge

July 25th, 2015|Columns, Drink, Food, HT Media, Mint Lounge|

My first memory of buttermilk is warmth and darkness.  I must have been five or six years old.  Still confused by the mists of sleep, I walked into my grandmother’s kitchen, drawn by a comforting swishing sound.  My grandmother was sitting on the floor, her legs spread-eagled and resting on the wall.  Soft light filtered through the window in front of her. In between her legs was a heavy mud pot that was held firmly in place by a coiled towel.

2706, 2015

Birds in culture– the last of the four part series that I hugely enjoyed writing.

June 27th, 2015|Columns, HT Media, Mint Lounge, Nature|

Everyone says that bird-watching requires patience. I don’t think so. I think that the pleasure of bird watching comes from the questions you ask. You can watch a crow and try to figure out why it is cawing at that moment. You can listen to the variety of calls that a common mynah makes and try to see if there is a pattern. I watch the birds come and go in the trees in front of my home and see if there is a reason or pattern that they follow when they sit down and take off.

2106, 2015

So of course I had to write about yoga: for Mint Lounge

June 21st, 2015|Columns, HT Media, Mint Lounge, Spirituality|

Actually, my editor suggested that I write about yoga on yoga day. It is here and below It is a little disconcerting, but ask yourself this question: what unites India? I have tried asking this question in various forums. It is hard to agree on three or four things that form the value system of this country. It cannot be religion because we are secular. It cannot be language because that changes every few hundred kilometres. It cannot be clothing style because even that varies from region to region. We listen to different music in the north and in the south. [...]

1306, 2015

Birding: seeing versus hearing

June 13th, 2015|Columns, HT Media, Mint Lounge, Nature|

In the beginning, with pig-headed ambition, I decided that I would memorize the Latin names for all the bird species that I saw. I have given up that endeavour now. It is complicated enough to keep track of the markings and learn the common names. This then is the other learning that will occur: spotting minor differences between birds that belong to the same species: White-cheeked Barbet, Grey-headed Barbet, Coppersmith barbet, Blue-throated Barbet, you get the picture. They all belong to the Megalaima species.

3005, 2015

Trees and birds

May 30th, 2015|Columns, HT Media, Mint Lounge, Nature|

The best thing that is happened to me as a result of this year-long journey is the cliché: I feel connected with the universe. Let me be clear. I don't think you wake up one morning and suddenly feel at one with the cosmos. It is a gradual process of shedding layers of armor that you have built around yourself. The way it happened for me, and I am by no means there yet, has to do with connecting multiple species and seeing a greater whole.

1505, 2015

How to bird-watch. How to watch birds

May 15th, 2015|Columns, HT Media, Mint Lounge, Nature|

It begins with a pair of binoculars; and a balcony, if you have one. If there is some greenery visible from your balcony, even better. But you need binoculars to begin this voyage. Mine are Bushnell binoculars from Amazon for about $35. They have a magnification of 10X50, which didn’t mean anything to me except that it seemed better than the 8X40 advertised by other brands. I use them every day, except during travel, and even that, I want to change.

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