Column: The Good Life: for Mint Lounge
For Travel & Leisure Southeast Asia on Nepal
Elephants, birds, nature and a posh lodge in Chitwan, Nepal.
Use your commute
24 September 2016 | Home » Leisure » The Better Life Last Modified: Thu, Sep 22 2016. 04 40 PM IST Work out during your commute Engaging your core while in the car, bus or autorickshaw is simple. All you need to do is make sure that your back doesn’t lean against the backrest Shoba Narayan Try sitting upright in your car rather than slumping back into the seat. Photo: iStock There is a great scene in The Other Guys, where Mark Wahlberg pumps his arms up and down and shouts, “I want to be a peacock.” His chicken-like pose works [...]
We live in thee age of betterment
People do many things to better themselves. They take up a sport, learn languages, do yoga, meditate and practise gratitude
The Better Life
Home » Opinion » The Better Life Last Published: Fri, Sep 09 2016. 12 35 PM IST How to get fit without exercising and other such shortcuts Simple things like stretching while waiting for the coffee to brew—and some a bit more complex grounded in psychology and science—but all easily do-able Shoba Narayan We live in the age of betterment. As adjectives go, this means living in or aspiring to the comparative state—faster, thinner, stronger, more disciplined, just better. We want to get better at managing people; have more control over our finances; learn to manage stress better; have better work-life balance; and the mother [...]
Connecting to readers is a columnist’s particular pleasure: last Mint Lounge column
This will be my last column. My first coincided with the first issue of Mint Lounge and so it continued for nine years, weekly for the most part. I have grown and changed with this paper, participating in and bearing witness to its multifaceted issues. To be one of its voices has been a privilege I have never taken for granted. I was going to write a philosophical piece about time. About how this wasn’t really an ending but a new beginning. About how the ancients viewed time as cyclical. I researched the Pirahã tribes of Brazil who know no past or future but live, like Buddhist monks, in the present always.
You don’t go to Rajnikanth movies for the plot, you go for the comfort
To understand the hold that Rajinikanth has on his fans, you have to meet my ex-driver, Robert. An archetypal Rajini fan, Robert dresses, walks and talks like Rajini. Conversations with him are a triumphant reminder that while English is the language of logic and analysis for us Indians, our mother tongue is the language of the heart. It is Tamil that I turn to when I want to plead or persuade. And like many of our great vernacular tongues, Tamil lends itself to exquisite hyberbole. What passes of as conversation in Tamil would sound like a film dialogue when restated in English.
Negotiating with a spouse about marrying a cellphone
“I am thinking of marrying my cellphone,” I tell my husband. We are sitting beside each other, tapping on our colour-coded iPads—his, black, and mine Hermes orange—the colour, not the brand. “Oh really,” he says in that overly enthusiastic voice he affects when he hasn’t heard a word I have said. Our gadgets punctuate our lives and burrow deep into our souls. There is an app for every emotion. Getting hitched to your phone is the next logical step.
An NGO in Bangalore for a European news agency
To think I heard about Reap Benefit from Amy Serafin, an editor in America. Small world READ YOUR STORIES Discover the best IJD stories from all over the world SPARKNEWS - EDUCATION GO BACK TO STORIES SHARE ON FACEBOOK SHARE ON TWITTER Teaching kids to sow and reap Shoba Narayan At Reap Benefit’s charming office in an old bungalow in Bangalore is a quote by Mozart, written with chalk at the entrance: “Be silent if you choose but when it is necessary, speak—and speak in such a way that people will remember it.” It is an apt model for [...]
Talk at ABB
So I have been giving a lot of talks these days. As any parent knows, having a group of people listen without interruption is like a dream. At home, of course, my opinions and advice are laughed at by my kids. So it was a treat to talk to young college students about the importance of literature and humanities. This one was to the scientists at ABB. A gentleman wrote to me out of the blue. I saw his title and promptly said No. What was I going to tell scientists? Ashish Sureka, Ph.D Principal Scientist, Industrial Software Systems (ISS) India Corporate [...]
Bangalore Diary for Outlook Magazine
"Shoba, you need to be on the back page of Outlook," said the voice on the phone. "Have a look." It was Krishna Prasad, then the editor of Outlook magazine. I like "Diary" pages because they imply casual writing. This took a few iterations however. The main dissonance was that I remain an optimist about Bangalore. The first draft was sunny, exuberant even. Thankfully, Krishna, my editor, gently suggested that I add a caveat. Hence the "unliveable" city quote, which, as it turns out is how many Bangalore papers are describing this city. 04 JULY 2016 LAST PAGE Bangalore Diary [...]