Column: The Good Life: for Mint Lounge
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 [...]
Senior Citizen Matchmaking
Elisabeth, my Parisienne friend. I am wearing the kurta you got for me in Anokhi. The pink one. I miss you. It has been a while since I posted on this blog. Somehow, writing messages to friends is an idea that I got from my friend who won the "ovarian lottery" and began this blog for me. So in addition to dumping articles here, I will write, to paraphrase Roald Dahl who said, "secret plans and clever tricks," in his Crocodile book, I will write "secret messages and candid compliments" when I can. I like writing for The National, [...]
Ode to an old-fashioned radio: how our parents listened to the news
How did you lose your Malayalam accent, I asked my father, especially since it has smeared itself like coconut oil on every other relative from Kerala. Radio, replied my father. My paternal grandfather was a lawyer in Kottayam, the kind of man who made fallen dominoes out of hardened criminals. At 9pm sharp, he would order his vast clan of sons, daughters and nephews to collect at his feet. Together they would turn on the radio and listen to the familiar voice that said, “This is London calling.”
The fantastic range of jewellery in India: inventive and imaginative
The range of jewellery available in India in terms of materials used, designs and techniques of craftsmanship is unparalleled,” says author and jewellery expert Usha Balakrishnan. She gives examples. The Nagas make jewellery using beetle wings, feathers and bones; Bengalis use conch shells for their bangles; Keralites include tiger claws and elephant hair in their jewellery; Maharashtrians use black beads; many states, including Tamil Nadu, use terracotta. The language of Indian ornamentation is vast. There is no such thing as pan-Indian jewellery.
Traditional jewelry brands going modern for Mint Lounge
Star trek How a traditional jewellery house can morph into a modern avatar without losing its cross-generational clientele Shoba Narayan Heritage jewellery from C. Krishniah Chetty & Sons In 1877, a young Greek jeweller named Sotirios Boulgaris left his village in the Epirus region and travelled to Corfu, Naples and, finally, Rome, where—in 1884—he opened a store on Via Sistina under the name Bulgari. A century later, Claudio Mariani, a young Italian, joined the company, first as a jewellery designer, then as manager of their Geneva outlet, and later as head of their Asian operations. At the [...]
Napa Valley wines Part 2 for Mint Lounge
Beyond the blue yonder where chocolate-coloured grapevines stretch as far as the eye can see, a plant is making choices about its future. It is gnarly and old. Its snaking brown roots sink deep into the land that has been its sole and only home; a land that made its name through Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon. Napa, they call this place. It used to be farmland until the 1970s. A young Stanford graduate, Robert Mondavi, moved there to start a winery in 1966. That changed everything.
Dead cow in the Ganga: for Mint on Sunday
Kashi is endlessly fascinating as is the Ganga, the river of India as Jawaharlal Nehru famously said. I just loved writing this piece. BIG STORY Sun, 28 Feb 2016 HOW BLIND FAITH IS CHOKING THE GANGA Photo: Shoba Narayan The mission to clean the Ganga will be a pipe dream as long as Indians have no problem in perceiving and accepting the river as both pure and dirty Shoba Narayan The Ganga would be a good place to jump in. The question that looms before me is whether to jump into the Ganga in Kashi: the holiest of rivers in [...]