Column: The Good Life: for Mint Lounge
Why your girl should go to a women’s college: for Mint Lounge
My view—from personal experience and from watching other adolescent girls—is that women have many voices in their heads that tell them how to behave. They have a mortal fear of being judged. They hate confrontation. A good teacher can drown these voices. A good college can alleviate the desire for approval that women have; the self-correction that they engage in all the time. Through role play and encouragement, faculty and staff teach young women to be assertive, to speak up; to stop second-guessing their thoughts and opinions.
Bonda Soup, where the bowl matters: for Mint Lounge
Still bummed that I didn't go to Ayodhya in Mangalore for typical Mangalorean food. The bowl matters as much as the soup I grew up in a home where we ate on stainless-steel plates. My grandmother’s idea of a festive dinner was to lay banana leaves on the floor and have a small army of topless dhoti-clad men race down serving spoonfuls of various dishes in a prescribed order: first payasam (kheer), then paruppu (dal), then pappadam , then pachadi (raita). Then came an array of dishes that are pretty much untranslatable— kootu , avial , olan , kaalan , [...]
In search of the perfect wine glass
Anyone who has stayed in a hostel has a resource-constrained mindset towards food. I don’t care which college you went to. Standing in line and waiting for a finite amount of food does something to your psyche. It makes you think of food, not as a pleasure to be had, but as a resource to be grabbed. It has taken me several decades to get out of this mindset.
Spirits of India
Korea has soju; Japan has sake; America has bourbon; Mexico has tequila and mezcal; Germany has schnapps; Scandinavia has aquavit; France has wine; Greece has ouzo; Britain has beer; Portugal has port; Spain has sherry; Turkey has raki; Brazil has cachaça; Peru has pisco; Scotland has Scotch; and India has…what? Chai? Horlicks? At a time when national spirit is high, shouldn’t we consider a signature spirit as well?
Birds: A tryst with cacophony and camouflage
Bird watching fits this paradigm, because no matter where you travel, you will always find birds. If you educate yourself on birds, you can travel the world and remain engaged in your interest. When you get too old or feeble to travel, you can stand in your balcony and look through binoculars. As I have been doing. The freedom that birds seem to experience is uplifting and you wish you could lift yourself up.
The big brooming business: for Mint Lounge
The big brooming business An acquaintance of mine, Chantal, called from New York the other day with a request: she needed brooms; lots of them. Could I source them from India? Chantal is a gaunt French-Algerian chain smoker. She says merde (shit) a lot; wears Dior rouge lipstick, and lots of moody grey Chanel eyeshadow. She used to be a hand model but now specializes in department store windows. Her job, she says, is to make mannequins “look like models”.Over Skype, Chantal explained her idea. She would decorate an entire department store with brooms. She had watched Prime Minister Narendra [...]
Train Diary 3 for Mint Lounge
Why do so few people talk to their fellow travellers on planes and why do some many talk to their neighbours on trains? I think it is because we view planes as mobile offices while train travel is time away from work; more like a vacation; a time to exhale and take stock; a time for diffused thought rather than focus; a time to relax. Planes produce the opposite effect. With no interruptions from colleagues or relatives, we pull out our computers and phones and get work done.
Train Diary 2
Train Diary 2: Easy, artless conversations Train travel has both a created ecosystem and inflection points. The first inflection point is when you walk down the corridor to your compartment for the first time, wondering who your fellow travellers are. They are the people who will share your space for the next six or 36 hours. Their temperament is critical to your well-being. Mine, on this overnight train journey from Bangalore to Kumbakonam, happens to be a nun, an elderly couple and two men. Sister Mary teaches biology at a college in Trichy. She is good looking, with clear brown [...]
Train diary No.1: we’re all in it together for Mint Lounge
Nothing matches the high drama of a train departure. Where else can you run beside the train, holding on to hand, finger, then little finger, then scarf, before letting go and waving till the train disappears. You certainly cannot run after an airline; and you’d bump into the passing cow if you tried this stunt in inter-city buses. Trains are designed for our sort of goodbye. Everyone is running, sobbing, yelling out instructions, and then frantically waving goodbyes and asking the traveller to call the moment the train reaches destination.
Serendipity
In shrinking urban spaces, there are a few locations that bring together intellectuals and ideas on a daily basis. In Bangalore, Koshy’s, the much loved coffee shop, is one such location. Cobalt Blue, a new shared-office space, aspires to be another. Part of the reason you visit these spaces is because you don’t know whom you will meet or what you will encounter. Of course, some of these encounters can be unnerving—the classic one being when you run into your ex at a location that was special to you.