Column: The Good Life: for Mint Lounge
Women– conformists and rebels: for Mint Lounge
It gave me a lot of pleasure to write this piece. I think my mother in law is fascinating. She stayed with me for six months recently and it was a learning experience. She, like many of her generation, inhabits her identity so firmly and easily, without much angst or internal conflict. She does Varalakshmi puja, cuts fruit every morning, observes all kinds of Hindu rituals and calls herself a "housewife." But she is so much more. Either she compartmentalizes really well, or she sees no contradiction between doing 'womanly chores' as she calls it and being a feminist. Maybe [...]
Confident Women: don’t listen to dissenting voices, carry on: for The National Abu Dhabi
A piece that really *really* bothered me and a response. Opinion Comment Don’t listen to the dissenting voices, just carry on regardless Shoba Narayan October 8, 2013 Updated: October 8, 2013 18:08:00 Recently, the New York Times magazine carried an article titled, Why are there still so few women in science? Related ■ South Korea a highly connected nation The piece, which attracted plenty of attention and more than 1,000 comments to its online version, posited that the reason women don’t excel in the sciences is because they aren’t encouraged enough and they lack the self-confidence to forge ahead on [...]
Characters
Children remember the oddest things. If you have kids around you; kids that visit you from time to time, you might want to consider the kind of person you are and personify. This one is written with Prabha-mami and Nagarajan-mama in mind. Two special people who were the 'characters' of my childhood. Cherish the weird and the wonderful Memory remembers the weird and the wonderful; the people who touch our senses, not just our brains: the ones who are different Shoba Narayan First Published: Sat, Oct 05 2013. 12 08 AM IST Kharbanda (left) in a small but memorable role [...]
Overlearning
Came upon this concept in an interesting way. Thank you, Ms. Anjana (kathak teacher) for the idea. Practice makes perfect in classical Indian dance classes Shoba Narayan October 1, 2013 Updated: October 1, 2013 17:27:00 Save this article Alaa Ahmed is an assistant professor in the department of integrative physiology in the University of Colorado in Boulder. I heard about him in a very unusual way. My daughter, Ranjini, learns kathak – a classical Indian dance form that has it roots in the nomadic bards of north India – at an advanced level. She is part of a dance company [...]
Regional aesthetics
I am wrestling with the whole notion of culture, identity, tradition, aesthetics, and how to infuse them into my life. How to embody these things? By wearing a sari? After years of being an atheist and then becoming a agnostic, I am taking baby steps to the other side. Someone-- Pratap Bhanu Mehta, I think-- wrote a nice piece a while ago, stating that you can be religious and secular at the same time. I come from a religious family. I have rebelled against it all my life. Now, slowly I am trying to see the merit in it. I [...]
Bangalore Literature Festival
Is this weekend. Please attend if you are in Bangalore. I am in a panel on Sunday afternoon (the 29th) from 1 to 2 pm. It is about rewriting the rules of romance and reminiscence. In bold below. But the entire day's schedule also below. SUNDAY | SEPTEMBER 29, 2013 TIME MYSORE PARK LAWN BAGH MAKKALA KOOTA Literature for Children 10:00 – 11.00 Thoughts that Breathe, Words that Burn: A morning of poetry Ashok Vajpeyi, K. Satchidanandan and Nabanita Dev Sen Moderator: Mamta Sagar Launch of Tilman Rammstedt's ‘The Emperor of China – Der Kaiser von China’ International Ink: Getting [...]
In support of arguing
My friend said something about fighting couples ages ago that served as the seed for this article. We were talking about elderly couples who balk at doing stuff for each other-- particularly women. Caring for husbands during illness, that sort of thing. He said that a couple should fight all the way and iron out differences so that by the time you reach seventy or whatever, your angst about each others' flaws is ironed out. Been thinking about this and this is a tangential take. He who shouts loudest is just a teen trying to make his point Shoba Narayan [...]
Why you may not be as cultured as you think: for Mint Lounge
Nice response to the piece below in Livemint website. I wish The Skeptarian, whoever she or he is had said some more. I don't agree with her or his notions about culture as talking to sweeper. That's my milklady version. The Skeptarian • 7 hours ago −This article just re-articulates a certain sameness in our thinking, a tired view of culture that equates it with the arts. Culture is not that at all. In its truest sense, culture is about a certain catholicity in one's sensibility. It is the ability to let go of one's identity; in fact, it is [...]
Vintage cars
Have to write another article on inheriting collections. Don't think I gave a satisfactory answer to this very interesting question: are you doing your kids a favor by passing on your collection to them? Driven by a passion for possession Can you love a collection that you inherit, particularly one that is not easy to maintain? Shoba Narayan First Published: Sat, Sep 14 2013. 12 03 AM IST The vintage rally in Bangalore was part of a campaign for a cleaner city. Photo: Hemant Mishra/Mint A few weeks ago, on a beautiful Sunday morning, a few hundred enthusiasts gathered at [...]
Smartphone addiction
The seed of this piece came from Nilesh, a friend in Bombay, who posted a photo of Sony's phone-camera clip on his FB timeline. It looked cool. I started digging. I love my iPhone, perhaps more than I should. I am waiting to buy an Oliloclip, which will enhance its camera capabilities. Has anyone used these camera attachments for iPhones? This in The National on September 11. Remembering this day when I lived in another beloved city. The zombie-like trance that smartphones induce in us all Shoba Narayan Sep 11, 2013 Save this article I wish I were in Berlin [...]