Column: The Good Life: for Mint Lounge
Storytelling course
I am doing a "webinar" on Storytelling with Takshashila Foundation, a non-profit public policy think-tank co-founded and run by my friend, Nitin Pai. The description can be found here. I get nothing out of it. All proceeds go to Takshashila. Please tell interested participants, although I think they are oversubscribed already.
New York Times: on Indian Girlhood
I wrote and rewrote this piece because it is a topic that I feel passionate about. Women are consensus seekers by nature and often, these voices paralyze action. They say that it takes a village to raise a child. But for girls, particularly in the East, it is also a matter of silencing voices and swimming against the village tide.
The Indian museum makeover 101: for Mint Lounge
This piece began with a simple question: why did we as a family visit museums so often while living in NYC and why don't we go to museums so often in India? Jazz Fridays was a favorite ritual for us when our daughter was a toddler. We would strap her up in the stroller, and walk through the Museum of Natural History on the Upper West Side, listening to jazz and seeing the exhibits. Ditto for the Guggenheim. When we went for a fancy schmansy corporate retreat thingie at Pebble Beach in California, the company that had invited us held [...]
Prema Srinivasan’s new book
My daughter wants to be a pastry chef. Study at Le Cordon Bleu, Paris. She is 12 and has been saying this for the last two years. This morning, when she picked up Prema Srinivasan's new book, Pure Vegetarian, I got a gleam in my eye. I love croissants. J'adore Paris! But hey, I wish the kid would learn some Indian dishes too. The book is gorgeous. Nothing glossy or overt, nothing cheap. Understated elegance and simplicity, just like the woman-- just like the author. The book is distributed well too. When I was at Kochi airport, I saw several [...]
The sari is neatly woven into my country’s social fabric: for The National Abu Dhabi
A piece on my favorite subject. The National Conversation The sari is neatly woven into my country's social fabric Shoba Narayan Aug 28, 2013 Different people have differing relationships with their country's traditional clothes. The Japanese, for instance, have eschewed the kimono and adapted western attire. So too the Chinese. In Arab nations, women still wear traditional clothes. So too in Vietnam and India, where women switch between western and traditional wear depending upon mood and circumstance. In the last few months, I have started to wear Indian clothes, specifically saris, more often. It didn't start out this way. During [...]
Want the arts to flourish? Get educated: about museums for Mint Lounge
I've been visiting a lot of museums lately. And getting irritated by them. We charge so little as entrance fee. I would happily pay 300 Rupees for the Raja Ravi Varma museum in Trivandrum housed in an old mansion; or for the NGMA in Bangalore. But I don't need to. When I go in, there is so few people. This column is a rant really. Want the arts to flourish? Get educated Along with constructing foundations and museums, consider audience participation Shoba Narayan First Published: Sat, Aug 24 2013. 12 05 AM IST When was the last time you visited [...]
Elders fighting
My friends Anuja Master Bose and Sujata Kelkar gave me ideas for this piece. Thank you both. Why do elderly couples argue so much? Because they can Shoba Narayan Aug 21, 2013 Save this article I was sitting at a restaurant in Florida when this thought occurred to me: old people fight all the time. All around me were senior citizens who were lunching with each other, lured by the all-you-can-eat buffet. Elderly couples sat across the table from each other with matching white hair and salad plates. As I went around the buffet section, I could hear them talk [...]
Spam
Why am I suddenly getting so much spam comments?
Arts funding: we don’t value our arts enough: for Mint Lounge
Like most journalists, I get lots of requests for meetings from people who have ideas to parlay, products to push, locations to publicize, and so on. Like most journalists, I am also prickly about such meetings because I don't want to be played, as it were. The assumption is: hey, I know you have an agenda, but I'll be damned if I am going to be your tool in pushing this agenda. So you go in defensive and doubt everything. So it was with the IFA. Before I went in, I said, let me write a column about funding for [...]
Tagore and Return to India
A Tagore quote prompted this piece. The quote is included in the piece published in The National here and pasted below. The National Conversation After a return to India, life has become more interrupted Shoba Narayan Aug 14, 2013 Ever since my family and I moved back to India after nearly 20 years in the US, people often ask me what it is like to be back in my native country. My answer is always the same. As the movie title says, "It's Complicated." If I could describe the difference between my life in New York City and my life [...]