The National2020-06-17T19:48:20+05:30

THE NATIONAL, ABU DHABI COLUMNS ON RELATIONSHIPS, FINANCE, POLITICS, GENDER, FASHION AND POLITICS 358 posts
3012, 2016

Indian vegetarians travelling the world: for a podcast

December 30th, 2016|Food | Drink, Radio | TV | Podcasts|

Audiomatic is a great platform for some great Indian podcasts.  Vikram Doctor does a great show called 'Real Food Podcast.'  Here is an episode in which I was (a little) involved. Here is the link to the show. [soundcloud url="https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/297693490" [...]

2512, 2016

Haveli Dharampura: Hotel Review: Mint Lounge

December 25th, 2016|Comment Essays, Hotels, Travel|

Haveli Dharampura and the future of India’s past Home » Mint on Sunday » Big story Last Modified: Sun, Dec 25 2016. 12 20 AM IST The restoration of Haveli Dharampura offers a template for breathing life into dilapidated [...]

408, 2016

Connecting to readers is a columnist’s particular pleasure: last Mint Lounge column

August 4th, 2016|Comment Essays|

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.

2307, 2016

You don’t go to Rajnikanth movies for the plot, you go for the comfort

July 23rd, 2016|Arts | Culture, Comment Essays|

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.

707, 2016

Negotiating with a spouse about marrying a cellphone

July 7th, 2016|Comment Essays|

“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.

3006, 2016

Talk at ABB

June 30th, 2016|Books, Events|

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 [...]

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