Gratitude
An attempt at being funny. I had the hardest thing trying to come up with a quote. I know that someone made a quote, which went something like...."dah dah dah...about" Was it grateful about? Happy about? Complain about? Trying searching [...]
A female chef’s secret recipe for success for Quartz
A female chef’s secret recipe for success I was thrilled to meet this chef. She is casual and confident but underneath you can sense her resolve. It appeared in Quartz here. Carme Ruscellada i Serra looks like the seven-star Michelin [...]
Nagging
The best way to make advice stick? Nag incessantly Shoba Narayan April 22, 2014 Updated: April 22, 2014 18:18:00 One of the perks of being a parent is that you get to offer advice to your children. One of the [...]
Cricket Widow
Opinion The only option for a cricket widow is to play the game Shoba Narayan April 13, 2014 Updated: April 13, 2014 16:57:00 I am a cricket widow. I didn’t think I would be one. Indeed, in the early throes [...]
Queen the movie, Lean In
I hope Queen the movie triumphs in the box office, because it is a rare Bollywood film with the heroine as the lead. Also produced and written by Kangana Ranaut. LOUNGE|BUSINESS OF LIFE|INDULGE FIRST PUBLISHED: SAT, APR 12 2014. [...]
About Indian Wine for Mint Lounge
Wine clubs are proliferating all over India. The time is ripe for local producers to capture and grow this interest. An informal club I belong to served some nice white wines recently: an aromatic white from Château de Fontenille and a 2008 Aussières Blanc Chardonnay from Domaines Barons de Rothschild (Lafite). The members of this club travel frequently and bring back wines. They do give Indian wines a try but prefer to pay two-three times more for wines of guaranteed quality. They are the market.
Maternal Mortality Rates
Maternal mortality interests me because it seems preventable and is a problem that is at a confluence of medicine, society and culture. I recommend (highly) the latest State of the World's mothers report. If giving birth is natural, why do [...]
Reinventing Carnatic Music
How do you make classical music relevant to a global audience? Should you even try? Today’s audience for Carnatic music ranges from Cleveland in the US to Chennai, and these are the hard-core ones. How can you expand its reach? Is it by removing the bhakti-rasa or devotional tone that some believe to be its core? Is it by changing the concert format, as some are doing? Or is it by developing a smartphone app?
VSCO
My latest app download. I love it Check out the photos here.
Lessons from Malaysia Airlines crash. For Quartz
LESSON FROM MALAYSIAN AIRLINES My rant about how large Planet Earth is; and about the hubris of our species. Sometimes, humans have no clue. Wrote it last night. Out today. The pleasure of web-zines is their immediacy. Reads better in [...]
Tackling Indian maternal deaths by smartphone: for Christian Science Monitor
This appeared in Christian Science Monitor. India's MMR statistics are shameful, something which I didn't know. But there is a nice report called "State of the World's Mothers" that outlines where India stands. The process is complicated because everyone has [...]
Evolution of Music 3
Western classical music traces its roots to Egyptian and Greek music. The medieval period lasted the longest, from about 500-1400. This was also the time when Indian music was being formalized. The Sangita Ratnakara, a musical text that influenced both Hindustani and Carnatic music, was written by Sarangadeva in the 13th century. The Islamic influence that caused Hindustani music to diverge from Carnatic music was just about to happen.