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. [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
Gita Govindam
Amazing love-poem by Jayadeva. One of the finest Sanskrit works. I am studying this. [soundcloud url="http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/104687562" params="" width=" 100%" height="166" iframe="true" /]
Memory Improvement
Memory improvement is an obsession of mine. Here is my latest exercise/attempt to improve it. The National Conversation When I turned to the internet to improve my poor memory Shoba Narayan Jul 26, 2013 "Thanks to your mother, I am [...]