The National Abu Dhabi
Comment Essays for The National Abu Dhabi
Ajmer Dargah
Mint has been sending me on trips to various spots to write on "sacred food." This week, it is Ajmer Dargah. What a sensual experience. I respond to scents and sounds. The enveloping scent of roses was amazing. You have [...]
Love Chennai. Had fun writing this piece.
FRI, JUL 10 2015. 03 44 PM Anger management at a Chennai cinema How Shoba Narayan queued up to watch the latest Tamil indie and dished out multi-coloured combs to aunties I tried my anger management technique when I was [...]
Birds in culture– the last of the four part series that I hugely enjoyed writing.
Everyone says that bird-watching requires patience. I don’t think so. I think that the pleasure of bird watching comes from the questions you ask. You can watch a crow and try to figure out why it is cawing at that moment. You can listen to the variety of calls that a common mynah makes and try to see if there is a pattern. I watch the birds come and go in the trees in front of my home and see if there is a reason or pattern that they follow when they sit down and take off.
A beautiful dancer talks about hand gestures–
Here and here
So of course I had to write about yoga: for Mint Lounge
Actually, my editor suggested that I write about yoga on yoga day. It is here and below It is a little disconcerting, but ask yourself this question: what unites India? I have tried asking this question in various forums. It is [...]
Birding: seeing versus hearing
In the beginning, with pig-headed ambition, I decided that I would memorize the Latin names for all the bird species that I saw. I have given up that endeavour now. It is complicated enough to keep track of the markings and learn the common names. This then is the other learning that will occur: spotting minor differences between birds that belong to the same species: White-cheeked Barbet, Grey-headed Barbet, Coppersmith barbet, Blue-throated Barbet, you get the picture. They all belong to the Megalaima species.
The Savage Beauty of Alexander McQueen: for Mint
Memories of the V&A and my Parisienne friend Elisabeth Guez are fresh in my mind. The V&A has another nice exhibit where they try to answer: "What is luxury?" Wish I could have seen the John Galliano retrospective also-- in [...]
Trees and birds
The best thing that is happened to me as a result of this year-long journey is the cliché: I feel connected with the universe. Let me be clear. I don't think you wake up one morning and suddenly feel at one with the cosmos. It is a gradual process of shedding layers of armor that you have built around yourself. The way it happened for me, and I am by no means there yet, has to do with connecting multiple species and seeing a greater whole.
How to bird-watch. How to watch birds
It begins with a pair of binoculars; and a balcony, if you have one. If there is some greenery visible from your balcony, even better. But you need binoculars to begin this voyage. Mine are Bushnell binoculars from Amazon for about $35. They have a magnification of 10X50, which didn’t mean anything to me except that it seemed better than the 8X40 advertised by other brands. I use them every day, except during travel, and even that, I want to change.
Radio New Zealand
I did my correspondent duty for Radio New Zealand last week here and embedded below http://www.radionz.co.nz/audio/remote-player?id=201753346
Ambalapuzha, and yes, I know it is a tongue-twister for some.
Some time ago, I went to taste this most famous of payasams in Kerala. Here is an account of the experience at the new Mint on Sunday's page I loved taking the photos and videos, which are inserted in the page, [...]
My first Mint video
I was trying to channel Peter Jennings but I really want to channel Gini Moos of CNN. Will be doing more. Looking forward to it. I recorded this in Bangalore, forwarded MP3 to Delhi where they mixed it in. Finally, [...]