Ganesh Nair, also known as Rajesh among close circles, accomplished a feat that many midlifers might contemplate but are hesitant to pull off: vaulting from a reputed senior leadership position into the choppy terrain of a novitiate in a completely unrelated field.
… Continue reading “From The Corner Office to Remaking Interior Spaces”
Let’s start with a scene that might be familiar to many parents. Your teenage son returns after a decisive exam. His performance on this might determine the course of his future. You hear him stomp into the dining room.
… Continue reading “The Makeup of Reality: Why Other Senses Are Not Given Their Due”
An Urban Anthropologist Dwells Among Taxi Drivers
Tarini Bedi, author of Mumbai Taximen, starts out, as many of us do when traveling through Mumbai, feeling carsick inside a kaalipeeli.
… Continue reading “A Heart-wrenching Dive into Taxi Driver Lives”
I can’t sing. I can’t carry a tune, not even of a nursery rhyme or of any other ditty. For those of us who speak quite easily, it’s rather astonishing that the brain/body circuits that produce music are aggravatingly absent.
… Continue reading “Whiskey Lullaby: Inebriation and Love Woven Into a Song”
Gaining An Early Sense of the Fragility of Life
When Clare Arni was three years old, she moved with her family from Scotland to Peru. Her earliest memory in the South American country involves an earthquake,
… Continue reading “Using Her Eye To Remake the World: Clare Arni’s Inventive Career”
Psst, folks, here’s the lowdown: the brainiest and most reflective minds are not sniffing the stuff. Some, like Walter White in Breaking Bad, might even be involved in cooking the meth, but they’re barricading their own smarts and wits from Instagram likes or LinkedIn notifications.
Most of us struggle to find an ikigai – the Japanese term for work that melds passion and skills with what the world needs and more critically, is willing to pay for. Raja Ganapathy belongs to the fortunate minority who can claim to have lived a passionate life,
… Continue reading “Living Your Ikigai: Pointers From Raja Ganapathy’s Passionate Life”
Gandhi, himself, might balk at being called a “brand.” After all, the leader was very explicit about embodying the kind of life that rose above the allure and corruptions of commerce. Despite belonging to the bania community,
… Continue reading “How To Convey More with Less: Communication Lessons From Gandhi”
In Get Rich or Lie Trying, the author Symeon Brown dwells on the manner in which the “influencer” economy is goading many young adults (and perhaps older ones too) to resort to any means to grow their followers.
… Continue reading “Lying and Cheating: Fallouts of the Influencer Economy”
Like many others who are physically distanced from the war, I have been wrestling with my own scant knowledge about Ukraine. And belonging to a cohort that prefers to glean information from old-fashioned newspapers, books and experts,
… Continue reading “Understanding the Makeup of Ukraine Through the Lens of A Revolution”
In certain literary circles, it’s cool to breathlessly declare: “I love Murakami.” What you really mean, as a reader, is that you love the Japanese author’s surreal, dark, sort-of noir novels. Maybe you’ve read just one,
… Continue reading “The Reflections of A Bestselling Novelist and Marathon Runner”
I always knew my own mother-in-law was uncommon. Uncommonly progressive, tolerant and kind; a gentle, mindful presence who stayed remarkably non-judgmental during the humdrum bickering that most couples engage in. So reading The Mother-In-Law by Veena Venugopal,
… Continue reading “Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi: A Contemporary Look At Indian Mothers-in-Law”
Sudhir Kakar has penned works that travel through the specific contours of the Indian psyche, burrowing not only into academic sources and formal accounts, but also into the country’s myths, folktales, songs and superstitions. Kakar,
… Continue reading “Delving Into A Historic Relationship Between Two Idealists”
I remember, as a school child in India, contending with ‘keds’ – shoes fashioned from thin white canvas with rubbery green soles – often pockmarked with holes from stubbing against stones or thorns. While we scampered around as best we could in these,
Elizabeth Day was divorced by 36. Moreover, she ‘failed’ to have the children she once wanted. She failed a driving test. She’s had a litany of failures – big and small, significant and trivial – that most of us are likely to have racked up,
… Continue reading “A Novelist and Podcaster Gleans Lessons From Failures”
The Fat. So? podcast starts with a cheery dare, as if inviting bullies and the Body-size Police, to arrest or punish the feisty voices that declare: “I’m fat and I love getting compliments about the way I look.
… Continue reading “The Inspiring Life Stories of the Fat. So? Podcasters”
As a writer, I have often dipped into the works of Amit Chaudhuri, as a masterclass in craft. His novels, stories and essays shimmer with images, the sort that Gustave Flaubert managed to evoke in Madame Bovary: with words that are supple,
I don’t remember when I first read a story by Alice Munro. I don’t remember which year it was, or even where I was, while reading it – at our apartment in Domlur, inside the British Council Library,
… Continue reading “Lessons From Writers: Engaging with Alice Munro’s Genius”
Given that, every morning, I confront the silvered-streaked intimations of mortality sprouting from my head, I am increasingly curious about people who seem to embody positive aging. Folks, who despite their advancing years, are as high-spirited and sprightly as the youngest generations.
… Continue reading “Life Lessons From the Ever-buoyant and Ageless Shobhaa De”
Rethinking Growth for Its Own Sake
Do we really need more evidence than the discernible changes in weather patterns, the wildfires, the untimely rains, heatwaves and floods to realize that climate change is upon us?
… Continue reading “Juliet Schor Proposes That We Pursue Different Forms of Wealth”
Brinda S. Narayan
