Couples fall in love for mysterious, ineffable reasons. We often hear that awkwardly suspended phrase – “What does she see in –?” or “How could they –?”, the pauses flashing with surprise and disapproval. But if the reasons for coupledom are hard to fathom,
This, to borrow a word from the title, is a gorgeous book. Gorgeous in the way Vuong’s words take flight, leaping from the light-filled memories of a child reading an ESL (English as a Second Language) storybook titled Thunder Cake to shockingly dark,
On Chapel Sands was a book buried in my Kindle, bought soon after it came out, but lost among the digital detritus that clog my devices. Recently, while combing through an ever-mushrooming to-read list,
Having encountered a few of John Donne’s poems in high school – “Death be not proud” and “No Man is An Island” – I was recently tugged in by a YouTube conversation with a contemporary biographer.
A Thrilling Start To An Academic Life
As a child growing up in San Francisco in the 1970s, Zena Hitz had always loved reading. As did her older brother, and parents, with the family often engaging in fierce literary feuds that sparked off her lifelong zeal for learning.
While our country has a colossal and overwhelmingly influential film industry, there is a surprising dearth of writers who turn a nuanced eye to the making of these films. Jai Arjun Singh, who also writes for The Mint,
At 50, Neeraj Sagar made a bold decision to quit his highly-regarded position as a Senior Partner at Egon Zehnder and strike out on his own. The driving force behind his new venture, WisdomCircle, is the belief that older generations have much to offer and should not be disregarded due to ageist biases.
What Malls Might Signify in India
To those of us who grew up in Indian cities in the 60s, 70s, 80s or even 90s, shopping malls were unfamiliar spaces. Since then, there are perhaps few other spaces that are as ubiquitous,
For all who have taken to playing chess since The Queen’s Gambit. Or have reassessed their flippant dismissal of the aspirations that abide in Kamathipura since Gangubai Kathiawadi. Or to those who wonder about the historical forces that have led to far fewer female comedians since The Marvelous Mrs.
When I stumbled on Ishani Roy’s profile on LinkedIn, I was fascinated for many reasons. For one thing, she had transited from a deep STEM career to a thorny human behavioural domain. After all, Roy had been passionate about Applied Mathematics,
I must acknowledge straightaway that I was bowled over by this book. As someone who likes to describe myself as “curious”, I thought I knew what curiosity meant. And more significantly, what it felt like.
Richard Reeves needed courage of a sort to write this book. After all, in an age where women’s issues are often accented – the wage gaps, their inadequate presence in senior leadership roles or on Corporate Boards,
Remember Gone With the Wind?
Many Boomers and Gen Xers might recall watching Gone With the Wind. Clark Gable as Rhett Butler exuded a slick charm that epitomized the dark,
Philippe Gluckman, who has been the Creative Director for Dreamworks in India and the Visual Effects Supervisor for iconic hits like Shrek and Madagascar, offers invigorating lessons for those who want to break into animation or forge successful careers in a creative field.
Have you ever wandered inside a zoo and wondered about animal talk? Do monkeys chatter with each other? What about birds, who according to recent research, are much smarter than we imagine? Better still, what if those creatures can talk to us?
When I first read Tim O’Brien’s novel-in-stories, The Things They Carried, I felt like I had been socked in the gut. His descriptions of soldierly feelings – the fatigue, the emotional depletion,
“Prem preet ya love l’amour” – From Chashme Buddoor (1981)
Chashme Buddoor was released in 1981. It was the pre-liberalization era. Most households did not own television sets.
At times, it’s fun to return to an old book. And the kind of book, that oddly enough, might be better understood by those that don’t read it. Or best understood by those that don’t read anything at all.
Large-scale disasters or pandemics give rise to unlikely outcomes. And even engender positive spinoffs. One of the offshoots was this book, sparked off by conversations between Bala Srinivasa and T.N. Hari, both deeply attuned to the entrepreneurial terrain in India,
It’s heartening when well-recognized national icons like Ravi Venkatesan reflect on their own life journeys and painstakingly mine nuggets of wisdom. After all, the kind of insights that Venkatesan offers can only be arrived at by those who traverse life stages with two selves: one being zealous and participatory,
I not only buy books, but I also watch others buy books. At bookstore checkouts, I’m intensely curious about the titles other customers choose. So recently, when I watched not one, but two Bangalore college students pick up “The Psychology of Money,” I was prodded into adding it to my list.
I’m back to riffing on a favorite song. While I realize that many in the younger generation might not have heard this ever, I hope at least a few Gen Xers and Baby Boomers can relate to the ‘80s hit: Summer of ’69 by the Canadian singer,
At one point, Ashish Kothari seemed like someone who had it all. At 42, he had the kind of life that checked all social boxes. Professionally, he was a Partner at McKinsey. On the personal front,
When I stumbled on Sandeep Nair’s personal website, I was intrigued. He was as fascinated by the manner in which an illiterate, Irish lad became the Maharajah of Tipperary (in Haryana, in the 1700s) as he was in P&G’s advertising failures or in Zepto’s speedy deliveries.
Games Invert Our Motivation
Usually, in everyday life, we do something in order to achieve some end. Like we might cook to create a delicious meal, or tidy our rooms to create a neat workspace.
It’s not easy to be funny. Honestly, it’s easier to scare audiences or to evoke their tears, than to make them laugh, page after page. Moni Mohsin pulls off an impossible writerly feat. She actually had me cracking up at the vapidly societal Butterfly,
Recently, I visited a photography exhibit at Gallery G hosted by Sandeep Maini, Honorary Consul for Mexico in Bengaluru and the Sandeep & Gitanjali Maini Foundation.
Chronologically ordered, the stark black-and-white images depicted Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera through various phases in their life,
About Hannah Kirshner
As someone who grew up on a farm outside Seattle, and then studied painting at the Rhode Island School of Design, Hannah Kirshner might not have predicted the manner in which her life was to be braided into another culture and country.
As the oldest of four children, Priya Paul, Chairperson of Apeejay Surrendra Park Hotels, was certain, from a young age, about wanting to work in the family business. Stirred by talk around the dining table and at various family to-dos,
At one time, Amitha Pai was on the path to a rewarding corporate career. With pedigreed qualifications – an Engineering degree from Manipal, an MBA from the Indian School of Business (ISB) – and a stint at the competitive Aditya Birla Leadership Program,
Kieran Setiya: Reaches Out to a Parched Public
There was a time when philosophers used to tell us how to live. How to deal with hardships, circumvent obstacles, conquer grief and usher joy.
When studying an intensely public figure like Gandhi, one wonders, as one often does with contemporary celebrities or bigwigs, about his behavior in the private sphere. Restless as Mercury offers glimpses into the leader that only those in the closest circles were privy to: namely,
Let’s start by putting this out there. Danielle J. Lindemann is a sociologist and an Associate Professor at Lehigh University. On her website, the “About Me” page ends with the following line: “In my downtime,
At 55, I find myself increasingly drawn to people who achieve remarkable physical feats. Like sportspersons, amateur athletes, fitness enthusiasts, marathon runners or mountain climbers. So it was really enthralling to meet with 34-year-old Shreyas Hosur,
Marshall Poe is a rare academic who has managed to achieve something that most professors would find formidable: establish a wildly popular platform that hosts sparkling conversations about books. I have been listening to episodes from the New Book Network (NBN) ever since the pandemic shuttered us into private spaces of our own making.
All businesses are rife with risk. But more so the entertainment business, subject to shifting audience whims, competitive pressures and the commercial imperative to deliver returns on huge production costs. It’s hardly a sector for the faint-hearted.
Forging Communities Inside Salons
Sandhya Sharma, 45, set up her own small parlor because she was married off too early – at 11 – to a man twice her age. Not only did she have to grapple with motherhood too soon,
A Cosmopolitan Childhood
Arundhati grew up with a sense of needing to excel in everything. Whether it was academics, dance, drawing or swimming, she always set up reach goals. Maybe this was partly inspired by her “helicopter” Mom.
Beauty Diplomacy: The Story Of The Book
Oluwakemi M. Balogun, Associate Professor at the Women’s Gender and Sexuality Studies at the University of Oregon, was fascinated by how beauty pageants were not just reshaping contestants in Nigeria but also changing notions of the country.
I have never attended the Jaipur Litfest (JLF). But I have been intrigued, like many other writers, by the manner in which the JLF has reshaped the Indian literary scene. Sparked off in 2006, as a smallish event with about 100 attendees,
Gandhi in Durban: Sticking To His Turban
When Gandhi reached Durban in 1893, he was just a recently graduated newbie lawyer. In his own words: “I was just a boy returned from England wanting to make some money.” But he already bore a remarkable degree of self-confidence in himself and his culture.
A recent article in The Hindu featured three artists who have painted murals at Indiranagar in Bangalore. Figures depicted on their colorful wallscapes include the mathematical genius Srinivasa Ramanujan, the religious teacher and educational philosopher J.
The Author’s Backdrop
The Telugu author, Varalakshmamma, was born in 1896 in Andhra Pradesh. She was a zealous member of the freedom movement, who was galvanized by Mahatma Gandhi. More impressively, she was a feminist who urged other women to assert their rights and to join Gandhi’s movement,
Of late, there has been a slew of books that critique higher education in the U.S. Many of these written by American scholars and pedagogical practitioners who are intensely invested in the system delivering better learning outcomes.
Krishna Gowda of Bookworm, one of our city’s prominent literary advocates, alerted us to a lovely set of books. Published by Aleph, these books carry English translations of the greatest Indian language “stories ever told” – for instance,
When I met Sowjanya Shetty at the Green Theory café/restaurant, in the kind of setting that the erstwhile city prided itself in – colonial bungalow, chiming bird song, leafy garden, white gazebos – I couldn’t help but dwell on how apt our meeting place was.
When I conduct writing workshops, I break my process into a simple and even dishearteningly imitable series of steps:
Step 1: Toss your phone into a pond
Step 2: Read
Step 3: Write
Step 4: Rewrite
Why is this disheartening?
All our lives are imbued with uncertainty. While the pandemic has only exacerbated our consciousness of fragility, our material realities have always been stitched with tenuousness. In a world or even universe, where nothing is certain,
I was raised in a family where the parental thrust was almost entirely on academics. At school, we had the athletes and the sports “B-Division”. Those of us who were clumped into the B-Division, according to the school’s classification,
A recent issue of The Economist (June 25, 2022) recounted the story behind one of my all-time favorite songs: It’s a Sin by Pet Shop Boys. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the British band or its haunting lyrics,
When An Investor Infuses His Soul in The Game
In a world where people are often expected to inhabit polarities – pro-capital or pro-labor, liberal or conservative – Vitaly Katsenelson dwells in a rare liminal or middle space.
Let me start with a favorite song. I’m not sure if many millennials or GenZs are familiar with the 1983 movie, Flashdance. The plot revolves around a working class woman, a welder called Alex,
In a world saturated with noise – podcasts, audiobooks, videos, talk shows, webinars – what the world doesn’t lack is content. Yet, there are scores of new podcasters, new writers, new TV shows, new films,
Jigyasa Labroo, who is ushering a critical change into Indian public schools and into the lives of low-income children, won a well-deserved spot in the 2022 Forbes 30 Under 30 list. As the co-founder of Slam Out Loud,
Neena Gupta, at the age of 62, after winning two National awards and essaying several memorable television and film roles – including the iconic Ketaki in Khandaan – had put this message out on Instagram,
I am as intrigued by the stories of books as I am by stories in books. Especially with intensely researched projects, I am fascinated by the author’s impetus to launch on such arduous and even perilous quests.
I’ve always enjoyed Aparna Piramal Raje’s pieces in The Mint, her profiles of business icons like Rahul Bajaj, or her vivid narratives about workspaces, buildings and cities. While reading her latest book,
Reading Queeristan feels like you’re sitting across an intelligent, high-spirited and intentionally campy writer, at a friendly café, with Bollywood songs playing in the backdrop. Not just any Bollywood song, but Hema Malini in Naseeb,
Pico Iyer has lived in Japan for more than thirty-two years but has consciously avoided learning Japanese. This despite, being married to a Japanese woman, whose grasp of English is as feeble as Pico’s knowledge of Japanese.
My husband has long since snatched the cool parent title. Since my ‘kids’ are no longer, well, kids – they are both in their 20s – I thought I would dwell on one of the reasons for the crown slipping well beyond my reach.
Working for the thriving family business at Banswara Syntex might have been an expected or inevitable end for Dhruv and Udit Toshniwal, the grandsons of R.L. Toshniwal; striking out on their own with a new-age,
I have no intention of founding a startup. But I do dwell in a city that carries an exalted status inside the global entrepreneurial ecology. Because of this, I have friends and relatives who are associated with startups in various ways: as founders,
When I started hearing a buzz about Desperately Seeking Shah Rukh from reader friends, I ordered my copy but allowed it to inhabit the clumsily stacked pile of “To-be-Read.” As an unabashed practitioner of
It’s been a while since I have formally inhabited an office. Though there are times, as a writer, when one constructs a make-do office, by heading out to a café or a library, to escape the ennui or annoyances of home: the doorbell,
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.
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.
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.
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.
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,
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,
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,
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.
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,
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,
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,
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,
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,
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.
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,
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.
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?
Paul Fernandes is the kind of person who sees riches everywhere: in dry, crackling leaves, in shrunken seeds, or in any other kind of wilted tree dropping that most of us would sweep aside. On one of the walls in his aPaulogy Gallery on Pottery Road (https://apaulogy.com/),
The makeup of Indian millennials – their belief systems, their aspirations and anxieties – should, as Vivan Marwaha observes in What Millennials Want, matter not just to Indian watchers and policy makers, but also to global decision makers.
A Bohemian Childhood
Anjali Patel Mehta, the founder of Verandah, a resort and lounge wear brand, did not envisage her future in fashion.
After all, she was climbing the rungs in Investment Banking,
Though I have spent most of the last three decades of my adult life in Bengaluru, India, I have been part-enthralled and part-appalled by the well-known storming of the Scripps National Spelling Bee by Indian American contestants.
If you’re curious about the culture of “romance” among millennials in London, Dolly Alderton’s Ghosts might offer some unnerving insights. Her protagonist, Nina George Dean, is a thirty-two year old on the hunt for a fairytale ending to her singledom.
A Childhood Inside Theatres
Shernaz Patel grew up inside the stir of auditoriums, imbibing the rhythms and murmurs of a workplace fitted out with lights and satiny curtains. Her parents, Ruby and Burjor Patel,
Janhavi Rao’s midlife pivot from Engineering to Medicine is extraordinary on many counts. Her journey can inspire anyone seeking to change their careers, or to embark on any strenuous adult learning project, especially when the odds seem stacked against you.
During the pandemic, I have taken not just to reading more intensely, but also to re-reading. After all, revisiting books that you remember for the pleasure they evoked, but whose exact contents have frayed like the super-soft pajamas you slip into despite family put downs,
Inside the House of Chanel at 31, Rue Cambon in Paris.
Inside the shop, where dazzling visions of Chanel-clothed selves are refracted from mirrors and videos played on a screen, the message is clear.
Unsurprisingly, The Plague, a 1947 novel about a mysterious epidemic that pummels a coastal city in Algeria, by the French writer, Albert Camus, has received a burst of new interest during the Covid pandemic.
Early Childhood in Devkali
The village of Devkali in Uttar Pradesh is located in the district of Shahjahanpur. Spanning an area of about 6.5 square kilometres, with a population of about 3035 people,
In On Photography, Susan Sontag observes that every photograph invites the viewer to penetrate its two-dimensional likeness to uncover the three-dimensional riches that gave rise to it. As Sontag puts it, the photograph seems to say,
Occasionally The Scientific American Mind magazine publishes riveting issues that centre around specific themes. I happened to read one at a friend’s place that was centred around the Science of Creativity (March 2017).
Neeraj Chopra Exhibits Awe-Inspiring Grit
Given the nation’s recent jubilation at Neeraj Chopra’s phenomenal javelin throw, I thought it might be interesting to resurrect the much-cited study on Grit by Angela Duckworth.
I grew up, like many middle to upper-income children in our generation, in a very bookish household. Given how television had forayed into our lives only when we were in high school, reading was an activity that was pursued without the kind of self-consciousness and exoticism that is attached to pretty much anything these days.
It’s virtually impossible to live in a country like India and not dwell on hunger. For many millions, far more than we would like to acknowledge, the preposition on would hardly capture their experience.
Brinda S. Narayan
