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,
… Continue reading “Re-reading a Gripping Thriller Set Inside a Research Laboratory”
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.
… Continue reading “Contradictory Impulses in the Nobel-Prize Winning French Writer, Albert Camus”
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,
… Continue reading “A Lyrical Portrait of Young Adults Coming of Age in A Turbulent Country”
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.
… Continue reading “Examining Neeraj Chopra’s Olympic Win Through the Lens of Grit”
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.
Elizabeth Weil, then a contributor to the New York Times Magazine who had won a slew of awards for her pieces, turned her deft writerly eye to a perilous terrain: her own marriage.
… Continue reading “A Writer Chooses to Better Her Good Marriage”
Anshu Gupta: Brought Up With a Social Conscience
Well before he was on his path to forging rural-urban interactions and the kind of straddling across socio-economic classes that the country desperately needs, Anshu Gupta,
… Continue reading “Anshu Gupta, Founder of GOONJ, Charts a Purposeful Life”
The Covid crisis has ushered both voluntary and involuntary changes into our lives: relationships mediated by technology, the blurring of work and domestic tasks inside living spaces, a compressed, never-ending togetherness with roommates or family members,
… Continue reading “Harnessing The Rider (Reason) and The Elephant (Emotions) to Drive Changes”
Ghachar Ghochar begins in a space that evokes an older city; a Bangalore, that was not yet tugged into the frenetic material spiraling engendered by the IT and outsourcing businesses. But the city outside has already morphed.
… Continue reading “Vivek Shanbhag Spins a Riveting Bengaluru Story in Ghachar Ghochar”
As children growing up in Bangalore between the late sixties and mid-eighties, we encountered the Mahabharata and Ramayana in various forms. In tales narrated by parents and aunts, in Amar Chitra Katha comics,
… Continue reading “Samhita Arni Spins a Gripping Tale About the Narrator of the Silappadikaram”
In Through The Children’s Gate, Adam Gopnik’s vivid essays about his time in New York, as a parent, he notes that it is impossible to map a city like New York. After all,
… Continue reading “Flaunting my Silvers: Exploring the Landscape of Aging“
Laura Vanderkam studies the one resource that is most precious, most scarce, and rarely granted the attention it deserves, until is one is confronted by a large-scale crisis like the pandemic or by a terminal diagnosis: time.
From The Craftsman: Sennett Expands The Notion of Craftsmanship
Pandora, the Goddess of Invention, was, according to the Greeks, not merely the giver of gifts. Opening Pandora’s jar or box was often considered a jeopardous act,
Just when we thought that the all-rounder, Renaissance-types were no longer faddish, Tom Hanks, who hardly needs an introduction as an actor, director and producer, has cranked out an astonishing collection of short stories. And I use “cranked out” because I deliberately want to evoke the clackety-clacks,
… Continue reading “Tom Hanks Evokes the Extraordinariness of American Every Days in Uncommon Type”
Arvind Saraf: Journeys from Surat to IIT, Kanpur
The probability of meeting someone like Arvind Saraf is staggeringly low. To give you an idea of how rarefied such encounters are, let me linger momentarily on the statistics.
… Continue reading “Arvind Saraf Leverages a Growth Mindset to Embark on Creative Voyages”
During the pandemic, many of us have been compelled to alter our exercise routines. Earlier, I used to swim and walk. In the last few months, I’ve been forced, like many others, to just walk.
… Continue reading “Lessons from Books: Walking with a Philosopher’s Outlook”
Driven largely by the success of Apple and also by its founder’s layered persona, “design thinking”, has spawned many corporate workshops, process changes and adopters. After all, if Steve Jobs, who was as obsessed with the appearance of things,
… Continue reading “Lessons from Books: The Ten Dimensions of Highly Creative Personas”
Often it takes an outsider’s captivation to shine a distinct light on a phenomenon that is unfolding around us in a seemingly slow and hence almost unnoticeable manner. Michiel Baas, an urban anthropologist who is currently engaged with the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology,
Brinda S. Narayan
