Sheila Kumar - Comfortably Numb

Feature: A Temple for Troubled Minds

Faith Fatale The Chottanikkara temple, near Kochi in Kerala, is a place that attracts the mentally disturbed, who seek solace here when all else fails. I’m standing with scores of people facing the closed doors of the Shiva shrine, awaiting darshan. Suddenly, without warning, it starts. A handful of women begin moaning. It is an…

Feature: Indian Men and the Fifty:Fifty Syndrome

Fifty-fifty Indian men are an odd mix of the deeply conservative and the half-hearted liberal. The saas-bahu serials, with their painted women who deliver painfully long sermons on emancipation, continue to draw eyeballs. Metroplex films dealing with prickly issues such as wife swapping, living together and love in the times of intolerance, draw their own…

Feature: Quit That nagging!

Quit that nagging! It’s time people realised that nagging gets them nowhere. I have a friend, male, of course, who insists nagging is in women’s genes. It seems that haranguing comes naturally to women only because it is hardwired into their psyche. While I definitely do not agree with the friend’s theory, there is no…

Book review: Feminism and Contemporary Women Writers: Rethinking Subjectivity by Radha Chakravarty

Feminist voices An in-depth account of how six women writers view women vis-a-vis the world. There had to come a time when our post- colonial, post-Modern, post-feminist sisters would actually ask, “What is feminism?” That time, sadly, may be now. After the glorious age of Millett, Steinem, Friedan, Wolf and Co., the Movement continues to…

Feature: Tamil Cinema, That Vicious Circle

The vicious circle When it comes to Chennai city, is it art imitating life or the other way around, asks Sheila Kumar. Reel to real The other day, someone close to me was accosted on a dimly-lit lane off Greams Road. The road was deserted, and the young woman was returning home when a motorcyclist…

Feature: When Jethro Tull Rocked Bangalore

Rock and roll will never die For days before the show hit town, there were groups of people going around Bangalore with a beatific ‘It’s-a-miracle -no-less’ look on their faces. The group gathered others like them, who gathered others like them and then, a few thousands in strength, they shuffled…

Feature: Ageing Gracefully

Grace while greying Ageing is not all bad news because the years also bestow certain attributes. Praise it or blame it on the times we live in. Ageing can be retarded, arrested, prevented in many ways, ranging from top-draw and extremely expensive lotions and potions, Botox and fillers, myriad surgical interventions, and the like. And…

Feature: Those Little White Lies

Little white lies! Men and women tell lies to each other, sometimes deliberately, sometimes unwittingly. There’s a reason behind the pile of untruths. No one wants to tell lies, we promise you that. Sometimes, it is to cover up an error, at other times, to spare someone from getting hurt. What we are dealing…

Travel: Bhojeshwar Temple, Madhya Pradesh

Jai, Jai Shivshankar Even as the ASI begins work on the landmark Bhojeshwar temple in Madhya Pradesh, Sheila Kumar pays tribute to an unfinished dream When I read about the ASI starting renovation work on the Bhojeshwar Shiva temple in Madhya Pradesh, I couldn’t help but recall a visit to the magnificent shrine some…

Travel: Train rides I have gone on

JOURNEYS Ticket to ride A recent news item said that all the short-haul trains, the Shatabdis, Deccan Queen, the Brindaban Express , were running almost always full, while flights were going near empty. Oil prices apart, this didn’t surprise me one bit. The thing is, I still remember the days when train travel was…