Features - Comfortably Numb

Comfortably Numb

Sheila Kumar's Storehouse

Feature: Strengthen Your Bond

Better your bond Getting a romantic relationship to last needs some effort. Here are some tips. Let’s face it. Falling in love is all too easy. Staying in love, however, isn’t. Like all other relationships, a romantic relationship too is vulnerable to the pulls and pressures of day-to-day life. However, if both partners are clear…

Feature: The Art of Anger Management

Let off steam but in controlled doses Anger management is vital for good health. Aggression and shouting are emotions that are always denigrated, never rewarded. `Shrieking like fishwives’, `squabbling like monkeys’, `fighting like demons’… these adages that describe the release of anger make it clear that anger is a negative emotion. Actually, anger is a…

Feature: Madras, the Different City

Rocking to a different beat Chennai city is different from all the other metros. This is its strength and it is high time that the difference is celebrated. It could be an apocryphal story but it isn`t. Two young men were `timepassing` in Spencer Plaza on Anna Salai…

Feature: Terrors of the Dark

At night the mind takes stock of all that one has or has not done, and fears and worries creep in. It’s obviously a throwback to the days of our ancestors.When it became dark, they built robust fires to warm themselves, as also to keep wild animals at bay. These fires, I am certain, kept their…

Feature: Who`s Afraid of Ayn Rand?

In the cult novelist/philosopher’s centenary year, SHEILA KUMAR looks at life after the Howard Roark effect. No one talks about the Howard Roark effect anymore. It seems to have got lost in the melee of MMS scandals, political intrigues, the advent of multiplex cinemas, rocking malls and the debate on whether Kolkata is dying, Mumbai…

Feature: We Who Watched Swades

We the viewers I WATCHED Ashutosh Gowariker’s ode to social service, “Swades” with a sinking heart. Oh, I liked the film, flawed though it was. In what is getting to be a Gowariker trait, it was a simple story told at its own pace. The humour was so gentle that it appeared positively fragile at…

Feature: Whither Next, Neo?

Whither next, Neo? We seem to be a nation of Neos, all battling an ancient Matrix. But do we know just what we are doing, asks SHEILA KUMAR. The UK-based theatre person Mahabano Kotwal put it best when she recently said: India is opening her legs even as she closes her mind. We are living in confused…

Feature: It Takes a Village

It takes a village An education camp held in a remote hamlet of Uttarakhand dispelled some long-held notions about people and about education. In India, the dispensation outlining a Rs. 40,000-crore programme for primary education was concomitant with the United Nations urging governments around the world to spend around six to eight billion US$ (Rs….

Feature: A Chance Encounter

One balmy evening by the waterside, Sheila Kumar meets a young woman from another world altogether. Kerala’s backwaters sparkled before us, washed golden in the gloaming. The river was running swift here, at Valiyaparamaba to the far north of the state. Some distance ahead lay my destination, an island hemmed thickly in with palm groves….

Feature: Are Herbal Cosmetics Really and Truly Natural?

Really and truly natural? Cosmetics that proclaim they are herbal and natural could well do with a closer look. Oh, I’m not throwing the baby out with the bath water, I’m not tarring all natural cosmetics with a brush of suspicion. I am myself an enthusiastic user of both botanical and chemical-based cosmetics. And one…