Features - Comfortably Numb

Comfortably Numb

Sheila Kumar's Storehouse

Guest column: What`s in a name?

What`s in a name? What`s in a name? A lot of aspirations, apparently. Before this becomes a scattershot viewpoint, let me specify that I`m talking only about names bestowed on buildings new and old. It began in a mild benign manner. Apartment blocks of modest rise that came up beside the fast shrinking lakes of…

Guest column: Why are we so loud?

Why are we so loud? I recently watched a video, purportedly a spoof, where an Indian aunty adopts a hectoring tone and shows us how ginger tea is brewed back home in India. I say `back home` because the woman is standing in an American kitchen, heaping much unbridled derision on Americans. Personally, I found…

Guest column: Selective offerings in the time of cancel culture

The art vs the artiste: that old divide The other day, I revisited that classic, Gerald Durrell`s My Family and Other Animals, an old-gold favourite. After the read I fell into a rabbit hole of info on the Durrell family, and was dumbfounded to find that much of what I had devoured as the —…

Guest column: In praise of gratitude

Gratitude comes with side benefits now Gratitude, thankfulness, an awareness of received grace. From time immemorial, this sentiment`s virtues have been extolled far and wide. On the ground though, we all know it is but a fleeting emotion, which sweeps over us at the time of the received grace but doesn’t stay too long afterwards….

Feature: NIFT Bangalore pays a wonderful tribute to India`s amazing textile heritage

When a piece of cloth is gateway to a magical world The Vignette: Viswakarma Textiles: Art & Artistry exhibition that was recently on at Bangalore`s National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA), was a powerful emphasis of an immutable fact: that India`s textile heritage is one that benefits from repeated outings to fix itself in the…

Opinion: No catchers in the rye anymore

No catchers in the rye anymore Just the other day, a line in a news report caught my eye. The article was an update on the death, five years ago, of a courageous activist who had been dear to us here in Bangalore. The case was proceeding at a pace that would put most common…

Guest column: Doggone it, I say!

Stray thoughts on stray dogs In a country where casual cruelty towards animals is woefully common, increasing awareness about the need to look after our stray denizens is something to cheer about. However, for the purposes of what I wish to convey, I am training focus only on stray dogs here. Though not a currently…

Guest column: Don`t Tar All Media with the Same Brush

Don`t tar all media with the same (grimy) brush You know how people constantly, relentlessly, moan about how terrible the media is, how it exists only to spread fake news, how it polarizes people? Well, you know what? India is still a free country, last time I checked. We don’t need to consume the kind…

Guest column: NRIs and the art of gifting

NRIs and the art of gifting With India having undergone a major transformation in the last three decades or so, some of our NRI brethren are a confused lot now. Even as Smart Cities came into being (inside the heads of planners, if not on the ground), even as unicorn startups sprouted alicorns aplenty, even…

Guest column: Sin City Blues, Bangalore through Kerala`s eyes

Sin City Blues Bangalore is home for me, and for upwards of 10 lakh Malayalis. Now, I don`t know about the other Malayalis in the city but it took me a while to realise just what Bangalore stood for in my home state of Kerala. The multiple mentions the city receives in multiple Malayalam films …