Comfortably Numb - Sheila Kumar's Storehouse

Feature: Privacy in a Marriage: Walking That Thin Line

Marriage: Walking that thin line If marriage is a sacred bond between two people, then just how much of it should leak into what can be termed the public space? Stripped of its inessentials, marriage really is a relationship between two people. They choose each other as life partners; vow to see each other through…

Travel: The gypsies of Granada

A touch of India in Granada I’m sitting in a small cave high up in a barrio in the Sacromonte hills of Granada in Spain. The walls are rough in texture and look white-washed. There are copper and brass utensils hanging from the rafters and on the walls, and they look oh-so-familiar: pots, pans, woks,…

Feature: Go Get A New Face!

Go get a new face! In an extension of the look good, feel good, reap good philosophy, young men and women are going under the plastic surgeon’s knife quite heedlessly. One almost wishes this could be dismissed as some crazy one-off fad. But it isn’t. Reports from at least two of India’s metros, Mumbai and…

Travel: Toledo, Spain

A flash of blades It is the dream tourists dream of when thinking of old Europe. Toledo conjures up images of ringing steel, of sabres flashing in a rakish manner. However, there is a lot more to the place…. While Toledo invariably conjures up images of ringing steel, of sabres flashing in a rakish…

Feature: The Treasure That is Tai Chi

People the world over are turning to Tai Chi, an ancient Chinese martial art form, because of its immense health benefits. Let me confess at the very outset: I had always considered Tai Chi to be an exercise for those who had crossed the silver threshold. As I hovered around that very threshold, I joined a…

Travel: La Maison, Kotagiri

Misty heights LA MAISON KOTAGIRI USP: Tryst with Nature He stood at the door of the colonial villa. Some three feet from the ground, pristine white feathers plumped. This red-necked turkey gobbled at us, till our hostess Anne-Helene rushed out of the homestead, La Maison. In some trepidation, we asked if the turkey was being…

Book review: Lessons in Forgetting by Anita Nair

Emotions at centrestage This is Nair’s fourth book and there is no doubt about one thing: she gets better with each one. Lessons… is a reflective, coming-to-terms sort of novel, in which the main protagonists — a former society wife who can wield a mean skillet and a professor of cyclone studies — keep doing…

Feature: There Are Army Wives and Then There Are Army Wives

Throwing a bad fit There is an awkward silence. The small group of women gathered for a coffee morning is staring at one woman. It is her turn and she is refusing to play the game. The game involves peering hard at a set of white powders (from heaps of powdered sugar, cornflour and maida to…

Feature: When Does Indulgence Run out of a Relationship?

It’s a thin line between tolerance and indulgence. Sheila Kumar parses the issue at hand. A successful relationship often has less to do with the number of things we have in common than with the number of quirks we can tolerate — Okay, the quote is from Cathy Thorne’s cartoon, but, it’s no less pertinent!…

Travel: Ladakh, the roof of India

Moonscape Pilgrimage It’s been called the moon desert, Desolation Station, the last outpost. The truth…