Feature - Comfortably Numb

Feature: Are You A Serial Pleaser?

Are you a serial pleaser? Don’t run yourself ragged trying to please everyone. A serial pleaser is someone who is forever trying to keep everyone in his/her circle happy all the time. An exhausting prospect, but you’d be surprised as to how many of us attempt to do just that, sometimes unconsciously. Of course, it…

Feature: Dhritiman Chaterji, Profiled

On life’s stage CHENNAI CALLING I shifted base from Kolkata to Chennai 16 years ago. I have always liked the atmosphere in Chennai. It still retains an element of quietude and moves at a slower pace compared to other Indian metros. Now, I know enough Tamil to get by. A decade ago, my wife Ammu,…

Feature: Forest Research Institute

Green crucible Dehradun’s Forest Research Institute is more than just a pretty face. There is an apocryphal story that if you took out all the bricks in this building, and laid them end-to-end, you could circle the earth. It’s on every tourist’s itinerary, a trip to the sprawling, red-bricked institute, built more on the…

Feature: Palakkad`s Ayurvedic Spas

Come alive Discover your inner self at the ayurvedic resorts in and around Palakkad Palakkad is perhaps the right destination if a healing holiday is what you are looking for. Health tourism is in, and traditional ayurvedic treatment is in demand. Palakkad came suddenly and rather unexpectedly into the tourist spotlight recently, with a…

Feature: The Eloor Lending Library

Trove of Tomes The Eloor lending library’s bank of books has ensured that Chennai will never be at a loss for words of the printed kind. “If my DVD player works fine, and I have my Eloor membership, its going to be a happy old age for me,” says a scriptwriter for Tamil films, of…

Feature: Love Yourself

Agreed, we live in an unforgiving age, surrounded by examples of perfection everywhere. People with perfectly worked out bodies, perfectly intelligent minds, perfectly honed talents; the perfect fathers, mothers, spouse, siblings, offspring, friends. However, it’s time you learnt to love yourself warts and all. The truth is nobody is perfect. Nobody. Of course, there…

Feature: On Downscaling

The view from the other side Drawing from personal experience and outside advice, SHEILA KUMAR details the life of a downscaler. Downscaling is when a man or woman decides to downsize their professional life, for a variety of reasons, all hard to contemplate, harder to act on. And, surprise, surprise, downscaling happens to women…

Feature: Embrace Your Imperfections

Embrace your imperfections! Don’t berate yourself endlessly for things that don’t matter in the long run. Learn to accept your flaws and grow to like them instead. Agreed, we live in an unforgiving age, surrounded by examples of perfection everywhere. People with perfectly worked out bodies, perfectly intelligent minds, perfectly honed talents; the perfect fathers,…

Feature: That Room Of Our Own

Virginia Woolf revisited For all the much-vaunted freedoms, Indian women are still seeking their niche. In the autumn of 1928, Virginia Woolf delivered an essay full of thought-provoking, even groundbreaking ideas underpinned with wry humour, to the students of the Girton College for Women at Oxford. It was a rambling discourse but it was by…

Feature: Pets are Fantastic Destressers

Pets keep you perpetually sorted out! Pets are the ultimate destressers. There can be no argument about the fact that pets are great company, wonderful partners in fun and grateful recipients of your affection. A lesser-known fact is that pets play a central role in the state of your wellbeing and help you keep stress…