Features - Comfortably Numb

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: 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: 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: The End Of An Era

Far away in a hill town, strong ties help a family continue a legacy of several generations. He was a self-made man, a flinty kind of man, given more to fits of rage than much smiling. But he had foresight, lots of it. Chancing upon large tracts of untouched land in a southern corner of…

Feature: A Matter of Gifting

A matter of gifting When it comes to giving, size does not matter; what matters is affection, a large heart. For years and years now, she had been playing Lady Bountiful but in the nicest sense ever. She was the sibling settled abroad. She had always been equipped with the most generous heart possible but…

Feature: The Search for Bunter

The Search for Bunter The search began inconspicuously enough. Some years ago, I was at this party in Coonoor and the talk turned to books and further, to the books of our childhood. Someone said, ‘’My favourite books were the Billy Bunter series by Frank Richards,’’ and I heartily agreed. The books were a riot,…