HEALTH-AND-FITNESS
Memories of a cancer survivor: The gratitude is real
Fighting cancer: How chemotherapy affects the body, and the mind. And why all manner of clichés from carpe diem, to stopping to smell the roses, no longer seemed trite.
TRENDS
Astro-tourism: In search of stars & a cure for night grief
Dark sky movement: Light pollution in cities has destroyed the night sky view in most places. A travel guide to see the stars in a remote and storied part of Spain: Trevejo.
TRENDS
My Family and Other Globalizers: Parent child relationship & the wokeism hump
Topics to discuss with children when most things spark a debate at home? Just remember: a family that philosophizes together, stays together.
TRENDS
My Family and Other Globalizers | Why we read Enid Blyton growing up in India
How, despite the seeming disconnect between the childhood of Enid Blyton’s characters and our own in India, we found a way to build bridges to the southwest coast of England, the stomping grounds of many Enid Blyton protagonists.
TRENDS
In Austria, coffee with a side of history
Viennese coffee houses and their associated culture were put on UNESCO’s list of intangible cultural heritage in 2011. Legend has it that coffee was first brought to Austria by the Turkish army some 340 years ago.
TRENDS
Merry Christmas 2023 | World's biggest lottery is all about sharing
Spain's famous El Gordo Christmas lottery brings in billions in revenue each year. This year, the winning lottery, number 88008, won the El Gordo jackpot of 400,000 euros.
LIFESTYLE
My Family and Other Globalizers | Birthday pampering is a love language
Stretch out your birthdays into birthday weeks and years. Recovering from a year of breast cancer treatments has made me more determined than ever to celebrate my birth.
TRENDS
My Family and Other Globalizers | Worried about spoilt children? It's a generational thing
The story of parents lamenting how “spoilt” their children are is an age-old one that repeats with every generation. And it can be read as a comment on the general increase in prosperity and well-being that has been a defining, human macro-trend.
LIFESTYLE
My Family and Other Globalizers | To be a reader is to never have solitude turn into loneliness
Screens are mental overload and fracture our brains into a prismatic way of seeing. Reading books provides an inimitable stillness of mind and inculcates a habit the young takes into their adulthood.
TRAVEL
My Family and Other Globalizers | Travel is an education, not just a boarding pass
Travel puts our own reality in context. There are limits to everyone’s ability to embrace cultural diversity. The real traveller is so much more than a tourist.
LIFESTYLE
My Family and Other Globalizers | Why husbands are not wives
Young mothers need wives, not husbands. The need for their husbands to be annexed by the baby rather than just do things like research or giving a bath is universal. Some husbands, however, do experience how wretched parenting can be.
TRENDS
My Family and Other Globalizers | Parenting theories have a counterpart in fad diets – both lack common sense balance
Can there be room for Mom Rage in Attachment Parenting?
TRENDS
My Family and Other Globalizers | Watching cricket has its advantages too
My boys were chosen to join their school’s brand-new cricket team wholly based on their 50 percent Indian genetics. But in this case, thank God for cultural essentialism.
TRENDS
Nostalgia in Bandung, Indonesia: Journey to the birthplace of the Non-aligned Movement
Indonesia's Gedung Merdeka (Independence Building) houses a permanent exhibition dedicated to the April 1955 Asia-Africa conference, being the very building where the meeting took place.
TRENDS
My Family and Other Globalizers | Kids not listening? Good news: it’s evolutionary biology
According to psychologist Daniel Berry, when children appear not to be following instructions, what they are following is the biological imperative of making sense of the world around them.
TRENDS
My Family and Other Globalizers | Finding echoes in the cultural chutney of Goa
Goa, like the rest of India, has been adept at domesticating foreign influences and making them its own.
TRENDS
My family and other Globalizers | Teaching children to be human in an AI world
Schools should offer courses in Empathy, Philosophy and Unusual World Views: where the emphasis is on thinking unpredictably, out-of-algorithm.
TRENDS
Switzerland and India: the cows that bind
The cow is as important to Switzerland’s sense of self as it is to India’s.
LIFESTYLE
My Family and Other Globalizers | Why do children ask so many questions?
Tarry a little, let your child be curious and ask away. Answer them. They remind us to be curious. And curiosity may be our most important human characteristic when compared to AI-powered machines.
TRENDS
My Family and Other Globalizers | Why it’s hard to take the tiger out of an Asian mom
And why every once in a while, I try and slash a tiger mom claw at the boys, to awake them to the reality that their competition will be global not local.
TRENDS
Lombok, Indonesia: Bali’s fraternal twin
Only a half-hour flight from the Hindu enclave of Bali, Lombok's reputation as un-Bali is well-deserved.
TRENDS
My Family and Other Globalizers | The call that all expat families dread...
If I had chosen to leave the children behind in Spain, or even at home in Delhi, the “death” of their nani would have been akin to a video game - lacking in corporeality.
TRENDS
My Family and Other Globalizers: A tribute to my mother, Gitanjali Aiyar
In the era of terrestrial TV, Gitanjali Aiyar had ruled the screens of millions of Indians - first in black and white and later in colour. Her passing, in early June, created a tsunami of posts on social media.
LIFESTYLE
My Family and Other Globalizers | Resist the all-consuming ideology of motherhood
Not just a vessel and caregiver, a 'woman' is more capacious than a 'mother', and must prioritise herself on a par with her baby. Too much sacrifice and abnegation are harmful to both a mother and her child.
