On the night of February 14, 2000, days after his father, the great tabla maestro Ustad Alla Rakha, passed away, Ustad Zakir Hussain mesmerised an audience at the Trade Centre in Dubai with an emotional performance during the concert “The Beat of the Millenium” featuring nine percussionists creating a fusion…

CHIKANKARI: Chikankari of Lucknow and Uttar Pradesh is believed to have been introduced by Nur Jahan, wife of Mughal Emperor Jehangir, and worked originally only with white thread on white muslin. One of the impressions it gives is of being patterned on fine lace. The most popular form of the…

A story of mix-ups, mess-ups and making the most of second chances, Someone Else’s Shoes was a nominee for the Best Fiction Award in 2023. Jojo Moyes also wrote ‘Me Before You’ and ‘The Giver of Stars’.  Nisha Cantor, globe-trotting wife of the stinking rich Carl Cantor, thinks she loves…

The doors slid open and Roshan Perera stood on the threshold of FedEx, the international courier company. FedEx had given him hope of initially training with them and thereafter he could apply for a job in the company. He started work in the internal communications division of FedEx using his…

Handicrafts from India have attained a worldwide regard for beauty, ingenuity, artistry and as a medium for the expression of rural India. Pride of place is, however, inevitably given to Indian embroidery. Its infinite variety, delicate handwork,

I was chatting with my old friend Pat last week and we suddenly found ourselves on the topic of caring and sharing. We were in a huge department store and the large box which obviously contained breakable China or other glass items had been stored in a corner where it…

Is garbage disposal one of the causes of marital disharmony? Grim headlines likely to evoke nostalgic smirks but considered a typical weekend morning when burrowed deep in bed sheets with a tender head cradled in soft feather pillows, you painfully open an eye lid as the first physical movement. As…

Hands are the instrument for all man’s work, which are of various kinds. Some require skill, others don’t. Some one degree of it, some another. Handicrafts is skilled work; one that expresses the measure of a person’s creativity in physical shape. It is the creation of form and beauty where…

It is quite rare to find someone who hates television and loathes the violence that pervades the medium. Pearl Douglas classifies the soap ‘The Bold and the Beautiful’ as a ghastly TV series that inspires millions of fans the world over. A teacher of drama and spoken English, Pearl trains…

Amongst my earliest recollections of childhood are memories of a giant grandfather clock in my mother’s hall. It loomed large in our lives and seemed to dictate the routine of the household. We awoke to its deep, sonorous ding-dong scrambling through the morning rush for school with one ear cocked…

Aerobics, yoga, Pilates, kicking boxing, training, all and any movement is good for both body and mind. It is essential to be aware how much you can accomplish on one day aiming to follow a pattern and build a routine. If you are feeling especially muggy, I would start with…

Geri Yeoman first visited the Emirates in 1973 to introduce the Silva Mind Control Method. Her trip was so successful that she decided to continue her visits at regular intervals. “I was overwhelmed by the response,” she added, “I felt there was a need and the series of lectures that…

Feeling a little restless, trying to cope with the pollution, we decided to make a foray into a new complex of cafés and restaurants at the National Gallery of Modern Art. We called in advance to book a table at “The Saddle House”. Surprisingly, the staff training did not include…

Dubai’s Souks have combined the Middle Eastern flavour with the characteristics of the city’s growth. The most well-known are the gold souk, an unbelievable display of hand-crafted and machine-made glittering jewellery, displayed in abundance with no signs of security or caution. But what really was the most fascinating, was the…

Younis Mohammed Noor, born in Deira, Dubai in 1944, reminisced about the good old days when life was about close ties, emotional bonds, warmth and bonhomie and less about fast-lane careers and opulent lifestyles. He started attending Al Qassimiya School in Sharjah around the age of 10 and recalled that…

The art scene in Dubai in the 1980’s and 1990’s was on the verge of taking off. Perhaps if they had not come to live in the Emirates, Ramni Talwar, Vandana Valrani and Nermeen Norani may never have translated their interest in art into a passion. They were three women…

We read The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese for our book club recently. Sanghamitra Bose, Founder of Sshrishti Trust, reviews the book: This is an engrossing read that is exquisitely crafted by the author Abraham Verghese, who took 14 years to write this epic. He is a doctor and…

In 1992, I had the opportunity to meet Kawla Lootah, a young local lady from the Emirates, who had started the first Social Development Centre in Dubai which was under the aegis of the UAE’s Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs. The Social Development Centre was established only for women…

Tall, lanky and debonair, ‘the national heartthrob’ and the biggest box office draw in India, the superstar and the one-man industry, was due to visit Dubai in 1981 and I was asked by the editor to do a piece for ‘Al Juma’, the weekend magazine of the Gulf News. Rumours…

You are never too unfit to be without hope. A lifestyle fitness program is designed to enable each individual to calculate precise fitness levels of each major muscle group in the body. You can estimate how much fat your body can contain and how much weight you should sensibly aim…

Edward Lear’s limerick is evidence enough that beards have evoked more than a passing attention from mankind: “There was an old man with a beard,Who said, “It is just as I feared! –Two Owls and a Hen,Four Larks and a Wren,Have all built their nests in my beard!” The hirsute…

The Shihuh mountains can be approached from two routes – the more difficult one is through Ras al-Khaimah, U.A.E. where one drives through Wadi Al Bih past the mountains and then south to Dibba. The other easier and more frequented route takes one from Dubai to Sharjah, Dhaid, Masafi and…

Vidur Bhatia, an ardent tennis follower, previews Roland Garros that starts next week The French Open used to be the most unpredictable of grand slams among the men in the 1990’s until 2004. The Spanish and South American often dominated in that period (with the likes of Sergi Bruguera and…

The affected global population of corpulent individuals has increased to epidemic proportions. According to the World Health Organization, 2 billion adults worldwide are overweight with at least 650 million clinically obese. Worldwide obesity has nearly tripled since 1975. You are considered overweight when you have a Body Mass Index (BMI)…

I had the opportunity to meet Keshav Shankar Pillai, better known as Shankar, in 1986, soon after he turned the grand age of 84. Shankar remembered with fondness the days of exciting encounters with nationalist leaders and dignitaries like Gandhiji, Nehru, Rajaji and Lord Linlithgow. His thoughts took him back…

The King of Hearts, Egyptian-born Magdi Yacoub, has won international acclaim in the field of cardiac surgery and is also privileged to be a link in the Chain that saves children’s lives the world over. The scene is repeated regularly in developing countries. As Professor Magdi Yacoub’s plane touches the…

A generation is all the people in a family, group or country born at the same time. Alternatively, the average time that children take to grow up and have children of their own, usually a span of 25-30 years. Would the Covid years be considered part of a generation which…

As a student, I passed a replica of Pabuji’s paintings as I sprinted down the verandah to catch my bus to university. Unless I was in a hurry, I had to stop and stare. They were not royal, but they had a majesty about them which was hard to explain

This is the second part of the earlier blog entitled “Life through rose-tinted glasses” The subject of Colour traces its birth in Light, and Light takes us back to the moment of Creation. This subject is so deep and vast, and the four years spent by Nina Guleria, a colour…

Skipping across the court with the agility of a galloping gazelle, I stood in the aggression, ready to serve for game and match. A long looping vicious lob served its lethal path to an inevitable winner. But my opponent in a desperate lunge, dug out the spheroid from the back…

In the pink, sad and blue. Purple with rage and white as driven snow. Are you looking at your life through rose tinted glasses? Madhu Nanda, my colleague journalist, talked to Nina Guleria, a colour therapist and healer, asking if we all had an inner spectrum of colour, and by…

We read “Lessons in Chemistry” at our book club recently which everyone loved. Dr. Lakshmi Rajgopal, retired Consultant Radiologist, reviews the book: “Lessons in Chemistry”, by Bonnie Garmus, is a debut novel about a scientist in the 1960’s who is opinionated, inflexible and intelligent. Unfortunately, Elizabeth Zott has been brutally sidelined…

Kusum Saxena, based in California, writes on the ups and downs of sibling relationships   I first met Sarah on a visit to my sister’s house. They were good friends and Sarah used to make a yearly sojourn from Germany to my sister’s place in India.  On one particular morning,…

Some of the most evocative memories of childhood are of the home one grew up in, the street that ran adjacent to it and the people who gave it its character … My home in New Delhi, India where I was born and grew up has a galli, or lane…

Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, children have spent a lot of screen-time, often being admonished by their parents. Rohan Woodcock tells us what he has learnt while he has been, according to his mother, playing games! Of the many games in my collection, Kerbal Space Program (KSP) is easily one…

Consequent upon the expulsion of the Portuguese from Bahrain at the beginning of the 18th century and the lack of any maritime authority in the Gulf, the Qawasim – the tribe inhabiting the Arabian Peninsula who originated from Qishm Island – tended to dominate this region. During the latter part…

We stayed at home for thirty months or more during the Covid lock down. It was a feat we will not forget in a hurry. Although it was tedious, at times boring and very uninspiring, we eventually had to spread our wings, move out of our comfort zone and start…

‘Before the coffee gets cold’ was reviewed at our book club recently. Darika Bhatia, who lives in Muscat, gives her take on the book: Before the Coffee gets Cold  ‘Before the coffee gets cold’ was reviewed at our book club recently. Darika Bhatia, who lives in Muscat, gives her take on…

She has danced with Fred Astaire, sung with Frank Sinatra and joined John Lennon and Yoko Ono in bed. She has sold over 70 million records and was the United Kingdom’s first female to win a Grammy with hits such as ‘Downtown’ and ‘Don’t Sleep in the Subway Darling’. She…

An avid enthusiast of inventing healthy recipes and of entertaining, Kusum Saxena, who lives in California, combined both interests in a book written for her daughter’s benefit. This interest in healthy recipes “that also please the senses” informs her diet plan for her students. For those looking for a natural…

The tradition of apothecaries and hakims, sellers of salves and spices, tinctures and medicinal herbs, is still wide spread in the by-lanes of the Muttrah souk in Muscat, the capital of Oman. Entering this bazaar, with its maze of alleyways, its age-old charm and its untold secrets of curative herbs,…

The Sari, which came into being in North West India, stretches across history from the Indus Valley Civilisation (2800-1800 B.C.) until today. The journey of the sari started by weaving cotton which flourished in the Indian subcontinent around the 5thmillennium B.C.

Dubai, once a relatively unknown part of the world, has today emerged as an important and strategic crossroad between the East and the West. It is a hub of international affairs, a first among equals, a venue where before the ink has dried on the contract, the construction is underway…

Kusum believes that an individual’s emotional landscape is an important area to address for their wellness practice to be sustainable. She often found that her students, who ostensibly came for a specific physical course of treatment or diet, would get into their current circumstances and their reaction to those events.…

An unusual, thought-provoking book, ‘No One is Talking About This’ was reviewed at our book club recently. It brought to the forefront the juxtaposition of the older generation and their ‘normal’ and today’s generation surrounded by gadgets which replace humans. Or do they? Vidur Bhatia, lawyer, critiques the book: Short-listed…

Hearty laughter is a spontaneous and uninhibited outburst of feeling good, relaxing both body and mind. It is a medicine which is not available in any chemist or pharmacy, yet you carry it with you all the time. Journalist and author Dinesh C.Sharma explained that laughter therapy is beneficial for…

Everyone called him “Chacha” (Uncle)* and knew that, should they have a genuine problem, Uttamchand could be counted on to offer assistance. Chacha had a modest textile shop next to the abra point and other merchants and shop-owners always sought his assistance and advice. Uttamchand had a place of honour…

With over 35 years’ experience as a successful wellness counsellor and dietician, Kusum Saxena, who lives in California, has received acclaim for her unique style of teaching. Her health craft offers a four-fold bespoke programme that includes yoga, diet, reflexology and relationship counselling. Through word-of-mouth, Kusum’s customised, effective methodology has…

The residents of Dubai were eager, impatient and agog with the news that Dubai’s first Grand Prix would be held on 4thDecember 1981 to coincide with the tenth anniversary of the United Arab Emirates’ National Day. As the track reached completion, there was an influx of foreign journalists in town.…

A brimful of stories…….fables, narratives, tales, legends, folklore and raconteurs delivering their missives to a spell-bound audience. Story telling is about sharing … it brings together the teller and the listener in a bond that bridges incompatability in society. It closes the hiatus between the young and the elderly, the…

Urgently required: a painless, inexpensive, strongmedication that couldcombat killers like cancer,heart disease, stroke,diabetes, osteoporosis,obesity, blood pressure,keeping you trim and fit. Doctor’s prescription:Rx.- Walking 15th and 16th century tombs of the Sayyid and Lodhi Rulers Is it possible to have a panacea for all ills? Apparently, it is.The cure is both…

It is a love story centered around two teenagers, Kostas, a Greek Christian Cypriot who falls in love with Defne, a Turkish Muslim Cypriot - a woman on the other side of the divide. They meet at a tavern on this beautiful island, which they both refer to as ‘home’. A…

I was privileged to meet and interview the renowned Indian film playback singer Lata Mangeshkar on her first trip to Dubai in December 1982. She has been at the centre of the Indian film music scene for over seven decades. In 1959, Time Magazine did a first cover story on…

A driving licence stands at the cross road of teenhood and adulthood, dependant and not independent, a person entitled to an opinion or a youngster whose views are taken with a pinch of salt. A driving licence is a status symbol and passing the test is a red-letter day in…

When Cornershop burst on to the music scene in 1997 with the Brit award for Song of the Year, I had just hit a half century and life, though full of twists and turns, was still a bed of roses with a couple of thorns in her side! The world…