Renuka Narayanan is a commentator and columnist on religion and culture.
Articles by Renuka Narayanan
The serpent that gave forth gold
Experts agree that it is the small biodiverse farms that actually grow 'real' food, the food that is high on nutrition and not genetically engineered. Renuka Narayanan writes.
Updated on Dec 15, 2012 11:58 PM IST
Hindustan Times | Renuka Narayanan
King of ragas and raginis
“Get high on music,” Pandit Ravi Shankar always urged audiences in the West, sharing one of India’s oldest and best-kept secrets with the world.
Updated on Dec 13, 2012 12:59 AM IST
Pacing ourselves to team speed
With so many people evidently out of step with others in public life, it might be useful to recall a natural law or two in our individual lives: that a convoy moves at the speed of its slowest ship; that a team moves at the speed of its boss. So what is a suitable response if an individual is faster or slower than his or her holding pattern? Renuka Narayanan writes.
Updated on Dec 08, 2012 10:36 PM IST
Hindustan Times | Renuka Narayanan
The Prince who preferred silence
Renuka Narayan writes about the new opera on the Buddha previewing next week in Thailand, two years after its critically acclaimed world premiere in Houston, USA, where it was produced by Indian-born Viswa Subbaram of OperaVista.
Updated on Dec 01, 2012 09:56 PM IST
Hindustan Times | Renuka Narayanan
Surasundaris, saqis, South African wine
The moment we have five ‘videshi mudra’, it’s possible we may feel pressured to be knowledgeable about wine culture as one of the prescribed marks of dominant farang culture.
Updated on Nov 24, 2012 10:42 PM IST
The lost lands of Buddhist belief
In today's religiously riven landscape, it's hard to imagine how Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Islam, Sikhism and Christianity took turns to water the land, each to its own degree. Of these, perhaps we know the least about Buddhism because it was so very long ago. Renuka Narayanan writes.
Updated on Nov 17, 2012 11:16 PM IST
None | Renuka Narayanan
A good reason to play Ravan
Sometimes Dipavali seems less a calendar aid to remembering the purpose of our human birth than an opportunity to be competitive in the most un-fun ways. Renuka Narayanan writes.
Updated on Nov 10, 2012 10:05 PM IST
None | Renuka Narayanan
It ain’t over till the fat lady sings
Got pre-Diwali blues, have we? The country’s going to Patal and taking us with it? Time to read the Ramayana and I don’t mean the baby stuff.
Updated on Nov 03, 2012 10:37 PM IST
Renuka Narayanan, New Delhi
The mangoes that did not suit people
The brain, or rather the mind, is criticised for its lack of 'emotion', but the mind is our friend and can be quite helpful. Renuka Narayanan reports.
Updated on Oct 27, 2012 10:27 PM IST
None | Renuka Narayanan
The heroes we need again at home
I don’t think anyone can think about 14-year-old schoolgirl Malala Yousufzai or 23-year-old Afghan rapper Susan Firouz without tears in their eyes. Renuka Narayanan writes.
Updated on Oct 13, 2012 10:12 PM IST
None | Renuka Narayanan
Go straight to Heaven, Ms Brown
Sridevi is told in just-out ‘English Vinglish’ that “she wasn’t born just to make laddoos” while a smart lawyer like Hillary Clinton got into trouble in 1992 for a throwaway remark about not staying home to bake cookies, that’s how deep it goes. Renuka Narayanan writes.
Updated on Oct 06, 2012 10:38 PM IST
None | Renuka Narayanan
Joyous in celebration of the Preserver
We're in the interstice now between two important festivals at Tirupati, the Brahmotsavams of September and October, perhaps a time for reflection, which may be the purpose of such calendar events. Renuka Narayanan writes.
Updated on Sep 29, 2012 11:33 PM IST
None | Renuka Narayanan
Railway pudding and religious sentiments
My religious sentiments have been badly hurt for years now in the matter of railway food and at last someone's noticed and ticked off "the world's largest employer", Indian Railways. Renuka Narayanan writes.
Updated on Sep 22, 2012 10:46 PM IST
Hindustan Times | Renuka Narayanan, New Delhi
The appalling silence about good people and the actions of bad ones
It's never lonely being the lone She Baba with you, dear HT readers, but it's rare to get an email from another religion columnist and blogger. Renuka Narayanan writes.
Updated on Sep 15, 2012 10:54 PM IST
None | Renuka Narayanan
‘We will always burn the man’
It used to be that we Indians burned real women all year round. Once a year on Dussehra, we still burn a wooden man. This week, while rained in at Huahin and unable to do much beyond watching TV, I caught a French report on a just-concluded annual American rite, which began in 1986 with one man in San Francisco wanting to burn a wooden effigy. Renuka Narayanan writes.
Updated on Sep 08, 2012 10:40 PM IST
None | Renuka Narayanan
And we sang of that glorious Light
As the rain pelts down on Bangkok and on Bharat across the Bay, you can’t seem to help a sense of slowness despite work as usual. Renuka Narayanan writes.
Updated on Sep 01, 2012 11:08 PM IST
Hindustan Times | Renuka Narayanan
Leaping tiger, snake, oh, and crunchy eel
A couple of things this week threw up unwanted angst on the dialogue between civilisations. One, I went to see Ek Tha Tiger in Bangkok’s newest mega-mall, Terminal 21. And if you’d gone by escalator to the sixth level where the movies are, you too would have seen the hordes going up and down inside and also outside, on the skywalk. Renuka Narayanan writes.
Updated on Aug 25, 2012 10:51 PM IST
None | Renuka Narayanan
A free spirit with a strong sense of duty
Did you see the fascinating story in HT this week about Sir Siremal Bapna, Prime Minister of the former rajwara of Indore, being sent by British Prime Ministers to assess Mussolini and Hitler in the build-up to World War Two? Renuka Narayanan writes.
Updated on Aug 18, 2012 10:59 PM IST
Hindustan Times | Renuka Narayanan
If we saw Pichet’s Ramayana in India
It’s not enough that the Ramayana and Mahabharata are part of our cultural DNA. It’s what we do with them artistically and I’d like to bring two outstanding examples from SE Asia to your kind attention. Renuka Narayanan writes.
Updated on Aug 11, 2012 10:58 PM IST
None | Renuka Narayanan, New Delhi
The first ever tweet thought (ours, of course)
The way social media now affect politics and therefore history, it is plainly our duty as patriotic Indians to get out there and say, “We thought of tweets first. Randomly, you know, one Vedic day, just like we invented the zero”.
Updated on Aug 08, 2012 03:18 PM IST
Looking through to the real person beneath
The epic story of Nala-Damayanti has stuck around for a while now. What is our take-home from it for our everyday lives? Do we see a touching message in it about mutual tolerance and about trying to cut through appearances to discern the real person underneath? Renuka Narayanan writes.
Updated on Jul 29, 2012 12:21 AM IST
Hindustan Times | Renuka Narayanan
God and the chatty bookseller of Bali
I think democracy is bs,” said the spike-haired, sharp-eyed bookseller in Bali, without rhyme or reason. “Oh God,” I said distractedly, trying to choose a couple of secondhand books for holiday reading, since I’d already raced through the one I’d brought along. Renuka Narayanan writes.
Updated on Jul 21, 2012 10:49 PM IST
Hindustan Times | Renuka Narayanan, New Delhi
It's lonely being good, for this epic flower
This week I sat in a car strongly scented with just one fresh champaka flower and also read in the papers that the year's big khon (classical dance) production of the Ramakien (Thai Ramayana) will be the episode of Jong Thanon, 'The Building of Rama's Causeway' or Raamkaaj as we'd call it in Hindi.
Updated on Jul 07, 2012 11:48 PM IST
Emerson & uncounted rotten roads of India
Did you know there were only 2,293 “motor vehicles” registered in India in December 1940 as compared with 37,181 in December 1938?
Updated on Jun 30, 2012 11:03 PM IST
Hindustan Times | Renuka Narayanan
Dances with wolves, buzzes with bees
Everyone knows how boring and tiring it is to deal with people who have no control over their emotions or worse, their reactions. To take on stress and to pass it on is tersely put as 'Tension lena aur tension dena' and colloquially described as 'pyaaz kaatna', to cut onions (on someone's head). Renuka Narayanan writes.
Updated on Jun 23, 2012 11:38 PM IST
Hindustan Times | Renuka Narayanan
Have you drunk the soup or flipped for the cook?
What is process for? What is its purpose, why has it been instituted? Don’t you think this is an existential question that any bureaucracy might like to introspect on to everybody’s benefit, particularly the religious bureaucracy? Renuka Narayanan writes.
Updated on Jun 17, 2012 12:05 AM IST
Hindustan Times | Renuka Narayanan
The baby quail and the Magadha forest fire
With celebrations on around the world for Sambuddhatva Jayanti, the 2600th anniversary of the Buddha’s Nirvana, a beloved jataka comes to mind as an illustration of how we in India may not have much by way of sangha, but seem to have internalised the Buddha and the dharma in wondrous ways. Renuka Narayanan writes.
Updated on Jun 09, 2012 09:42 PM IST
None | Renuka Narayanan, New Delhi
Detective Parker Pyne and the Pashtun code
Stats are often quite amazing. You remember Parker Pyne, the Agatha Christie investigator who retired from the bureau of statistics and swore that all situations arranged themselves in one of precisely twelve categories? Renuka Narayanan writes.
Updated on May 26, 2012 10:39 PM IST
None | Renuka Narayanan
You may drive out nature with a pitchfork, but…
Something happened last Sunday that upholds the allure of thought and why those who like to read need not feel discouraged by the sarcasms of those who don’t, which occurs oftener than we may admit. Renuka Narayanan writes.
Updated on May 19, 2012 10:40 PM IST
Hindustan Times | Renuka Narayanan
The right to not believe, thank God
How awful to be jailed for saying you're an atheist, as happened this week in a foreign land. It makes you so grateful for ancient India's gift to us: the right to 'unbelief'.
Updated on May 13, 2012 01:58 AM IST