Author: Lavina Melwani

Life in the Time of Coronavirus Here’s why we should be taking it seriously! View this post on Instagram When the Italian media began reporting on the increased community spread of the novel #coronavirus across the country, filmmaker Olmo Parenti, like many Italian citizens, didn’t take the threat of the pandemic too seriously. “My friends and I were almost mocking the few people who believed the issue was serious from the get-go,” Parenti said. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ Just days later, Parenti felt like he was living in a different version of reality—a dystopian one. The number of positive cases had…

Once upon a time, Yogesh*, a vibrant young dreamer set out for America with his wife and child on a H1 B Visa to conquer the world. Ten years later, he’s still on the waiting line, still waiting for the elusive green card. Immigration has increasingly become a waiting game, and a numbers game. The sheer math of it all is overwhelming.

When Indian-American men cook, it’s considered cool and they are anointed chefs and stars and given all the respect. But when women cook, they are the housewives, the home-cooks and kitchen-bound who are doing what they’ve done for millennia. But now change is happening and some Indian-American women are taking the rolling pin and the tawa, and turning them into money-making startups!

Warning: Do NOT Separate an Indian from his Onions! It’s the one ingredient that no self-respecting desi cook would want to be without; whether you are whipping up a Mughal feast or a poor man’s meal – onions are absolutely necessary. In fact, a shortage of onions can cause a near revolution in India!

You could call them some of the most desirable voters in America that any political party would love to have in their ranks. Indeed, Indian-Americans seem to be in all 50 states and are strong players in the American political scene.So how is this viable block of American citizens going to vote in the upcoming presidential elections? Will they vote for a Democrat in the White House or four more years for Donald J. Trump?

Shubh Mangal Zyada Saavdhan’ has all the Bollywood trimmings – the catchy songs, the hot romance, the dances, the big fat Indian wedding, the comedy, the drama which have made it a box-office hit.
Yet it has something more which will ensure it will become a milestone marker in Hindi film history.

Now in the 2020’s, we are certainly seeing more action. It’s a groundswell with Indian-Americans in the corridors of power, in think-tanks, political campaigns, in community organizations and often as commentators on national television.

When Kunal and Michael got married – the secrets of living happily together.

Oscar nominations for Smriti Mundhra and Sami Khan’s documentary short ‘St. Louis Superman’

spent a lot of today thinking about the unpredictability of life and why things happen the way  they do. The helicopter crash, the meaningless deaths of all on board including the basketball legend  Kobe Bryant and his 13-year-old prodigy daughter Gianna.  The random nature of life is the enigma we have to face time and again.

Leila Chirayath Janah, 29, recently bagged a whopping $ 1. 25 million in funding from Google for her company, Samasource. Add that in, and this small, non-profit has got close to $ 5 million from several major giant corporations including Rockefeller Foundation, Ford Foundation, Ebay, Cisco, Facebook, LinkedIn and even the US State Department.

Why have so many blue chip organizations put their faith in this little-known non-profit?

The idea behind Samasource is audacious – that the poorest of the poor are equal to the larger world community and quite capable of doing good work when they are entrusted with it, rather than just being given handouts and pity. In fact, Sama means equal in Sanskrit and it is Leila’s way of bringing the poor into the hi-tech world.

Meet Senator Elizabeth Warren’s India connection – her Indian-American son-in-law from Uttar Pradesh and her three grandchildren of mixed Indian-American heritage.

Zarna Garg, who had been a practicing lawyer, left the field for 15 years to bring up her children. At 44 she was looking to jumpstart her career – but once again on her own terms – now as a writer and stand-up comic.

It started like a whispering rustle around the world, a soft rumbling and become this mighty force of marchers from Paris to Washington DC which also poked its way into my quiet apartment in New York. It seemed almost sacrilegious to be just spending a cerebral work afternoon at my computer when right on my streets so much action was taking place.

“we’re both fighting for something universal and something specific, and the specificity is about being an Indian-American, a desi Muslim American running to represent our communities which have been shut out of the conversation for far too long.”

Dr. Nirmal Mattoo may be far away from the Vale of Kashmir, the place where he was born,  but its sheer beauty, sense of community and native customs have stayed with him, even in far-off New York. He has tried to bring the wisdom and beauty of India, including that of his hometown, to share with the larger world.

The 800 lb gorilla in America is still the issue of immigration and affects so many lives. Be it the construction of the border wall, detention centers, the elimination of chain migration and the visa lottery and the limbo lives of so many green card hopefuls – most of them Indian and the possibility they may still be waiting 50 years later.

Yet as South Asians turn to political activism and support civic organisations that fight for immigrant rights and human rights in America, we see some famous names in the arts taking on these issues on television and on the big screen.

“We should never forget the roots of America’s Gay Liberation, which is the Stonewall riots of ‘69. My family immigrated to America from Kuwait in 1997. I was 18 and started college. I struggled with coming out publicly for many years.”

We all know about the birth of a restaurant – but what happens when a restaurant closes and reopens after several years – is that a rebirth?
Back in 2015 when restaurateur and chef  Anita Trehan announced she was opening the  Chaiwali in Harlem there was a lot of buzz about it. The name  wasn’t the ‘chaiwala’ but ‘chaiwali’, a rare phenomenon in those days and to have a woman chef or chaiwali move into Harlem and seek her fortune that was even more exciting!

Director Swati Bhise and actor Devika Bhise have brought the story of Lakshmibai, The Warrior Queen of Jhansi to the big screen, a tribute to Indian womanhood.