Author: Lavina Melwani

He’s got to be the world’s greatest multi-tasker. Dr. Sanjay Gupta is living several lives rolled into one. He’s an Emmy-winning television celebrity, a neurosurgeon, a professor, an author. Not to mention, a husband and dad of three girls, and a sportsman.

“When I turned 40 years old, I thought I could start making my biological clock not just run slower, but start to reverse and I think I have done that. I think in many ways biologically I am younger now than I was five years ago. Athletics, sports, and fitness are a very, very big part of my life. I was up at 4:15 and going for a run and a swim, so it is a big part of my life and that is something that I am teaching my girls too.”

Not too many new fashion design graduates get to debut at the prestigious Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week in New York but that’s what happened with Dipti Irla, a young Maharashtrian designer from Mumbai. There she was soaking in the limelight of this fashion circus at Lincoln Center, surrounded by buyers, editors and paparazzi.

“Illness is the night-side of life, a more onerous citizenship. Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick. Although we all prefer to use only the good passports, sooner or later each of us is obliged, at least for a spell, to identify ourselves as citizens of that other place.”

– Susan Sontag.

This quotation begins Dr. Siddhartha Mukherjee’s Pulitzer Prize winning biography of cancer, ‘The Emperor of All Maladies.”

In this series we pay tribute to five physicians who preside over ‘the kingdom of the sick’ with not only their healing hands but their powerful words: Drs. Siddhartha Mukherjee, Atul Gawande, Abraham Verghese, Sanjay Gupta and Sandeep Jauhar.

There were no writers or physicians in Siddhartha Mukherjee’s family. He grew up in New Delhi where his father Sibeswar Mukherjee worked for Mitsubishi and his mother Chandana was a school teacher. His parents still live in Delhi.

“We spoke Bengali and English at home, our house was immersed in books,” he recalls. “I have a very intimate relationship with Bengali literature, particularly Tagore, and I would say my interest besides reading at that point of time in my life was music. And so, my memory of my household is of one immersed in books and music.”

Doctors are considered omniscient Gods but are actually very human, and no one conveys this truth better than Dr. Sandeep Jauhar. He is Director of the Heart Failure Program at Long Island Jewish Medical Center in New York, specializing in novel therapies for acutely decompensated heart failure.

It is hard to believe that this accomplished cardiologist once was a conflicted intern and probably no physician has been able to capture that coming of age story more evocatively than Jauhar in his remarkable first book, ‘Intern: A Doctor’s Initiation.’

The case of the invisible patient, the I-patient who exists just on the physician’s computer monitor as so much data, while the real live patient in the bed is ignored, has become an important issue for Verghese, both in work and his writing.

“I think that there’s a very special transaction that takes place between physician and the patient during the course of a careful examination,” he says. “It’s during that exam when the physician touches you and pulls your eyelid down and looks into your eyes and thumps on your chest – that’s when a very ritualistic bond is formed and if you shortchange that by just sitting behind your desk and saying ‘Let’s send you for this test, let’s send you for that test,’ you have essentially shortchanged yourself from an important transaction.”

It was the night of maharajas and maharanis, of pomp and splendor. The occasion was Children’s Hope India Royal India Gala and Pier Sixty in Chelsea Piers, Manhattan had been transformed into a royal retreat with life-size peacocks, golden sculptures, rich silks and gorgeous live mannequins draped in Mughal couture. Yes, hookahs and turbans too!

Photo: Shaun Mader

It’s that time of the year again when the annual Sikh International Film Festival takes place – and this year one of the guests is film-maker Gurinder Chadha who is a panelist at the inaugural Leadership Summit and is being honored with an Arts award. at the Sikh Heritage Gala on October 15 at Cipriani.

Lassi with Lavina caught up with the hugely popular director in London to get a heads-up on the Sikh International Film Festival which starts tomorrow. Here’s Gurinder Chadha on her award, the Sikh International Film Festival, the changing face of Southall and – ‘Bend it Like Beckham’ – the Musical.

Is Madhuri Dixit, Bollywood Superstar, really moving back to India?

Economies and nations can fall, but there is frenzied speculation in the Indian media about this earth-shattering move. The reasons for the move are being analyzed with much indepth analysis by media seers and gossip columnists. Chill, folks! This is the new global age when anyone who can buy an air-ticket can fly wherever they like and for whatever reasons they like!

Meanwhile, one lucky fan in Denver managed to come face to face with the Superstar – in the shoe store! And she heard it right from Madhuri’s mouth – yes, she is moving back to India! This story has all the old-fashioned magic of a fan meeting an unreachable star…truly the world is full of random surprises….

Want to make some spiritual gains and rub shoulders with Gods and Goddesses? The place to go for darshan is the Brooklyn Museum because here you get to meet not one, not two but all ten avatars of Vishnu, Hinduism’s Blue-Skinned Savior.

“Vishnu – one of Hinduism’s most important and powerful deities – is the Great Preserver, vanquishing those who seek to destroy the balance of the universe,” writes Joan Cummins in ‘Vishnu – Hinduism’s Blue-Skinned Savior.’ Indeed, the time looks ripe for Vishnu’s avatar to come to earth…

A chat with Joan Cummins, who is the Curator of South Asian art at Brooklyn Museum.

“Right from my childhood, when I would be getting ready for school, my mom would be getting her makeup done for her shoot,” recalls Esha Deol, star daughter of super stars Dharmendra and Hema Malini. “So instead of being in uniform, I would try on her wig, put on her lipstick.
I used to love watching ‘Seeta Aur Geeta’ which I saw every day. I loved dancing on all Hindi songs of the 80’s, so I knew that this is what I have always wanted to do.”

What can be better than seeing the wonderful Hema Malini performing Indian classical dance live on stage?
Watching Hema performing Indian classical dance live on stage with her two daughters Esha and Ahana Deol!
Three for the price of one you could say!
For New Yorkers this will be a unique experience as the famous mother and daughters have never performed together in the US before. Read an exclusive interview with Ahana Deol on life in a star-spangled world.

If you have a tiara, now’s your chance to wear it! This is the year that everyone gets to be a maharaja or maharani and indulge in a royal celebration. Falu will be performing live with her band and there’s a dance presentation of Royal India. All for children’s health and education in India.

With all the fashionistas in New York, this was bound to happen. Against the grand canvas of New York Fashion Week, a group of young South Asian women entrepreneurs created their own hurrah, a showcase of the sparkling talent of desi designers from the US and the Indian-subcontinent.

At the Fashion for Compassion event at the Ritz Carlton honoring Ranjana Khan, there was a happening buzz with lots of star power on the red carpet : Abhay Deol, Preeti Desai, Archie Punjabi, Samrat Chakrabarti, Janina Gavankar, Anusha Dandekar, Pooja kumar, and Shenaz Treasurywala.

“It is one thing to get out of an abusive relationship. It is another thing to be able to support yourself and your children afterwards,” says Reshma.

Quilt making has always been a community effort and so it seems particularly appropriate in a commemoration of a horrific day when in spite of destruction and death all around, the community came together; strangers clasped hands and lit candles on the sad streets.

The age-old craft of quilting has seen generations of women through rough and tough times. Artist Faith Ringgold herself learned quilting from her grandmother who learned it from her mother who was a slave. Story quilts use painting, quilted fabric and storytelling to create powerful narratives about issues which effect humanity.

Great music lives on forever, and great artists are never lost. If you look at the Google doodle today, it’s a tribute to the legendary performer Freddie Mercury who died at the age of 45. The doodle opens out into a wonderful video which captures the essence of Freddie Mercury perfectly – check it out!

Mercury, who has been hailed as Britain’s first Asian Rock Star and one of the greatest singers of all time, would have been 65 today. This charismatic performer has a huge fan following all over the world.

“I was looking through the list of runway shows at Lincoln Center and saw that there was not one South Asian woman designer presenting,” says Reema Rasool, the founder of SayWe. “It actually made me mad, with all of the amazingly talented South Asian women designers we have worldwide! I wanted to do something to correct the situation.”

The result is the upcoming Fashion for Compassion event which honors noted designer Ranjana Khan and showcases the collections of South Asian designers.

Like all New Yorkers, playwright Rehana Lew Mirza has turbulent memories of 9/11 when the world seemed to come crashing down. That night, aware of the rising backlash against Muslims, she and her sister remained barricaded in their one bedroom apartment, watching the horrific images on TV.

A week after that, just as they were struggling to get back to work, Mirza found a flier pinned to her door: it had the image of a missing South Asian woman – and someone had burnt holes into the paper, into the eye-sockets and mouth with a cigarette.

It was at that chilling moment that she knew that for New York Muslims the tragedy was a double whammy – not only were they too the victims but were also being demonized as the perpetrators.
Her response was the play ‘Barriers’. Now on the tenth anniversary of 9/11, ‘Barriers’ is back.

“And then there was the rainy season, and the accompanying sounds of the flirty breeze playing with the leaves of the mango tree in our backyard, the rustic smell of wet earth, and the thud of mangoes falling to the ground,” recalls chef Hari Nayak in his new book ‘My Indian Kitchen’. “We kids often dashed out to pick them up before the sky broke loose! This priceless robbery of ours would mean that soon spicy green mango chutney would be on our dining table!”

Enticing tales such as this, traditional home recipes explained lucidly and photography that’s luscious enough to eat make this a welcome addition to the books on Indian cooking.