Author: Lavina Melwani

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.

Chef Hari Nayak, author of ‘My Indian Kitchen’ shares three delicacies from his book – two of them can be complete meals in themselves – one for the non-vegetarians – Coconut Shrimp Biryani, from Goa. The other is a rice dish much beloved by vegetarians – Black Eyed Peas and Rice or Lobiya Pullao. And what better ending to a meal than to top this satisfying meal with Pistachio Mango Ice Cream?

This Spring there were hugs and handclasps galore as New York’s rich and powerful mingled in the beautifully lit up Cipriani Wall Street which is located, appropriately enough, in the Financial District where so many fortunes are made.

Over 500 movers and shakers had gathered to applaud another great performance in the art of giving. The occasion was American India Foundation’s 10th year Gala to felicitate not the biggest spenders – but the biggest givers of them all, the leading philanthropists.

‘The ‘Emperor of All Maladies’, subtitled A Biography of Cancer, won the Pulitzer Prize for Dr. Siddhartha Mukherjee. This week it won the 2011 PEN/E.O Wilson Literary Science Writing Award. An interview with this award-winning author about the writing of the book.

The challenge of ‘The Emperor of All Maladies’ was that in taking on such a formidable foe, Mukherjee had to create a complex tapestry which was by no means linear. It went all over the map, backwards, forwards, even sideways, zig-zagging between the impersonal and the very personal, between a clinical trial with 10,000 patients to the emotional tale of one particular patient. “The challenge was to take all that and make narrative out of it – it really is the most invisible thing in the book, it is the bones of the book,” says Siddhartha Mukherjee.

“This dish is one of the favorites on our appetizer list at Junoon. Its origins are in Goan cooking which evolved with considerable influence from the Portuguese who used Goa as a trading port for many years” Chef Vikas Khanna of Junoon

Are you a lover of contemporary Indian art who always thought collecting art was beyond your means?
Did you think you’d have to mortgage your house – and sell your soul – to obtain an MF Husain?
Were you always intimidated by the art auctions which seemed so elitist and such a closed club?
Well here’s Anu Nanavati Chaddha, Director of Saffronart in New York, to show the path to newbie collectors and to answer all the questions you had about contemporary Indian art – but were afraid to ask.

Long Island was once an Indian stronghold (native Indian, to be precise) – well now the Indians from India are making their mark there, what with the burgeoning Indian population, academics at various area universities, not to mention an overload of Indian grocery stores, sari boutiques, and the occasional Bollywood extravaganzas at Nassau Coliseum.

So now it’s pretty sweet that the mainstream is also recognizing this newest population – and its cinematic contributions. The recent Gold Coast International Film Festival organized by the Great Neck Arts Center on the North Shore of Long Island, gave a nod to the Indian film industry with several screenings of India-related films.