Author: Lavina Melwani

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.

Project Chirag began as a student-run organization in Free Enterprise at H.R. College of Commerce & Economics in Mumbai. Since its inception, the Project has purchased solar equipment, trained and hired paraplegic Indians to assemble the parts, and then installed the panels and lanterns in thousands of households across Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and Karnataka.

Asian Garden of Many Delights – every table was decorated by a different designer and the dinner menu was designed by Chef Hemant Mathur of Tulsi and his wife, the equally talented pastry chef Surbhi Sahni of Bittersweet NYC.

Bold-face names and big accomplishments amid the opulence of New York’s Waldorf-Astoria – the perfect place for The Light of India Awards, the first ever major recognition of NRI movers and shakers by Remit2India, a Times Group company. Over 200 of the who’s who of the South Asian community gathered to pay tribute to their own, the doers and dreamers of the corporate, business, arts and technology world

Anand Giridharadas’s ‘India Calling’ – evocative and insightful – is almost a road map to the New India which has so much of the old India mixed in it. The book has been re-introducing young Indian-Americans to the land many left as children or may have never seen. Then there is the older generation of Indian-Americans who came as immigrants many years ago and still see the India they left decades ago, frozen in time.

He did it! Floyd Cardoz is the new Top Chef Master and has won $1i0,000 to support his favorite charity, the Young Scientist Cancer Research Fund (YSCRF) at the Tisch Cancer Institute at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine.

This grueling competition on Bravo had 12 award winning chefs competing for the title, participating in elimination style challenges. In each episode, money was at stake, and Cardoz, who is the former executive chef/partner of Tabla, pulled it off.

M.F. Husain – Goodbye to an Icon. (September 17, 1915 – June 9, 2011)

The great artist died of a heart-attack in London, far from his homeland of India. He was a giant of the contemporary Indian art world and there are as many colorful stories about him, about the controversies swirling about him, as there are unmatchable pieces of art which encapsulate the complexities of India. New York gallerist and collector Kent Charugundla shares some untold stories about the flamboyant artist. Join in sharing your comments and memories of M F Husain.

Is Skype the new matchmaker? Can a robot inventor find true love in Nepal? Can a Hindu and a Mormon find bliss together? Can you get good karma for just $ 10? Read on..

This is what my email account yields: “This year, July has 5 Fridays, 5 Saturdays and 5 Sundays. This happens once every 823 years. This is called Money Bags. So, forward this to your friends and money will arrive within 4 days. Based on Chinese Feng Shui. The one who does not forward this will be without money.” Ah, the many easy ways to make money via email!

How are friendships created? What attracts very different people to each other? This blog introduces two fast friends who lived thousands of miles apart, one in New York, the other in New Delhi. They got to know each other through Facebook and have now actually met. Meet Sulekha aka Lucks, and Kriti who will both regale you with tales from their own frenetic worlds. Sometimes you will see your own lives and your own truths reflected in there. They chat a lot so be prepared to listen…

In our virtual worlds, there is a small, vibrant nation of 7 million people called Foursquare – it’s actually an app that can be uploaded on your mobile or your computer but is a buzzing hive of human activity. Everybody seems to live on Foursquare nowadays.

It is a location based social networking website created in 2009 by Naveen Selvadurai and Dennis Crowley to help people to check in through their mobile devices with their friends in different locations where the action is.

This innovative app which brings people and businesses together in a win-win situation was recognized as a Technology Pioneer for 2011 by the World Economic Forum.

Imagine a room full of women, prostitutes, lowest of the low. They are faceless – without an identity, without a future. They are created out of found objects, the flotsam and jetsam of society.
Their heads are fashioned out of jars, their breasts are jars shaped like voluptuous melons– after all, aren’t women objects? They lack hands, and some even their lower limbs, they have no standing in society. Clad in flashy underwear and gold heels, they are what they wear, sexual objects in an uncaring society.
And yet to stand in that small room with these life-sized, lifeless women was to feel their presence and their pain. It seemed almost a community. Iranian artist Shirin Fakim’s women were just one vignette of the recent Asian Contemporary Art Week (ACAW)

The only job he ever applied for was at McDonalds – and he was turned down! He is a high school dropout who at the age of 16 went on to create ClickAgent, an Internet business which sold for $ 40 million.

He sold his next start-up, BlueLithium, to Yahoo for a whopping $ 300 million. Now he’s on to his third start-up, RadiumOne, and is having the time of his life.

Meet Gurbaksh Chahal, the kid from Tarn Taran, near Amritsar, who has gone on to become a major serial entrepreneur in Silicon Valley. He has been on Oprah before millions of viewers and has written a best selling book. Worth over $100 million, he’s got the fabulous penthouse and the Lamborghini and all the perks. He was proclaimed as the most Eligible Bachelor in America in 2009. Now, at 28, he’s still single!

Last year Vikas Reddy and co-founder Jeff Powers of Occipital, a start-up in Boulder, Co, were listed in the 30 under 30 – America’s Coolest Entrepreneurs by Inc. Magazine.

Vikas and Jeff came up with an innovative price checker called RedLaser, a free scanning application for iPhone and Android that has been downloaded over 8 million times. They sold RedLaser to eBay for an undisclosed amount, and now are creating and fine-tuning 360 Panorama, an exciting new product which enables computers to see like the human eye.

At 21, Rahim Fazal was the youngest CEO ever to head a publicly traded company. He was the celebrity entrepreneur whose face was splashed in newspapers and who at 16 had already sold another company for $1.5 million. But within a year his new company was in trouble, and he had to walk away from it – to study in a community college since he had hardly finished high school. Talk about ups and downs!

Rahim, who was named amongst America’s top 30 entrepreneurs under 30 by Inc. magazine and amongst the top 25 digital thought leaders by iMedia, has had enough twists and turns in his life to be worthy of a Hollywood – or Bollywood – movie!

In the city of reinvention, what better way to stand out from the crowd than to reinvent yourself?
As the film festivals focusing on South Asian films have multiplied in the Big Apple, the oldest and most noted showcase of them all, the MIACC Film Festival, is now known as New York Indian Film Festival (NYIFF) and is focusing on independent and regional films, while still being open to Bollywood blockbusters. The opening film ‘Do Dooni Chaar’ is a Disney film with Bollywood stars but imbued with the indie spirit.

In our virtual world anyone can become an instant expert on any city – thanks to MyCityWay, an innovative mobile app designed by the team of Archana Patchirajan, Puneet Mehta and Sonpreet Bhatia, three immigrants from India who’ve made New York home and achieved the American Dream.

MyCityWay just raised $ 5 million in financing from BMW i Ventures, FirstMark Capital and IA Ventures and you may see this app in BMW cars in the future. This little app, which can be downloaded free on your mobile and offers you a comprehensive grid of the city, is currently available in 40 cities and the plan is to bring it to 40 more.

Do you think it’s still possible to dream big and actually see that dream become a reality? Ask first-time filmmaker Nayan Padrai. His project ‘When Harry Tries to Marry’ – made on hope, persistence and a limited budget has gone on to bag several top awards at the recent London Asian Film Festival: Best Crossover Film and the Audience Award for Best Film. Rahul Rai, the young actor who’s never acted before, was named Best New Talent.
The film has already shown at the Austin and Mumbai Film Festivals, and its script was a featured project at the Sundance Institute Independent Producers’ Conference. It’s now showing in New York.

In a world where the computer is king, the Internet is all-powerful and Facebook and Twitter reign, social media is the newest and hottest turf to be conquered.

For each of these innovative entrepreneurs, who are in their 20’s and 30’s, the world to be conquered is virtual but the treasures to be won are very real – millions of dollars for successful start-ups, fame, fortune and fans globally.

Meet the creators of five start-ups everyone is buzzing about – Foursquare, Involver, MyCityWay, Occipital and Radium One. In our increasingly interconnected world where Mumbai and Manhattan are just a click away, you will soon be using their creations if you are not already…

Dhukia, a poor untouchable, journeys to the home of Ghashiram, the village brahmin, to request him to set an auspicious date for his daughter’s wedding. He is made to wait, told to clean the stables and chop wood. The hapless man, burdened by caste and class, malnourished and starving, labors in silence – finally dying in the scorching sun. For Ghashiram, the death is an inconvenience; the dilemma is how to get rid of the corpse of an untouchable man…

“Deliverance’ (Satgadi) is a powerful short film by Satyajit Ray based on a short story by Munshi Premchand. This stark film underlines the brutishness of life, the inhumanity of man to man, and is one you won’t forget in a hurry.

New Yorkers got to see this film in the recent film series – Long Shadows: the Late Work of Satyajit Ray, at the Walter Reade Theater, organized by the Film Society of Lincoln Center.