Author: Lavina Melwani

If you’re sitting in front of your television set in America, it’s as good as being in India! That’s because of all the Indian programming available here now – and the latest to join the party is Times Television Network, part of one of India’s largest media conglomerates, the Times Group. It launched its news and entertainment channels – Times Now and Zoom – on Dish Network with a bash at the Marriot Marquis in New York.

I interviewed Chandrika Tandon for The Wall Street Journal just before the Grammy Awards and asked her for her thoughts on the Prize.
“That’s not the way I think of my life; I don’t think of winning or losing. I think of the Grammys as a happening at a point in time. I’m not trying to use this as a stepping stone to something else. I live by the words of the mystic Kabir:

‘When ‘I’ was there, the Divine was missing.

When ‘I’ left, the Divine took over. ‘

So the quest is to lose myself and go with the flow.”

She spoke about her childhood, her passion for music and how the worlds of business and art intersect. You can read the full interview at The Wall Street Journal

If you’ve been enjoying Lassi with Lavina, now it’s time to make some of your own too!

If you have insights, ideas, thoughts – provocative, funny or plain offbeat – you are welcome to be a guest blogger at the ol’ Lassi Guesthouse. We’d love to hear your perspectives on India and all things Indian or South Asian. Take an Indian thread and spin a silken tapestry!

Have you met Radical – I mean – Radhika Vaz? Known as Rad for short, this stand up comic and sketch artist is the mouthpiece for all that women have been dying to say – but were too afraid to, or perhaps too ladylike. Vaz’s new one woman show ‘Unladylike’ takes on everything one would hesitate to discuss in polite company. It’s all about letting your hair down and speaking your mind.

Mount Kailash, Tibet’s holiest summit, gives lessons in life – and death. It can even inspire people who have never seen it. Mexican artist Ricardo Mazal was mesmerized by the images and took a trip, one of the most difficult he’s ever attempted, to do the ‘Kora’ or pilgrimage which is a 33 mile trek around the peak, and is undertaken by Buddhists, Hindus, Jains and Bonpos alike.

It is believed that 108 rounds of Mount Kailash can lead to nirvana. The Kora became a pilgrimage for Ricardo Mazal to unearth larger truths about life and death.

12 Things You Didn’t Know About Tulsi

What strikes you on entering Tulsi is the sheer lightness of being – floating white shamianas, basil green accents and mirrored walls. It’s not your traditional Indian restaurant with the elephants, silk curtains and ornate touches – this is India dealt out with a showering can rather than a shovel, and the food is just as subtle, with a melange of regional dishes and a touch of fusion.

What can be more soul-satisfying than legumes and lentils slow-cooked to creamy perfection, with a touch of Indian spices? In ‘The Indian Slow cooker’ Anupy Singla shares 50 healthy authentic recipes passed down in her family and which work well for busy lifestyles.

Life can change in the blink of an eye. It happened to Sonia Rai, 24, a risk analyst in Boston, when a routine visit to a dentist turned into a nightmare scenario. She was diagnosed with Acute Myeloid Leukemia and is desperately seeking a match.
Did you know that if you are a South Asian and get Leukemia, your chances of survival can depend on a bone marrow match from another South Asian? While 30 % of patients will find a matching donor within their family, the remaining 70 % have to search for a match from unrelated donors.The hard fact is that only 1% of South Asians are registered with the National Marrow donor program.

BlackBerries and Apples are much more than fruit nowadays – they are our very lifeline to the larger world outside. So today on Jan 25, it’s hard to believe that on yet another Jan 25 – in 1915 to be precise – Alexander Graham Bell, first inaugurated US transcontinental telephone service. Can you imagine a world devoid of our little buzzing devices, no email, no Facebook, no Twitter, no text messages on the run?

In a time of Tweets, frenetic commutes and mountains of stress, imagine slooow cooking, food which cooks itself, slowly, deliberately throughout the day while you’re out earning a living or are just immersed in the latest best-seller. It’s almost like having one of the legendary ‘bhaiyas’ of India doing your cooking for you, and quite welcome in the US.

Fundraising in New York can have a wonderful ripple effect and translate into health camps, scholarships and education for children in the slums in India. That’s been the happy result of Children’s Hope India, a non-profit organization started by a group of five women professionals in New York in 1992 with seed money donated by them and with just one project in hand.

Breakthrough celebrated a decade of work on issues of human rights with the Let’s Breakthrough Together Gala at Cipriani 42nd Street in New York City, with over 300 supporters of the organization’s groundbreaking work in India and the US.

The men all wear dhotis (and look darn good in them), the women are covered from head to toe and there’s not a swinging item number in sight. In an age of mindless Bollywood entertainment, Ashutosh Gowariker’s ‘Khelein Hum Jee Jaan Sey’ (KHJJS) is a film you can sink your teeth into. It’s the real stuff.

Lassi with Lavina was featured in Global Glam, a lifestyle magazine

Want to keep tabs on the New Year and make a difference in the lives of children in need? Buy a calendar for 2011, and help children have a brighter year. Vikram Nandwani of Verry India is addressing children with special learning needs.

“This is one of our most beloved family dishes. It is very much in the Hyderabadi style, where North Indian and South Indian seasonings are combined” – Madhur Jaffrey.

“I’ve been watching its influence grow and expand. We now educate children of widows in every one of India’s 29 states,” says Cherie Blair, president of the Loomba Foundation.
L. to R: Cilla Black, Raj Loomba, Cherie Blair, Preity Zinta, Veena Loomba and Joanna Lumley in New York to raise funds for widows at the Loomba Foundation dinner. (Photo: Jonathan Elderfield)

Chandrika Krishnamurthy Tandon, the dynamic chairman of Tandon Capital Associates, who has done major restructuring surgeries in the global financial world, is executive-in-residence at New York University Stern, a member of the board of overseers of New York’s Stern School of Business, a member of the President’s Council of International Activities at Yale University, and an arts patron.
There’s more: she has the voice of an angel. ‘Om Namo Narayanaya’ is the chant that will calm and strengthen you. Newsbreak: Soul Call has just been nominated for a Grammy in the Best Contemporary World Music Album category

She’s made Madhur Jaffrey, Preity Zinta, Yoko Ono and even Cherie Blair, the former First Lady of Britain, taste her cakes. She says with a smile, “Preity Zinta called them ‘yummy’; Yoko Ono said ‘Nice cupcakes’ and Cherie Blair said, ‘These are great!’”
Indeed, if Parul Patel has a mission in life, it’s to get a cupcake inside you!
(Parul offers a tasting to Britain’s former First Lady, Cherie Blair, at a fundraiser)

“I think acting, especially in something as delicate as this, is like when you’re switching a radio knob to look for a correct frequency and you know the program you want to listen to is at 99.5 and you don’t get it. You try 4 and you try 6 and you still don’t get it and you feel that you’ve lost it forever, it doesn’t exist.
And then suddenly at 99.48 something happens and you suddenly can hear very clearly the song you were looking for, the radio station you were looking for. It’s really a chance – you have to try hard but ultimately it’s a lot to do with chance and I think I got lucky. At least I hope so!”
(Rahul Bose seen here with Minu Tharoor)