Author: Lavina Melwani

We are a simmering bundle of the past, the present and our hopes and anxieties about the future – what we remember and what we choose to forget becomes the world around us. Memories often trespass from locked rooms and forbidden places in the mind into the present. Some of them become the scaffolding for art, for the truths artists want to share through their work. Yet seen through the distancing telescope of memory, how true is truth?

“It is the devotees who humanize Guruvayurappan, investing Him with characteristics and traits that bring Him into their lives at a level where He ceases to be a distantly enshrined divinity. They display an intimacy with Him that in no way diminishes their reverence, expressing emotions that speak volumes about their sense of His accessibility and understanding.” – Pepita Seth

Still got a bitter taste in your mouth from the Indian passport surrender saga which took place a few months back? Well, the Consulate General of India in New York has taken the agitation and stress of Indian-Americans to heart and is working on smoothing the path where the issuance of Overseas Citizenship of India (OCI) cards is concerned.

The incidence of prostate cancer amongst South Asians in the US is just 4.6 per 100,000 population as compared to 104.3 per 100,000 amongst non-South Asians. Yet when they come in for treatment, 85 percent of them are usually in the late stages, as compared to late stage prostate cancer diagnosis for non-South Asians which is around 15 percent.

Given the sheer numbers of the South Asian population around the world, it is imperative they get checked early. Dr. Ashutosh K. Tewari, an expert on prostate cancer and robotics, discusses the hard facts.

It was a book reading to which the books never made it, but if an image is worth a thousand words, then guests got a good idea of what they would get when they finally got the book.

According to the World Health Organization, by 2010, 60 % of the world’s cardiac patients will be Asian Indian. The scary part is we are already in 2010! Indeed South Asians are predisposed by genetics for a higher probability of heart disease, but the lifestyle and diet habits can have a huge impact on whether they actually get the disease. It need not be a food-fight between healthy and tasty: One couple’s battle to make Indian food more heart-healthy.

‘Giving Back’ is Meera Gandhi’s cinematic tribute to all her friends in high places and the good that they do for others through organizations for women and children, addressing everything from human rights to micro-credit. In the film she interviews Cherie Blair, Kerry Kennedy, U2’s singer Bono, Peter Raj Singh, interior designer Clodagh, Steven Rockefeller and others.
Watch the video.

Contemporary Indian art is certainly the comeback kid if the March auction results at Christies, Sotheby’s and the online auction house Saffronart are any indication. The sales revealed a healthy appetite amongst collectors for buying the best of Indian modern and contemporary art after the slowdown experienced immediately after the economic downturn.

Thousands tread the crowded pavements of Times Square, surrounded by the glittering, psychedelic signage which includes the world-famous NASDAQ billboard.

New York City is certainly the place where wild dreams can come true. As Archana Patchirajan, a fairly new transplant from India, recalls, “Exactly 5 months back the three of us were walking in Times Square and said to each other, ‘We will be on the NASDAQ billboard one day!’ – and here we are!” And this dream did come true.

Two recipes from ‘Amrit: Luscious and Heart Healthy Indian Meals’ by Purnima Nandkishore with nutritional analysis by Karen Yee, MS, RD, LN. Read how the diet brought about dramatic changes in the health of Nanda Nandkishore who was at high risk for heart disease.

They are probably some of the brainiest dancers in America, having graduated from top universities like Stanford to MIT to Harvard Business School. Indeed, between them, the sprightly Sa Dancers have degrees in everything from mechanical engineering to computer science – but they sure can dance!

By now you’ve all probably read Joel Stein’s ‘My Own Private India’ in TIME magazine – his tirade against Indians in Edison, NJ and heard of the big hullabaloo that’s ensued. The bloggers, Indian media as well as regular folk are quite upset about Stein’s seemingly bigoted views.

“All that needs to be done is Indian merchants should stop selling TIME in their news-stands, and c-stores,” fumes Nayan Padrai, a reader of this blog. “Indian doctors should cancel their subscription for waiting room copies, and Indian CEOs of Fortune 500 companies should instruct their marketing managers not to advertise in TIME! Joel is surprised at the ‘non-Gandhian’ response on Twitter. So please send a ‘Gandhian’ response of boycott!”
READ ALL COMMENTS

“Sometimes in life you have to take a chance no matter how much of a long shot it may be. It’s the same reason that drives us to buy a lottery ticket or even to take a chance on love after you’ve had your heart broken into a gazillion pieces,” says Ayesha Hakki, editor of Bibi Magazine and blogger behind Ruby40. “It’s with that attitude that I decided to submit an audition tape for Oprah’s search for a Talk Show Host for her OWN network .”
WATCH THE VIDEO. CAN IT MAKE IT TO THE SEMI-FINALS?

When Mallika Dutt, director of Breakthrough, the international human rights organization, adopted the innovative, game-changing strategy of ‘Bell Bajao’ to combat domestic violence in communities, she turned to the advertising firm of Ogilvy & Mather to translate that vision into film.

Two of the films bagged the Silver Lion at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival 2010. Ogilvy & Mather had created these films for Breakthrough pro bono – so this just goes to show no good deed goes unrewarded!
WATCH THE AWARD-WINNING VIDEO. A CHAT WITH MALLIKA DUTT

Lord Shiva danced the world into existence with a shake of his mighty damru, it is said, and we’ve been dancing ever since.You had to be at ‘Erasing Borders: Festival of Indian Dance’, a three day festival of dance in NYC to see how boldly the ghungroo bells ring and how feet and hands and bodies meld into a thing of beauty. What was eye-opening was the sheer diversity of the dance vocabulary and how it’s being interpreted by a whole new generation of dancers.
WATCH THE VIDEO

Raj Loomba was only ten years old when his father passed away but he never forgot the turbulence of that event, the way the family’s life changed when Pushpa Wati, his 37 year old mother, became a widow and had to bring up seven children. Now decades later he has taken the pain and grief of that time and turned it into something positive – a determination to help other women who find themselves in his mother’s helpless state.

As an immigrant writer from India, I well remember my first day in New York City.
Overwhelmed by the enormous skyscrapers, fast moving crowds and nonstop traffic on Fifth Avenue, I suddenly came across an ocean of calm, an iconic, strikingly beautiful Beaux-Arts building at a height, with cascading stairs below it.

At the foot, on either side were two life-size handsome marble lions. Patience and Fortitude.

Tired of your desk job and longing to take on the world? Love food and want to follow your culinary dreams? Yes, it can be done. Take a page or two from the game plan of Divya Gugnani, a New Yorker who chucked her day job to create her own nascent start-up, Behind the Burner.

It’s been chosen as a critic’s pick by The New York Times, and has received pretty glowing reviews in the west. Technically, I would agree, it’s a marvel but it didn’t get my heart – and with a film by Mani Ratnam, you expect things to happen to your heart.

The much anticipated ‘Raavan’ starring Abhishek Bachchan, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan and Vikram, the superstar from the south, and directed by the great director Mani Ratnam, who is idolized by the film industry as ‘Mani Sir’, should have been a terrific movie. Should have. Could have. But in the end, wasn’t.

Recently 12-year-old Akash Viswanath Mehta, founder of Kids for a Better Future, along with his 14-year-old brother Gautama and other volunteers, tried to deliver a warrant for the arrest of Warren Anderson, former CEO of Union Carbide, in Manhattan. Not much happened but at least some awareness was created, especially in the media. Even symbolism is better than no protest, because without protest, it’s an easy road to indifference, and eventually to forgetting.