Author: Lavina Melwani

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!”
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“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.

Ah, the things citizens choose to tell their presidents! Recently a New York based Indian artist, Anand Patole, didn’t quite like what he saw in a newspaper picture of the big Nuclear Security Summit – President Barack Obama’s shoe was pointing like a missile toward the Indian prime minister!

So what did Patole do? He shot out a letter to the Prez, advising him that pointing one’s footwear at someone was a no-no in eastern culture.

If brainpower, great looks, accomplishments and sheer good intentions could be harnessed for solar energy, then you’d have quite a surplus at the AIF Awards Spring Gala held in the grand ballroom of Manhattan’s Hilton Hotel.

A quick glance of the crowded cocktail circuit and you spotted famous faces including Adi and Parmeshwar Godrej, Salman Rushdie, Richard Gere, Karan Johar and Madhur Jaffrey mingling with the brightest and most powerful of New York’s Indian-American corporate czars and entrepreneurs. Just the bold face names would have been enough to cause a surge in the NASDAQ numbers!

The surroundings could not have been better: the beautiful, peaceful Rubin Museum of Art was the venue for a gala fundraiser for a new school building for the children of Manjushree Orphanage in Tawang, India.

It’s not every day that something dearly loved by Indian parents becomes a Twitter trending topic but that’s what happened with the 2010 Scripps National Spelling Bee championship finals! We are speaking of course of the annual spelling-fest in which Indian children do so well, and which becomes a magnificent obsession for the concerned parents.

Interestingly, there was a desi word which one of the spellers stumbled over and which seems fast to be becoming a recognized word in the English language – Lassi, which Hannah Evans spelled as lasse. Just shows the importance of eating out frequently at Indian restaurants (and reading L-a-s-s-i with Lavina!)

BREAKING NEWS: SURRENDER FEE HAS BEEN WAIVED BY THE INDIAN GOVT – BUT THE SAGA CONTINUES

Planning to visit India this summer? If you’re not an Indian citizen, be prepared for some mighty long lines at the Indian Consulate. If you gave up your Indian citizenship, the pigeons are coming home to roost – you now have penalties to pay. According to new rules, persons of Indian origin who acquired foreign citizenship, must surrender their Indian passports immediately after the acquisition of foreign citizenship and also obtain a Surrender Certificate – and pay a price.

Else, no visa and no travel to India!

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President Barack Obama dropped in at the U.S- India Strategic Dialogue Reception hosted by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for Indian External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna – and amongst all the serious issues, Indian food, inevitably, found its way into the conversation!

“Secretary Clinton, I think as you may be aware, is a great admirer of India, and I know the sentiment is shared in return,” said Obama. “In fact, I’m told that one of the Secretary’s favorite restaurants in Delhi added a new item to the menu —- the ‘Hillary Platter.’ This is true. What does it have — chapatti?”

Ravan, the villain in the Ramayana through the ages and in myriads of Ramlilas across the world, has now been co-opted by Bollywood. Soon ‘Raavan’ will be blazing in lights across the diaspora and the big blockbuster which bears his name is being directed by none less than the iconic Mani Ratnam with super stars Abhishek Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai. The music is by everyone’s favorite A R Rahman, lyrics by Gulzar and cinematography by another major name – Santosh Sivan. Now what could make for a better debut for Ravan?
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Goodbye, Wall Street. Hello, Start-Up! The world is a-changing, the economic landscape is re-aligning. No doubt about it. In the days of the economic downturn, Wall Street had been handing out pink slips to workers – now you have three workers who have given Wall Street the pink slip!

Puneet Mehta was a SVP with Citi Capital Markets, Archana Patchirajan was a senior consultant with the same company; and Sonpreet Bhatia was a vice president at Merrill Lynch/Bank of America.

Now why would people throw up hard-to-get, prestigious jobs in the financial sector and go off into the unknown? They’ve heard the siren song of ‘entrepreneurship’ and their grand dream is being funded by venture capital and endorsed by none less than Mayor Bloomberg!

Got $20,000 to spare? You can live like a Mughal emperor in New York’s own Taj – the iconic Pierre Hotel in New York.

It’s always nice to see the Indian tricolor flag flying outside the landmark Pierre Hotel on Fifth Avenue, which was acquired by the Taj Hotels of the Tata Group in 2005. Now known as the Taj Pierre Hotel, the hotel underwent a multimillion dollar transformation recently and is the very visible US flagship of Taj Hotels, a stone’s throw from Central Park.