Author: Lavina Melwani

Lavina Melwani is a New York-based journalist who writes for several international publications. Twitter@lavinamelwani & @lassiwithlavina Sign up for the free newsletter to get your dose of Lassi!

Can the child of a security guard and a homemaker make it to medical school? Jyotsna, a student at CHI-Eklavya, became the first in the school’s history to be awarded a seat in medical school.

Can the daughter of a driver and a home-maker, mired in poverty, not only finish school but make it to college? Kaveri, also from the same school and with a scholarship from CHI, has gone on to win a seat in the prestigious NIT-Jalandar.

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ow do we protect our youngest and most vulnerable children against COVID-19? An eye-opening video for parents of young children as health experts led by NYC Dept. of Health and Mental Hygiene Commissioner Dr. Ashwin Vasan and Senior Ambulatory Care Dr. Ted Long and other experts answer all the questions you may have had about COVID-19, vaccines and children 6 months and older.

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We all know India has an infinite amount of wonderful products from spices to foods to crafts and textiles but do we know what part of the country they really come from?The Consulate General of India in New York, in partnership with the Department of Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) and Invest India, held a Roadshow on One-District-One-Product (ODOP) to showcase India’s best.

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Indian doctors are everywhere but you wouldn’t have expected one to be right on the glittering stage of the 2021 Academy Awards!  Dr. Meena Makhijani was in the elite group receiving the Jean Herscholt Humanitarian Oscar. This year the winner  of this prestigious award was the Motion Picture and Television Fund (MPTF) where Makhijani is physician and the Chief of Staff. Yes, she actually held the iconic Oscar in her hand and recalls with delight:  “It had heft!”

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123 people reached on Instagram – 13 Likes New York Diary Photo of the Day: Manhattan Sky and Waterworks  Nothing quite as powerful as the canvas of sky and water in the concrete jungle of Manhattan – walk away from the traffic and the rush of humanity and you see nature put on quite an electrifying show every day. Its calming and all-encompassing and makes you realize there’s more to life than our small wins and failures. The sky has always been there with its many colors and moods and the river flows on and on.  East River in Manhattan…

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We hear of Indian-American success stories but there are other stories to be told too. So many forgotten immigrants labor in low-paying, thankless jobs: essential workers, restaurant staff, nannies and nail salon workers. The pandemic tightened the screws further as so many found their lifeline receding with loss of jobs, home schooling of children and the inability to pay rent or the grocery bills.

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Ritwik Ghatak’s films are frenetic, heartfelt and heartbreaking, as agonized and without any final answers as life and existence itself. Yet with their tales of partition and loss, of refugees and homelessness, of changing families, of pain and ultimately hope, they touch a chord within contemporary audiences and are relevant even – perhaps especially – now.

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New York is the city for reinvention, for doing old things in new places, unexpected things in unexpected places and so here was I, right in the middle of Times Square with about a million other unknown people standing and doing surya namaskar in the middle of traffic – honking cars, buses and an unending stream of pedestrians.

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