Browsing: Features

If the Best Exotic Marigold Hotel was really a hotel in Rajasthan, I think I’d like to spend a few weeks there for there’s just such a kookie charm about the going-to-seed establishment and the young manager Sonny Kapoor, played by Dev Patel with maniac energy and chutzpah, is such an exuberant, happy host.

Indeed ‘The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel’ gives outsourcing a whole new dimension. What if old age could be outsourced – to India? The film follows a group of British retirees who decide to move to India to get more bang for their buck – and discover a whole new world at the Best Exotic Marigold Hotel ‘for the elderly and beautiful’. Recently the stars of the film were in New York and weighed in on their experiences in India.

Can’t get to South Beach? Come to the next best thing – Children’s Hope India’s much anticipated annual Spring Lunch – Miami Beat! Over 250 women are expected at this fun event poolside at the beautiful Crest Hollow Country Club in Long Island. Ranjana Khan, the noted designer, will be honored as Woman of Distinction for having achieved success and balanced the worlds of work and family perfectly.

Who are Shah Rukh Khan fans? No anthropological thesis this, but anecdotal evidence and what my eyes saw at the recent Yale event where the Bollywood Badshah was honored with the Chubb Fellowship, I would have to say SRK fans are an ageless lot, going all the way from babyhood to Golden Oldies.

Actually maybe it starts even earlier with Shah Rukh-mad moms watching his movies during their pregnancies, giving their unborn babies a taste of Chammak Challo while still in the womb!

When Carlton Kitto was just a teenager many decades ago in Calcutta, he had a love, and its name was jazz. At first, it was an innocent attraction, but the notes kept calling him, taunting him. It became an obsession and soon the yearning was too great. He had to make a choice between staying back and fulfilling expectations, or leaving to chase jazz where it took him. Fifty years later he’s still playing for crowds in the new documentary that bears his name, “Finding Carlton: Uncovering the story of jazz in India.”
It will be screened at the U.N. on April 30 as part of Indian Mission’s programming for the first International Jazz Day.

For many Indians living in America, India is the talisman, the sacred thread around their wrists, which connects them to the past and their changing tomorrows. Visit any Indian American family and there are bound to be keepsakes which link them to their lost homeland.

For some it may be a frayed album of photographs frozen in time, for others it may be a much loved folk painting or a pair of tablas, percussion drums. For me it is my silver icons of Krishna and Radha, on their own carved throne, which sits is in my home in Long Island, NY.

I look at it and I am transported back to my home in New Delhi in the India of decades ago. My mother would bathe the many Gods in her home shrine and carefully put new clothing on these mini figurines, cutting holes in silken cloth with a small pair of scissors.

“Before touching ground, I had already decided that this film would be about children. Eye disease is an affliction commonly associated with the old. But, one fifth of the world’s blind children live in India. In my mind, it’s a demographic that still has their whole lives ahead of them. I needed a Director of Photography who was a master at artfully capturing children.

Marcelo Bukin, who had shot and directed many award winning films (Dreaming Nicaragua), was originally from Argentina, but had spent time shooting films for foundations in Latin America. His reel of a little cobbler boy named Joseu speaking about how his father beats his mother, got me.” – Joya Dass, filmmaker, ‘First Sight’

This has been quite a year for noted actor and activist Shabana Azmi who was awarded the Padma Bhushan by the Government of India. She’s just finished Deepa Mehta’s ‘Midnight’s Children’ based on Salman Rushdie’s novel and is currently making a film with Vishal Bharadwaj. She has been chosen by TIME Magazine as 1 of 25 Asian heroes and is the only woman amongst 4 Indians on the list.

Now comes her New York minute! Shabana Azmi was presented a proclamation by New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo’s Office for Motion Picture and Television Development for her commitment to the arts and contributions to New York City’s film industry.

Shah Rukh Khan fans – the King of Bollywood is coming to Yale University! This is a brand new real life role for SRK, who is being recognized as a Chubb Fellow at the prestigious university on April 12.

Shah Rukh Khan is in extremely good company: Former fellows include President George W. Bush, Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter, authors Octavio Paz, Carlos Fuentes and Toni Morrison; filmmaker Sofia Coppola; architect Frank Gehry; choreographer Mikhail Baryshnikov and journalist Walter Cronkite.
And yes, there’s actually a chance to see SRK!

Some days just begin with news that delivers a powerful kick to your gut and the world seems to stop for a minute.
Sonia Rai, the young woman who gave a human face to the South Asian bone marrow drive, lost her fight against Acute Myelogenous Leukemia today.
You feel saddened and quite helpless.
So we pause and think of the beautiful life lost and what she would have liked us to do, what efforts she would like us to make.
The battle may have been lost but the war goes on.

Some things never change. Lord Krishna played holi with Radha and her sakhis in the lush groves of Brindaban in timeless time – and now we are still playing it in the 21st century, not only in India but across the diaspora – even on board a ship anchored off New York city, no less!
Holi, the Hindu festival of colors, is here heralding spring, joy and togetherness. In India, the streets are turned multicolored with every hue imaginable. At private parties there are pichkari-fights as revelers get splashed with color, dunked in pools full of colored water, and splurge on sweets and gets intoxicated on thandai, often laced with bhang. We share a wonderful video of the late great showman Raj Kapoor whose Holi parties were legendary. Enjoy!

For people from South Asia, especially Pakistan, it was a big moment when Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy won the Oscar for Best Documentary for ‘Saving Face’.

It was a triumph for the Pakistani filmmaker and her co-director Daniel Junge, a triumph for Pakistan bringing home Oscar gold for the first time – but most of all, it was a triumph for the women who have been victimized with acid attacks – the most incomprehensible mode of revenge by angry men – jilted lovers and disgruntled spouses.

Modern day iconic artists like the late MF Husain, FN Souza or Tyeb Mehta are the rock stars of the Indian art world and you see their celebrity status reflected at art biennales and gallery openings, and in the high prices their work commands in the auction houses. They are the superstars, the rajas of any social event, the focal point of international culture. Everyone knows their name.

Yet there is another set of artists who never achieved fame in their lifetime, and whose names no one knows. We are talking of the superb master painters who lived and worked from 1100 to 1900, who rarely signed a canvas with their own names, and who lived and died in anonymity.
They created some of the most magnificent works for emperors, maharajas and the nobility, and yet today no one knows their names or faces.

“We want to give a sense, an understanding that these works produced by anonymous craftsmen in dimly lit backrooms – these were very creative individuals responding to a particular place and time and their response to the subject matter and the demands of their patron – all those things went into the mix.” Curator John Guy, Metropolitan Museum of Art

Love is the four-letter word most used today on Valentine’s Day and who knows how to use it better than A.R. Rahman.? On this day of love and one-ness, listen to the Maestro’s new song. It covers all the shades of joy and sorrow, togetherness and separation, wanting and denial which make up the high drama of love.

What better insurance for a home’s peace and prosperity than installing an image of Ganesha or Buddha within it? For the spiritually inclined and the stylish, jewelry designer Amrita Singh has introduced a home collection line which includes some beautiful icons for the home. Singh who was recently in Bali, came back inspired by the sheer joy of having a touch of spirituality in one’s home.

Zenobia Shroff, the talented actress who starred in Sooni Taraporevala’s splendid ‘Little Zizou’ is back on the big screen, this time in a real, dyed in glitz, Bollywood super-starrer ‘Ek Main aur Ekk Tu’ starring Bollywood royalty Kareena Kapoor and Imran Khan and produced by none other than Karan Johar. The film has a great ensemble cast and New York based Zenobia gets to play Kareena Kapoor’s mother, a fun, cool mom to be sure!

Here she talks about ‘Ek Main Aur Ekk Tu’ and the hilarious, catchy item number ‘Auntyji’ which seems to be dominating the air waves and Youtube videos.

In India you can see man and monkeys living together in an uneasy truce. A photograph that got away was of at least 20 monkeys all dangling from a traffic light pole in Agra! Before I got my camera out, the bus had moved on and the clambering monkeys remain a delightful snapshot in my memory. I’m sure the monkeys run rampant in places like Benares, Mathura and Haridwar.

In fact, I distinctly remember having my toast snatched from my hand by a greedy monkey at the Haridwar Railway Station many years ago. Now I caught glimpses of monkeys – and humans, outside a small wayside temple near the Ranthambhore National Park. Seen as a form of Hanuman, the venerated Monkey God, these monkeys are indulged and even fed by passers-by.

Ever had the experience of dressing up and rushing out – into a downpour? Or freezing in a slinky outfit when the weather suddenly turns abrasive? Looking out of the window to judge the weather is just not good enough – a more practical weather forecaster might be Daily Dress Me!

“Tis the Season to Be Fabulous fa la la la la…I love the holiday season. The shopping; the sales; the extravagant get-togethers; the holiday parties; the cookies; the gifts; the Secret Santas; the holiday cards; the holiday movies; the New Year’s eve parties and the chocolate. What a great way to say goodbye to a year and ring in the New Year with some great spirit and some awesome love.”

In fashion-mad New York, it’s not just the people who get decked out in designer fashion – their bicycles do too! The recent Tour de Fashion may not have been exactly the Tour de France, but bikes certainly received a lot of love from some of New York’s top designers including Diane Von Furstenberg, Isaac Mizrahi, Betsey Johnson, Elie Tahari, Yeohlee, Nanette Lepore, Nicole Miller and many more.
Noted jewelry designer Amrita Singh and happening fashion designers Prabal Gurung and Bibhu Mohapatra were the South Asian presence at this buzz-y fest with designers, fashionistas and hordes of fashionholics.