Will students be heading to American universities to get their degrees as Ayurvedic doctors? Will patients seek out practitioners of this 5000 year old system of medicine from India when next they have health problems? And will Ayurveda form the basis for new health and beauty products, even of restaurant menus, in the US?
Browsing: Features
‘Hiding Divya’ is a provocative Indie film which takes on hard issues – and delivers. Mental illness is a taboo word in the Indian-American community – it’s about loss of face, ‘bad blood’ and failure – and is often kept under wraps. Filmmakers Rehana Mirza & Rohi Mirza Pandya get the dialogue going…
Above: Pooja Kumar and Madhur Jaffrey in ‘Hiding Divya’
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For once, the gregarious Shah Rukh Khan didn’t have a word to say. He stood as still as a statue – oh, what am I saying – this Shah Rukh Khan was a statue – a wax one at that! The famous tourist attraction Madame Tussauds in Times Square has now immortalized superstar King Khan in wax, and throngs of fans came to see him holding court in the Bollywood Zone.
Who would have thought Osama Bin Ladin could make you smile? The face that gives one nightmares becomes central to ‘Tere Bin Laden’, a good-natured, cheeky comedy which is almost a fable about America’s war on terror.
What would the real Osama say if he saw ‘Tere Bin Laden’? Says director Abhishek Sharma, “I think even he would be amused to see the way we have used Bin Laden tapes to show the madness in the post 9/11 world.”
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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
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.
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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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.
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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.
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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‘Kites’ Review
‘Kites’ is the face of the new global Indian film industry – fast-paced, fast-moving and completely at home on the world stage. From beginning to end, it has the look and feel of a big international film, and moves flawlessly and boldly, from glittering Vegas casinos to raw desert terrain to fabulous mansions. But where is the soul?
Pop artist Anoop Desai has been on everybody’s radar ever since he became a finalist on the eighth season of “American Idol.” Now his first independently released EP ‘All is Fair’ has hit the airwaves. His new single is titled ‘My Name.’
Was growing up in North Carolina with a name like Anoop difficult?
“Kids made fun of it all the time, in the school bus, and I remember coming home from kindergarten and demanding that my mom change my name, because I wanted to be a Bill or something,” he recalls.
“I cringe at that now because I am lucky to have my name, lucky to have my culture. That’s what makes me unique and a lot of people don’t have that.”
Like hundreds of fans, I’m headed out for the AR Rahman show tonight. Will have a report for you tomorrow. Meanwhile some Rahmanisms to keep you going!
I recalled a very different, calmer afternoon with Rahman several years ago when I was doing an interview with him for Beliefnet, the spirituality website. It was a one-on-one with the maestro in his hotel room and his staff had placed an Indian lunch for us on the table. Learning that I was fasting on that day, Rahman himself disappeared and returned with a glass of orange juice which he silently placed before me. Such is his empathy for other people.
A gossamer web of stories ensnares the reader in ‘One Amazing Thing,’ Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s new novel, taking you into distant lands, hidden places in the heart and into the hidden strengths people have.
Nine very different people drawn by chance or luck or destiny into the same spot just as disaster strikes. They are all gathered for obtaining visas to India in the basement of the Indian consulate in an unnamed American city when a powerful earthquake strikes. ALSO LISTEN TO A LIVE INTERVIEW WITH CHITRA DIVAKARUNI
When different lives, different experiences intersect, you get something totally unexpected and fresh. That’s the story of The Sa Dance Company – twelve dancers coming from diverse disciplines and filtering their moves together into something unique. Many of them are from Ivy League colleges and work at blue chip corporations but through it all they’ve kept their deep passion for dance.
They may live in American cities, go to American schools but Bollywood runs in their blood. We’re talking of young Indian-Americans, thousands and thousands of them, scattered across American towns and cities. Weaned on Bollywood movies on DVD since babyhood, they learn the Shah Rukh moves, the Madhuri moves, the Shahid moves, almost by osmosis in family living rooms.
Later many of them learn dance, classical and Bollywood, at the scores of Indian dance schools that have sprouted up in towns and cities. They dance at family events, birthdays and weddings, as naturally as if they were in a Bollywood movie and it was written into the script of life.