VIJAI NATHAN: FUNNY MONEY
“My oldest sister is a Born Again Christian. My mother was very upset when she converted. She said, “Why does she have to be Born Again Christian? We are Hindu – we are born again, and again and again!”
As she says this, Vijai Nathan draws big laughs. With a straight face, she continues: “Every time I go through airport security I get detained. Last time the guard said, ‘Excuse me miss, we hear a ticking sound coming from your body.’ I said, “Oh, that’s just my biological clock. When do you get off work?”
Vijai Nathan, you see, is a stand up comic, and is laughing all the way to the bank. She is one of the first generation of Indian-Americans, born in America, who are expressing themselves in unusual and offbeat careers. Immigrant parents have always favored traditional careers like medicine, law and engineering, so it’s interesting to see how their children are often marching to the beat of a different drummer.
As Vijai, probably the first Indian woman stand up comic, jokes: “My father loves to brag about his daughters. He says, “This is my daughter, Santhi, she is A Doctor. This is my daughter, Indu, she is A Lawyer. This is my daughter Vijai, she is A…. adopted.”
Vijay grew up in the 70’s in Washington DC where her father was with the World Bank and her mother taught Tamil at the State Department. Her family expected her to go the traditional route so she got an honors degree from McGill University in Toronto and worked as a journalist at The Baltimore Sun. Then she gave it up to pursue a career in stand up comedy, doing odd jobs on the side.
“As a little girl, I dreamed of being a star!” she says. “But everyone on T.V. was blonde and blue-eyed. It was discouraging. I never saw anyone that looked like me until Apu from “The Simpsons” showed up. A cartoon Indian who runs a convenience store was the first voice of my people!”
For years Vijai held various day jobs and spent nights doing comedy: “I worked at a café making lattes and answered phones at an office in NYC. Yes – my parents were thrilled that my degree was put to such good use!”
Since her mom raised her the way she had been raised, in the India of the 50’s, she wasn’t allowed to wear pants, cut her hair or date boys and yes, an arranged marriage was in the cards. “Then I realized that the truth was much funnier than anything I could make up,” she says. “I started winning audiences over when I talked about my family and the cultural clashes that happen to an Indian girl growing up in America.”
The main fodder for her comedy act became dating, sex –or the lack of it – and the culture clashes with parents. When she started in 1997, she was the only Indian girl performing and took her show wherever she could get a gig.
As the South Asian population has increased in America, the tribe of Indian stand up comics has multiplied and there are receptive audience. She tours all over the US with her one-woman show. “Good Girls Don’t, But Indian Girls Do”.
Interestingly, Vijai’s comic routines are popular with both generations and are a hit not only at comedy clubs but also at community events. “South Asians connect because they live exactly what I’m talking about,” says Vijai. “They like the fact that I take tough situations, such as pressure to get an arranged marriage or being mistaken for a terrorist every time you go to the airport, and make it funny.”
Vijai Nathan has toured with her new show, “McGoddess: Karma, Big Macs and the American Dream,” and also be performed at the Smithsonian Institute. She performs with four other desi comics on a new DVD called “Indian Invasion: Civilizing the West”.
NANDINI MUKHERJEE: BRINGING IN THE DOUGH
While Vijai is making the masses laugh, Nandini Mukherjee is feeding them Indian bread. This Calcutta native has put naans, paranthas and kati rolls into the lexicon of mainstream New Yorkers with her fun bakery-café in the West Village in Manhattan, on Bleecker Street. And to think she gave up a career as an architect to bake bread!
Nandini, who hails from Calcutta, was an architect in Delhi before heading out to Parsons School of Design in New York, where she obtained a master’s degree in lighting and then worked at the prestigious architectural lighting firm of Fisher Marantz Stone.
While there she got drawn to the vibrant food scene in Manhattan. “I come from a family where cooking was considered on par with any other art form,” she says. “My year at Parsons was spent experiencing and exploring the fascinating budget gourmet scene in the city.”
After taking classes at the French Culinary Institute, Nandini’s decided to make her own contribution to the Big Apple’s culinary offerings. “Though India has a wide variety of distinctive breads, in most Indian restaurants Indian breads are relegated to being add-ons to the main meal,” she says. Wanting to give Indians bread the center stage, she hit upon making bread the star, her take on the bread café culture that she saw around her. She partnered with a friend to open a bakery cum café – “a fast-casual Indian café that reflects the mindset of the global Indian who enjoys parathas as much as paninis.”
In 2003, the Indian Bread Company was born – a place where fresh breads were baked and served in fun ways to people on the go. And so naanwich and naanini have been added to the lexicon of New York street foods, along with parathas and Kati roll wraps in the cozy café in the West village.
So what exactly is a naanwich? Fresh falafel style Naan pocket sandwich with savory fillings of aloo, paneer, chicken or lamb keema, served with a tikka masala sauce. Wrote Lauren Aaronson in New York Metro.com, “The various sandwich formats merge surprisingly well with the South Asian flavors. Ultimately, this small shop doesn’t just blend cultures, it also fuses fast food and quality dining.”
Nandini is now partnered by her husband Chetan Gandhi who works with Intel, and The Indian Bread Company has branched out to catering. It was the only South Asian restaurant chosen, along with other NY eateries, to cater a welcome reception for the Republican National Convention in New York which was hosted by Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Governor George Pataki and Rudy Guiliani at the Time Warner Center.
Nandini uses her architectural background to create the atmosphere for catered events, using banana leaves, candles and flowers. Indian Bread Company also fed 10,000 people at the huge Bengali Convention in Madison Square Garden some years back and also catered the party for plays like Sakharam Binder and Fatwa. Always interested in franchising her concept of taking the street foods of India to the streets of other cities, Nandini entered and won a contest Make Mine a Million, which gives winners the support to take the dream further.
She was endorsed by companies like Count Me In, AmEx and Cisco, and was given access to a team of experts to help with business issues and received credit and loans to expand her business. It also helped in networking as she landed the catering for the Tribeca Film Festival through it. Since then, she’s been in negotiations with companies in the US and Dubai for opening up an Indian Bread Co.
Asked about the most challenging part of creating a new concept, she says she has had to wear multiple hats and juggle many tasks, from the day to day activities of running the café to the funding, network and market strategies to create brand recognition. She also has to hire, and take care of inventory, cost control and staff.
“The challenge is to strike a balance between vision and day to day responsibilities, and the payback is hundredfold,” she says. “The fun part of being an entrepreneur is the opportunity to translate my vision into reality. I get to live my dreams, and my mistakes teach me valuable lessons which I might have learnt later on in my career had I been a salaried employee.”
POOJA NARANG: BOLLYWOOD BELLE
All those years of eating chaat and kati rolls in India have certainly paid off for Nandini but for Canadian-born Pooja Narang, it is Bollywood films which have found her the dream career. Being a dance aficionado and a watcher of Bollywood films, it was natural for Pooja to start Bollywood Axiom, a dance school teaching Bollywood moves in the Times Square area of Manhattan.
“Of course as all desi parents hope for their child to become either a doctor or lawyer, so did my parents, but they were happy that I at least pursued and obtained my IT Degree before taking dance full on,” says Pooja who was director of IT at a security printing company before taking on choreography and dance full time.
Pooja, who was a finalist in the Miss India Canada pageant, was trained in classical Indian dance as a child and later explored jazz and hiphop. With some nice Bollywood connections, she received training from Bollywood’s choreography queen Saroj Khan, as well as the Shiamak Davar Institute.
Fortunately for her, there has been a real dance fever amongst the hundreds of thousands of young Indian Americans – and some of their parents too! All of them want to dance like Shah Rukh Khan and Kareena Kapoor, so the school is thriving. Also, since belly dancing was popular with young Americans who are into fitness, she thought bhangra and Bollywood dancing would catch on with them.
In 2003 Pooja started with just ten students, and now says she has over 400 students, a mix of college students and young professionals. About 40% of her students are American, and she also has classes for children.
Recently Pooja trained Hollywood actress Ali McGraw for her dance scenes in ‘Marigold’, which is set in India and has also finished filming Karma Confessions and Holi, which stars Sushmita Sen and was shot in New York.
And now in a reverse journey, Pooja was invited to Hyderabad to choreograph the festivities at the wedding of an NRI physician’s daughter at Golkonda Resorts. Says Pooja, “I had taught a few other people from their family and friends
circle before so they thought I would add to the spirit of the wedding with my choreography. It was a great experience and the Resort was outstanding. I had a great time shaking a leg with Telugu film star Venkatesh who is a member of the bride’s family.”
Besides running her dance school, Pooja has started providing her dancers for Bollywood films which are shot in New York, including Jaaneman, Kal Ho Na Ho, Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna and Haste Haste. She has also choreographed for independent films like The Gold Bracelet, which was shot in LA and the Hollywood film “Accidental Husband” which stars Uma Thurman. In fact, Pooja got a chance to appear in the dream scene, singing A. R. Rahman’s number ‘ Rang De’ for the film, with her dancers performing.
Yes, all these self-created careers are a world away from journalism, architecture and information technology – but Vijai Nathan, Nandini Mukherjee and Pooja Narang prove that there’s nothing more rewarding than following a passion and making it a profession!
© Lavina Melwani
Photo of dancers by Samir Patel.
