Browsing: India

This Dusshera the Goddess Durga herself descended to earth in a powerful tableaux at the Children’s Hope India Gala – Viva Calcutta on October 13, 2013. Over 430 guests who came to this fundraiser for children’s health and education at Pier Sixty in Chelsea Piers, New York, saw this breath-taking 200 1b idol seated in a pandal of radiant hues of red, gold and orange.

A day of celebration indeed as it was not only Dusshera and the last day of the Bengali Puja holidays but also an evening to enjoy the seductive charms of the city of Calcutta, now known as Kolkata. The festive evening, which had a keynote address by Indra Nooyi, Chairman and CEO of PepsiCo, raised $450,000 for CHI projects.

It’s the biggest block party in America with a desi touch. In fact, it’s become an American tradition – the AIA Deepavali Mela at South Street Seaport where thousands of people of Indian origin gather to celebrate their most important festival – Diwali. Having been to many Diwali Melas in India, I can attest this is as big, as grand and as fun as the ones back in India.ndians are also famous for making and breaking records of all kinds and this year you also get to dance with DJ Rekha and set the Guinness World Record for the largest Outdoor Bhangra party!

Where does that gorgeous Indian outfit go after you’ve worn it? I think all of us have faced this dilemma – spending a fortune on an Indian ensemble and not wanting to repeat it again. What do you do with such ornate outfits and how do you get new ones without spending more money?

Dina Patel, a very successful investment banker has used her business smarts to come up with the perfect solution for you! Turning entrepreneur, she’s created Didi’s Wardrobe – a reseller of new and gently used Indian clothing and accessories – in America!
This is what we call reincarnation – the American way! (Sponsored Content – Tips You Can Use)

By winning the Miss America title, Nina Davuluri has scored big for all those little brown girls who were always the outsider and had to answer the taunt “But where are you really from?” Generations of kids were often asked why their mothers had dots on their heads and whether they lived in huts and about their connection to tigers, snakes and elephants.

The title of Miss America makes Nina Davuluri as American as apple pie, as American as American can be. In fact, you can dance the bhangra, eat dosas and sambar, worship any God you choose – and you’re still American. Davuluri’s win shows Indian-American children that their many differences are what make America rich and special, and don’t make them any less American

“Once you hit your 30’s, you aren’t going back. It is essentially your last time to have children before having children at a later age of 40. If you are in your 20’s, you have a lot of time on your hands; you can mess up and get back in the dating game. You have a lot of energy to introduce yourself and re- introduce yourself to different people…. However 30 something women know that they are running out of time and their biological clock is ticking.

30 something women have to make the choice of whether to be parents without a life partner in which case, their option would either be adoption or in vitro fertilization. Nowadays, there are a lot of women who want children and want to move on with their life without the help of a partner.” Guest Blog

Picture this: The world of global fashion designers who dress glamorous celebrities with bold-face names and fashionistas; leggy models wearing fabulous fashions and glittering jewels; high-end stores showcasing the whimsies of fashion.

Then picture this: Struggling South Asian women without marketable skills, little income, closeted lives and low expectations, no language skills, always working, always the care-givers with no prospects of a better life.

Two very different world views – yet in a moment they can come together to the benefit of both. Meet Ranjana Khan, noted jewelry designer, and Naeem Khan, the iconic designer who has dressed everyone from First Lady Michelle Obama to Hollywood Royalty. Come September 26, they are opening up their penthouse studio for a fashion fundraiser to support struggling South Asian women achieve success and confidence through the non-profit organization Wishwas.org.

“Once in the US, much like in most Jhumpa Lahiri stories, my husband plunged into his work leaving me to figure out the foreign land and how much we would like each other.
Well, we had our tussles but America finally gave in and I made a place there. All this took a little more than a year. I finally found a job and discovered a life I could actually fall in love with. However, I remember us being really stubborn about our resolve of returning to our country ‘no matter what.'”
Guest Blog – Chatty Divas

Visiting family and old high school friends is a part of life – especially if you are settled in a city away from them.

This blog is for those of you in your 20’s and 30’s that live far from your family and have spontaneously made a trip down and decided to spend some quality time visiting with your parents and high school friends.

“Spending quality time with your family does not necessarily mean you have to compromise the person you are today. Let’s face it, you are all grown up. As soon as you left your parents’ home you changed. Dealing with generation X and Y, working different jobs, making friends, balancing your relationship with your current boyfriend has all led you to a more grown up you. No matter what anyone wants from you, you will never return to your high school identity. It is your life now and you create the rules.”
Guest Blog

“It will be almost 20 years since I left an Indian household and became an individual entity. I have now turned into myself. I run my own household, follow my own rules, pay my own bills and travel to the destinations of my choice.
Whenever I talk to people of my parents’ generation they always point out that they went from their parents’ household to their husband’s household. They didn’t get the freedom that we seem to have in the middle of life.” Single Desi Blog

Looking ahead to the golden days of Summer, Chef Hemant Mathur shares some delightful recipes for the outdoors – with desi spices! Recipes for grilled shrimp, chicken Tikka and tandoori vegetables. Just right for the holiday weekend!

India, Pakistan, Bangladesh…migrants from towns and villages, leaving everything behind to create something new, something of their own in America.

It’s all about journeys, about the lives you leave behind and the new ones you make. We’ve all got into a plane, left a place and arrived somewhere else. The baggage we’ve carried is physical things – loved old photographs and mementos, homemade garam masala – but it’s also about memories, lost homes and loved ones who are no longer with us.

The way artists deal with this excess baggage and physical and mental borders is through paint and canvas, creating a new reality which did not exist before. For the past ten years, IAAC’s ‘Erasing Borders: has been giving this space to artists to share their creations and their innermost thoughts, and this year too artists participated in this long lasting celebration of home and the world, as more and more artists take on the global trek.

It was a power-packed evening with over 580 people from the worlds of business, arts and philanthropy. AIF, whose honorary chair is President Bill Clinton, has impacted the lives of more than 1.7 million of India’s poor. This evening raised big bucks – $ 1. 5 million – for AIF’s Market Aligned Skills Training (MAST) Program which provides underprivileged youths skill training in India.

“One day you are uprooted and told that this is not your home any more. Not only that – this is a different country altogether!

Then follows an insane bloodshed which scars the lives of friends and neighbors for years to come. I cannot understand this absurdity. I find it very stupid, drawing lines on paper and fighting over land. The worst is we continue to thrive on hatred, the seeds of which were sown in 1947.”
– Nitin Kakkar, director of ‘Filmistan’ which has won the 2013 National Award for best Hindi film.

This year Mira Nair celebrates the 25th anniversary of her first feature film, the Oscar-nominated ‘Salaam Bombay’ and also the birth of her new film, ‘The Reluctant Fundamentalist’.
On the eve of the release of ‘Salaam Bombay!’ in New York back in 1988, I had taken a subway downtown to interview the new, not-so-famous filmmaker in her tiny apartment.
The world had not yet discovered ‘Salaam Bombay’ but she was exuberant, excited, animated.
Twenty-five years later, she seems exactly the same – exuberant, excited, animated. There have been critically acclaimed films from ‘Mississippi Masala’ to ‘Monsoon Wedding’ to ‘The Namesake’. The awards and accolades have been coming thick and fast.’The Reluctant Fundamentalist’ screened at The Venice International Film Festival and the Tribeca Film Festival, among others. Nair calls it her labor of love, five years in the making.

‘Midnight’s Children’ – a major film collaboration born out of an epic book – and film-goers are waiting in excited anticipation, popcorn and soda ready.
At a preview screening at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, author Salman Rushdie and director Deepa Mehta were in a fun mood, completing each other’s sentences, putting a light-hearted spin on things, and what came through clearly is the rapport they share.

I think I’ll entertain you all meanwhile with the goings on of that evening.

“Meet Amma, 85, who sits all day smoking weed! She has a farmhouse and lives in a lavish set up with some 12 -15 rooms. She grows weed in her backyard, tends to it in the morning with immense love; orders her tea and carries it to the lawn where she smokes up some of her creation.
She puts on her thick rimmed glasses and controls her shaking hands till they settle on the page of her diary where she writes a new story every day! When I heard that, I knew immediately who I wanted to be when I ‘grew up’.” Guest Blog – Chatty Divas. Photo: Marilena Benini

“Being first generation isn’t easy for anyone. However, once you finish the first 30 years, you begin to understand life a little bit more. Being in my mid-thirties, I am able to pass on some wisdom that might help other first generation desis on their life journey.”
22 Tips to a More Productive Lifestyle from The Single Desi

The latest salvo, of course, has come in the wake of the Delhi rape scandal, and has tarnished the reputation of the country immeasurably. Not that rape and women’s rights are not real problems in India, but the persecution of an entire nation and culture is unjustified.

After all, we are still talking about a nation with thousands of years of rich history and advancement behind it and a cultural pedigree that frankly far outpaces that of America; not Iran or some tribal village in Afghanistan where they still use the abacus and stone women for adultery.

We are also talking about a nation with more than a billion people and very complex sectarian, cultural, religious, and economic dynamics that don’t lend themselves to black-and-white characterization or blanket judgment. Guest Blog – Sanjay Sanghoee

You’re in the comfortable upper middle-class home of Changez Khan’s parents in Lahore where a qawwalli concert is in full swing and the mesmerizing sounds of Sufi devotional music pervade the room.
The camera zones in on the red paan-stained mouths of the performers, then cuts to the kidnapping of an American academic on the dark streets of Lahore, then back to the musical energy, the total civility of Urdu poetry in bloom. Paan stains and blood. Ethereal music, gun shots and screams. The crescendo rises and you are totally hooked.

The great thing about New York City is that you never know whom you’re going to meet and where. It’s like pulling a slot machine lever every morning and watching a waterfall of casino coins tumble out – or not!
So if you had told me that before the week was midway through I’d be sipping wine at Tina Brown’s fabulous apartment and hobnobbing with celebrated author William Dalrymple and a bunch of celebrities, I would have been skeptical. But that’s the way the week turned out. Only in New York City…