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There was a time many years ago when Indian-Americans had to travel to India to get their holiday outfits, music and jewelry – or at least drive down to the nearest Little India, which may have been miles away, depending on which part of the US you lived in. Now times have changed and your India fix is a click away, thanks to eBay.
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There was a time in America when Indian food, like Rodney Dangerfield, got no respect. Westerners (and some embarrassed Indians) tried to eat rotis with knife and fork, complained of the greasiness and the smell of the cuisine, and thought Indian food began and ended with ‘curry’.
That was then – this is now!
In our new global world, Indian cuisine is hot – and cool! Everyone seems to understand the language of Indian food, Indian chefs are stars and Indian cuisine has many fans, is anointed by Michelin and Zagat, and is the subject of great reviews. So it was inevitable that a glamorous award ceremony celebrating these successes would be next – the Varli Global Culinary Awards for the best and brightest in Indian cuisine…
Year of India at Queens College; Holiday Party at Asia Society; Intern at Pratham
Indian-Americans finally have a presence in the US Congress – Ami Bera, MD, is the new Congressman-Elect from California’s 7th Congressional District. I had interviewed him some months back when he was running a hard-fought race against the incumbent Congressman Dan Lungren, who conceded today.
For Ami Bera, serving people has been an important part of who he is, and he is ever conscious of the need to give back to a country which embraced his immigrant family. While he grew up in California, his father crossed the oceans from a farming family in Rajkot near Ahmedabad, Gujarat for a higher education in America. “My father was the first in his family to go to high school,” he says. “He got a master’s in engineering and my mother became a teacher.”
Like many immigrant families, theirs’ was a close-knit family with a lot of emphasis on education, hard work. His father ran a small commercial real estate business, and inculcated the values for a strong work ethic in his children. “There was a strong family support and strong community support,” he recalls. “And also a keen appreciation of the opportunities America offered.”
“Anyone that knows the desi culture knows that it is primarily male dominated…men control the household, make the decisions, and decide on the direction of the family. Does that formula still apply to a woman in her mid-thirties, who has exited her past and created a whole new personality to gel with her environment?
A woman who has lived independently for a few decades and experienced life in the way she sees fit. She has gone to the bars and clubs, enjoyed the music, watched the latest movies, experienced different fashion statements, and met a variety of people. All in all, she has self healed her wounds, picked herself up and moved on repeatedly.”
Guest Blog – The Single Desi (Photo: alvarotapia hidalgo)
“In the Hindi language, there are no sweeter words than ‘Muh Meetha Karwaho’ – ‘Make Your mouth Sweet’ – and any occasion of joy needs a sweet ending. Something about the idea of how no meal was truly complete without a sweet bite and how every major celebration, gathering and even religious event is commemorated with sweets has resonated with me.
I can’t count how many times I’ve heard someone say, ‘Make your mouth sweet’, but I do it happily every time. However, it is Diwali that I especially remember from my childhood because it featured an abundance of sweets.”
Sponsored Guest Blog by Shefalee Patel
She’s a svelte and golden goddess with a cooking utensil in her hand and she’s coveted by all those in the world of cuisine.
We’re talking of course of the Varli Culinary Award, in the form of a lithe sculpture – and now the most talented chefs are going to be able to take her home as a testimony to their cooking talent.
On November 15, foodies, chefs and restaurateurs will gather for the first Varli Culinary Awards at the Altman Building in New York City to honor the best talents in Indian cuisine. The chief judge of the evening is renowned cooking authority Sanjeev Kapoor whose show ‘Khana Khazana’ is a huge hit on TV. The hosts for the evening are popular New York actors Manu Narayan and Pooja Kumar.
Hard to believe but true – a whopping three billion cups of tea are consumed daily worldwide. Indeed, if there’s one drink that no South Asian can resist, it’s a cup of steaming hot desi chai! Festive snacks and sweets need the perfect sip to magnify the celebrations. Now Lufthansa has brewed just the perfect holiday campaign – a dedicated micro site which is a platform to bring together family and friends for the holiday season.
Here are the top 10 reasons for visiting Lufthansa’s Virtual ChaiLounge…
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“I have to say that I was very blessed as a child as I grew up in a family that was blessed with great cooks! My dad is amazing at making meat based dishes, my mother – I think she should be called the Vegetable Whisperer – has a delightful way with vegetables and pretty much my entire extended family either cooks well or knows where to take you for a great meal!
My fondest memory as a child is sitting in the kitchen with my dad and watching him cook his legendary butter chicken. Not only did I know the dish would turn out amazing (it always did) but it was a time for us to connect and talk about his world travels. I adored listening to his stories and was thrilled whenever he would make this dish as it meant he would be in a mood (and have time) to talk!”
Monica Bhide chats with the Single Desi on Food, Family – and recipes for the perfect date!
After being the chef at Vermilion, the acclaimed Indian-Latin fusion restaurants in Chicago and New York for eight years and the first Indian woman to be a competitor on The Iron Chef and The Next Iron Chef, what do you do for an encore?
Well, if you’re Maneet Chauhan, you take a break. You go have a baby, become a judge on Food Network’s ‘Chopped’, work on two cook books and plan a new restaurant in Nashville, TN, partnering with the M Street Restaurant Group.
Here Maneet shares her life and recipes with Lassi with Lavina readers!
India gave us the sari, the salwar kameez, the lengha. So what’s coming next?
“The Indian gown!” says Shirin Vinayak of Shehnaai Couture, who just got back from Lakme Fashion Week. “Indian fabrics, Indian embroideries and Western silhouettes seem to be the way to go, not only for the red carpet but also for reception wear as well.”
Gowns are all the rage with Bollywood stars like Katrina Kaif and Kareena Kapoor, as well as the Page 3 crowd in India, tricking down to young women in the metros.
Vinayak is bringing that trend of the Indian gown in – “I feel like culturally that works for us here and so this is the first year that we have a full display of gowns on our rack.”
Once upon a time three young rising chefs were handed shrimp, an immaculate kitchen. limited time and a medley of ingredients to orchestrate into an award-winning new shrimp masterpiece. They dashed and they mashed, they mixed and they fixed, they chopped and they pureed as a lineup of pedigreed judges and VIP guests watched with bated breath and hungry stomachs.
The event was Varli’s ‘Rising Star Chef 2012’ live competition at Junoon featuring chefs under the age of 35 – Bhavesh Patel (Moghul Caterers), Shravan Shetty (Urban Spice), and Sylva Senat (Tashan). Each created a signature entrée and served a tasting to the celebrity panel of judges – noted chef Jehangir Mehta of Graffiti and Mehtaphor; restaurateur Rajesh Bhardwaj, and award-winning cook book authors Monica Bhide and Ramin Ganeshram.
Three Shrimp Creations from Varli Rising Star Chefs at Junoon Restaurant in New York
The world knows of Dropbox, which is estimated to be a $ 5 billion company but few know that its genesis happened at Y Combinator, an incubator of start-ups which also nurtured the $1. 3 billion Airbnb.
“Y Combinator has become the central place to see where the next huge companies will be born and this makes it tremendously exciting to be a part of,” says Harj Taggar, 29, who is part of the core team at Y Combinator.
Since 2005 Y combinator has funded over 380 startups, including Reddit, Scribd, Disqus, Dropbox, ZumoDrive, Justin.tv, Posterous, Airbnb, Heyzap, Cloudkick, DailyBooth, WePay, Bump, Stripe, AeroFS, and Hipmunk.It has been called the most prestigious program for budding entrepreneurs and has created an entirely new method of funding early stage startups.
“I remember my mother’s cooking and how the entire house used to smell like a culinary heaven then. She used to wash our clothes by hand because we didn’t have a washing machine; the only help she had was a cleaning lady who used to sweep and mop the floors daily. Rest of the chores were her responsibility which she performed lovingly and without complaint.
Fast forward to me now, I can’t think of managing the house like my mom and need a lot of help from a lot of people to survive. I have a lot of like-minded friends who are as hopelessly inefficient as I am.
But the domestic help has also evolved with us, and are no longer the docile, simple kind. Their lifestyles have undergone a transformation too and sometimes they are even more advanced than their employers. It’s now all about cell phones and designer labels!”
Guest Blog – Chatty Divas
New York fashionitas rejoice! Soon noted Indian designer Anita Dongre will be making her US debut, and in her many labels you are bound to find your vibe. Her style has brought cachet to everything from the airlines to the hospitality industry and her designs can be found in films like ‘My Brother Nikhil’, ‘Bas Ek Pal’ and ‘Sorry Bhai’. Fresh from her dazzling show at Lakme Fashion Week, Anita Dongre shows her latest couture and answers your questions.
“Q: Do you think you need a different fashion lingo for New York or are you planning to bring the same looks to the US? How different or similar are the sensibilities in Mumbai and Manhattan?
A: Women all over the world share a commonality which is to discover new trends and style statements so the lingo in New York isn’t necessarily different. We as designers have to constantly be reinventing our designs whether for the consumer in Manhattan or Mumbai. There is a similarity between the two cities as both are fast paced cities and women are always on the go and they want to dress efficiently yet trendy.”
On this golden summer afternoon, it seemed quite a good option to be jobless, a tourist or a window shopper browsing the Financial District rather than a hedge fund guy or a banker immersed in a dry office!
In a surreal juxtaposition, sparkling Bollywood, Indian music and dance had come to NYC’s downtown business area, with costumed dancers doing high kicks against the skyscrapers and bringing the ‘nakras’ and ‘chakras’ of Indian dance to this rather sober part of town.
Tourists gaped from the top of open double decker tourist buses which rolled past the plaza with its unexpected celebration of Bharat Natyam, Kuchipudi, Kathak and ‘filmi’ Bollywood dance. Right on One New York Plaza was Erasing Borders: Festival of Indian Dance, a free event co-presented by the Indo-American Arts Council and Battery Dance Company as part of the 31st Downtown Dance Festival.
It’s been more than a year since I moved to Gurgaon, India, from the US. While my routine still is very similar to what it was in Connecticut, social life in India has created a drastic change in the quality of my days. And with that one single change my life has transformed in entirety.
It was raining friends in the city of Delhi and Gurgaon; the excitement and anticipation of their visits is peaked because of the stories they carry with them enriching my knowledge in the process. This occurrence reminds me of the folk tales in Bengali literature called “Thakur Mar Jhuli”. Am I becoming the “Thakur Ma” (paternal grandmother) with the sack of stories then?
Why would young people all be wearing sunglasses in the darkness of a happening bar? The Empire State Building was recently lit up with a very different kind of light- the light of giving – when CH2 hosted the 20/20 Party Bring Sight Tonight at the Empire Room. CH2, the junior branch of Children’s Hope India, held a swinging cocktail soiree for over 300 supporters – and the idea of this fun evening was to raise funds to correct and prevent blindness in children in India through the K.K. Eye Institute of Pune.
While everyone had a fun evening, the cool thing as a guest was to acquire a pair of dark glasses – given as a thank you gift to those who contributed towards funding eye care for children in rural India. “Everyone was wearing their sunglasses, adding another fun element to the night while also a great reminder for why they were all there,” recalls Puja Pahlajani, a CH2 board member.
Children’s Hope India presents the Black and White Ball to mark a grand anniversary – its 20th year of service to children. Two decades ago this New York-based non-profit started as a small group of women professionals hoping to make a difference in the lives of disadvantaged children.
Now in 2012, CHI has over 20 projects across India which have served 200,000 children, looking after their health, education and vocational training. CHI projects are in Delhi, Mumbai, Calcutta, Bangalore, Bhuj, Pune, Jabalpur and several villages in Rajasthan and Tamil Nadu.