“In our family, the moment a child is born, my grandmother would come with a jar of honey and would dip her little finger into the honey and write ‘Om’ on the baby’s tongue with it. And my mother always tells me, ‘You just opened your mouth and licked up the honey and when she put it again, you licked it up again.”

Through the powerful voices of the dastangohs the tale came alive; you saw life and death, the grandeur, the sorcery, the parades, the fires and the warfare in your mind’s eye. For two hours the crowd at this sold out show sat riveted, taken quite far away, centuries back, on the wings of a language many of them did not understand.

All this was achieved without a blow being dealt, without a sword being drawn or a match lit – a testament to the story-telling powers of the three dastangohs.

“Water is life and I think as a human rights activist there is no more poignant metaphor than water – the commoditization of water and the corporate control of water is to me the human rights issue of the millennium.”

“There is now a real feeling of home, I must say, in all three places. I don’t think I could do without one of them,” says Mira Nair.

“Michelle Obama and Oprah Winfrey were just four feet away from me – and it was the most amazing moment of my life till date because I was singing for Michelle and Oprah and everyone in that room was a celebrity.”

He’s a rock musician and she’s an architect but the two have been creating some intriguing perfumes together. DS and Durga is the name of the perfume that David Moltz and Kavita Ahuja first began concocting as a hobby and which has evolved into a successful business.

President Clinton certainly has the charisma to get pin-drop silence in a room. He was at the Hilton Hotel for the American India Foundation Annual Spring Awards Gala and over 400 heavy hitters from the Indian community turned up.

So how did a PricewaterhouseCoopers accountant-turned venture capitalist- turned entrepreneur get into the world of gaming startups, outsourcing and India, raising over $ 3 million for projects?

The MBA graduate from Columbia University turned entrepreneur with Swirl Events, a hip wine tasting company for corporate and private events, and she’s giving a fresh spin to things.

“None of the sites reflected the wonderful cosmopolitan person my cousin is,” she recalls. “I really didn’t think she cared what someone’s skin complexion was or what their caste was – this was not her world. Yet she wasn’t ready to do it on her own – she still wanted family involvement.”