“She may be mythical to many but I have not yet learned to control the free flow of tears when I look at her killing the demon with the spear, in a trance -like environment created by the sound and movement of the Dhakis, traditional drummers.

To me she is a modern day working girl – our Ma Durga! Created with the fire of the Trimurti, she works diligently to kill Asura – the ‘demonized’ image of everyday evils that we need to deal with in our lives. In a world where women’s subjugation still is an agenda to be dealt with, it is mesmerizing to see multitudes of strong powerful men bowing their head to the divine Ma.” GUEST BLOG – Chatty Divas

The fireworks still explode in the memory, and the taste of nuts and cream and sugar still linger on the tongue. For immigrants from India, the childhood memories of Diwali are strong, for it is a time when India transforms into one glittering celebration. Public buildings are illuminated with neon lights and every home, no matter how humble, is ablaze with earthen lamps. In fact, entire villages are turned into fairylands, dotted with millions of lamps, glowing in the dark of night.

Want to make some spiritual gains and rub shoulders with Gods and Goddesses? The place to go for darshan is the Brooklyn Museum because here you get to meet not one, not two but all ten avatars of Vishnu, Hinduism’s Blue-Skinned Savior.

“Vishnu – one of Hinduism’s most important and powerful deities – is the Great Preserver, vanquishing those who seek to destroy the balance of the universe,” writes Joan Cummins in ‘Vishnu – Hinduism’s Blue-Skinned Savior.’ Indeed, the time looks ripe for Vishnu’s avatar to come to earth…

A chat with Joan Cummins, who is the Curator of South Asian art at Brooklyn Museum.

Is Skype the new matchmaker? Can a robot inventor find true love in Nepal? Can a Hindu and a Mormon find bliss together? Can you get good karma for just $ 10? Read on..

In a bad economy such as here and now, it helps to have always been creative with very little. Every day at lunch break at the Convent of Jesus and Mary School in Delhi, India, hordes of ink-stained white-uniformed schoolgirls would surround me, salivating for a taste of my home-made lunch: aam ke achaar ke sandwiches.

Diwali in America is all about innovation and creating new traditions and each family follows its past rituals but also adds in new ones. Indeed, Floyd Cardoz, the celebrated chef of Tabla in Manhattan, is a Catholic married to Barkha, a Hindu, and is an avid celebrator of Diwali.
“Even though Floyd and I come from different religious backgrounds, our kids are lucky and blessed to be able to celebrate both holidays,” says Barkha. “They absolutely love Diwali – we do Lakshmi puja in the evening and then it’s followed by the food that is a tradition from when I was a little girl – Pooris with aloo rassa, makhani dal, a paneer dish, gobi sabji, lots of mithai and then the all time favorite – sabudana kheer.”
(Barkha Cardoz with extended family at the Diwali table)

This festive season, welcome to Nina Paley’s animated film ‘Sita Sings the Blues’, yet another retelling of India’s great epic, Ramayana. Perhaps it would be more accurate to call it, as some have done, ‘Sitayana’ for it tells the tale from the perspective of Sita, not unlike the oral retellings through the ages by village women that made Sita the focus of the story. Only here the story is told through the jazz tradition of torch songs, of a lovely, smoky voiced lament more often heard in a dark New York lounge or bar, than in the rural outposts of India.

On 9/11, 2001 all hell broke loose from the sky in Lower Manhattan, and America and Americans have never been the same again. A human trust was broken, and now there’s always a chasm, a looking over the shoulder, a wound which never completely heals.
That brings us to the proposed Cordoba House community center/mosque near Ground Zero. Not a handful of soil has been turned nor a brick has been laid, yet this mosque-to-be has caused angst, debate and anger. Like a phantom, it has entered into conversations, both real and virtual.

Joel Stein wrote about ‘My Own Private India’ in TIME Magazine so I thought this Fourth of July maybe an Indian immigrant should write about ‘My Own Private America’ – and how different it seems to be from the space inhabited by Stein.

I came to the US in the 80’s, as an immigrant via India, Hong Kong and Africa, and landed in Astoria, a gritty Greek neighborhood in Queens. I fell in love with the prosaic neighborhood with its heart of gold, and it was here that I discovered my own private America.

If you went on the Google home page today, you’d have to rub your eyes and wonder whether you were still on Planet Earth. Google has been renamed Topeka! Then you realize – right, its April 1 and this is Google’s idea of an April Fools’ Day prank. As you must remember, some days back the city of Topeka in Kansas did Google the supreme honor of actually renaming itself Google and this has so touched this Jagannath of all internet activity that it decided to change its world-famous name to Topeka – for a day!