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.
Browsing: 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…
Do you have a few extra million dollars lying around? Did you just pick up the phone and bid $39 ,323,750 on a diamond? No? Well, someone did!
An anonymous collector bidding by phone just parted with $ 39.3 million at Christie’s. This was no ordinary sparkler – a rare 34.65 carat Fancy Intense Pink diamond named the Princie, which originated from the ancient Golconda mines in India.
It is the most expensive diamond ever sold at Christie’s – or in the US.
The more things change, the more they remain the same. Annu Palakunnathu Matthew is an America-based artist who grew up in Kerala. In the late 1990’s she made a portfolio titled Satirizing Bollywood, about her memories of her life as a woman in India. She calls it her ‘Angry Woman’ years. Misogyny and a patriarchal society existed then, and as the recent gang rape and unending cases of abuse of women prove, nothing much has changed. Now two decades later, Matthew has taken on the subject again.
“It’s very Andy Warhol goes Indie-pop,” says designer Sabah Arenja Vig about her collection – and that got me a-wondering: what would Andy Warhol think about our wild, multi-hued surreal Indian fashions? Probably turn them into equally wild, multi-hued surreal art!
Yes, Indian couture is certainly riding high. With a young ever-burgeoning population in India and the diapora, the demand for bridal wear and fashion with a touch of India is only going to grow. Recently Shireen Vinayak of Shehnaai Couture showcased the latest collection and answered some burning questions about the new fashion trends, especially for New York fashionistas.
Every day is an opportunity to learn something new and enter new worlds.
Here are three great events during April and May which guarantee you a new perspective and maybe even help you mobilize a new talent.
Really Useful News tells you about free lectures on innovations in technology sponsored by Tata at the Liberty Science Center; free scholarships for Indian students by the Government of India; a free art exhibition at the undiscovered architectural gem of the Flushing Town Hall in Queens, and more. The best things in life are free!
Ah – March! Comes in like a lion, goes out like a lamb – not! Just yesterday New York was suddenly blanketed in snow even as the floral buds were beginning to bloom in our backyards.
Today it’s supposed to be officially spring. So let’s think positive and prepare for a glorious golden season. And if spring is here, glorious summer and the barbecue season can’t be far behind!
Hemant Mathur, the noted chef of Tulsi, creates classic Indian tandoor dishes in the Homdoor, a Made in America tandoor.
“Stories of extramarital affairs are a class apart, especially in India when penned by Indian authors. Majority of protagonists end up going back to their husbands or wives, leaving the poor lover in the lurch. Nobody wants to cross the Laxman Rekha drawn by the caretakers of morality.”
Guest Blog – Chatty Divas
Call for Artists, Graphic Artists and Photographers by the Indian-American Project
What do you think of the H 1-B Visa? What are your thoughts on Immigration, outsourcing and the diaspora? If you’re an artist or photographer who can put these experiences into art, the Smithsonian wants you!
Desis are a dynamic, evolving breed who are constantly surprising themselves and others with their creativity, success, and growing place in the world. And yet, despite all this, there are some things about desi culture that never seem to change, such as our craving for spicy food, our inherently musical nature, our extremely dry sense of humor…and our work ethic.
No matter how much we evolve, desis just cannot seem to give up the laissez faire style of working that we have long practiced in our motherland and which we import with amazing tenacity to the new world. So mind-boggling is this phenomenon, in fact, that it is difficult to express its essence in plain prose and requires an imaginary conversation between two desis to be communicated effectively. Guest Blog.
Can you appropriate two worlds? Or to put it less elegantly, can you eat your cake and have it too? The Sa Dancers once again prove that you can, shifting effortlessly as they do between the world of business and the world of fabulous dance.
Their latest showcase at the Alvin Ailey Theater showed how effortlessly they mix their roots and faraway homelands with the here and now of frenetic New York.
The SA Dance Company took an audience of over 200 people on a journey into Indian villages, sitting on an imaginary slow-moving boat, then to Mughal India, and yes, out into the pouring Indian monsoon. The music was a wonderful blend of folk and Bollywood, modern and pop and the dance steps spawned from many different choreographies created a pattern all their own.
So what’s on the menu? Chef Roshni Gurnani showcases Fusion Sushi, Curry Infused Swordfish with creamed spinach, and Coriander crusted rack of Lamb with Bombay smashed potato, baby carrots and an onion tomato salad. Bon Appétit!
Chef Roshni Gurnani’s earliest memory of cooking is having her own mini rolling pin set and of rolling out chapatis next to her mother. The first meal she ever cooked was at the age of 5 when she whipped up some eggs and toast. By the time she was 13, she was working at a local Toronto restaurant.
No surprise then that for Gurnani, food was destiny.
She became the winning contestant on the popular Food Network show Chopped, and also participated in Hell’s Kitchen. She went on to become executive chef at an elite club, supervising a staff of 22. She is now part of 5 Star Chefs, noted chefs who travel and cook around the country. Food has certainly taken Chef Rosh, as she is popularly known, full circle.