Nita Mukesh Ambani Cultural Centre: My Visit to NMACC – A Place of Art with…
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New immigrants in ethnic enclaves tend to have a stronger support system but once they fly the coop into the prestigious suburbs and into Americanization, there is a chasm of distances to overcome between friends. We are monetarily richer but are we poorer in friends?
Dr. Nirmal Mattoo may be far away from the Vale of Kashmir, the place where he was born, but its sheer beauty, sense of community and native customs have stayed with him, even in far-off New York. He has tried to bring the wisdom and beauty of India, including that of his hometown, to share with the larger world.
This Mother’s Day, we look at what happens when children grow up and become parents for the first time. Sarina Jain grew up in America in the 70’s when kids were embarrassed by the ‘curry’ smells of their lunch and the Indian-ness of their names.
If you’re brown, come from Asia and practice a different religion, you’re often seen as exotic, sometimes as strange and almost always as a curiosity by the mainstream, and these misconceptions are often triggered by the stories that are written about ethnicity in the media.
You have to give it to South Asians for out-of-the-box thinking. No access to a school bus? An auto-rickshaw will do.
No budget? How about a bicycle with seating made out of a plastic crate which fits two school kids and gets them where they have to go?
Not the ideal solution and certainly not the safest but typical of what is known in India as ‘jugaad’.
Gods and kings, past and present, tradition and modernity all merged in ‘Mystic India: The World Tour’ at New Jersey Performing Arts Center (NJPAC) in Newark, New Jersey. This was the first Broadway style Bollywood inspired extravaganza to debut at NJPAC.
For many young Indian-Americans the show was a reaffirmation of their culture and for mainstream Americans it was an introduction to the vibrant colors, dance and music of India. The show, created by Amit Shah and the Aatma Performing Arts, features passionate dancers, musicians, and acrobats.
Missing India? Love Bollywood? Want to know more about the music and dance of different regions of the home country?
Well, now you can travel back to India without a passport or air-ticket – by way of New Jersey!
Imagine over 60 dancers, acrobats and musicians taking you on a wonderful journey to India, fueled by music and dance. The event is Mystic India: The World Tour at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center’s Prudential Hall on March 8th for one performance only, by the noted choreographer Amit Shah, director of Aatma Performing Arts.
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Where would you get to rub shoulders with Salman Rushdie, Shabana Azmi, Danny Boyle, Shashi Tharoor, M.F. Husain, Mira Nair, Deepa Mehta, Madhur Jaffrey – and the late, great Ismail Merchant? Well, I met all these topnotch names in New York, all thanks to a small, spunky organization which has survived and thrived by sheer chutzpah. It’s brought a mix of Indian cinema, art, theater and dance to barren city streets, making them all a natural part of American life.
Indeed, if you’re talking about Indian art and culture in the city, you can hardly go a few sentences without mentioning Indo American Arts Council or its creator, Aroon Shivdasani. This year IAAC celebrates its 15th tumble and toss year, and so here’s the story of the little engine that said I think I can, I think I can, against all odds.
“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.'”
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“As I get older, I find myself trying to rediscover some of the values of our Indian culture which shaped my childhood and still run as an uneasy undercurrent through my adult psyche, but for the most part have been suppressed in the desire to adapt to the New York lifestyle.
As with all value systems, of course, not everything is desirable and it’s necessary to pick and choose the best of both Indian and American values in order to be truly happy.” – Sanjay Sanghoee
Pop artist Anoop Desai has been on everybody’s radar ever since he became a finalist on the eighth season of “American Idol.” Now his first independently released EP ‘All is Fair’ has hit the airwaves. His new single is titled ‘My Name.’
Was growing up in North Carolina with a name like Anoop difficult?
“Kids made fun of it all the time, in the school bus, and I remember coming home from kindergarten and demanding that my mom change my name, because I wanted to be a Bill or something,” he recalls.
“I cringe at that now because I am lucky to have my name, lucky to have my culture. That’s what makes me unique and a lot of people don’t have that.”