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?
Browsing: Indians
With the upcoming holiday season begins the Indian community’s tryst with tradition in America. Both Garba and Dandiya Raas, folk dances, have found their way to America and everyone from heart surgeons to hip-hop kids are taking to the large dandiya raas arenas during the festival of Navrati which heralds a season of upcoming festivals from Dusshera to Diwali. How has the interaction with America changed Garba and Dandiya Raas?
Janmashtmi – Lord Krishna is the Cosmic Cowherd, the mischievous deity that Hindus love the most for his pranks, for his butter-thievery, for his melodious flute, for his romantic interludes with Gopis, the milkmaids.
He fought demons, danced on the mighty serpent’s head and lifted Govardhana Hill with his little finger, using it as an umbrella to protect the people from torrential rains.
Ganesh Chaturthi in a time of coronavirus – check out the steps to visiting the temple safely – and we also share memories of past joyous celebrations with thousands of people
This year on India’s Independence Day, we pay tribute to the wonderful Homai Vyarawalla, India’s first woman photojournalist (1913-2012) who captured the nation’s ups and downs in a series of remarkable photographs.
We are fortunate that the Rubin Museum of Art hosted a retrospective of her work right through January 2013, with free tours every day. Visitors could catch a glimpse of the India that was, and also see the work of a woman who captured history as it was being made. Her images include those on the historic meeting of Gandhi and the Congress Committee on the 1947 plan for partition, of a changing India as well as of many dignitaries who visited India including Queen Elizabeth, Ho Chi Minh, Zhou En-lai and Jacqueline Kennedy.
You’ve heard of Versace, St. Laurent and Prada – now here comes Temple Fashion! If you can dress for social events, then why not for God? When it’s Ganesh Chathurthi, the nine-day festival dedicated to that most beloved of Gods, Ganesha, people go all out to look their best.
2026 people reached on Lassi with Lavina FB page – 219 post clicks Sonam…
In a reprieve for the Dreamers, as they are known, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a decision finding that the Trump administration’s termination of DACA was judicially reviewable and done in an arbitrary and capricious way that violated federal law.
India is like a gigantic Hall of Mirrors – so many reflections, some magnified, some distorted. Which is the true India? And who is the true Indian? In ‘Kai Po Che’, Abhishek Kapoor’s stunning new film, you realize there are no easy answers as you step into the complex, complicated terrain that is India.
‘Kai Po Che’, based on Chetan Bhagat’s best-selling novel ‘The Three Mistakes of My Life’, takes you into the innards of the bustling city of Ahmedabad and introduces you to real people in situations taken right out of real life, such as the 2001 earthquake and the Godhra killings. You are relentlessly drawn into the ugly, unpredictable vortex of current events, of unforgiving real life as it happens.
Warning: Do NOT Separate an Indian from his Onions! It’s the one ingredient that no self-respecting desi cook would want to be without; whether you are whipping up a Mughal feast or a poor man’s meal – onions are absolutely necessary. In fact, a shortage of onions can cause a near revolution in India!
It started like a whispering rustle around the world, a soft rumbling and become this mighty force of marchers from Paris to Washington DC which also poked its way into my quiet apartment in New York. It seemed almost sacrilegious to be just spending a cerebral work afternoon at my computer when right on my streets so much action was taking place.
A new study MASALA has some startling new facts for Indians, heart disease, and diabetes. The two investigators are Dr. Alka Kanaya & Dr. Namratha Kandula
Indeed, the maharajas had an appetite for every kind of jewelry: when the British refused to let them wear western-style crowns, they simply wore tiaras over their turbans!
A majestic decorated elephant lumbering down the streets of Washington DC, with an Indian bridegroom ensconced like a maharajah on top; scores of chanting, dancing wedding guests causing a traffic jam on New York streets as they accompany the bridegroom in the ‘baraat’ or wedding procession, dancing the bhangra to the beat of village drums. Hundreds of guests in a man-made Gujarati village in New Jersey especially set up for a wedding celebration, with stalls, carts and even mud huts!
Yes, all this has come to pass as Indian immigrants have brought their Big Fat Indian Wedding to America.
How many Indias are there?
As many as the eyes that perceive it.
Each visitor sees a different India, bringing in their own experiences to the encounter. British photographer Clive Limpkin has a lively new book ‘India Exposed: the Sub-Continent A-Z’ which shows the results of his brush with India. His camera, however, returns time and again to what really moves him: the human connection. As he writes: “When friends ask for one good reason to visit, I offer them a billion – it’s the people.”
Who is the Indian Bollywood star with a huge mainstream fan following in Spain, Germany and France? Amitabh Bachchan? No. Aishwarya Rai? No. Shah Rukh Khan? No. It’s Sally Bollywood!
Who would have thought a time would come when there would be a Bollywood movie made by a totally non-Indian team, and its heroine Sally Bollywood would become a super-star with French, German and Spanish fans, her own series of books, stationery line, a comic strip, a luggage and textile line. WATCH THE VIDEOS!
The US has several Indian-Americans doing important work in academia. Meet Beheruz. N. Sethna, President of the University of West Georgia with a budget of $ 100 million and 100 programs of study through the doctoral level.
He’s a Parsi who’s got some important firsts affixed to his name: he is the first person of Indian origin to ever become the president of a university anywhere in the US. He’s also the first person from any ethnic minority to become president of a predominantly white or racially-integrated university or college in Georgia.
“I was so amazed at the thought of somebody cycling me, who was just turning 20, who was a fit young American man, that I insisted on bicycling half the way myself. That’s how I entered India, bicycling a rickshaw, with the rickshaw-wallah sitting in the back, wondering what the hell I was doing!”
“Most Indian-Americans are an infuriating, thin-skinned bunch, their runaway success in this country notwithstanding. Always on the alert for cultural slights, theirs is a largely mercenary attachment to American society…They are ‘drop in’ immigrants—like those drop-in cricket pitches so popular these days: situated on American soil, but not an organic part of it. ”
Tunku Varadrajan on Indian Americans and their reactions to Bobby Jindal and Nikki Haley.
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.