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Posts Tagged ‘Mumbai’

The India blog – Only in India

By Lavina Melwani • Jan 30th, 2012 • Category: 24/7 Talk is Cheap - The Blog

In India you can see man and monkeys living together in an uneasy truce. A photograph that got away was of at least 20 monkeys all dangling from a traffic light pole in Agra! Before I got my camera out, the bus had moved on and the clambering monkeys remain a delightful snapshot in my memory. I’m sure the monkeys run rampant in places like Benares, Mathura and Haridwar.

In fact, I distinctly remember having my toast snatched from my hand by a greedy monkey at the Haridwar Railway Station many years ago. Now I caught glimpses of monkeys – and humans, outside a small wayside temple near the Ranthambhore National Park. Seen as a form of Hanuman, the venerated Monkey God, these monkeys are indulged and even fed by passers-by.



India Blog: Ringing in 2012 in Mumbai

By Lavina Melwani • Jan 1st, 2012 • Category: The Buzz

It was only 8 pm on Dec 31st in Mumbai but already the drums were beating wildly outside my window in an apartment close to the Gateway of India. People are packing the streets here and I’m struck by the sheer energy of the crowds. The vitality of Mumbaikars is catching, their passion to live, to succeed. I’ve been in the city just three days but already I’ve met so many ordinary people who take each day as it comes and pack a punch into it.



Nayana Currimbhoy &‘Miss Timmins’ School for Girls’

By Lavina Melwani • Nov 13th, 2011 • Category: 24/7 Talk is Cheap - The Blog

Traditional Brahmin values, sex and rock n roll and drugs, caste and class, British missionaries, forbidden love affairs and murder, Indian schoolgirls playing British – all in the same India of the 70’s. ‘Miss Timmins’ School for Girls’ is a lush coming of age story and a murder-mystery rolled into one, set in an all-girls school in the sleepy hill station of Panchgani in India.

It also happens to be Nayana Currimbhoy’s first novel – and that is surprising for the writing is seasoned, evocative, taking you into a compelling yet insular universe.
Q and A with the author.



Vintage Sarees at Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week

By Lavina Melwani • Nov 1st, 2011 • Category: People

Not too many new fashion design graduates get to debut at the prestigious Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week in New York but that’s what happened with Dipti Irla, a young Maharashtrian designer from Mumbai. There she was soaking in the limelight of this fashion circus at Lincoln Center, surrounded by buyers, editors and paparazzi.



Indian Classical Dance – Past and Future

By Lavina Melwani • Aug 28th, 2011 • Category: 24/7 Talk is Cheap - The Blog

The first thing I spotted was rows and rows of footwear lined up outside the door, neatly stacked. I dutifully shed my sandals too, and going inside found an Indian-style behthak in progress with silk cushions scattered on the woven carpet.
Arts lovers, some with babies in tow, were already sitting cross-legged, facing the empty expanse of a large wooden floor. Musicians were tuning up their instruments, in anticipation.

The space is the Anamika Navatman Studios, an innovative organization for South Asian Arts and the production was Bhinna Pravaaha: Memories of a Performing Artist – Maya Kulkarni. This is a first undertaking to record and pay tribute to the noted artists of the past.



Janmashtami – The Birth of Krishna

By Lavina Melwani • Aug 19th, 2011 • Category: The Buzz

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.
This year Janmashtami – the birth of Lord Krishna – falls on August 22, 2011.



Bollywood Cinema Showcards – A Lost World

By Lavina Melwani • Jul 4th, 2011 • Category: 24/7 Talk is Cheap - The Blog

Long before Hindi cinema was rechristened Bollywood, there were film posters and showcards under glass in the lobbies of the theaters in India.

As you bought your tickets to enter a magic world, you sauntered by the display cases to check out these show cards, a collage of hand painted photographs which whetted your appetite for the treat to come.

Most of these old markers have disappeared but recently cinema fans got a chance to see a cache of vintage cards, lovingly preserved.



NYIFF 2011 – Cinematic Diversity

By Lavina Melwani • Apr 30th, 2011 • Category: Cinema

In the city of reinvention, what better way to stand out from the crowd than to reinvent yourself?
As the film festivals focusing on South Asian films have multiplied in the Big Apple, the oldest and most noted showcase of them all, the MIACC Film Festival, is now known as New York Indian Film Festival (NYIFF) and is focusing on independent and regional films, while still being open to Bollywood blockbusters. The opening film ‘Do Dooni Chaar’ is a Disney film with Bollywood stars but imbued with the indie spirit.



Children’s Hope India – Every Child Counts

By Lavina Melwani • Jan 9th, 2011 • Category: CyberCircles: For You!

Fundraising in New York can have a wonderful ripple effect and translate into health camps, scholarships and education for children in the slums in India. That’s been the happy result of Children’s Hope India, a non-profit organization started by a group of five women professionals in New York in 1992 with seed money donated by them and with just one project in hand.



Ekta Kapoor: Eating Her Cake and Having it too…

By Lavina Melwani • Nov 21st, 2010 • Category: Cinema

Ekta Kapoor is a self-made millionaire and, as the head of Balaji Telefilms, she’s produced over 74 hugely popular television serials which are said to make up about 80 percent of television programming in India. Recently the Queen of TV Soaps was in town for the premiere of the gritty, fast moving ‘Shorr’ which is as real and as different as you can get from the sugar coated melodrama of the television serials steeped in tradition and changing social mores.
(Ekta seen here with actor Sendhil Ramamurthy)