What can be better than going home for Christmas, especially if home happens to be warm and sunny Goa? Chris and Beverly D’Souza with their young son Luke visited Goa, their hometown, far away from the cold of New York.

“I get a missed call. I know who it is, it would have been a dream come true in the US but here it has become ritual – that call… I have pondered over it several times. It’s surreal – the annoying convenience that we get used to in India. I remind myself to be grateful and not get irritated by that call. I tell myself it’s the call of duty on a silver platter. I am almost guilty to be receiving it.”

New York’s own rock star of an Indian chef, Vikas Khanna, is certainly going places. India, to be precise!

He is the new host and judge of Star Plus TV’s popular show Master Chef India Season 2 and is going to get a lot of eyeballs with the show which can be seen in India and the diaspora. The second season showcases different cooking styles and presentation of food, using Vikas Khanna’s food philosophy of fresh ingredients juxtaposed in innovative ways.

I missed it. This beautiful festival of Indian dance in the middle of Manhattan’s bustling downtown business district. A pretty surreal event, I’m sure, looking at the pictures of bedecked dancers striking poses, surrounded by skyscrapers rising against the New York skyline. Yes, the temples of Khajuraho are very far away.

“Right from my childhood, when I would be getting ready for school, my mom would be getting her makeup done for her shoot,” recalls Esha Deol, star daughter of super stars Dharmendra and Hema Malini. “So instead of being in uniform, I would try on her wig, put on her lipstick.
I used to love watching ‘Seeta Aur Geeta’ which I saw every day. I loved dancing on all Hindi songs of the 80’s, so I knew that this is what I have always wanted to do.”

An NRI discovers time is a very different commodity in New Delhi and New York
EST – Eastern Standard Time – Or I must Eat and Sleep so I am in Time for my meeting.
IST – Indian Standard Time – Or I will Sleep and take my own Time because my Time is only mine – no one else owns it…
No wonder IST is also known as Indian Stretchable Time!
Kriti Mukherjee in The Chatty Divas blog…

How are friendships created? What attracts very different people to each other? This blog introduces two fast friends who lived thousands of miles apart, one in New York, the other in New Delhi. They got to know each other through Facebook and have now actually met. Meet Sulekha aka Lucks, and Kriti who will both regale you with tales from their own frenetic worlds. Sometimes you will see your own lives and your own truths reflected in there. They chat a lot so be prepared to listen…

Imagine a room full of women, prostitutes, lowest of the low. They are faceless – without an identity, without a future. They are created out of found objects, the flotsam and jetsam of society.
Their heads are fashioned out of jars, their breasts are jars shaped like voluptuous melons– after all, aren’t women objects? They lack hands, and some even their lower limbs, they have no standing in society. Clad in flashy underwear and gold heels, they are what they wear, sexual objects in an uncaring society.
And yet to stand in that small room with these life-sized, lifeless women was to feel their presence and their pain. It seemed almost a community. Iranian artist Shirin Fakim’s women were just one vignette of the recent Asian Contemporary Art Week (ACAW)

In our virtual world anyone can become an instant expert on any city – thanks to MyCityWay, an innovative mobile app designed by the team of Archana Patchirajan, Puneet Mehta and Sonpreet Bhatia, three immigrants from India who’ve made New York home and achieved the American Dream.

MyCityWay just raised $ 5 million in financing from BMW i Ventures, FirstMark Capital and IA Ventures and you may see this app in BMW cars in the future. This little app, which can be downloaded free on your mobile and offers you a comprehensive grid of the city, is currently available in 40 cities and the plan is to bring it to 40 more.

Archana Patchirajan, Puneet Mehta and Sonpreet Bhatia, the three entrepreneurs behind MyCityWay really seem to be on a roll – they’ve just managed to raise $ 5 million in financing from BMW i Ventures, First Mark Capital and IA Ventures. Yes, you may be seeing the innovative MyCityWay app in BMW cars in New York in the future!

Mobile services are very much on auto-makers minds and the BMW Group has founded BMW i Ventures — a New York-based venture capital to provide early- and mid-stage investments in the area of Mobility Services, and MyCityWay is the beneficiary.