I did an interview with Mayor Eric Adams back in May and this first ran in The Week, one of India’s leading newsmagazines. I am now posting the profile and interview on Lassi with Lavina.
Browsing: South Asia
What’s the Difference between Racism and Casteism?
As a first-generation American born to Indian immigrant parents, the following message is intended to address my fellow Indian-American community and beyond.
Some of the most poignant testimony of a culture in flux is Thomas Kelly’s ethnographic work of marginalized, landless communities. He has lived with the Badi people where the young women have had to sell themselves to keep their families out of poverty. Once they were singers and dancers and entertainers at weddings and other ceremonies – now these women have to use their bodies as a source of income.
Using a Gates grant, Kelly looked into the lives of fallen angels in various parts of Asia, from ‘maalish’ or massage boys in hotels to sex worker communities, analyzing what drove them to this work and how they could be helped by the organizations.
The upcoming IAAC Lit Fest has not one, not two but three Tharoors! It’s being billed as a Trio of Tharoors and promises to make for some intriguing conversations: Shashi Tharoor and his twin sons Ishaan and Kanishk.
Little could Indian immigrants have dreamed that technology would connect them in many ways – and their own efforts would finally bring them a US Diwali stamp to put on the letter to the homeland, making them feel truly at home in their adopted home.
Yes, it’s that time of the year when Asian art takes over New York City and art-lovers from all over the world come to the Big Apple. Just before Asia Week opened (March 13 -21) I spent a day with a group of bloggers and journalists in hot pursuit of hidden treasures.
India, Pakistan, Bangladesh…migrants from towns and villages, leaving everything behind to create something new, something of their own in America.
It’s all about journeys, about the lives you leave behind and the new ones you make. We’ve all got into a plane, left a place and arrived somewhere else. The baggage we’ve carried is physical things – loved old photographs and mementos, homemade garam masala – but it’s also about memories, lost homes and loved ones who are no longer with us.
The way artists deal with this excess baggage and physical and mental borders is through paint and canvas, creating a new reality which did not exist before. For the past ten years, IAAC’s ‘Erasing Borders: has been giving this space to artists to share their creations and their innermost thoughts, and this year too artists participated in this long lasting celebration of home and the world, as more and more artists take on the global trek.
As Galleon co-founder Raj Rajaratnam’s trial
Insider trading scandals have been a staple of the American landscape for decades and while the more sensational ones like those involving Michael Milken and Martha Stewart are legendary, they are only symptoms of a larger disease that is the true bane of the business world – The Old Boys’ Club mentality.
Guest blog – Sanjay Sanghoee
When you are in your adolescence and twenties, you want to do what the norm is. If everyone around you wants to be more Indian, then so do you. If everyone wants to be more American, then so do you. It depends on where you are living, your social experiences and how much impact your family has in shaping your cultural life.
Little India has everything from precious stones to rich silks to aromatic spices. If you’re craving for a paan or a kesar kulfi – and you’re a continent away from India, this is the place you’ll find it. A photo gallery of the Little India in Jackson Heights.
If there’s something five generations of Rockefellers have been fascinated by – it is Asia. They were into Asian art and culture long before it became fashionable and certainly long before Asia became a major emerging global power.