Author: Lavina Melwani

      Between You and Me: Sunita Ratanlal – Celebrating A Beautiful Life Relationships: When You Lose the One You Love   Today morning I lost my much-loved older sister Sunita Ratanlal nee Prabha Kripalani. She left for her true home after a fierce battle fought courageously over the past few years and then finally in the ICU. She was 85 and had been ailing for a few years. I still remember her as the beautiful college student who looked like a model. She could sketch, paint and write and ran her own store before the term ‘woman entrepreneur’…

At Hanukkah, Indian-Jews remember the homeland which nurtured their faith. “India has been the only country in the world where Jews have never been oppressed or suppressed or discriminated against,” says Romiel Daniel, who is Jewish-Indian-American. Indeed, India has been nurturing home and haven for generations of Jews whose ancestors fled from persecution centuries ago. At its peak there were about 37,000 Jews living in India. “Discrimination is something that has never happened in India for 2000 years and that is something we are very proud of, and that is why we go back to India so often,” he says.

  New York Photo: Sunset Meditation over the East River As darkness falls early in December, it is startling to see the sun set over the East River so early in the day and gives me my photo for the day. As bundled up by passers rush home quickly to early dinner, they fail to catch the high drama going on above their heads and miss the most amazing conclusion to the day. Worried about work and family and busy replaying future scenarios of doom in your head? Just look up at the evening sky to witness the sheer magnificence…

While Christmas is important to Indian Christians as a celebration of faith, many non-Christians enjoy it as a secular holiday in ways small and big. Indeed, Christmas is such a huge, high voltage commercialized event in America that few can escape its allure, be they Christians or not.

Christmas Karma – CharIes Dickens, Priyanka Chopra Jonas, Gurinder Chadha and Boy George too! CharIes Dickens, Priyanka Chopra Jonas, Gurinder Chadha and Boy George all in the same space? Prepare for a very desified Christmas this season with the iconic director Gurinder Chadha’s new comedy Christmas Karma which is based on Dicken’s famous novel A Christmas Carol. Chadha, whose given us gems like Bend It Like Beckham, takes on her own vision of Charles Dicken’s Christmas Carol which we all know and love. This feel good musical stars Kunal Nayyar of The Big Bang Theory as a desi Scrooge who…

  India Is The Globe’s Largest Vegetarian Foodie Club A Veggie Food Diary: New York to Mumbai to New Delhi By Lavina Melwani The Vegetarian Food Chronicles – Feasting in Delhi and  Mumbai I have just come from Shiv Sagar, a humble vegetarian restaurant in Mumbai where you get hundreds of choices including South Indian and North Indian but also Jain food, Mexican specialties, pizza, burgers and Chinese dishes every single day – including the All-You-Can-Eat Thali which is refilled free as fast as you can finish it! The South Indian menu alone numbers 74 options. Every item is pure…

If Thanksgiving is a festival of gratitude, then Indians have been preparing for it their whole lives.

In India, take a walk down the Mumbai waterfront in the early morning mist, and you see ordinary citizens quietly feeding the fish and the birds. Their daily day doesn’t really begin until the deities in their home shrine have been venerated with fresh flowers and offered prasadam.
It is only after eating a little of this blessed offering does the family sit down to their meals. Many remember to keep aside a portion of the food for a hungry person or the birds. It is all about sharing.

Meet Zohran Mamdani, the Next Mayor of New York There was a seismic earthquake a week ago, not in any remote part of the world, but right in America, in the middle of one of the world’s largest cities, New York. This sudden shake-up was the stunning political upset in the city’s Democratic Mayoral election: Zohran Mamdani, a 33-year-old little-known Muslim-Indian-American legislator, had overwhelmingly trounced Andrew Cuomo, 67, former Governor of New York and the scion of a political dynasty.  Mamdani won by 44 percent of first rank votes and Cuomo, who had been so confident of victory that he…

    137,105 views on Lassi with Lavina FB page – 36 Follows 3.1 k Likes on Facebook – 292 comments – 156 shares 50864 impressions on LinkedIn and 38055 people reached 33,145 views on Instagram The Zohran Effect – this post went viral! Zohran Mamdani: The Immigrant Mayor of New York What was Zoran Mamdani, the Mayor-elect of New York, doing when he was four years old? Hanging out on the sets of ‘Kama Sutra’ with his mom, the noted film director Mira Nair! I have been interviewing her since her very first film for various media outlets internationally.…

Cinema: Jafar Panahi’s It was just an accident Sometimes, a film is more than just a film. It is a matter of life and death. Jafar Panahi’s latest film IT WAS JUST AN ACCIDENT, which won the top prize (Palme d’Or) at this year’s Cannes Film Festival is such a film. It takes you on a wild ride through the streets of Tehran as a dark tale unfolds. Victims of a cruel tormenter, who have tried to rebuild normal lives for themselves, encounter this man in a different setting. He is now the one bound and shackled, the one in their…

Did you ever hear of the arrival of the turkey on to the Thanksgiving table being heralded as the arrival of the ‘dulhan’ or Indian bride? For Sunita Advaney’s family fixing the 30 lb bird was like preparing for an elaborate Indian wedding. Trust desis to bring their own take on this American holiday, imprinting it with their own special flavor!

  New York Diary: Halloween in Scary Times Wars, democracy in danger, inflation, job loss, hunger, climate change, homelessness – the real world is scary enough – and then along comes Halloween! Ghosts, monsters, skeletons, witches and dead bodies have taken over the streets of New York. You can’t walk a few steps without encountering these spooky individuals or hearing bone-chilling cackles from every other townhouse that you pass. The Upper East Side has turned into a Horror Town and in the darkness of fall, it all looks quite macabre. Still, it’s good to remember that these occasional scares for…

New York Diary Diwali Reception with New York Governor Kathy Hochul in Flushing, Queens Diwali is Everywhere in New York! It was quite a thrill to meet Gov. Kathy Hochul, New York’s first-ever woman governor. She held a Diwali celebration for New York’s large Indian community at the BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir in Flushing. Hundreds of New Yorkers representing various desi organizations were there. After she spoke, she took selfies with each of the guests and everyone enjoyed a program of dance and music by talented community members. They were also treated to the most delicious vegetarian food and Diwali…

      New York Diary When Even A Storm Advisory Can’t Keep the Givers Away…… New York City is a Giving City where people love to wine and dine and celebrate the power and potential of transforming lives. Over 400 people came to Pier Sixty to rally around the education of vulnerable children, changing lives and making futures at the Children’s Hope India Gala by raising funds for early learning education centers in the slums and villages. This year major corporations and individual givers had come together to create a force for good.   A striking performance about hope…

  Twenty-Five Years of Celebrating One World, Cross-Cultural Artists There are no borders at Sundaram Tagore’s eponymous gallery in Chelsea for on its walls you’ll see the work of artists from countries as far apart as South Korea, Morocco, Iran and the US. Tagore, who started his first gallery in Soho in 2000, has gone ever more global in his embrace of artists whose work defies cultural and geographic demarcations in their cross-cultural dialogue. Celebrating 25 years, it’s only appropriate that the Sundaram Tagore Gallery has mounted an exhibit of paintings, sculptures, photography and installations by more than thirty artists…

They spin round and round, going faster and faster, but never breaking the sacred circle, as they clap their hands rhythmically, dancing around the Garba or earthen pot. They smile as they twirl around for in these nine nights they are celebrating the Goddess that is enshrined in all of us.

This hugely empowering dance is called the Garba and it is the centerpiece of the celebration of the Hindu festival of Navratri or Nine Nights.

Christie’s Sells Untitled Gaitonde for $2,393,000 at its Asia Week Auction in New York It’s one of the lovely rites of the autumn season in New York – viewing iconic South Asian contemporary art over a glass of wine at Christie’s.  Art collectors, artists, dealers and art lovers had gathered to view the work of some of India’s noted artists at  a reception at Christies in Rockefeller Center. It was a precursor of its auction of South Asian modern + contemporary art as part of Asian Art Week in New York.  At the reception there were familiar faces and many…

  MIT’s Provost Anantha P Chandrakasan – A Man for All Seasons   What if I were to tell you that Anantha Chandrakasan, the newly appointed and much celebrated Provost of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, was also the same man whose application as a graduate student to the same MIT was rejected? His story is truly one of grit, focus and persistence, of winning against the odds. As the leader at MIT, Provost Chandrakasan navigates a rarified world, a galaxy of high achievers and innovators, not only from all 50 states of America but also 159 countries.…

Our Communities: Celebrating Janmashtami – At the birth of Krishna, Small People Rule! Photos: Lavina Melwani     Children were center-stage at the celebration of Janmashtami – the birth of Krishna – at the Satya Narayan Temple in Queens. There were several little Krishnas and Radhas dancing the night away, anticipating the big baby reveal moment at midnight when a bejeweled, curtained cradle was to be opened to introduce the God with 108 names to the waiting, troubled world. Temple devotees dressed in their finest for this celebration, listened to spiritual stories and music and feasted on a delicious community…

  Our Communities: Children’s Hope India – Celebrating Those Who Change Lives Shaping Futures, Changing Lives is the mantra of the upcoming Children’s Hope India Gala at Pier Sixty on October 12, and nobody embodies that more than these honorees: there’s Nitin Rakesh, CEO and Managing Director of Mphasis who is the Lotus Honoree for this year; there’s M R Rangaswami, founder of Indiaspora, a changemaker who receives the Special Impact Award for his groundbreaking work in nurturing the diaspora community; Priti Patkar gets the Making a Difference Award for her passionate work with vulnerable children in India; and highlighting…