Author: Lavina Melwani

What constitutes an Indian? Are you Indian if you are born in India or is it your Indian genes which make you Indian? Are you not Indian if you are of a different religion or pray to a different God? Are you seen just as a vote bank by conniving politicians in the great tumult of the Indian Elections?

Sabina Himani, an Indian artist who is Muslim and lives in New York, reminisces on a comment which has dogged her through the years and now she hears once again, due to the ongoing elections.

“All Muslims should leave India and go live in Pakistan ..”

Here’s her answer to all those who make that statement.

It is indeed telling that while the elections are being played out in India, some of the most avid watchers are thousands of miles away and separated by oceans and continents – in America. Indeed the Indian Diaspora from Africa to the Middle East to Europe are all deeply involved in the outcomes but nowhere is the connection so deep as in America. Men and women who left their homeland over 30 to 40 years ago, still are moved enough to catch all the details on television, Indian newspapers and by phone calls to the family in India. (Photo – Narendra Modi supporters in Silicon Valley hold a tea rally in California)

When in India, do as the Indians do! Kentucky Fried Chicken, known globally as KFC is the latest American food chain to have undergone a transformation in India.

The chickens are still coming home to roost but it has introduced a substantial vegetarian menu with its ‘So Veg So Good’ campaign to reel in lots of new customers who eat neither egg nor chicken nor meat.

Dekh, cinema, dekh! In the old days, people in small towns and villages in India would wait anxiously for the traveling cinema to come to them with surprise offerings and entertainment.
In a way, the annual New York Indian Film Festival (NYIFF) does the same thing for New Yorkers who are a savvy lot. Yet the festival brings unexpected cinematic treats of found gems, lost stories and glimpses into lives lived.

East is increasingly meeting West on the red carpet. It’s great to see couture by an Indian designer showcased on New York red carpets – especially by the sizzling Padma Lakshmi.
The host of Bravo’s Top Chef and the must-click subject of every photographer in NY, Padma was seen at two NY events in Payal Singhal’s elegant yet fun outfits which debuted recently in the Lakme Fashion Week.

It’s the City of Dreams, of Make-believe.

The strivers, the strugglers keep coming but Hollywood’s gates are often closed. Can their stories ever be told, if they are a minority, an outsider? Writers of color are often underemployed in cinema.

Recently the Writers Guild of America, an influential Hollywood entity, set up the Features Access Project to rectify this by encouraging diversity in writing.

Among this year’s eight multicultural honorees, three trace their roots back to India – Radha Bharadwaj (Final Boarding), Nayan Padrai (Billion Dollar Raja) and Tianna Majumdar-Langham (Guns and Saris) who won the honor with her co-writer Chris Bessounian.

Could there be a filmi success story brewing in here? We saw some young unknown and aspiring filmakers with cinematic dreams – and we saw how far they went! We’re talking M.Night Shyamalan and Nagesh Kukunoor here.

Well, meet Ajmal Zaheer Ahmad, a young filmmaker from Detroit with a passion to stir up a devilish hell with his supernatural thriller ‘Jinn’. The film had a glamorous premiere in the fabulous Detroit Institute of the Arts with a packed hall. Get ready to get goose-bumps and some sleepless nights for ‘Jinn’ releases nationwide tomorrow and in Canada.

Imran Khan comes from a famous film family – he is the grandson of director-producer Nasir Husain, creator of some of the most rocking musicals of the 70’s. He is also the nephew of actor Aamir Khan and director-producer Mansoor Khan. He acted as a child star in several movies, disappeared to America, and then re-emerged as a romantic hero in Jaane Tu, Ya Jaane Na which won him the Filmfare Award for the Best Male Debut.
Bollywood loves his romantic ‘chocolate hero’ image in films but chatting with him, you realize he’s not just about style and stardom – but about substance. Here he muses about life, family, love and social activism.

“It’s the Oscar party for giving back,” said Meera Gandhi, founder of the Giving Back Foundation at its inaugural gala at the Pierre in New York, and indeed it was a fun-raising and fund-raising event which brought together an eclectic crowd from the worlds of arts, design and business together in a warm, intimate evening.

People certainly gave in different ways that night – from Phylicia Rashad giving generously of her time, noted artists and jewelers and designers donating their work for silent auction, and performers sharing their dance and music.

“As most of you know, I’ve written a book about Bombay called ‘Maximum City’. If Bombay is the maximum of the urban experience, India is the maximum of the democratic experiment.
What does it mean to be ‘maximum’? By the middle of the century, India will be the world’s most populous nation, overtaking China. Biologically, at least, we will be number one. But ‘maximum’ isn’t just about population. It connotes generosity, openness, large-heartedness. It is about striving for the limits of what is possible. And it’s what characterizes the age-old cultural traffic between the country of my birth and the country of my nationality.” – Suketu Mehta.
(Photo: L to R: Salman Rushdie, Suketu Mehta, Tunku Varadrajan & Amb. Dyaneshwar. M. Mulay.)

You could call it the traveling House of Wonders. One year it’s in South Africa, another in Singapore and yet another in Dubai. It’s a virtual orgy for Bollywood lovers.
We’re talking of course about the International Indian Film Academy (IIFA) and there’s good news for Bollywood fans in the US – IIFA is coming to Tampa Bay this year, from April 23-26.For fans who want to rub shoulders with celebrity, there’s quite a red carpet contingent coming – Farhan Akhtar, Vidya Balan, Kareena Kapoor, Saif Ali Khan, Madhuri Dixit-Nene, Shruti Hassan, Sonakshi Sinha, Anil Kapoor, Shahid Kapoor, Priyanka Chopra, Sri Devi & Boney Kapoor, Shabana Azmi and Javed Akhtar.

She is Alice in Fashionland – a young designer lost in the surreal magic world of French fashion.

Christine Philip, an up-and-coming Indian-American fashion designer, had always been enamored of Paris and its legacy of ground-breaking fashion. This season she basked in the unparalleled world of French style, soaking in the rhythms and romance of Parisian haute couture. Shows that she attended included Corrie Nielson, Issay Miyake, Chanel, Hermes, YDE, Chloe, Amaya Arzuaga, and Fatima Lopez.

Not totally an insider, this young designer reveled in her entre to a fabulous world. She says: “Paris produces ‘the mother’ of all fashion weeks. There is no other fashion capital that does it like they do and I wanted to be a part of it.”

“First commitment as CEO: I won’t wait four years between tweets!” tweeted Satya Nadella, the newly appointed CEO of Microsoft, whose last tweet was back in 2010. There is indeed a hunger out there to learn more about him; he’s tweeted only 27 times since 2009 and yet has a whopping 108,000 followers.

While most of Nadella’s tweets are about Microsoft and Bing, two old tweets give us the desi angle: “Great evening to be watching some good old fashioned test cricket!” Another tweet will sound like deja vu to most Indian achievers: “I may break my continuous work day record!” Family friend and retired Microsoft executive Vijay Vashee recalls the time Nadella, who’s passionate about cricket, watched the 20-20 cricket match from midnight to 6 am at and then went straight to a full productive day of work.

That Indian sensibilities of style can merge seamlessly into the Western vocabulary of fashion has been proven by many international designers – but new Indian-American designer Sheena Trivedi puts her own stamp on this east-west marriage – and has tremendous fun doing it.

Trivedi presented her Fall/Winter 2014/15 Collection at the Empire Rooftop to a packed hall with models ensconced on top of light boxes, dressed in a collection which could be described as edgy New York with tribal Banjara touches – suitable for both Soho and the Rajasthani desert.

It’s International Women’s Day again and in a way, kind of grim that we still need to have a specific day set aside for women.
Why do we need one special day – why aren’t women treated like the special people they are every day of their lives?
The past year has been horrific with atrocities against women, young girls, even toddlers. When will all that end?

We do live in a brave new world where social media has made interaction amazingly easy. In the old days only media behemoths had power, now every little blogger has a piece of the empire! Facebook, Twitter and Google + have made it possible for ordinary people to nurture revolutions and push for the popular choice.

And now Bollywood actor Abhay Deol has come up with a creative innovation- First Release Cinema on Facebook!

Like a breath of fresh air from the Himalayan river valleys here are some mouth-watering recipes from Vikas Khanna’s new book ‘Return to the Rivers’ (with Andrew Blackmore-Dobbyn). Vikas Khanna traveled to India’s Himalayan valleys as well as countries of Tibet, Bhutan and Nepal to gather a taste of dishes rarely eaten in the West. Here are a few tantalizing bites – and recipes.

Yes, Bollywood in all its avatars is eternal and continues to take audiences on a seductive, addictive emotional roller coaster ride. Long live the 800 pound gorilla!

The Indian-Americans, now numbering a sizable 3.3 million, successful, entrepreneurial and with healthy, happy families behind them, seem to be at a crossroads for the demographics tell yet another story, a more sobering one. The Indian immigrants who came here in the 50’s and 60’s are now approaching their final years and many of these voices are disappearing – and with that, all the untold stories, the celebration of lives well lived.

Stories which are undocumented will surely be lost, silenced. Now is the time to gather these voices and record them for posterity. Some attempts are being made to do this, by institutions and individuals. A major effort is the Indian-American Heritage Project at the Smithsonian Museum in the nation’s capital which is launching a major exhibition spotlighting the Indian community in February 2014: “Beyond Bollywood: Indian Americans Shape the Nation”

I also invite you to add your voice to the daily blog, 24/7 – Talk is Cheap. I hope this will be a fun Tower of Babel, with many voices discussing many topics. In the beginning I tentatively bring one solitary voice – my own – and hope many others will join in. Be it Indian art, movies, books or spirituality – do bring in your point of view.