Browsing: People

Google’s tribute to India’s first woman doctor – Dr. Kadambini Ganguly

Today we have thousands of Indian women lawyers, both in India and the Diaspora. But how lonely and frustrating must it have been to be the first and to try and change society?
We pay tribute to the one who started it all, and won the right for women to stand up in court and argue a case. Cornelia Sorabji- India’s first woman lawyer.

Home and exile are two of the most evocative words in the English language, and they are seared into the work of Zarina Hashmi, noted printmaker and sculptor, who was born in Aligarh in India. Zarina, who goes by only her first name, has been a nomad, a transient who has taken many journeys, crossed many borders. The floor plans of past homes, the many stories of dislocation and the sweet lost language of Urdu are embedded in her prints.

Having worked in relative anonymity for 35 years from her small loft in Manhattan, NY, Zarina, 75, is now suddenly on the international art world’s radar. The prestigious Guggenheim Museum is showcasing “Zarina: Paper Like Skin”, the first retrospective ever of an Indian woman artist, featuring 60 works dating from 1961 to the present.

“As many of you will come to know in the weeks and months ahead, the door to my office has a sign for all to see every time they walk through my doorway. The sign says, ‘Can’t Is Not an Option.’

These are the words of Nikki Haley, nee Nimrata Randhawa, the feisty new Governor of South Carolina, the Indian-American daughter of Punjabi immigrants. Haley, 38, has gone from being an obscure Southern legislator to a nationally known rising star on the Republican circuit.

For all those who’ve watched King Khan, the Badshah of Bollywood, dance and sing and romance over the years, Shah Rukh Khan’s talk at Yale was one of a kind, a look at the real man, rather than the reel man.

Un-awed by the pomp and ceremony of being honored with the prestigious Chubb Fellowship, he was down-to-earth and funny, talking one on one to Yale students, as someone human and humane, a striver, a dreamer and a parent.
Here, Shah Rukh Khan, in his own words….

Indian doctors are everywhere but you wouldn’t have expected one to be right on the glittering stage of the 2021 Academy Awards!  Dr. Meena Makhijani was in the elite group receiving the Jean Herscholt Humanitarian Oscar. This year the winner  of this prestigious award was the Motion Picture and Television Fund (MPTF) where Makhijani is physician and the Chief of Staff. Yes, she actually held the iconic Oscar in her hand and recalls with delight:  “It had heft!”

The American president and vice-president were always white and always male. With President Obama’s inauguration they finally got to see a minority family in the White House.

Now with the nomination of Kamala Harris as vice president by Democratic presidential contender Joe Biden, comes the unprecedented prospect of a woman and a minority in the second highest position in the land.

This morning we learned that we have lost that wonderful chef and human being Floyd Cardoz to Coronavirus. My eyes welled up with tears; I must have met Cardoz briefly about a dozen times over the span of 20 years – but his grace and his integrity stayed with you. That was the kind of person he was.

Leila Chirayath Janah, 29, recently bagged a whopping $ 1. 25 million in funding from Google for her company, Samasource. Add that in, and this small, non-profit has got close to $ 5 million from several major giant corporations including Rockefeller Foundation, Ford Foundation, Ebay, Cisco, Facebook, LinkedIn and even the US State Department.

Why have so many blue chip organizations put their faith in this little-known non-profit?

The idea behind Samasource is audacious – that the poorest of the poor are equal to the larger world community and quite capable of doing good work when they are entrusted with it, rather than just being given handouts and pity. In fact, Sama means equal in Sanskrit and it is Leila’s way of bringing the poor into the hi-tech world.

Dr. Nirmal Mattoo may be far away from the Vale of Kashmir, the place where he was born,  but its sheer beauty, sense of community and native customs have stayed with him, even in far-off New York. He has tried to bring the wisdom and beauty of India, including that of his hometown, to share with the larger world.

Indian-American children did very well in the 2019 Scripps National Spelling Bee – here’s the back story

V]ikas Khanna’s life has been no bowl of gulab jamuns – he was born in a middle-class home in Amritsar with a club foot. He struggled with his disability  and had to overcome bullying by the other children. His is the classic story of the immigrant, coming to America with little money and big dreams.  

Will the Desi Vote be as potent as the ‘Desi Girl’ in the Midterm Elections? Listen to Roopa Mahadevan!

Tulsi Gabbard’s Diwali Greeting Aloha and Namaste. I’d like to wish you and your family a very Happy Diwali. Diwali…

3595 people reached on Lassi with Lavina Sabina Beri, Anu Hazra and 7 others  like it on Lassi with Lavina…

Cocktails and Conversation with Chandrika Tandon was a small informal event organized by CHI’s junior board CH2 through which young professionals get started in helping the less privileged and creating a future for them through education.

She was a captain in the US Military, has served in the war-torn hell-hole of Iraq and been awarded several honors, including the Bronze Star – but she has never fired a shot. She was in the combat zones of Northern Iraq for 12 months, surrounded by the cacophony of bombs and mortar attacks – yet she has never carried a gun.

She says simply, “My defense is God.”

Prashant Bhargava 1973-2015

Deeply sad to share this news – it’s a loss for all of us. Today the world has lost a wonderful human being and filmmaker – Prashant Bhargava, 42. We remember his brilliant filmmaking, his great potential and his unfinished stories. He gave us many gifts, from ‘Patang’ to ‘Radhe Radhe’ and the last, ‘Ammaji’ – a small meditation on the power of love.

The aspirations behind ‘Patang’ made everyone a part of Prashant Bhargava’s world, his humanity and his caring.

If you’re brown, come from Asia and practice a different religion, you’re often seen as exotic, sometimes as strange and almost always as a curiosity by the mainstream, and these misconceptions are often triggered by the stories that are written about ethnicity in the media.

Ever visited Planet Shankara? You don’t need to journey as far as Mars or Pluto and you don’t need a rocket to get there but you will fly to a place of total musical bliss!

Planet Shankara is coming to you, right to the Lincoln Center Performing Arts Center and you’re in for a mind-blowing musical experience when three mighty talents come together – Anandan Sivamani – the magician of percussion, Anurag Harsh whose powerful voice transforms words into a direct conversation with the Almighty, and Stephen Devassy, the amazing keyboardist who has performed so often with AR Rahman.

A solo performance by even one of them would be heady enough but when all three are unleashed together on the stage, it is a joyous ride for the listeners, a musical monsoon to get thoroughly drenched in.