“Over drinks (some excellent Chilean wine), the minister told me of a new program that Chile is piloting to lure bootstrappers. Chile will grant $40,000 and provide some really cheap office space and accommodation to budding entrepreneurs from anywhere in the world. All they have to do is to build their products in one of the most beautiful locations on the planet. Chile is betting that once these entrepreneurs get there, they will never want to leave.”
Browsing: India
By now you’ve all probably read Joel Stein’s ‘My Own Private India’ in TIME magazine – his tirade against Indians in Edison, NJ and heard of the big hullabaloo that’s ensued. The bloggers, Indian media as well as regular folk are quite upset about Stein’s seemingly bigoted views.
“All that needs to be done is Indian merchants should stop selling TIME in their news-stands, and c-stores,” fumes Nayan Padrai, a reader of this blog. “Indian doctors should cancel their subscription for waiting room copies, and Indian CEOs of Fortune 500 companies should instruct their marketing managers not to advertise in TIME! Joel is surprised at the ‘non-Gandhian’ response on Twitter. So please send a ‘Gandhian’ response of boycott!”
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Lord Shiva danced the world into existence with a shake of his mighty damru, it is said, and we’ve been dancing ever since.You had to be at ‘Erasing Borders: Festival of Indian Dance’, a three day festival of dance in NYC to see how boldly the ghungroo bells ring and how feet and hands and bodies meld into a thing of beauty. What was eye-opening was the sheer diversity of the dance vocabulary and how it’s being interpreted by a whole new generation of dancers.
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Raj Loomba was only ten years old when his father passed away but he never forgot the turbulence of that event, the way the family’s life changed when Pushpa Wati, his 37 year old mother, became a widow and had to bring up seven children. Now decades later he has taken the pain and grief of that time and turned it into something positive – a determination to help other women who find themselves in his mother’s helpless state.
As an immigrant writer from India, I well remember my first day in New York City.
Overwhelmed by the enormous skyscrapers, fast moving crowds and nonstop traffic on Fifth Avenue, I suddenly came across an ocean of calm, an iconic, strikingly beautiful Beaux-Arts building at a height, with cascading stairs below it.
At the foot, on either side were two life-size handsome marble lions. Patience and Fortitude.
The surroundings could not have been better: the beautiful, peaceful Rubin Museum of Art was the venue for a gala fundraiser for a new school building for the children of Manjushree Orphanage in Tawang, India.
“Ten, fifteen, twenty thousand killed, blinded and maimed and their distraught families keep screaming – in person or in spirit – on Bhopal and New Delhi streets. We’ll compensate them with some small money and then turn the page on the history book and move forward; better yet, erase that history from newly published text books. Happily, in today’s Jai Ho Incredible India, nobody gives a hoot about history. So, no bother.” – Partha Banerjee, social activist.
It’s not every day that something dearly loved by Indian parents becomes a Twitter trending topic but that’s what happened with the 2010 Scripps National Spelling Bee championship finals! We are speaking of course of the annual spelling-fest in which Indian children do so well, and which becomes a magnificent obsession for the concerned parents.
Interestingly, there was a desi word which one of the spellers stumbled over and which seems fast to be becoming a recognized word in the English language – Lassi, which Hannah Evans spelled as lasse. Just shows the importance of eating out frequently at Indian restaurants (and reading L-a-s-s-i with Lavina!)
BREAKING NEWS: SURRENDER FEE HAS BEEN WAIVED BY THE INDIAN GOVT – BUT THE SAGA CONTINUES
Planning to visit India this summer? If you’re not an Indian citizen, be prepared for some mighty long lines at the Indian Consulate. If you gave up your Indian citizenship, the pigeons are coming home to roost – you now have penalties to pay. According to new rules, persons of Indian origin who acquired foreign citizenship, must surrender their Indian passports immediately after the acquisition of foreign citizenship and also obtain a Surrender Certificate – and pay a price.
Else, no visa and no travel to India!
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President Barack Obama dropped in at the U.S- India Strategic Dialogue Reception hosted by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for Indian External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna – and amongst all the serious issues, Indian food, inevitably, found its way into the conversation!
“Secretary Clinton, I think as you may be aware, is a great admirer of India, and I know the sentiment is shared in return,” said Obama. “In fact, I’m told that one of the Secretary’s favorite restaurants in Delhi added a new item to the menu —- the ‘Hillary Platter.’ This is true. What does it have — chapatti?”
Goodbye, Wall Street. Hello, Start-Up! The world is a-changing, the economic landscape is re-aligning. No doubt about it. In the days of the economic downturn, Wall Street had been handing out pink slips to workers – now you have three workers who have given Wall Street the pink slip!
Puneet Mehta was a SVP with Citi Capital Markets, Archana Patchirajan was a senior consultant with the same company; and Sonpreet Bhatia was a vice president at Merrill Lynch/Bank of America.
Now why would people throw up hard-to-get, prestigious jobs in the financial sector and go off into the unknown? They’ve heard the siren song of ‘entrepreneurship’ and their grand dream is being funded by venture capital and endorsed by none less than Mayor Bloomberg!
Got $20,000 to spare? You can live like a Mughal emperor in New York’s own Taj – the iconic Pierre Hotel in New York.
It’s always nice to see the Indian tricolor flag flying outside the landmark Pierre Hotel on Fifth Avenue, which was acquired by the Taj Hotels of the Tata Group in 2005. Now known as the Taj Pierre Hotel, the hotel underwent a multimillion dollar transformation recently and is the very visible US flagship of Taj Hotels, a stone’s throw from Central Park.
‘Kites’ Review
‘Kites’ is the face of the new global Indian film industry – fast-paced, fast-moving and completely at home on the world stage. From beginning to end, it has the look and feel of a big international film, and moves flawlessly and boldly, from glittering Vegas casinos to raw desert terrain to fabulous mansions. But where is the soul?
Pop artist Anoop Desai has been on everybody’s radar ever since he became a finalist on the eighth season of “American Idol.” Now his first independently released EP ‘All is Fair’ has hit the airwaves. His new single is titled ‘My Name.’
Was growing up in North Carolina with a name like Anoop difficult?
“Kids made fun of it all the time, in the school bus, and I remember coming home from kindergarten and demanding that my mom change my name, because I wanted to be a Bill or something,” he recalls.
“I cringe at that now because I am lucky to have my name, lucky to have my culture. That’s what makes me unique and a lot of people don’t have that.”
Like hundreds of fans, I’m headed out for the AR Rahman show tonight. Will have a report for you tomorrow. Meanwhile some Rahmanisms to keep you going!
I recalled a very different, calmer afternoon with Rahman several years ago when I was doing an interview with him for Beliefnet, the spirituality website. It was a one-on-one with the maestro in his hotel room and his staff had placed an Indian lunch for us on the table. Learning that I was fasting on that day, Rahman himself disappeared and returned with a glass of orange juice which he silently placed before me. Such is his empathy for other people.
A gossamer web of stories ensnares the reader in ‘One Amazing Thing,’ Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s new novel, taking you into distant lands, hidden places in the heart and into the hidden strengths people have.
Nine very different people drawn by chance or luck or destiny into the same spot just as disaster strikes. They are all gathered for obtaining visas to India in the basement of the Indian consulate in an unnamed American city when a powerful earthquake strikes. ALSO LISTEN TO A LIVE INTERVIEW WITH CHITRA DIVAKARUNI
What better way to launch a film series about a rich culture than with a Mughal feast?
Fabulous jewels, opulent palaces, courtesans, high melodrama and a vanishing way of life is what enthralled us in the classic historical movies like ‘Pukar’, ‘Najma’, ‘Mirza Ghalib’, ‘Mughal-e-Azam’, and more recently ‘Jodhaa Akbar’.Now you can get the flavor of those bygone days with a rich cinematic feast worthy of the Mughals – and actually indulge in a royal celebration.
How can young girls get a sense of self and confidence in tackling the larger world? On the recent Take Our Daughters to Work Day, two South Asian organizations came together to make this a reality. South Asian Women’s Leadership Forum (SAWLF) partnered with South Asian Youth Action (SAYA!). Over 45 high school students got a chance to visit corporate offices such as JP Morgan Private Bank, Harper Collins, MTV, Infosys and Colgate, thanks to SAWLF women who are already working in these companies.
They may live in American cities, go to American schools but Bollywood runs in their blood. We’re talking of young Indian-Americans, thousands and thousands of them, scattered across American towns and cities. Weaned on Bollywood movies on DVD since babyhood, they learn the Shah Rukh moves, the Madhuri moves, the Shahid moves, almost by osmosis in family living rooms.
Later many of them learn dance, classical and Bollywood, at the scores of Indian dance schools that have sprouted up in towns and cities. They dance at family events, birthdays and weddings, as naturally as if they were in a Bollywood movie and it was written into the script of life.
In the wake of recent events, what’s happening with Shashi Tharoor will need much more than 140 characters of Twitter analysis! You could of course say ‘Storm in a Teacup’, ‘Much Ado about Nothing’ – or ‘There’s More to This Than meets the Eye’. All would be essentially correct.