Browsing: India

A store is born – or should we say a star is born?

Misha Nicole, a new fashion concept store which is opening in Soho in fall 2010 gave shoppers a peek at things to come with Global Runway’s Night Out, a fashion show organized with the Indo-American Arts Council (IAAC) at the Paramount Hotel. Over 300 people turned up for an evening of cocktails and style-gazing as a battalion of models showed the collections of 10 designers from India, the US and Canada in a series of looks conceptualized by Misha Nicole Shivdasani.

Are Hollywood movies going to be a cash cow for Indian-American producers? Generally you have NRI filmmakers making movies with Indian themes or Indian actors but Naveen Chathapuram of Chicago has just ventured into mainstream territory, by producing ‘CA$H’, a psychological thriller with Hollywood stars Sean Bean (Lord of the Rings), Chris Hemsworth (Thor, Star Trek) and Victoria Profeta (Push, The Drew Carey Show). The film is written and directed by Stephen Milburn Anderson (South Central)

Now we’ve seen it all! Steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal, Chairman and CEO of ArcelorMittal – and one of the world’s richest men, will actually have a tower named after him, and it’s no less a structure than the mighty Olympic Tower being readied for the 2012 Games in London. He will be picking up most of the $30 million tab. It’s going to be made of 1400 tonnes of steel, appropriate for the King of Steel, and is being designed by the acclaimed London-based artist Anish Kapoor

It’s been voted the best Indian restaurant in the San Francisco Bay area by the 2010 Zagat’s guide and offers food that is innovative and yet rooted in regional cuisine

It was a bit like a floating library of Vedantic literature – and now it’s shutting down, or is being grounded, if you want to take the airport analogy a bit further. For the last four decades, the Hare Krishnas, as the followers of International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON) are popularly known, were a fixture in American airports. Heads shaved, clad in orange and white robes, they would cluster in busy terminals, waving Vedic literature at rushing passengers. Now their spiritual take-off has been canceled – a California Supreme Court ruling prohibits the Hare Krishnas from soliciting passengers at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX).

I always suspected Indian chili peppers were good for something more earth-shattering than merely spicing up our food. Well now the Indian military has discovered the true value of the formidable Bhut Jalokia pepper from Assam which is 100 times hotter than the Jalapeno. It will be used in smoke grenades to battle unruly mobs and nasty terrorists.

If you went on the Google home page today, you’d have to rub your eyes and wonder whether you were still on Planet Earth. Google has been renamed Topeka! Then you realize – right, its April 1 and this is Google’s idea of an April Fools’ Day prank. As you must remember, some days back the city of Topeka in Kansas did Google the supreme honor of actually renaming itself Google and this has so touched this Jagannath of all internet activity that it decided to change its world-famous name to Topeka – for a day!

The tragedy of Partition is almost Shakespearean in its fallout. It’s been over sixty-three years since this catastrophic event occurred yet its effects continue to unfold, like seismic aftershocks. No one on the Indian sub-continent has really escaped its scathing wounds as the two countries carved out of undivided India in 1947 – independent India and Pakistan – reel even today from the legacy of hatred and suspicion unleashed by the Partition. In reality, one people, one culture, today stand on opposite shores – We and They – talking in tongues which neither understands.
One would think that everything that had to be said about the Partition has been said but along comes Sarah Singh, an intrepid film-maker who has boldly gone into this troubled, calloused territory.

Meet some of the Big Apple’s hottest and happening Indian chefs…

They are the interpreters of Indian Cuisine, the innovators who aren’t afraid to experiment and create, adding new dimensions to the food they grew up with, giving an exciting buzz to the ho-hum chicken tikka masala and palak paneer which has become the norm of Indian restaurants around the world. Some of them are at the helm of New York’s most noted Indian restaurants and bring in the foodies.

Indian filmgoers have endured through much to see their favorite cinema, right from projections on a sheet in the open air in villages to screenings in ramshackle halls across the Diaspora. Early immigrants tell of renting small tattered theaters or community centers for a single showing of an Indian film to which starved filmiholics would drive from miles to get sustenance. Now they finally have a theater chain of their own.

Would you like to import an elephant or a rhino perhaps? Ornaments of jade, lapis lazuli, crystal and carnelian?

We may think of global trade as a modern day invention but way back in the ancient world there was a brisk trade and rich cultural exchange going on between far-flung countries. ‘Arts of Ancient Viet Nam: From River Plain to Open Sea’ is an intriguing new exhibition at The Asia Society in collaboration with Museum of Fine Arts Houston, which shows the interconnections which existed between Viet Nam and many countries, including India.

It was the Mercedes-Benz New York Fashion Week and Sabah Mansoor-Husain was one of six student designers from the Academy of Art University in San Francisco who showed their debut collections at the tented extravaganza. For Sabah, the destination was particularly thrilling for the journey to Bryant Park had started all the way in Bangalore, her hometown.

Think of home, and for many Indian immigrants it evokes memories of cool interiors, a whirring fan and the street sounds floating from the outside. Inside was a cool, domestic heaven, outside was the chaos, the traffic, the ugly realities of the work world, of political upheaval, of price cuts. It was always about inside and outside, two very different worlds. And now in our new global world it is about India interacting with a larger, more complex world at its doorstep.

New Yorker Meera Gandhi was appointed a centennial councilor for RNID which will be completing a hundred years in 2011. She is one of six centennial councilors who will serve for a year and highlight the mission of RNID in the US, India and China.

Life seems to be turning into a Bollywood movie and you won’t even need to lip-sync as you sing and dance your way through life with your romantic hero – just wear a musical sari! Yes, you’ve seen those Made in China Christmas cards which sing, autos from everywhere which talk and clocks which nag you to wake up. Now you have a Made in India intricately embroidered sari which comes embedded with a digital player in the ‘pallu’, 8 micro-speakers on the border and can play over 200 songs for four hours.

As if there aren’t enough big breaking news stories or international crises to report – Elizabeth Hurley wears a sari and discards the blouse – and Huffington Post reveals all! Great investigative reporting!

India and Indians seem to have a finger in every pie, and recently New Yorkers got to see the full gamut of India’s 7 billion dollar leather industry, from bags to stylish leather jackets in every possible hue.

Saks Fifth Avenue, Cole Haan, Jones New York, Levi’s, Guess, and Norma Kamali were just some of the style leaders who came in to check out Indian leather at Know Leather, Now India, a sourcing show at the Westin Hotel. Models displayed a rich array of fashion garments which underlined the fact that Indian leather has moved from just basics to high fashion too.

Want to know where you can get WiFi connection in Manhattan? Confused by the labyrinth of subway connections? Or just hungry for a great meal? Now, thanks to a team of Indian IT professionals, you can have all that information at your finger tips on your iPhone – and it’s free.

NYC Way is the name of this neat application and it’s got Mayor Bloomberg’s seal of approval. It got an honorable mention for the App of the Year but also won the Public Choice Grand Prize and the Investors’ Choice Award in the NYC Big Apps competition

McMansions, hefty bank balances, unfettered success, Ivy League schools, a world embroidered with dollar signs.

For many Indian immigrants, that was the fabric of the American Dream. Add to that a Lexus and maybe a BMW in the double car garage, lots of travel, lots of dining out, and the ability to live a rich lifestyle.

For other Indian immigrants, the American Dream was much more modest—just the ability to survive, to consolidate some savings and send funds back home to family members still in the village.
Yet all these dreams, big and small, modest and immodest, have been gathered, whipped up and churned in the ruthless and noisy cement mixer of the economy—pummeled, pushed and battered by the worst crisis in memory as the global economy has taken a severe beating.

The bride in her glittering red sari was carried into the ballroom in a palanquin held aloft by four burly Westerners dressed in turbans. As the gathered guests watched, the bridegroom came forward to claim his bride and the couple walked to the stage. Standard wedding fare you’d say – except both the bride and bridegroom were children!