By Rohini Mohan A slightly nasal but melodious voice follows me whenever I walk down memory lane; a security blanket that envelops me in its comforting embrace. Manna De, Asha, Talat, Hemant Kumar, Lata, Geeta Dutt, Rafi, Kishore- I grew up with all of them, but none made an impact as much as Mukesh, the man with the golden voice.

Let’s admit it – most of our knowledge of Indian mythology comes from Amar Chitra Kathas. And even here, 7000 miles away from home, most of us have a couple of those comics stashed away in our bookshelves. Indian books are our link to our childhood, a sometimes tenuous link with our culture that we would like to hold on to and pass on to our kids. Desi Knowledge, the brainchild of Monica Khosla, is one such company which aims to help us do just that.

By Rohini Mohan ‘Provoked’ is the story of soft spoken Kiranjit Ahluwalia who accompanies her Asian- British husband to England, a young bride at the cusp of a new life, with hopes of continuing her education, becoming a mother, maturing as a woman. Alone in a strange country, with below par English speaking skills, she finds herself at the mercy of her new husband, Deepak, a Dr Jekyll, Mr. Hyde kind of character.

By Vidya Pradhan With the kind of Indian population we have in the Bay Area, I half-expect to hear the shehnai strains from Vividh Bharati when I turn the radio on during the morning commute. So it was with very pleasant surprise that I discovered ‘It’s Different’, a radio program that airs 6-9 a.m. on Wednesdays on the Stanford FM station KZSU 90.1.

By Rohini Mohan I was raised for the most part in Madras (which I can never bring myself to call Chennai), and am as Tamilian as they come. But it was not until I went to Delhi to study that I realized that not only am I an Illad, which is BITS Pilani jargon for anyone from Chennai, but also a Tam Bram, short for Tamilian Brahmin, deserving of my own peculiar little niche. My irreverent peers who neither knew of nor cared for any form of political correctness mercilessly branded every rookie who walked in the door, slotting us by our accents, our body language and our other idiosyncrasies. It was all one grand joke, but as I thought about it, I figured there is logic to the stereotyping. I shall proceed to unveil some unique Tam Bram attributes as gently as I can, but this is not for the overly sensitive or easily offended, so caveat lector….