Category Archives: Features

Indian American Parenting; A rebuttal

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by Divya Valluri

divya.jpgDivya Valluri is the quintessential California girl; confident, talented, vivacious and earthy. Her parents have given her a couple of very useful gifts; Indian roots and American wings. WNI’s August 5th parenting article “The confused Indian American Parent” in which PR Ganapathy talks about praise in the American system and Sukanya Mahadevan explores the efficacy of a crazy extra curricular schedule for kids, evoked this response from Divya; I think it’s interesting that parental concerns about the dichotomy of Indian and American cultures never really address the effort children growing up in the United States inevitably have to make to create a balance between the two. We definitely go through a struggle to combine the Asian values of our households with the American values in the outside world, and still have solid relationships in both places. I respect the valid concerns Indian parents have with raising their children with a combination of solid values and limitless opportunities. I don’t think my parents are going to be reading this any time soon, so I can safely say that I sincerely believe they raised me with a perfect combination of the two. So here we go: Continue reading →

Don't catch that disability

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By Salil Chaturvedi

I’ve often wondered if disability is contagious.

Can one catch it by being around a disabled person, like one contracts a viral or flu? Or perhaps more like the mysterious way in which yawns get transmitted. My experience suggests that that might well be the case, though this needs a deeper scientific study.
Here are some conditions, enumerated in the hope that they will keep you from accidentally catching a bout of disability. Continue reading →

India- Life Starts at 60…

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By Rohini Mohan

It’s been 60 years since India awoke to life and freedom. A land divided and conquered many times over, in the course of our history we willingly or unwittingly opened our borders to the Dravidians, the Persians, the Greeks, the Huns, the Moguls, the British, the Portuguese and the French. They each left their distinctive mark on our DNA, our culture, our language and our psyche. We morphed, we evolved, we progressed some and we regressed some. And through it all we developed a unique identity that we christened India, Bharat, Hindustan. Continue reading →

On the trail of the Tiger

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by Nirupama Subramanian

It was 5.30 am on a dark December morning. The wind gnawed at my face and froze my fingers gripping the edge of the seat in the open Maruti Gypsy. I wished I had worn gloves. The cold was something I had not anticipated on our quest. We were at the entrance of the Bandhavgarh National Park, along with forty other jeeps, with one singular purpose- seeing tigers in the wild. I had seen tigers before, pacing restlessly behind the bars, resting behind high walls and deep trenches, separated by more than those boundaries from the humans that gawked at them. They were creatures that evoked only curiosity and provoked cries of ‘Hey, tiger, move from there’ from unruly spectators. We are masters of confined spaces, tigers are creatures of vast open territories. We have rarely met on neutral ground. Continue reading →

The Bhagavad Gita – Chapter 1

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Gaurav Rastogi will be blogging his thoughts as he reads the Bhagvad Gita for the first time. He is 35, lives in the Bay Area, curiously religious but not a Sanskrit scholar.

#1 WHATEVER YOU DO, DON’T PANIC!

FOR THOSE WHO CAME IN LATE
For those not familiar with the text, here’s a brief backstory. You must know that the Bhagvad Gita is an orthogonal insert into the main story of the Mahabharata which itself is the epic story of the sons of Bharat and their Godfather-style story of deceit and sweet revenge. The Gita is set in the climactic battle scene between two sets of cousins who are fighting over property rights. The bad guys, historically speaking, are the Kauravas, who are fathered by Dhritrashtra – the blind king. The good guys are their cousins – the Pandavas – who are supported by sympathetic friends and relatives, including Krishna Vasudeva. (Vasudeva means land-owner, and was apparently a title of some sorts. Krishna just means black.) Continue reading →

Blogging the Gita

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Gaurav Rastogi will be blogging his thoughts as he reads the Bhagvad Gita for the first time. He is 35, lives in the Bay Area, is curiously religious but not a Sanskrit scholar.

GITA KI KASAM KHA KAR KAHO…(PUT YOUR HANDS ON THE GITA AND SWEAR THAT…)
References to the Gita are everywhere in Indian – and international – culture. As everybody knows, Bollywood criminals are asked to swear by the Gita that they will speak the truth and nothing but the truth. This sort of confers a “holy book” status on the Gita, in league with the Bible or the Quran. We grew up watching pulse-racing TV in the form of BR Chopra’s Mahabharata with its kitschy dress sense and continuous references to Karmanyeva Adhikaraste. In international culture, you might know that the book and movie – The Legend of Bagger Vance (Will Smith played the eponymous Bagger Vance, which even sounds like Bhagvan. Besides, he’s black, which is a plus) loosely translated the teachings of the Gita in the context of Golf-as-War. Continue reading →

Human rights in India – are some still more equal than others?

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By Rohini Mohan

With a population in excess of a billion, most struggling to merely subsist, it is not surprising that a country like India has not really been that vested in upholding and enforcing its human rights policy. There are countless human rights violations everyday on an individual and mass level, but very rarely are these brought to the attention of the authorities. Even when they are, chances are, other more pressing issues are given precedence. What we take so much for granted in the developed world has so far been a luxury in India; just like everything else, in this area too, it is only the voice of the moneyed that is heard. But things are changing, if slowly. To understand the progress in this critical milestone in a country’s development, WNI spoke to R Nataraj, recent Police Commissioner of Chennai and currently ADGP (Additional Director General of Police) assigned to the Investigations Division, State Human Rights Commission (SHRC), Tamilnadu. Continue reading →

MeeraMasi -Bilingual books for Indian kids

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By Vidya Pradhan

Sonali Sahni Herrera had a problem common to Indians brought up in the United States. Husband Carlos was able to share his culture and Spanish language with their children with the help of many bilingual books and DVDs but she was at a loss when it came to Hindi, having grown up in the US since the age of 4. Not being very fluent in the Hindi script, she looked around for books, CDs, nursery rhymes that could bridge the gap between her knowledge and her culture but the offerings were limited and few met her quality standards. She turned to sister Sheetal Sahni Singhal, for help. After scouting around in India and here for material, the two decided that the only way to get quality books was to publish it themselves. They started MeeraMasi, a publishing company that focuses on Indian bilingual books for kids under the age of 6. Continue reading →

Your Call Is Important To Us

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By Salil Chaturvedi

Monika, my richer half, had received a hefty bonus and after some debate on how to blow up the money, we decided to put it to pay back part of the housing loan and bring the EMIs down to a more comfortable level.

I called up the Customer Care Service of a bank (referred to in our household as Icky Icky bank, owing to the strong emotions it stirs in us). I needed to find out how paying back Rupees two lakh would affect the EMI plan. A simple thing, really. Here’s how it went: Continue reading →

Swayamkrushi…. Guiding the challenged towards independence

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By Malathi Mohan

Sometime in the nineties, I visited an ordinary house in Secunderabad. I was received with a lovely smile and made to feel welcome by a little boy who said “Hello aunty, Namaste. Please sit down, Manjula madam will come soon.” I sat at the entrance lounge and noticed that the reception desk was managed by a young girl who was also answering the phone in a businesslike manner but was very friendly and polite. Both the ‘lobby managers’ answered all my queries pleasantly and offered me a glass of water, properly served. There were a few other youngsters of different ages around who went about their jobs with a cheery greeting to me. Helping the cook with vegetables; the invariable cleaning of rice and dhal; sweeping and mopping; dusting and bed making were some of the duties they handled by rotation. This was no ordinary house. It was Swayamkrushi, a community based project for the mentally challenged, started by Manjula Kalyan, a dynamic, motherly woman who had always been interested in helping the developmentally disabled. Her goal is to give them an equal seat at the table and a chance to face life’s challenges from a position of strength. Continue reading →