By Vidya Pradhan
For the holiday season, WNI picks movies that can be watched with the entire family as you gather around the big-screen plasma TV with cups of chai and plates of mithai. In no particular order are the following Continue reading
By Rohini Mohan
My favorite thing to do in my pre-teen and teen years was to curl up on a sofa, with a nice, juicy, comfort oozing book. The actual reading of the book was the climax of the whole experience, generally preceded by a long drawn out ceremony, starting with a trip to either the second hand book store if my parents were feeling particularly generous or nine cases out of ten, to the library where I spent most of my meager allowance. Next would follow the deliciously painstaking process of locating just the book I wanted to read which itself could take an hour or more. There would be much conferring with the store keeper/ librarian, I would change my mind at least 15 times, and when I finally picked the chosen book, no-one was happier or more anxious to get started than me. Continue reading
By Asha Chandra
Like so many young Indians at the time, my parents immigrated to the US in the 1960s to further their education and pursue the American dream. For the past 40+ years, they have worked and raised their family here. Now, as much as I try to deny it, they are reaching their senior years. Even though my parents have essentially “grown up” in the US, and today they are completely independent, and have created a savings net, live a very comfortable life, and in general, understand the American “systems and culture”, it will be inevitable that one day, there will be so many questions that they (and we), as adult children, will need to ask ourselves. Will they be able to live in their current homes? Will they need additional care? Will they have health insurance? For how long will they be able to continue to drive? And who can help us find out about the resources and services that exist in our local community to help make their lives comfortable as they become older? Continue reading
By Vidya Pradhan
Let’s face it..to many Indians, exercise for exercise’s sake is often considered a waste of time. After all, our agrarian ancestors depended on hard work in the fields and back-breaking efforts in maintaining the household to work off the lassi and ghee. Middle class homes featured simple, low calorie food, rich in seasonal vegetables and local grain. Options for eating out were limited to the local dhaba or udipi joint.
Today, our environment has had an explosion of food choices, from processed to fast food, but alas, our mindset has remained the same; which may explain why the South Asian Heart Center in El Camino Hospital is chock-a-block with young Indians with heart disease.
Shobha Reddy, fitness guru from Mountain View, is doing her bit to shatter this mindset and get us sedentary Indians off our couches and on to the gym floor. Once a portfolio manager with a mutual fund company in Mountain View, Shobha traded in stocks and bonds till a meeting with a personal trainer in 1998 made her focus on an investment in the health of the body rather than the health of her client’s finances.
By Rohini Mohan
I suppose the concept is different. It’s like reading a book of short stories as opposed to a full length novel. Dus Kahaaniyaan is 10 different short films which have no connection to each other, each a little self contained feature on its own with its own cast of actors and directors. Continue reading
By Salil Chaturvedi
I’ve had this itching allergy for about seven years now. My eyes swell up and get all puffy and raw-like and the skin around the eyes itches in a strange way from the inside. A skin specialist told me to think about how I spend my day, what I eat, what I use, what I wear, etc. So, my plan was simple, list the things that I use on a daily basis and try and isolate the problem ingredient. How do I spend my day? I begin by brushing my teeth with the extra whitener toothpaste. I picked up my favourite toothpaste and listed the ingredients.
Colgate Advanced Whitener: Silica Sorbitol, Glycerine, Sodium fluoride.
I decided to go after sodium fluoride and googled it on the laptop. I found that kidneys can eliminate only about 50% of the daily fluoride intake. The rest gets absorbed in calcified tissues, like bones and teeth. For the average individual, a retention of 2mg/day would result in crippling skeletal fluorosis after 40 years. Small children, even if pea-size amount is used, will still absorb the same, more if the child is younger and has less swallowing control skills. Half a tube of toothpaste can kill a child. So my toothpaste was safe. Sodium Fluoride didn’t cause any allergies. And now I knew how to pop off irritating children. Not bad, for ten-minute’s worth of research. I scratched my eyes a bit and moved on. Continue reading
By Vidya Pradhan
The typical Silicon Valley success story has to do with chips, b(y)tes, outsourcing and lots and lots of dough. Well, so does our story, though not in the way you might think. It all started when the bottom fell out of the hardware market in the early part of this century. Mani Krishnan, who had been making a comfortable living exporting computers, printers and peripherals to India, suddenly found himself in the unfamiliar territory of having to hound his Indian distributors for collections.
Having made a resolve never to work for anyone else ever again, Mani was scouting around for ideas for a new business when a friend commented on the lack of good South Indian coffee in the Bay Area Indian stores. A tie-up with 777, a Chennai based company selling various Indian processed foods led to the seeds of a new business, now importing goods into the US instead of the other way around. Mani’s fragrant godown in Mountain View now stocks pickles, sambar powder, puliyogare paste and of course many different brands of ‘kapi’ but the secret to the success of his fledgling company is – batter!
By Rohini Mohan
Aaja Nachle – another consummate entertainer for the entire family by Yash Chopra. That’s the thought that crossed my mind when the movie was over. It was endorsed by a bunch of teenagers in the seat behind me. ‘Good Movie, tabhi to flop hui’ was the comment. Continue reading
By Vidya Pradhan
Sometimes it is all about the treatment.
You can have a complex script, big name stars, special effects and professional comedians or you can have a simple love story that is well directed, smartly edited and best of all, well written.
With a plot loosely similar to a Ben Affleck/Sandra Bullock movie called ‘Forces of Nature’, Jab We Met is director Imtiaz Ali’s second movie after Socha Na Tha. His forte appears to be small, intimate, slice-of-life ‘dramedies’, if I may coin a term. SNT was also expertly directed, though I didn’t enjoy it as much as JWM because I can’t stand Abhay Deol( or at least I didn’t, before Manorama Six Feet Under).
Jab We Met has a rather unfortunate title, because it sounds cutesy, pretentious and very ‘desi’ but it is, in fact, one of the best romantic comedies I have seen in a long time. You just have to watch the first few scenes of the movie to make out that this is a classy product and you are in for a real treat. Continue reading
Kashyap Deorah, IITian and Returning Indian Entrepreneur, with a yen for start ups from his college days through to his sojourn in Silicon Valley is now back to his roots in hometown, Bombay. Here are his views on 'Maximum City – Bombay Lost and Found', a 542 page tome by New York based journalist and writer, Suketu Mehta. Continue reading
Water, No Ice 