Browsing: Features

Cinema
6 'When Harry Tries to Marry' – A Happy Ending

Do you think it’s still possible to dream big and actually see that dream become a reality? Ask first-time filmmaker Nayan Padrai. His project ‘When Harry Tries to Marry’ – made on hope, persistence and a limited budget has gone on to bag several top awards at the recent London Asian Film Festival: Best Crossover Film and the Audience Award for Best Film. Rahul Rai, the young actor who’s never acted before, was named Best New Talent.
The film has already shown at the Austin and Mumbai Film Festivals, and its script was a featured project at the Sundance Institute Independent Producers’ Conference. It’s now showing in New York.

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People
1 Indian Entrepreneurs in Social Media Start-ups

In a world where the computer is king, the Internet is all-powerful and Facebook and Twitter reign, social media is the newest and hottest turf to be conquered.

For each of these innovative entrepreneurs, who are in their 20’s and 30’s, the world to be conquered is virtual but the treasures to be won are very real – millions of dollars for successful start-ups, fame, fortune and fans globally.

Meet the creators of five start-ups everyone is buzzing about – Foursquare, Involver, MyCityWay, Occipital and Radium One. In our increasingly interconnected world where Mumbai and Manhattan are just a click away, you will soon be using their creations if you are not already…

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Cinema
4 Satyajit Ray – Remembering a Master

Dhukia, a poor untouchable, journeys to the home of Ghashiram, the village brahmin, to request him to set an auspicious date for his daughter’s wedding. He is made to wait, told to clean the stables and chop wood. The hapless man, burdened by caste and class, malnourished and starving, labors in silence – finally dying in the scorching sun. For Ghashiram, the death is an inconvenience; the dilemma is how to get rid of the corpse of an untouchable man…

“Deliverance’ (Satgadi) is a powerful short film by Satyajit Ray based on a short story by Munshi Premchand. This stark film underlines the brutishness of life, the inhumanity of man to man, and is one you won’t forget in a hurry.

New Yorkers got to see this film in the recent film series – Long Shadows: the Late Work of Satyajit Ray, at the Walter Reade Theater, organized by the Film Society of Lincoln Center.

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Faith
10 Devi Durga, Mahishasura & Cosmic Evil

(Photo: Amal Biswas)

Ever wondered why Hindu Gods and Goddesses have multiple heads, limbs and eyes?

Word as a vehicle of expression of thought is a powerful instrument – but its adequacy is limited to the phenomenal world. That is why an individual’s personal spiritual realization is inexpressible in its totality.

Mythology is an offshoot of this inefficacy of word while dealing with celestial events. The saintly scholar in Hinduism is seized with the problem of adequately narrating a superhuman extraordinary event, and tends to exaggerate. He needs to respond to his inner clamor to bestow the highest glory to the Lord with love, respect and adoration.

This has inevitably resulted in the Hindu pantheon having Gods and Goddesses with multiple heads and hands, but then so do cosmic evil forces too. There is a deep philosophical significance in this.
– Guest blogger Tapas Mukherjee

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Cinema
4 Julian Schnabel & Rula Jebreal on ‘Miral’

It is a film which touches you and makes you think and realize that there are always two sides to a story. Julian Schnabel’s ‘Miral’ was bound to cause controversy because the noted Jewish director shows the world from the perspective of a young Palestinian girl in occupied East Jerusalem, something which has rarely been done. This blistering film is based on an autobiographical book of the same name by Rula Jebreal, who grew up in the occupied territory and is now a journalist in Italy but has never forgotten the traumas of her scarred land.

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Faith
6 Spirituality 101 – The Journey of a Skeptic

“My blogs usually are about trips to exciting and exotic international destinations, and these trips typically last about two weeks or so. Today I’m writing about a very different journey – my journey on the path of meditation that I have been on for about three years. When I set off on that trip, I didn’t even know that I was embarking on a journey.

I started learning meditation out of exasperation. My sister had been insisting that I attend a course with Art of Living (AOL) because it would help me. I was quite sure I didn’t need help. My experience growing up in India and then living in the US for several years was that this stuff was either for the ultra-religious Indians or new age Americans. I was neither. But I took the course anyway – so I could turn around and let my sister know that it was no good and a waste of money!” Guest Blogger Jinny Uppal

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Faith
0 I Meditate NY, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar & Social Media

I-Phone, I-Pad, I-Meditate?

It was bound to happen! The practice of meditation may be thousands of years old but it is perfectly suited to our very stressful modern times, when in order to go fast, you have to learn to slow down. And the buzz of the moment is that the power of social media is being harnessed by a group of high achieving young professionals to get the word out about the value of meditation, and the upcoming I Meditate NY event, one of the largest meditation gatherings ever to be held in the Big Apple.

Over 2700 New Yorkers, from all walks of life and all religions, will come together to listen to and meditate with the renowned spiritual leader Sri Sri Ravi Shankar who heads the Art of Living Foundation, with music by Grammy nominated Chandrika Tandon and world music band Bhakti. This unique event will be held at Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Hall on April 10, and leading up to it are free meditation classes at the Art of Living Center in Manhattan, a chance to get a first-hand taste of meditation.

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People
8 Anoop Desai – Zero Hero

Great news for Anoop Desai fans – they are going to get not one but three albums from him this year, as part of the Zero trilogy. Songs like ‘Worth the Wait’, ‘Want your Love’ and ‘OoWee’ can be downloaded for free – in fact the entire ‘Zero.O ‘ can be downloaded. The light-hearted ‘OoWee’ is just the right number to hear now – fun and very danceable, it makes you think of Spring. And Anoop is giving away the album – so here’s a chance to download it and also watch his new music video. Also learn how you can support the efforts of this independent artiste who does not have a big label behind him.

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Art
0 Indian & Pakistani Contemporary Art, Together

A precursor to Asian Contemporary Art Week in NY, a recent group show: India and Pakistan may have been geographically birthed on the same subcontinent but they are relentlessly apart as nations. It is a question of so near – and yet so far. Once one people, they are now so far apart that can one understand the mindset of The Other?

Yet, art by Indian and Pakistani artists hung side by side in the Aicon Gallery in Manhattan – perhaps there were not even six degrees of separation between these canvases.

Looking at these powerful works of art one would be hard-pressed to say which artist was from India, and which from Pakistan. This only goes to prove that at heart, the dreams, the hopes and the fears are the same…

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Faith
41 Karma 101

“If you punch a concrete wall with your fist, the wall hits you back with the same amount of force you had engaged in hitting it.

Your bad actions in this world will inevitably hit you back too; just as your good actions will ensure good consequences reflected either in ensuring unburdened living, or in ameliorating accumulated bad karma.” New guest blog on spirituality.

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