When Carlton Kitto was just a teenager many decades ago in Calcutta, he had a love, and its name was jazz. At first, it was an innocent attraction, but the notes kept calling him, taunting him. It became an obsession and soon the yearning was too great. He had to make a choice between staying back and fulfilling expectations, or leaving to chase jazz where it took him. Fifty years later he’s still playing for crowds in the new documentary that bears his name, “Finding Carlton: Uncovering the story of jazz in India.”
It will be screened at the U.N. on April 30 as part of Indian Mission’s programming for the first International Jazz Day.
Browsing: Features
For all those who’ve watched King Khan, the Badshah of Bollywood, dance and sing and romance over the years, Shah Rukh Khan’s talk at Yale was one of a kind, a look at the real man, rather than the reel man.
Un-awed by the pomp and ceremony of being honored with the prestigious Chubb Fellowship, he was down-to-earth and  funny, talking one on one to Yale students, as someone human and humane, a striver, a dreamer and a parent.
Here, Shah Rukh Khan, in his own words….
This has been quite a year for noted actor and activist Shabana Azmi who was awarded the Padma Bhushan by the Government of India. She’s just finished Deepa Mehta’s ‘Midnight’s Children’ based on Salman Rushdie’s novel and is currently making a film with Vishal Bharadwaj. She has been chosen by TIME Magazine as 1 of 25 Asian heroes and is the only woman amongst 4 Indians on the list.
Now comes her New York minute! Shabana Azmi was presented a proclamation by New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo’s Office for Motion Picture and Television Development for her commitment to the arts and contributions to New York City’s film industry.
Shah Rukh Khan fans – the King of Bollywood is coming to Yale University! This is a brand new real life role for SRK, who is being recognized as a Chubb Fellow at the prestigious university on April 12.
Shah Rukh Khan is in extremely good company:  Former fellows include President George W. Bush, Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter, authors Octavio Paz, Carlos Fuentes and Toni Morrison; filmmaker Sofia Coppola; architect Frank Gehry; choreographer Mikhail Baryshnikov and journalist Walter Cronkite.
And yes, there’s actually a chance to see SRK! 
Some things never change. Lord Krishna played holi with Radha and her sakhis in the lush groves of Brindaban in timeless time – and now we are still playing it in the 21st century, not only in India but across the diaspora – even on board a ship anchored off New York city, no less!
Holi, the Hindu festival of colors, is here heralding spring, joy and togetherness. In India, the streets are turned multicolored with every hue imaginable. At private parties there are pichkari-fights as revelers get splashed with color, dunked in pools full of colored water, and splurge on sweets and gets intoxicated on thandai, often laced with bhang. We share a wonderful video of the late great showman Raj Kapoor whose Holi parties were legendary. Enjoy!
For people from South Asia, especially Pakistan, it was a big moment when Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy won the Oscar for Best Documentary for ‘Saving Face’.
It was a triumph for the Pakistani filmmaker and her co-director Daniel Junge, a triumph for Pakistan bringing home Oscar gold for the first time – but most of all, it was a triumph for the women who have been victimized with acid attacks – the most incomprehensible mode of revenge by angry men – jilted lovers and disgruntled spouses.
Modern day iconic artists like the late MF Husain, FN Souza or Tyeb Mehta are the rock stars of the Indian art world and you see their celebrity status reflected at art biennales and gallery openings, and in the high prices their work commands in the auction houses. They are the superstars, the rajas of any social event, the focal point of international culture. Everyone knows their name.
Yet there is another set of artists who never achieved fame in their lifetime, and whose names no one knows. We are talking of the superb master painters who lived and worked from 1100 to 1900, who rarely signed a canvas with their own names, and who lived and died in anonymity.
They created some of the most magnificent works for emperors, maharajas and the nobility, and yet today no one knows their names or faces. 
“We want to give a sense, an understanding that these works produced by anonymous craftsmen in dimly lit backrooms – these were very creative individuals responding to a particular place and time and their response to the subject matter and the demands of their patron – all those things went into the mix.” Curator John Guy, Metropolitan Museum of Art
Love is the four-letter word most used today on Valentine’s Day and who knows how to use it better than A.R. Rahman.? On this day of love and one-ness, listen to the Maestro’s new song. It covers all the shades of joy and sorrow, togetherness and separation, wanting and denial which make up the high drama of love.
What better insurance for a home’s peace and prosperity than installing an image of Ganesha or Buddha within it? For the spiritually inclined and the stylish, jewelry designer Amrita Singh has introduced a home collection line which includes some beautiful icons for the home. Singh who was recently in Bali, came back inspired by the sheer joy of having a touch of spirituality in one’s home.
