Browsing: People

People
0 The Nikki Haley Story

“We were the first Sikh family in Bamberg. It was a small town in South Carolina, a closed community at that time,” recalls Ajit Randhawa of the 70’s. “Our daughters Simmi and Nikki entered the Little Miss Bamberg contest but the school selected only a White Queen and a Black Queen. So Nikki and Simmi were not eligible as contestants. Nikki was five years old at that time and sang, ‘This land is your land, this land is my land, from California to New York Island’ and received a resounding applause.”

Fast forward to 2010 and Nikki Haley (nee Randhawa) is not only a contestant in the most powerful contest there is – US politics – but has won big time. Forget black and white, she has shown that an Indian-American can be a game changer where race and gender is concerned in the Deep South.

People
1 Chandrika Tandon's Healing Mantra

Chandrika Krishnamurthy Tandon, the dynamic chairman of Tandon Capital Associates, who has done major restructuring surgeries in the global financial world, is executive-in-residence at New York University Stern, a member of the board of overseers of New York’s Stern School of Business, a member of the President’s Council of International Activities at Yale University, and an arts patron.
There’s more: she has the voice of an angel. ‘Om Namo Narayanaya’ is the chant that will calm and strengthen you. Newsbreak: Soul Call has just been nominated for a Grammy in the Best Contemporary World Music Album category

People
1 Parul Patel – the Eggless Cake Designer

She’s made Madhur Jaffrey, Preity Zinta, Yoko Ono and even Cherie Blair, the former First Lady of Britain, taste her cakes. She says with a smile, “Preity Zinta called them ‘yummy’; Yoko Ono said ‘Nice cupcakes’ and Cherie Blair said, ‘These are great!’”
Indeed, if Parul Patel has a mission in life, it’s to get a cupcake inside you!
(Parul offers a tasting to Britain’s former First Lady, Cherie Blair, at a fundraiser)

People
1 Isheeta Ganguly’s ‘Damaru’ Across Continents

Bollywood fans will be intrigued to know that their favorite hunk John Abraham is part of ‘Damaru’, Isheeta Ganguly’s new album – in a very different way than they usually envisage him. Rather than a Bollywood hero, his is the thoughtful, strong voice behind the words of “Bande Mataram” and the Tagore poem, “Where the Mind is Without Fear”.

People
0 Shabana Azmi in Broken Images

Imagine this: just one actor on stage. No set transformations, no costume changes, little or no action. Yet you sit for a full hour, totally engrossed, and are almost surprised to find that, though you’ve sat immobile in your seat, you’ve traveled into complex worlds, into the innermost reaches of mind and heart.

Few people could pull this off but the combination of actor Shabana Azmi, director Alyque Padamsee and playwright Girish Karnad makes ‘Broken Images’ a play to watch and relish.

People
0 Harvard's Nitin Nohria – The Arc of leadership

“My father was a CEO, so I grew up in a family that gave me a very real sense of the positive impact that business can have upon society – from providing goods and services to creating jobs to building entire communities,” says Nitin Nohria, Dean of Harvard Business School.

People
0 Divya Gugnani Cooks Up a Start-Up

Tired of your desk job and longing to take on the world? Love food and want to follow your culinary dreams? Yes, it can be done. Take a page or two from the game plan of Divya Gugnani, a New Yorker who chucked her day job to create her own nascent start-up, Behind the Burner.

People
1 Anoop Desai after American Idol

Pop artist Anoop Desai has been on everybody’s radar ever since he became a finalist on the eighth season of “American Idol.” Now his first independently released EP ‘All is Fair’ has hit the airwaves. His new single is titled ‘My Name.’

Was growing up in North Carolina with a name like Anoop difficult?
“Kids made fun of it all the time, in the school bus, and I remember coming home from kindergarten and demanding that my mom change my name, because I wanted to be a Bill or something,” he recalls.

“I cringe at that now because I am lucky to have my name, lucky to have my culture. That’s what makes me unique and a lot of people don’t have that.”

People
1 Dan Nainan's Funny Money

He’s fifty percent Japanese and fifty percent Indian, so does that make him a Lexus-Nano hybrid? Or a Toyota-Ambassador? This might be my own sorry attempt at stand-up, but Dan Nainan’s mixed heritage has certainly had him laughing all the way to the moolah house. Always squeaky clean, his humor has found many takers in the South Asian community across the diaspora. Here the funny man answers some serious questions.

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3 The New Global Indians

There was a time in the old days in India when it was regarded as almost sacrilegious to cross the oceans, and to leave one’s homeland was to leave it forever. Now, hopping between continents and countries and cities has become commonplace and there’s a new breed of global Indians who think nothing of breakfast in one country and dessert in another, with homes, networks and emotional ties in multiple cities.