Cultural Connect’s Sumaya Kazi on CNN

Lapin and Kazi on Larry King’s set. (Courtesy CNN PR, Sumaya Kazi)

Young People Who Rock, CNN’s weekly interview series hosted by Nicole Lapin and focused on people under 30 recently interviewed Sumaya Kazi of The Cultural Connect, a media publishing company with a series of online magazines spotlighting young minority professionals. Watch the CNN Live Video interview.

Kazi took a few questions from Lapin, and if we didn’t hear it from Kazi herself—“Don’t laugh! it’s my first ever on-camera interview!”—we wouldn’t have guessed that this appearance marks her TV debut. Lapin, on the other hand, struck me as a tiny bit awkward, dropping the “Asian” from “Southeast Asian” (or perhaps she meant “South/East Asian”), resulting in the phrases “Southeast Trinity” and “Southeast background,” the latter referring to Kazi’s background. Maybe words like South Asian or South Asian American don’t exactly roll off the tongues of every news anchor. Or perhaps Lapin was nervous about interviewing someone who has been running with the new CNN show’s basic premise for two years now over at The Cultural Connect!

Previously: “Business Week Names Kazi to Top 25 Under 25″

…And the Living’s Easy

Summer’s in full swing, so we hope you’re doing more than just sitting in front of a computer screen. If you’re lucky, you’ll have the chance during these glorious months to travel or read or just laze around and do nothing. Wiling a few hours away at work before you hit the beach? Nirali‘s the perfect companion for lunch breaks.

We’re short and sweet this month, but we do have a few stories to make your summer brighter. Looking for the perfect sounds to accompany a balmy night? Check out our profile of musical duo Shaa’ir and Func. Want to cook something quick and easy for a weekend get-together? Try Manju Malhi’s 10-Minute Chicken Curry. Dreaming of booking a trip to the motherland? Read Let’s Fly Away for tips on how to get the best deals.

We’ll be back in two weeks with a few more reads, but we plan to take it easy this summer. We hope you will, too!

Close Relations

(Bob Hambly/New York Times)

Growing up, I remember the three-ring circus that ensued—on both ends—whenever my family placed a call to our relatives in India. My parents would ping around the house like unmoored marionettes, herding my brother and I into the kitchen, and we would take turns yelping greetings and endearments into the phone. It was always difficult to hear what was being said on the other line, located in the apartment of my grandparents’ downstairs neighbors. Crackly and halting, you could make out, if you really tried, what was being said, and occasionally, if you were extra lucky, who was saying it. Telling riddles, as I was often requested to do, was a totally doomed idea.

Now, of course, the world has gotten juiced up on instant communication. My grandmothers peck out emails in Tamil and are crazy for forwards, and if I log into Skype, my computer speakers explode with calls from my relatives, all of them crystal-clear and eerily similar to talking to them in person.

“Relative Distance,” Rishi Reddi’s piece in last Sunday’s New York Times Magazine, deals with the same phenomenon. In it, Reddi chronicles her grandmother’s visit to her home in Boston, and how the visit brings the two of them closer together: she discusses how she, like many grown NRIs, has until now inhabited an amorphous middle ground with someone she loves intimately but rarely sees. She also touches towards the end on how the expanded abilities of communications technology have changed the preciousness of being able to contact distant family members, but notes that the limitations of geography remain.

Nirali has featured Reddi before, in Good Fortune, a profile that ran in our May issue, and in an April post on The Daily.

Here Comes the (Nirali) Bride

Last December, I traveled to Lahore, Pakistan, to attend my cousin’s wedding. December is the peak of wedding season in Pakistan, and I’m always amazed by the endless, colorful celebrations held each night during the winter. Of course, in North America, most people—including South Asians—hold their weddings in spring or summer, when the weather is more cooperative.

But that’s not the only difference between weddings on the Subcontinent and weddings over here. There, most couples have much more help during the planning process, and parents are usually the ones who handle everything. Right up until her wedding, my cousin was pampered and primped with uptan massages and told not to lift a finger. Not so for modern South Asian American and Canadian brides. They’re often busy juggling jobs with planning every wedding detail themselves. Add to that the stress of meeting family expectations, blending desi customs with Western ones and managing a multitude of vendors, and you’ve got the recipe for nothing short of a nervous breakdown.

That’s why when readers asked us for a Nirali weddings issue, we were excited to oblige. After all, there are few good, easily accessible resources for South Asians planning weddings in North America. We hope our first attempt at offering this service makes life somewhat easier for future desi brides. In this half of the issue, we’ll show you how four couples planned beautiful, unique South Asian weddings. We’ll offer you advice on everything from designing invitations to choosing wedding photographers. We’ve even rounded up the best tips from recent South Asian brides. On June 18, when the second half debuts, look for even more tips and useful stories, like a guide to shopping in India and Pakistan and a piece on how to invest in wedding jewelry.

After talking to dozens of brides, we learned one thing for certain: Try not to get caught up in the planning, and focus on making the marriage—not the wedding—your top priority. After all, it’s the little things that will make your day special. Aneesa Shoaib, a bride featured in our Real Tips piece, said it was a simple gesture by her mother that made her day perfect: “The only desire I had for my wedding day attire was to wear a garland of jasmine flowers in my hair. I was willing to wear anything, serve anything, decorate with anything, but I really wanted the jasmine flowers that every Indian bride wears.” Because her wedding was in Morocco, the flowers were impossible to find. “But on the day of the mehndi, my mother came to my room with a garland of jasmine. I am not sure how she pulled it off, but it was the most beautiful and touching moment of the entire wedding.”

So remember your jasmine flowers—whatever they may be—and don’t forget to bask in your day.

Our Mothers, Ourselves

There is no one in my life more supportive, more caring, more loyal to me than my mother, Ayesha. I’m blessed with a mom who is kind, patient and endlessly selfless; sometimes I wonder if, when I have my own children, I will be able to match her talents as such a superb guardian and protector. Her generosity amazes me to this day—not just toward her children, but toward her parents, her family and people in general.

My siblings and I poke fun at her idiosyncracies—the way she insists on bringing us mountains of food (even if we asked her not to) when she visits, or how, after cheering for her favorite sports team to win a game or series, she suddenly feels a wave of sadness for the loser when her team claims victory. But the truth is, these are the things we love about my mother, and though we may feign exasperation, we wouldn’t change a thing.

I suspect that many of Nirali‘s readers feel the same way about their own moms. So when Nalini Abhiraman asked me if she could write a column about food as an homage to her mother for Mother’s Day, I immediately agreed. Because the fact is, our mothers—especially in South Asian culture—may cluck over us and nag and worry, but they don’t get nearly enough credit.

Mothers are present in the rest of this issue, too. Read Flavorful Finds to learn how Geetha Jayaraman founded a whole new business based on a visit from her mother. And in City of Roy, designer darling Rachel Roy talks about the challenges of balancing a career with motherhood.

In the second half of our issue on May 21, look for a piece on the South Asian children’s magazine, Kahani. Founder Monika Jain dreamed up the idea because she wanted her kids to know about their South Asian heritage; coincidentally, Jain’s mother came up with the title of the magazine. You’ll also read about the film Amu, in which an Indian American woman returns to India to learn about the past her adoptive mother has kept from her.

We hope these stories about moms and the rest of this issue will continue to entertain and inspire.

Happy Mother’s Day to all our readers.

Guggenheim Glory

Mahanthappa (Jazz Museum in Harlem)

The names of the 2007 Guggenheim Fellows have been announced. And this year, five desi Americans are on the list of the 189 chosen scholars and artists.

The Fellows are selected on the “basis of distinguished achievement in the past and exceptional promise for future accomplishment.” Achievement in 78 different fields (“from natural sciences to the creative arts”) is considered. Among the awardees: computer scientists Dr. Sanjeev Khanna of the University of Pennsylvania and Dr. Salil Vadhan of Harvard University.

Suketu Mehta, a writer from New Jersey was recognized for his work (remember his Pulitzer Prize-finalist book Maximum City?). Rudresh K. Mahanthappa (a Brooklyn-based composer and jazz musician) and Dr. Arjun M. Heimsath (an earth scientist at Dartmouth) were also given fellowships for success in and dedication to their respective fields.

The Guggenheim Foundation has given out $256 million in fellowship monies since its founding in 1925.

Previous recipients have included Henry Kissinger, Martha Graham, Ansel Adams, Vladimir Nabokov and Linus Pauling.

Congratulations to all awardees (and here’s hoping next year we’ll have some female representation).

Being Muslim, Female and Chic

William Mebane/The New York Times

I’ve been invited to be a guest writer over at the South Asian Journalists Association weblog, and I’m so honored! My first post is up today—I hope I can do the folks over at SAJA justice. A bunch of awe-inspiring smarties in that bunch, I tell you.

Anyway, I thought I’d re-post my little musings here:

Being a Muslim woman in the West isn’t easy—and if you practice some form of purdah (covering), it can be especially tricky. You want to fit in and assert yourself as a proud, educated, modern woman, but throw on some extra clothes and a headscarf and you might as well be sporting a neon sign on your head that screams, “I’m Muslim! I’m DIFFERENT!” And there are plenty of people who add another meaning to that sign—“She’s oppressed! She can’t think for herself!” (In 2004, Michigan Radio profiled Zoe Piliafas, a college student who donned a burqa for a few months and decided that it did make her feel oppressed. Some Muslim women disagree with her assessment.)

So I was excited to see today’s New York Times piece, “We, Myself and I,” on the challenges Muslim American women face when it comes to merging modesty and style. I’ve been there—I practice purdah, but I also don’t want to leave the house looking like I could not care less about my appearance. Read the rest of this entry »

The Little Things

Little things matter.

You may be wearing your most gorgeous suit for that job interview, but the toilet paper stuck to your Enzo heel is sure to attract more attention than your Donna Karan threads.

You could be seeing the seemingly perfect guy—only to realize that the way tiny bubbles form in the corner of his mouth when he talks are enough to turn you off completely.

Your brand-new hybrid car might look fabulous as you race around town, until your little sister borrows it and puts (in her words) a “tiny” dent in the driver’s side door.

The smallest things can make the biggest difference. This issue of Nirali is devoted to those small things. For example, in Secret Weapon(s), you’ll meet accessories maven Rima Shah, who swears by the power a piece of jewelry can have on your whole look. And check out Taking Care of Business to learn the tips and tricks of business etiquette that will help you attain the next level of success. Ready for a laugh? Don’t miss Extreme Home Makeover: FOB Edition, Roxanna Kassam Kara’s hilarious look at the little details that make up a truly FOB-style home.

So take a moment to see what little secrets we have in this issue of Nirali—and be sure to check back in two weeks for more.

Ismat Sarah Mangla
Editor-in-Chief

Look Who’s Talking … Hindustani?

Do you know your Hindi from Hindustani? If not, we’ve got a primer for you. Some of our readers have taken issue with Mira Nair’s statement that her family speaks “Hindustani” (rather than “Hindi”) at home. So Nirali asked the experts to get to the heart of the matter.

Turns out, the meaning of the term “Hindustani” has changed over the decades. Dr. Ulrike Stark, Assistant Professor of Hindi Language and Literature at the University of Chicago, notes that originally, Hindustani was used to refer to Urdu and was the official language chosen by the British for the northwestern provinces in the 19th century. At that time, says Stark, “Urdu was still very much a lingua franca spoken by the educated, whether Hindus or Muslims.” And the decision by the Brits to choose Urdu—with its Persian alphabet and Nastaliq script—meant that anyone who knew that language would have an advantage when applying for positions within the civil service and administration.

Mira Nair has been quoted as saying she speaks “Hindustani.”

But that decision backfired. Those Hindus in the civil service who knew Hindi—that is, the Sanskritized script—wanted in on those jobs. They won a victory in 1900, when Hindi, alongside Urdu, also became an official language of the northern provinces.

Fast forward to the Indian independence movement—and the changing of the meaning of the term “Hindustani.” The Hindu nationalist movement grew, and its members decided to frame sanskritized Hindi as the “mother tongue.” Stark explains: “They stylized Urdu into the foreign language … even though it was the language spoken very much by the elite.” As a result, “Urdu was increasingly identified with Muslim culture and Hindi with Hindu culture,” even though Hindustani/Urdu had been the language of the elite and educated—Hindu and Muslim alike—in the 19th century.

Further complicating matters? During the fight for independence, Gandhi decided to promote his own concept of Hindustani: a sort of “middle-ground spoken language that is neither too Persianized nor too Sanskritized.” Unfortunately, Gandhi decided to leave out the issue of script (the written language) altogether, essentially resolving nothing, since as Stark notes, you have to choose a script. Not to mention that this put him at odds with the Congress Party, which was pushing a Sanskritized Hindi—now known as “High Hindi.”

Now you’ve got the backstory—but what does Hindustani mean today? Read the rest of this entry »

Penn Pehchaan

Masala Men. (HNI)

The world’s premier Hindi a cappella group, Penn Masala, brought a full-capacity crowd to its feet last Saturday night at the University of Pennsylvania in West Philadelphia. The men treated 1,200 fans, packed into Irvine Auditorium, to timeless classics (like the desi anthem Mere Sapno Ki Rani) and fresh tracks (their reinterpretation of this year’s runaway hit Tere Bin was goosebump-inducing like you don’t even know).

The concert marked the launch of Pehchaan, Masala’s latest and perhaps most successful album: A highly effective mix of their trademark playful buoyancy, with an increasingly mature, aching soulfulness (if you don’t feel the brilliantly remastered Aankhon Mein Tu Hai racing under your skin, rippling through your spirit, get your pulse checked).

I remember going to my first Penn Masala concert six years ago; ambivalent, definitely not aware of what I was in for (you’ve seen one college a cappella performance, you’ve seen them all, right? Yawn.). But as I sat perched up on the second floor and leaned into the cold iron railing of the balcony, I heard something so unique, so inspired, it transfixed me.

I haven’t missed a single home concert since.

Read the rest of this entry »