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By JacoB DaviDIt has been a tough climb, metaphorically

speaking, but Indo-American Association and its team have finally reached the sum-mit, mainstreaming the cultural voices of India. Founded by Dr. Hari Dayal, a keen and passionate individual with a clear mis-sion to promote Indian Music and Dance, IAA has succeeded. India offers a rich diversity of talent in these fields, there are many more exciting performances to come for a lifetime. Indo-American Association was founded in 1993 as a non-profit orga-nization. For seventeen years it has selec-tively voiced the resonances that Indian culture has to offer.Faced with opposition and hurdles along

the way Indo-American Association has grown steadily promoting famous and even brand new artistes who have the singular vision of uniting India and its harmony of cultures through their music and dance. In-do-American Association has also helped make their presentations commercially viable thereby taking these artistes to the American public.Some of the major artistes who have per-

formed in association with Indo-American Association are: Ali Akbar Khan, Amjad Ali Khan, Hari Prasad Chaurasia, Zakir Hussain, Rashid Khan, Rais Khan, Vijay Kichlu, Subhara Guha, Nand Kishore Mu-ley, Ramesh Mishra, Ali Ahmed, Moni Lal Nag, Suben Chatterjee, Anand Gopal Band-hopadhay, Samar Saha, KA-TAP troupe, Gypsy Caravan, Bharatratna Ravi Shankar, Padamvibhushan Ali Akbar Khan, Vilayat Khan, Jasraj, Shivkumar Sharma, Amjad Ali Khan, Birju Maharaj, Padambhushan Lalgudi Jayaraman, T.N. Krishnan, Girija Devi, Zakir Hussain, Padamshree Vish-wamohan Bhatt among others.Indo-American Association is a financial-

ly prudent enterprise handling its finances extremely well. It has seen an increase in patron donations, endowments, corporate giving, and support from volunteers who give 100% of their time to make sure each presentation surpasses the previous one. True, there are hiccups along the way, “bad apples” who try to throw a wrench in the works, but Indo-American Association’s stance has been to take the higher road. Led by Dr. Hari Dayal, executive director, a gentleman and a class act who makes it a point not to stoop to the cheap tricks em-ployed by certain divisive elements. Case in point, a recent event hosted by IAA, the Shreya Ghoshal and Atif Aslam show was rumored to fail - stating that Atif Aslam was having visa problems. “He won’t make it to the show, he is not coming,” spread the rumors. IAA kept silent on the issue. Atif Aslam showed up on the day of the event. The rumor mongers were disgraced and the show went on to a full house. Dr. Hari Dayal (HD) in an exclusive in-

terview with Indo-American News sets the records straight on the Atif Aslam show.

Indo-American Association: Mainstreaming Cultural Voices of IndiaHe also talked with us on the contributions Indo-American Association has made to the community.JD: How does IAA differ from the other

presenters?HD: Indo-American Association is a non-

profit 501 (c) (3) organiza-tion. We present events based on the merit of the events and the value it delivers to promoting India’s art and culture. India has many sub cultures and we try and present these in the best possible light. Profit is not the driving force or motivation for IAA to host the shows. We take note of various factors while hosting a show - the unique na-ture of a show, presenting it in high class venues like Houston’s The-ater District, acoustically sound venues, and we try to bridge the gap between Indians and Ameri-cans here through these presentations. Our mission is to maintain the quality of each show we host. We had to turn down host-ing the Asha Bhosle show because we did not want to compromise on the venue for acoustic quality reasons.JD: Tell me what hap-

pened with the Atif Aslam visa issues? Did Atif Aslam really not get his visa on time?HD: That’s what certain

bad apples would like you to believe. Truth was Atif Aslam stayed back an extra day to celebrate his birthday on the re-quest made by his aging mother. She was not sure she might be around for another year to celebrate his next birthday. Like all good sons, Atif Aslam made his mother’s re-quest a priority and spent his birthday with her. He joined us for the show on the day of the event. Ev-erything went well and we actually had a full

house.JD: Why do you think this rumor about

Atif Aslam’s visa was started?HD: There could be two reasons: 1. Who-

ever started this would like to caution IAA that Atif Aslam may not get a visa, and 2. they possibly had a malicious agenda that once spread could affect the shows rat-ings, ticket sales and performance overall. Your guess is as good as mine. I’ll make this clear: Atif Aslam had no visa issues.JD: Why

then did IAA not respond to quell these rumors?HD: If IAA

responded, it would have made the public believe that there

was some truth to it. IAA did not want to glorify the juvenile behavior of the radio stations and the commercial promoters or be dragged into the controversy. These ru-mors were being spread up to March 13th. But we were selling tickets right until the

last day.JD: What was your response to the

show?HD: It went excellently well. It was a

sold out show, we are sorry we had to turn people away, the tickets were oversub-scribed because the show appealed to most age groups. Of course a few in the crowd - the students misbehaved, a few entered the show without tickets, these were bad apples. Also we had commotion backstage because we had a bunch of students trying to enter backstage, thereby preventing ar-tistes from coming on to the stage.JD: What future steps do you envision

that these will not happen?HD: We are going to be more strict, im-

plement more security officers next time round, and enforce a backstage pass.JD: Do you think hiring an impersonal

manager who will report to you make your job easier as director?HD: That is a good suggestion. I might

look into that. But mainly it was the stu-dents who made it difficult backstage. None of my associates or people I know act this way. JD: What is your show line up for

2010?HD: We have India Jazz Suites on May

21 - a fusion of Kathak and Tap dancing - cross over of cultures, dancing Kathak with Jazz music is going to be a treat to watch. On June 6, we have Lamhe, a Bollywood presentation by Kavita Krishnamurthy, Suresh Wadkar and Sanchita contestant of Sa Re Ga Ma Pa. What makes this show unique is the actual music band of Sa Re Ga Ma Pa is accompanying this event. On July 10, we have a Tour Program with Bade Ghulam Ali Khan and Patial Gharana - a

Dr. Hari Dayal, founding member of Indo-American Association is now the Executive Director. Indo-American Association has been extremely successful in promoting Indian cultural events to mainstream America.


26 Indo American News • Friday, April 02 , 2010 ONLINE EDITION: www.indoamerican-news.com

Why Chetan Bhagat is the Indian English Pioneer of Our TimesAs a student at IIM Ahmedabad, Chetan

Bhagat founded a magazine, Tomato Ketchup. Even at IIM-A, not the most literary of places, Tomato... was reportedly considered lowbrow and died a premature death. Bhagat’s subsequent literary forays have seen more popular success but continue to be considered lowbrow.

But Bhagat need not fret. The novel genre itself was considered lowbrow and commercial during its early days. As Daniel Defoe, often considered the first novelist, said, “Writing itself has become a very considerable branch of the English commerce. The booksellers are the master manufacturers, or employers. The several authors, copiers, sub-writers and other operators with Pen and Ink are the workmen employed by the said manufacturer.” Ian Watt, author of the classic The Rise of the Novel, says Defoe’s style was considered to be ‘easy, copious and unpremeditated’ in contrast to the ‘verbal grace, complication of structure...’ of the prevalent literary culture.

Watt argues that while the early novels may not have been masterfully crafted, they were revolutionary in their movement away from Classical Idealism towards a greater empathy for individual imperfection. They also under-stood the needs of the rapidly rising, newly lit-erate, industrial revolution-created bourgeoisie. These two seminal course changes, in structure and audience, by the early novelists laid much of the foundation for the development of modern literature.

Indian writing in English, from Bankim Chandra to Arundhati Roy, has not had the same middle-class trajectory of the West and has been accused of being elite. While it has successfully answered W.B. Yeats’s admonishment that “no man can think or write with music and vigour except in his mother tongue”, it has not quite

successfully countered U.R. Ananthamurthy’s allegation of “writing for export”.

Indian English writing in the late 19th century does seem like a quaint replica of the Victorian novel. Sham Lal, former editor of The Times of India, refers to a British writer calling Indian

writing in English “Matthew Arnold in a sari” with an Indian professor hurrying to correct him with a more appropriate “Shakuntala in skirts”.

The second phase of In-dian English novels try and move away from, as Gandhi advised Mulk Raj Anand, “meretricious literariness”. The novels of key writ-ers, Mulk Raj Anand, R.K. Narayan and Raja Rao have common themes around a search for an ‘authentic’ In-dia. But with the exception of G.V. Desani’s brilliant All about H. Hatterr, these books tend to romanticise and the quest for the authen-tic, couched in the idiom of modernism, at times ends up sounding contrived.

The last, post-Rushdie phase has been referred to as the coming of age of Indian English literature. Yet, while some of the new authors do write masterfully, they still fall prey to the problems of their predecessors. They con-tinue to write for a western or elite Indian audience, they

still struggle with their quest for an ‘authentic’ India and they still give an Indian lick of paint to the current western ‘ism’ in vogue.

Like Defoe, IIT-IIM-I banker Bhagat is a tradesman and, like Defoe, he is likely to be blissfully unaware of the literary conventions

of the day. He is also unlikely to care. His re-cent Two States reportedly sold 10 lakh copies in 10 weeks, a 100 times more than what was considered a hit Indian English novel in the pre-Bhagat era.

Early 21st century India is astonishingly similar to mid-18th century England, with the ‘millennium bug’ being India’s ‘spinning jenny’. The IT revolution has created lakhs of English-speaking, under-25-year-olds living in tier-2 towns like Kanpur or Coimbatore. They have a subculture of their own with the key words being IIT, IIM, IT, multiplex, malls, SMS etc. Openly consumerist but not violently so in a Clockwork Orange sort of way; more permissible in matters of sex yet shying away from promiscuity; western in many ways yet conscious of a constructed Indian identity. Bhagat appeals to this group—he does not ig-nore them, he does not caricature them and he does not ‘anthropologise’ them. He writes, like Defoe, simply and insightfully, about himself and—embodying the ideal so many of them aspire to—captures their imagination.

Pioneers are not usually master craftsmen. Bhagat is certainly not. He displays an igno-rance of the world beyond his own experience; his characters, real though they are, never really rise above themselves; and the simplicity of his language is probably more inability than profundity. But as the early 19th century Eng-lish essayist Hestor Chapone said of Samuel Richardson: “It is only from the ignorant that we can now have anything original; every master copies from those that are of established author-ity....” Chetan Bhagat may not be a master, but he is certainly an original.

IIM-A alumnus Sitapati is marketing man-ager at a leading MNC.

I N d I A


27 Indo American News • Friday, April 02 , 2010ONLINE EDITION: www.indoamerican-news.com B U S I N E S S I N d I A

India Calling: Many Indian Americans Returning BANGALORE:

Since India pro-vides excellent op-portunities, younger generation of Indian American is now fly-ing back to the land of their forefathers. The younger gen-eration also wants to keep in touch with their roots and experience India’s multiculturalism.

From aspiring ac-tors to profession-als armed with Ivy League degrees and entrepreneurs, an increasing number of “returnees” have been making this gi-ant leap over the last few years, at times giving up lucrative careers in the pro-cess. “It was the lure of freedom to pursue what you want to pursue on your own terms that brought me here,” said Raj Shroff, a Mumbai-based actor and model.

Shroff, who grew up in Texas, said the decision to move was spurred by his interest in Indian culture, litera-ture, philosophy and music. “It was just something I felt like I wanted to do and wanted to see first hand, as opposed to just reading about it or seeing it on TV or through a movie. I wanted to live it.”

The unparalleled growth in the In-dian economy and the arrival of mul-tinational corporations has afforded the opportunities to move for many of these “returnees.” The availability of familiar comforts like fast-food outlets such as McDonald’s and Pizza Hut, designer labels like Tommy Hil-figer and Louis Vuitton, and a buzzing nightlife in the country’s major cities are perks that were unavailable a few years ago.

“This is a really fascinating time to be in India, for a unique time in its history,” said Bangalore-based Nandu Madhava. For Madhava, a Harvard Business School graduate who runs a start-up, India offered sev-eral advantages - a large family, a size-able talent pool and a better work-life balance.

Often, the parents of the “returnees” were unhappy with their children’s de-cision to move to the country they had left years ear-lier. “The first six months I moved here my dad would ask me every time I talked to him: ‘So when are you com-ing back?’” said

Meeta Baphna, who moved to India in 2007.

The work environment in India is different-the rigid hierarchy, interac-tions with co-workers and even the infamous concept of Indian Standard Time. “It’s been interesting to see the difference between work culture here and in the States. Time is a very abstract concept and that took a little bit getting used to,” said Vaman Kamath.-SI

New Hi-End Mobiles from Sony Ericsson

NEW DELHI: Sony Ericsson on Friday, March 26, introduced its new range of hi-end mobile phones eyeing bigger market share in the fast growing smartphones market. It launched five mobile phones with the latest multimedia and enter-tainment features, priced between Rs.25,695 and Rs.35,795.

Addressing a press conference here, Sony Ericsson Corporate Vice-President and Head of Asia Pacific Region Hirokazu Ishizuka said, “new phones will take commu-nication entertainment to the next level. The proliferation of social and

Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications Corporate Vice President, Head of Asia pacific, Hirokazu Ishiuzuka (right) with Bollywood actor and company brand ambassador Kareena Kapoor at the launch function in New Delhi on Friday, March 26. Photo: S. Subramanium

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digital media is changing the con-sumer experience with mobile phones.” The company also plans to launch mobile handsets in the low-end segment also, priced be-low Rs.5,000.

Sony Ericsson has also part-nered with regional and local con-tent and application providers to deliver the latest in entertainment content for consumers, which include MTV India, UTV, Hun-gama, Shemaroo, Electronics Art and Disney among others to de-liver entertainment content.SI

Indian Rail Vital to Port GrowthBy RuchiRa Singh

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India’s ambitious, port expansion plans must include better road and rail links if all the new ports are to suc-ceed, a major figure in the strategy said.

Paul Jensen, Director of Delhi-

based consultants European Busi-ness & Technology Centre, was involved in planning Tuticorin and Cochin ports and took part in the Shipping Ministry’s development of single consolidated roadmap for all the 12 major ports.

Some ports in the initiative were ideally located with strong links and others will struggle to move cargoes on, he said. “One cannot look at ports in isolation and that’s one issue that is always critical be-cause the port is only one link in the supply chain,” Jensen said.

“There are different kinds of in-

vestments and many ports coming up on the basis, for instance, that a large power plant is being built somewhere along the coast. Then promoters say ‘why don’t we have our own port close by and we are not dependent on the government port’,” he said.

Adani Group’s expanding port and adjacent power plant in Mun-dra in Gujarat was an example of a port which has planned its logis-tics fully, he said.

“Adani knew they had to con-nect the port to the markets but there was no rail connection. So out of their own pockets, they paid for 61 kilometres of railway track as part of the port investment,” he said. Rewas port near Mumbai on the west coast also has a lot of potential and the developers were conscious of the need to connect to the hinterland, he said.

BMW 5 Series and X1 Coming Soon to India

NEW DELHI — BMW has announced that it will launch its latest 5 Series and X1 in India by the second half of 2010. Shipped as completely knocked-down units (CKD), the new BMW 5 Series will go on sale starting in July this year followed by the X1 launch in December.

The models were launched in Europe in 2009, and BMW expects them now to drive global revenue growth by doing well in India and elsewhere around the world.

The new 5 Series and X1 will be assembled at BMW’s Chennai plant, for which the company will increase its production capacity. The German car manufacturer is expecting to sell around 4,000 units in 2010.

BMW is likely to bring in the 535i and the new 520d

to spice up the competition in the premium-luxury-car segment. The X1, which is slated to be the smallest SUV from the BMW stable, will be the cheapest BMW to go on sale in India, with a starting price tag of $55,000.

In addition, the company has said that it will start its used-car business, BMW Premium Selection, in the country by April. Its first pre-owned-car showroom will be inaugurated in Chennai on April 1, followed by a second showroom in Gurgaon in the second half of 2010. The company is expecting at least 30 percent of its sales to come from its pre-owned business.

BMW India’s expansion plans also involve an increase in the dealership network from the current 17 to 24 dealer-ships by the end of 2010.- Edmunds Insideline

2011 BMW 5 Series Picture: Before the year is out, customers in India will be able to buy BMW’s new 5 Series.

No Social Security Benefits for Indian CompaniesIndian companies operating in

the United States make “contribu-tions to social security that they never see at any point,” Sachin Pi-lot, Minister of State for Commu-nications and Information Tech-nology, said.

Emphasising the contribution of Indian companies to the U.S. econ-omy at a time of serious unemploy-ment, Mr. Pilot said, “It will be the endeavour of Indian companies to have more job opportunities for U.S. citizens here… It will be in both our interests to solve this [un-employment] problem.”

Speaking at a gathering of busi-ness leaders on Tuesday Mr. Pilot said that many Indian companies, especially in IT, that have “set up shop here, are employing a lot of Americans and are more Ameri-

can than Indian.”At the event, hosted by the U.S.-

India Business Council, Mr. Pilot also described the opportunities that India presented in the field of IT not only for both services and manufacturing. He further touched upon the Indian government’s ini-tiatives to provide broadband con-nectivity to villages in India so as to improve rural populations’ ac-cess to healthcare, education and other services.

During his visit to the U.S. the Minister also met with senior offi-cials in the White House and in the U.S. Department of Commerce to discuss ways to take the India-U.S. economic and technological col-laboration forward. Areas of dis-cussion included healthcare, cyber security and cyber terrorism.


28 Indo American News • Friday, April 02 , 2010 ONLINE EDITION: www.indoamerican-news.com B U S I N E S S I N d I A

Vodafone India Launches iPhone 3GSNEW DELHI: Telecom major

Vodafone Essar on Friday said it will launch Apple iPhone 3GS in the country beginning today, priced at Rs. 29,500 ($655) onwards.

iPhone 3GS is the fastest iPhone yet and is equipped with a three mega-pixel autofocus camera, video re-cording and hands free voice control features. The handset also provides access to Apple’s App Store, which has more than 1.5 lakh appli-cations ranging from games to social networking.

“We are delighted to offer iPhone 3GS in India. We are confident our customers will enjoy the revolutionary iPhone and the flexibility of our tailored tariff plans,” Vodafone Essar Chief Marketing Of-ficer Kumar Ramanathan said.

time and 250 MB data usage free, while the 999 plan would offer free talk time of Rs. 299 and data usage of 600 MB without charge.

iPhone 3G is available at Rs. 33,500 ($744) (for 8GB version), Rs. 40,500 ($900) (for 16GB) and Rs. 47,500 ($1055) (for 32GB) in

Mumbai, Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh, respectively.

For other regions, the handset would be available for Rs.

29,500 ($655) (for 8GB version), Rs. 35,500 ($789) (for 16GB) and Rs.

41,500 ($922) (for 32GB).

Its competitor, Bharti Airtel, has also announced that it will sell the handset in the country. - Hindu

Vodafone Essar will o f f e r th ree plans - a p r e -p a i d plan of Rs. 100 and two

pos t paid plans with Rs. 799 and Rs. 999 as rental respectively.

Under the Rs. 799 plan, the cus-tomer would get 249 minutes talk

Disney to Offer TV Serials Based on Thirukkural


29 Indo American News • Friday, April 02 , 2010ONLINE EDITION: www.indoamerican-news.com I N d I A

GM to Launch its Electric Car E-Spark by Year-EndMUMBAI: Automobile major,

General Motors, on Friday said that it would launch the electric version of its small car ‘Spark’ in the Indian market this year-end. “We are set to launch our electric car, E-Spark, by the end of this year in India,” GM Motors’ Market-ing Director, Gaurav Gupta, told PTI. “It will be an electric version of our small car Spark and will be the first four-door passenger car in the world in this segment,” he said.

Considering the extra cost incurred on electric engines, Gupta said that the E-Spark’s price may be a little higher

India to Launch Rocket with Own Engine Technology in a MonthBANGALORE: India is set to launch

in a month its powerful rocket with the homemade cryogenic engine to propel a satellite into a geosynchronous orbit and become only the sixth nation to develop this complex engine.

The much awaited launch has been billed as a landmark event for the country’s space programme after its maiden unmanned moon mission Chandrayaan-I in 2008.

India had been using Russia-made cryogenic engines so far for satellite launchings. A cryogenic engine will be used for the first time in the rocket’s upper stage.

Indian Space Research Organisation(ISRO) is getting ready for the launch of the Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) from the spaceport of Sriharikota expected on April 15, an ISRO source said. A geo-stationary orbit is about 36,000 km above the earth.

“The launch is likely to be on April 15 or before April 20. Preparations are underway”, the source said, add-ing “The exact date of the launch will be finalised at the mission readiness review in Sriharikota on Sunday”.

With the launch, India would join a select club of five nations--U.S., Rus-sia, China, Japan and Israel--that had mastered the complex cryogenic tech-

nology. The mission would make New Delhi totally self-reliant in all aspects of launch vehicle technology 15 years after work was started on developing the cryogenic technology.

It would be the first time that ISRO would launch a GSLV with indigenous cryogenic engine, a programme that was taken up in 1996 following the technology denial regime in the 1990s. The US had then forced Russia to stop giving India the technology.

ISRO’s previous GSLV flightscarried Russian cryogenic engines

procured earlier. Next month’s GSLV would carry GSAT-4, a 2,200 kg tech-nology demonstrator satellite.

Also for the first time, ISRO would test the electric propulsion technology -- plasma thrusters -- that Indian space scientists developed, in GSAT-4, in

addition to chemical propulsion that it had been using.

According to ISRO officials, the electric propulsion technology is ex-pected to boost the life of geostationary satellites by upto five years.

“This is a concept we are going to prove in this (GSAT-4). Once proven, it can be adopted as standard for future geostationary orbits”, an ISRO official said. Technological challenges faced during the development of indig-enous cryogenic engine and stage include those relating to new materi-als, composite thermal insulation, new fabrication techniques, handling of cryogenic fluids at cryogenic tem-peratures, realisation of facilities for assembly, integration and testing, and associated safety systems, ISRO officials said. - ET

CHENNAI: Disney Channel is all set to reintroduce to the younger generation the ancient Tamil litera-ture Thirukkural with the first ever animated TV serials based on this celebrated text. The series developed as animal fables by Accel Animation Studios, Chennai, is titled ‘Ek Tha Jungle’ and showcases couplets from Thirukkural — one of the most im-portant and celebrated works in Tamil literature written by noted Tamil poet Thiruvalluvar. Each episode has a universal theme presented in modern day, 3D animated format.

Set for a premiere on Disney Chan-nel on April 5, every episode will showcase a universal theme and

strong life lessons. The stories are laced around strong ethics and family values with a moral that is applicable to the present and future generations. There is no better way than adapting the evergreen Thirukkural to narrate stories to the young audience. We are delighted to partner Disney Channel to bring this classic work to the Indian audience.”

The $5 million Accel Animation Studio was set up in Chennai in July 2006 as a division of Accel Trans-matic, an IT services company, as part of its initiative to foray into digital media technologies. It has facilities in Chennai, and Thiruvananthapuram. - Hindu

India Launches Campaign in China to Push its IT SectorBEIJING: India on Friday launched

an aggressive campaign to showcase its IT prowess in China to woo local companies in order to bridge the trade imbalance between the two nations.

Officials of over 300 top-end Chi-nese companies, including that of government-owned undertakings, today attended the India-China Busi-ness Technology Summit in which NASSCOM President, Som Mittal and other officials of top Indian IT firms made presentations

Lou Qinjian, Vice-Minister, Chi-nese Ministry of IT, also attended the meeting.

“We are not asking for any favours. We are globally competitive in these sector... we are making an aggressive pitch to woo the Chinese compa-nies telling them if you have ambi-tion of becoming a global Chinese Company, you need get a global IT

solution provider. That is us,” Indian Ambassador S Jaishankar told PTI at the meeting.

“We are telling them that we are cost-wise and quality- wise superior to what you get in China. So, why don’t you look at us. This is part of aggressive strategy where we are concerned to try and do something about trade imbalance we have with China,” he said.

India’s total trade with China stood at about $42 billion this year with balance of trade tilting massively in favour of China. India imported a whopping $32 billion and exported only $9.5 billion goods, mostly raw materials like iron ore and oil seeds.

India has been asking China to ad-dress the trade imbalance.

The IT summit was part of a strat-egy to attract local companies as the Chinese government has agreed

to encourage its firms to look at the Indian IT market.

“We discussed with the Chinese government to encourage Chinese companies to come and listen to us. Now it is up to the companies,” he said.

He said in the next few months, In-dia would make a strong bid to make strong dent in the Chinese market in IT, Pharmaceuticals, Engineering services and Agro products.

Summits would be held all over China on all the four areas where India is strong, he said.

Jaishankar said for a variety of rea-sons, Indian companies have made very limited progress in China.

“This is a matter of concern not just for us, because Chinese too appreciate that large trade imbalances are not sustainable,” Jaishankar said earlier addressing the meeting.- ET

than the Spark.“The acquisition price may be

slightly higher. But the operating costs will be very low,” he said.

The company is entering into the Light Commercial Vehicle (LCV) segment as well this year, he said. The vehicles would be produced by the joint venture formed with a Chinese company, SAIC. When asked if there was any plan to export engines to China, Gupta said that the company would look at all business opportuni-ties allowed by the laws of both coun-tries.- HT


30 Indo American News • Friday, April 02 , 2010 ONLINE EDITION: www.indoamerican-news.como p I N I o N

Terror is An Event, Peace is A ProcessTalk with Pak we must—it’s the right, rational choice for a mature power

By K.J. BaJpaiPakistan’s greatest advantage over

India is, surely, the excited confu-sion that dealing with it provokes among us. Before attacks against our exploring talks with Pakistan could fade, we’ve started tilting at another imagined windmill—that we have shattered our tradition of bilateralism by invoking Saudi involvement. Of course, we can argue about India’s strategies and tactics regarding this troublesome neighbour, but between the petty confrontationalism of our domestic politics and our baffling re-fusal to face facts, there is no attempt at a solid national consensus that this crucial relationship requires.

Though reputed for hair-splitting skills, we somehow ignore important distinctions. Nobody has asked Saudi Arabia to help us solve Indo-Pak problems. To convey our concern over Pakistan’s prevarications on terrorism to Saudi Arabia (adding that its good offices in getting Pakistan to cooperate would be welcome) ac-cords with standard diplomacy and is perfectly consistent with our basic stand that solutions must be worked out directly by India and Pakistan. Certainly, the Saudis would be more than messengers, their closeness to Pakistan gives them influence. (But to fear this submits us to unacceptable pressures, and is to suppose that we would submit.)

Similarly, objections to holding the recent foreign secretaries’ talks overlook the distinction between up-

holding basic positions and manag-ing changing circumstances. To seek a rational basis for a constructive relationship is the right approach for a mature, major power like India. We suspended talks because 26/11 was a horrendous new circumstance. Pakistan’s wriggling away from ac-tion on terrorism is as material a circumstance as any specific action could be, and demands a response beyond sticking to what we did after 26/11. Our understandably incensed and frustrated public would like some strong response. Why India con-tinues to avoid that will be looked at shortly, but to see New Delhi’s initiative as weakness is a mistake—for Pakistanis and ourselves. It is a move in a process, whose primary importance lies in what it adds to our existing impressions about Pakistan’s attitude towards that process. Will it help? Only what happens next can give an answer, but bickering about holding the meeting is fruitless. The issues involved are too serious to be debased by the partisan polemics that pass as our political debates.

Those issues, decisive in determin-ing how we handle Pakistan, are so complex, a short article cannot do them justice. But certain basics stand out starkly. Ever since Parti-tion, Pakistan has consistently chosen animosity against India. Invasion, subversion, terrorism, nuclear theft, any means to pull us down. The excuse that the Kashmir dispute justi-fies all this is specious—and cannot

extend to Pakistani mischief in our Punjab or other forms of destabilisa-tion. And while depicting us as an existential threat, Pakistan also as-sumes a really strong response which is beyond India—as much because of our supposed spinelessness as their nuclear deterrent, and because any damage we might inflict would fertilise terrorism. Smugly sure, it suits them whether we are bellicose—which helps unite them and perpetu-ates authoritarianism—or restrained, which encourages their persistence in destabilisation without fear of re-taliation. Pakistan’s rulers see us as damned if we do and damned if we don’t. We do need to ready ourselves for the consequences of doing.

Their foreign secretary Salman Bashir’s press briefing sums up what we face. The pleasant manners only emphasised unpleasantly hard at-titudes. As if he needed cover against domestic hardliners—an approach that underlines doubts on Pakistan’s interest in a rapprochement. The near-est we ever came to a settlement was with Zulfiqar Bhutto and Pervez Musharraf—both unable to deliver, and both ousted. Are today’s leaders, whoever they are, more likely peace-makers?

No, but keep trying. Both parts of that answer shape India’s present approach. To object that ‘no’ obvi-ates ‘trying’ ignores the many good reasons that arise from the distinction mentioned earlier: it’s the right basic position, and it is the right way to deal

with ever-changing circumstances. What the criticism does bring out is the need for greater public realisation of what more we have to do— when it means preparing for talks that may lead nowhere.

Let’s start with what Pakistan is clearly telling us: ‘we cannot/will not do what you want on terrorism.’ The claim that they too are terror victims is deliberate obfuscation. Their actions show a clear separa-tion: cracking down on purely do-mestic groups, going easy on groups used against India. A distinguished Pakistani was recently asked: if the modern-minded, extremist-free Pak-istan he and his kind represented has realised that terror had turned against them, was there not now a common cause? Nobody expects Pakistan to admit complicity, but so much could be done quietly. Why was there no sign of that? He admitted frankly he had no answer. Didn’t that force the conclusion that Pakistan would not let go of this successful new weapon against us? The response was that we should allow for Pakistan’s sincere conviction that it wished to dismantle terror.

They cite the stormy past and our increasing capabilities to doubt our good intentions. Of course, that past includes some Indian errors which have fed Pakistan’s mistrust (and vice-versa). Pakistanis tend to project 1971 as an Indian design to undo Pakistan, adding wild accusations about interference in Balochistan

as evidence of continuing malice. That West Pakistan lost East Pakistan through its own follies is conveniently overlooked; in making accusations it knows are false, its own malice goes unstated. Here is a mindset that prevents drawing objective lessons from the record. What is obvious to us—that India has no desire to harm or undo Pakistan—they reject. They demand things which harm, could even undo, India. That leaves little hope of letting trust replace terror, but that little can only be realised through talks.

India avoids strong action not be-cause we are afraid. That said, limited retaliation would likely fuel more terrorism. And full retaliation is not our way. But if Pakistan keeps using terror, we could be driven to risk all consequences. Pakistan’s claim that this is the eventuality they are guard-ing against means they anticipate the terror continuing. The plea that the terrorists’ acts are beyond their control overlooks the trust that could develop through genuine coopera-tion: if we saw Pakistan doing any of the numerous things that could be done, by and large it would be pos-sible to distinguish between acts per-petrated by terrorists on their own and those with the hallmarks of official connivance—like Mumbai.

Will solving all the issues with India solve their terrorist problem as they say it will solve ours? Obviously not—which underlines the falsity of



31 Indo American News • Friday, April 02 , 2010ONLINE EDITION: www.indoamerican-news.comwww.indoamerican-news.com

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NEW DELHI: In an unprecedented move, PM Manmohan Singh will ad-dress the nation on the historic Right to Education Act on April 1, the day the law comes into effect.

It is for the first time in independent India that any PM will address the nation on a specific law.

Though it it is also for the first time that a new fundamental right -- Right to Education -- will come into play, the PM’s address takes on significance because it comes against the backdrop of a strong perception that he was more focussed on foreign policy issues and rate of growth.

The PM’s preoccupation with big ticket foreign policy issues -- civil nuclear energy cooperation with the US and quest for improvement of ties with neighbours -- has seen Congress chief Sonia Gandhi getting the ex-clusive political property rights over major social sector initiatives -- from the NREGA to food security bill to women’s quota bill.

The confrontation with the op-ponents with the women’s quota bill

starkly brought out the disconnect between priorities with Sonia Gandhi staking her political capital to see the Bill through in the Rajya Sabha.

Importantly, the Prime Minister’s decision to speak to a country-wide audience on RTE comes a day after the setting up of the National Advi-sory Council under Sonia Gandhi.

Right to education as a fundamental right was brought about through the 86th Amendment in 2002 by inserting Article 21A in the Constitution.

It is believed that the HRD minister Kapil Sibal had met the PM and re-quested him to address the nation on the historic law.

Meanwhile, HRD ministry has put

in place all the necessary legal requirements needed under the RTE Act. The model rules have been sent to the state gov-ernments while central rules for Union Territories without assemblies -- Chandigarh, Andaman & Nicobar Island, Dadra & Nagar Haveli, Lak-shwadeep, and Daman & Diu -- will get finalised on Wednesday after being vetted by the law ministry. Many state governments have also begun the process of adapt-ing/adopting model rules as state rules.

The HRD ministry has also notified NCERT as the aca-demic authority for the cur-

riculum and the National Council for Teacher Education as the aca-demic authority that will lay down the minimum qualification for teachers. National Commission for Protection of Child Rights will soon set up a monitoring cell for the RTE Act. Each state has also been asked to set up a

State Commission for Protection of Child Rights (SCPCR). Till this is done the states have been asked to set up Right to Education Protection Authority. Karnataka, Sikkim, Delhi and Maharashtra have already set up their SCPCR.

HRD ministry has also zeroed on a host of issues as the next steps for better implementation of RTE. Among them is sharing of funds between the Centre and states. The ministry wants revision in the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan’s funding pattern of 55:45 between the Centre and states so that it can be aligned with RTE. HRD wants the Centre’s share for RTE to go up.

HRD has also decided to ensure that age appropriate admissions are given by schools as well as mapping of neighbourhood schools is done. Res-ervation of 25% to underprivileged children in the neighbourhood might not be possible this year as school admission in many states had nearly got over by the time notification of RTE and Article 21A was made.

PM Singh to Address Nation about ‘Right to Education’ Act

A model presents a creation by designer Nida Mahmood at the Wills Lifestyle India Fashion Week Autumn Winter 2010 in New Delhi.

Funky Fashion Sprouting

India’s landmark Right to Education act will go into effect on April 1.

their attempt to equate their own victimisation with India’s. It is well within Pakistan’s power to cooperate if indeed it seeks settlements. The prospects of non-cooperation also mean we are going to face more of Pakistan’s PR campaigns. We are not good at this, and they are. They have persuaded much international opinion which goes that we are in the wrong on most differ-ences—from Siachen to Afghanistan. Our most unfortunate disadvantage is the widespread acceptance of their taqiya kalaam that Kashmir is the core issue. Their case seems simple and comprehensible: Partition was based on con-tiguous Muslim majority areas opting out of In-dia, J&K is a Muslim-majority contiguous area,

“Terror is an Event, Peace is a Process”India is denying it to Pakistan by force. India’s reply is valid but complicated: outsiders get lost in explanations of our pluralism, the compre-hensive nature of our independence movement, our secular needs and ideals, the horrors of Paki-stan’s invasion—or the Kashmiri’s continuing dislike of domination by Pakistanis. States act according to the situation on the ground, not on right or wrong, so this need not bother us as long as we keep the ground reasonably in order. It’s also true that states believe what suits them, and PR has limited effects, but we underestimate its importance to our detriment.

K.S. Bajpai was India’s ambassador to Paki-stan, China and the US. He retired as secretary, external affairs ministry. - Outlook

continued from page 30


32 Indo American News • Friday, April 02 , 2010 ONLINE EDITION: www.indoamerican-news.como p I N I o N

Asli Indian Standard TimeTime past, time present and possibility fuse at the horologist’s

By GopalKrishna GandhiClocks and watches, pocket watch-

es in particular, have gripped me since I can remember. As a child, I was fascinated by a stooping ghari-saaz who used to come to our home in Connaught Circus, New Delhi, the magic chabi in his hand, to go straight to the two wall clocks we had, stand up on any chair that could be found, move the hour and minute hands about, ponder the dial, set the time and go away as wordlessly as he came.

Some years later, in Chennai, when my nana’s pocket watch, a dainty piece of British make, began to lose time, I offered to take the irregularly pulsating disc to P. Orr & Sons, the hoary horologist on Mount Road, to have it set right. I was shown into a corridor where, to my teenage eyes, several men, each looking as ancient as my nana, or almost, were stooped over some watch or other, peering into its innards through eye-glasses that fitted into the socket of each one’s good eye like a bulb into its holder. The company set the watch right and my nana regained that part of his comfort level with Time.

A month ago, with my nana and all the men who worked on those watches in Mount Road and the ghari-saaz of Connaught Circus hav-ing moved on to a zone where hours no longer matter, I had the good luck to return to this ticking world. Sixty-five now, white of head, grappling with the collapse of a table timepiece of the ‘alarum’ type, I entered a 10x10 roadside watch-repair shop on Chen-nai’s Lattice Bridge Road.

I was struck by the sight of a man wizened by age bent over a watch in a corner of that tiny establishment. Repair over, I asked him how long he had been setting watches right.

“All my working life,” he said.“You must have known people in

P. Orr & Sons,” I ventured.“I worked there myself,” he said,

“until my retirement.”“Really? I once had my grandfa-

ther’s watch repaired there. It has given up working again, of course. Perhaps I should bring it back to you.” He just smiled at this.

A young man was waiting for me to settle my bill. “How much?” I asked

him. “Oh, for this job, ten rupees.” I was disbelieving. What does one get for ten rupees these days? I took out a fifty-rupee note, thanking both of them profusely.

As the man was getting me my change, he asked me in Tamil, “You look like someone from the north but you are speaking Tamil...so where are you from?”

“Oh that...well, you see, my mother was from these parts and my father from Gujarat.”

“Say that then, true national inte-gration! You are an asal Indian.”

“Why, we all are asal Indians.”“No, not that way, sir! You see, we

have all got divided. Take any two men in Andhra. This one, he speaks Telugu. That one, he also speaks Telugu. But one wants Telangana and will give his life for it. The other will give his life to prevent it. So where is the asal Indian?”

“I see what you mean....”“By the way, sir, you must be quite

old?”“Of course, as you can make out by

looking at me.”“Don’t mind, sir, but can I ask what

you do for entertainment?”This was an unexpected ques-

tion. Glancing at the watch-repairer, bent again over yet another watch, I said, “Well, I like old Hindi film songs....”

“Oh, right, right,” he said, and drumming on his counter, started to hum ‘Baar baar dekho, hazaar baar dekho....’

“Well, that one is an old song, but not old enough for me....”

“Oh, right, right. Then you must be very old, sir, very old...you can pay me eight rupees. That will do for the repair.”

“No, no, that is not necessary—ten rupees is fine.”

“What are you, sir, I mean, what do you do?”

“I am, well, a pensioner....”“By the way, do you stay in a house

or in a flat?”“In a flat.”“Ayyo. Pity. Open the door and you

see your neighbour. Close the door and you hear him cough. If you sing your old Hindi film songs, he will say ‘Don’t Disturb!’”

“Quite.”“Come again, sir. Even without

repair work.”The wizard-repairer looked up and

gave me a wan smile, nodding. “Next time, bring your grandfather’s pocket watch,” he said. “I will see if I can do something with it.”

Ten rupees down, a timepiece re-paired, and hope held of future Time being set right on old dials, I stepped onto the street outside, humming without realising it, ‘Baar, baar...’

The author was till recently the governor of West Bengal. He’s the grandson of C. Rajagopalachari on the maternal side and of Mahatma Gandhi on the paternal side


34 Indo American News • Friday, April 02 , 2010 ONLINE EDITION: www.indoamerican-news.comI N d I A

Gates Foundation to Go All Out to Reduce Child Deaths in UP and Bihar

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By n. ramIn a thrust to provide sustained support to

life-saving innovations in India and around the world, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is placing new emphasis on innovations that effect social and cultural change to bring down the un-acceptably high death rates for children under five years of age in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. “A lot of times,” Melinda French Gates, wife of Microsoft founder Bill Gates and co-founder of the Gates Foundation, told me in an interview given recently in New Delhi, “people think the Foundation is absolutely about innovations in science, in technology and biotechnology. We believe in that innovation but another piece of big innovation is social, cultural change.”

She spoke of her visits to villages in Ba-rabanki and Rae Barelli districts to see what could be learnt from the work of the ‘Sure Start’ programme of PATH, a non-profit organisation supported by the Foundation, and a research project called Shivgarh.

Asked about her meeting with Chief Minister Mayawati, Ms. Gates said it went very well. They discussed the Foundation’s focus on bringing down the under-5 child death rate in U.P., polio eradication, immunisation coverage, maternal and child issues, and development in the State. The Foundation was committing $55 million in the State over the next three to five years. This would be a new investment that fol-lowed up on other and larger investments.

It was “really, really key,” she pointed out, to bring down the child death rates in U.P. and Bihar but there would also be a larger benefit: “That’s something we can spread all over India, where it needs to happen. But we can spread that practice around the world.”

Emphasising that “cultural change... can bring down this death rate,” Ms. Gates posed

an interesting question: “How do you talk to them [the women] in a way that appreciates their culture but helps them understand what will keep their children alive?”

Responding to questions, Melinda Gates ex-plained that while the health picture in India was mixed, her optimism sprang from the fact that “there’s so much to build on in India. You have to understand that in the other places I travel to there isn’t the infrastructure” and also the kind of official commitment to improving rural and

urban health that she found in India.The Gates Foundation is one of the largest

philanthropic trusts in the world, with an asset trust endowment of $33.5 billion, grant pay-

Co-chair Melinda Gates speaks about innovation, social and cultural change and the philosophy of giving

Melinda French Gates, co-founder and co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, speaks on the Foundation’s life-saving mission and other issues. Photo: V. Sudershan

ments amounting to $3 billion in 2009, and grant commitments since inception totalling $22.61 billion. The Berkshire Gift, announced by Warren Buffett in June 2006, has dramati-cally increased the Foundation’s funding, ex-panded its ambit, and raised the level of the challenge.

Asked about her husband’s and her motiva-tion in setting up the Foundation in 2000, Ms. Gates explained that “both Bill and I grew up in families that really believed in giving back. So we came to the marriage knowing that the money that had been amassed from Microsoft would be given back to society.” The motto, “All Lives Have Equal Value,” came to them during the first two to three years of the Foun-dation.

The youngest of the three co-chairs of the Gates Foundation explained, in answer to another question, that Warren Buffett’s enor-mous Berkshire Gift enabled the Foundation to “start to scale up” the work it had started to do in Global Development – to “help people lift themselves out of poverty.”

Towards the end of the interview, Melinda Gates made it clear that “we, like Warren, completely want to take the resources that we have from Microsoft and his Berkshire Gift and spend that basically on the problems of our lifetime.” In fact, Bill and Melinda Gates have “made a commitment that 50 years after the last of the two of us has died…all our money would have been given away.”- The Hindu



By Saikat DattaFor 10 years, Daood Sayed Gilani

existed only in the shadows, quietly travelling between India, Pakistan and the United States, building his links with the terror outfit Lashkar-e-Toiba. Ideally, Gilani should have shown up on the radar of the Indian or US intelligence communities dur-ing his extensive tours in India. That didn’t happen because on February 16, 2006, Gilani virtually ceased to exist. He was now officially David Coleman Headley.

Arrested on October 3 last year, Headley’s journey and his central role in the planning of the 26/11 attacks on Mumbai had initially confounded Indian intelligence. But his plea bar-gain now in the North district court of Illinois and subsequent confessions have helped Indian investigators piece together a key element of the 26/11 puzzle, adding further credence to the suspicion that it was conducted with the help of the Pakistani intel-ligence establishment.

While the broad contours of Head-ley’s confessions have been made public, US intelligence has also shared some sensitive material with their Indian counterparts through of-ficial channels, which has proved to be a breakthrough in the 26/11 probe. Some of the key information the US has shared with India is:

Headley has accepted he had four Pakistani handlers. While one has been identified as retired army of-ficer Major Abdul Rahman Hashim Sayeed, the identity of the others had not been disclosed. Indian investi-gators told Outlook that Headley has confessed that the other three were serving Pakistani army officers. Headley has identified them as Major Iqbal, Major Sameer and Colonel Shah. While the names could be pseudonyms, it has confirmed that the handlers were serving army officials. This is the first evidence of official Pakistani involvement in the 26/11 attacks. In fact, American prosecu-tors refer to the handlers as “A, B, C and D”. The person identified as ‘A’ is believed to be Colonel Shah of the Pakistan army.

Headley has also accepted his role in the 26/11 terror strike and has con-firmed that he conducted extensive surveillance of the targets. Having attended three LeT training capsules between 2002-06, Headley used his extensive tactical military knowledge to brief the 10 terrorists who attacked Mumbai. He had also visited the Taj Mahal and Trident hotels and mapped both of them from a tactical point of view. His maps and videos helped the LeT in training the terror-ists who knew precise locations of hotel rooms, possible entry and exit

points that could be used by In-dian secu-rity forces to launch a counter-of-fensive and also helped identify the best areas in the ho-tels where explosives could be detonated to cause maximum casualties and dam-age.

The landing points and the Mumbai coastline was also surveyed by Head-ley. Armed with a GPS, Headley hired a boat in the summer of 2008 and, after sailing along the Mumbai coast, fed in the coordinates that would help the terrorists to come ashore. Headley ruled out three land-ing points and finally settled on the area next to Badhwar Park for the terrorists to come into Mumbai and then spread out. The coordinates supplied by Headley helped the ter-rorists landing from the sea pinpoint the two hotels, Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus and Nariman House where the Jewish organisation, Chabad, had its headquarters. Armed with the co-ordinates, the terrorists knew exactly where to head for after they landed at Badhwar Park.

Headley also worked with two key HuJI and LeT operatives—Ilyas Kashmiri and Zaki-ur-Rahman ‘Lakhvi’, both former Pakistani army commandos. Lakhvi became the chief of operations for the LeT and put the final plan together. He also used the extensive footage and tactical de-tails Headley had provided to train the assault team. After the 26/11 attack, Headley met up with Kashmiri again in the summer of 2009 in Waziristan to plan further attacks.

Headley and his handlers were planning another terrorist strike in India, possibly in the latter part of 2009. While popular belief is that the Pune blasts had a Headley hand, Indian investigators have ruled this out. However, the new attack could have been deferred by the LeT in the aftermath of Headley’s arrest.

For Indian intelligence, Headley’s revelations are in many ways a game-changer. This is the first evidence of the spreading global reach of the LeT, which now includes terrorists from western backgrounds using US travel documents. Indian visa rules are very specific that any person of

Pakistani origin has to be checked out thoroughly before a visa is granted to visit India.

In Headley’s case, he managed to hide the fact that his father was a Pakistani in the documents submitted to the Indian consulate in Chicago. No surprise then that Headley was granted a multiple-entry business visa enabling him to travel to India several times between 2006-08. What now worries security officials is the pos-sibility of more Americans or British-ers (with or without Pakistani links) visiting India who could be part of the LeT’s global terror network.

However, even with all this shared information, there has been a rift between Indian intelligence and their US counterparts. While India had granted FBI officials full access to Ajmal Amir Kasab, the lone terrorist caught alive in the 26/11 attack, no such access was given to an Indi-an security team that travelled to the US earlier this year.

This has raised doubts on whether Headley had also been working for the Americans in some covert ca-pacity before he turned rogue. In-dian officials feel that Headley’s name-change was facilitated by US intelligence to help him work with the LeT. “The Americans were probably running Headley as their asset to gather more in-formation about the LeT and its

leadership without realising that he had ‘turned’,” a senior Indian security official told Outlook.

Intelligence officials also point out that Headley had lied to the au-thorities that his father’s name was “William Headley”. The son of a Pakistani diplomat, Sayyid Salim Gilani, Headley had wiped clean his Pakistani links which, say In-dian intelligence officials, could have only been done with the help of the Americans. The fact that Headley also managed to return to Pakistan after each visit to India to brief his handlers has also caused consterna-tion in Indian security circles. This is another indication of the Americans probably helping Headley in a bid to infiltrate the LeT’s ranks.

Five Questions India Wants To Ask Headley

David Headley Reveals Pakistan Army, US Involvement in 26/111. Are there more ter-

ror accomplices of west-ern origin with American or British passports/travel documents working with the Lashkar-e-Toiba or any other homegrown terror outfit in India?

2. Is the LeT planning another attack against India based on the intelligence gathered by Headley during his trips in India? If so, what are the targets?

3. Who are the serving or retired Pakistani officers that Headley dealt with during his visits to Paki-stan? What role do they play within the LeT and are

they still active?4. Did Headley work with terror

cells in India during his stay here and if so, where are they located and what was the nature of their interface?

5. What are the names of the LeT members who planned the 26/11 as-sault on Mumbai, and also details of other actionable intelligence?

But the one question which has the Indian security establishment most worried is whether US intelligence knew beforehand about the 26/11 attack. “The Americans did share a few intercepts and intelligence that an attack was coming. But did they know what Headley knew?” an of-ficial with the ministry of home af-fairs asks. Could it be that they had not informed the Indian intelligence agencies in detail so as to save their

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Indo-American Association: Mainstreaming Cultural Voices Of India

light classical Thumri, Dadra and Bengali songs hosted by Ajay Chakrobarty. We do have shows also coming up in September and after, but dates have not been fixed for those yet.JD: As executive director, what role do

you play in IAA’s activities?HD: I am honored to be associated with

the IAA for seventeen years. I am origi-nally the founding member. I have to give credit to the efficient governance of IAA by its thirteen Board of Directors. The chairperson is Dr. Raj Bhalla. I associ-ate myself with the daily activities. I help choose the events that can be presented by IAA in keeping with our policies. We are approached by several promoters to do shows. My job is to screen these events, we apply several criteria to select them. I also help find the right balance in present-ing different cultural programs throughout the year.JD: How is IAA doing financially?HD: Very well. We have over 100 individ-

ual patrons of the arts who give us $1000 each. We are thankful to each of these pa-trons for supporting IAA and all the artistes we represent. I’d like to also thank Vijay Goradia and Gopal Savjani who have been patrons for all the 17 years. JD: How have corporations and other

foundations supported IAA?HD: American Corporations and founda-

tions have been extremely supportive with our presentations. The Houston Endow-ment has given us a good grant, Exxon and other corporations as well. Certain Indian corporations and businesses expect person-al on stage recognition time which takes away from the actual event. It is not what we do. We also do not to carry too many logos as sponsors in our advertisements.JD: How has IAA changed or influenced

the Indian diaspora view toward art and culture?HD: In the past, and I think even now,

people view donations to be given to char-ity, temples, flood relief, earthquake relief, battered women, political and religious contributions, all of which are great. But now they are also realizing the importance of preserving our cultural heritage by sup-porting art, music and dance. We as an or-ganization have helped people appreciate our culture. IAA has successfully accom-

plished what it set out to do - bring Indian Arts and Culture to the mainstream stage and present it like the Houston Symphony and Ballet events. Now we are starting to experiment with fusion of Indian and American cultures. This has been well received and will help broaden the under-standing of both cultures.JD: How is IAA giving back to the com-

munity?HD: We have instituted art scholarships.

We encourage people of all ages to take classes appreciating Indian music and dance. We will help pay for half of their tuition. We also encourage exposure of young artistes locally. We are promoting health awareness through a medical net-work locally - preventing obesity among others. IAA bears the expenses for all these programs that help benefit our com-munity.JD: Has IAA promoted local Houston ar-

tistes?HD: We have. Shantilal Shah - a Tabla

player who played in tandem with Pt. Jas-raj and Shujat Khan, the Sitar Maestro; Pt.Suman Ghosh - the vocalist, and Uma Nagarseth - the Kathak Dance teacher have presented their programs success-fully through us. We are on the look out to collaborate with new and experienced artistes locally all the time.JD: Does IAA network with the Indian

dance schools here in Houston?HD: Sadly no, we have not been ap-

proached by any of these Indian dance schools. We look forward to collaborating with these schools and their students who are dancers and musicians. At the same time we don’t want to impose on these schools.JD: What other social causes has IAA

benefitted?HD: We have done many. Two notable

ones are we have conducted benefit events for raising funds to help the Tsunami vic-tims, and the 9/11 victims.JD: Thank you Dr. Hari Dayal for sharing

your passion and IAA’s vision with us.HD: My pleasure Jacob, It was nice talk-

ing with you.For details on IAA e-mail: info@iaahous-

ton.com • www.iaahouston.com • Call 281-648-0422 or 832-758-2844 • 3722 Latma Drive, Houston, TX 77025

Taking a Sip from The Blue MugAtul Kumar’s The Blue Mug is about memories

and what we make of them.

Based on The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat (the book recounts the case histories of patients lost in the bizarre, ap-parently inescapable world of neurologi-cal disorders; patients who have lost their memories) by Oliver Sacks.

The Blue Mug play boasts names like Konkona Sen Sharma, Rajat Kapoor, Ran-vir Shorey, Vinay Pathak, Sheeba Chadha and Munish Bhardwaj. The talk of the town in Kolkata was the play had a lot of expec-tations to meet. On D-day, after a wait of 45 minutes, the show finally began and as soon as the actors took to the stage, began the laugh riot. In fact, the introductory ses-sion was well in tune with the subject and it didn’t come as a surprise when Rajat said, “I have this stone in my pocket to remind me (hinting at his memory loss) that please switch off your mobile phones and no flash photographies during the show please.” As soon as he said this, Vinay’s phone rang and everyone started snubbing him for this careless act of his. This set the ball rolling for what was to follow soon. All the char-acters in the play were playing themselves and even their names, except for Ranvir and Konkona, were also the same. What made the play even more interesting was the fact that the characters were directly speaking to the audience.

The artists narrated memories from child-hood, teenage, adolescent and adulthood,

some blurry, some crystal clear — how Vinay got scared seeing a joker spitting wa-ter from his eyes in a circus, how Sheeba hated going to Shaharanpur every year with her family, how Rajat’s wife broke his fa-vourite blue mug once gifted to him, how Munish couldn’t express his love to the girl he loved, but the girl did. They scribbled on blackboards on the stage as they took off on their dream sequences. There was music, maths, equations, algebra and letters. For them, these were memories. The Ranvir-Konkona part was the favourite with the crowd. They played doctor and patient what with Joginder’s (Ranvir) memory getting stuck in a time warp (the year, 1983).

Ranvir’s Jat accent and innocent humour were clearly a hit with the audience. Huge applause followed each time the duo came on stage.

Needless to say, there was oozing chemis-try. At the end of the play, the characters got back to the present mode and started recol-lecting what happened with them a few min-utes before the show — how they passed the Stephen Court when someone pointed out yahan pe aag lagi thi, how Sheeba fell down outside the auditorium and hurt herself and Konkona passed her school while she was coming to the venue.

Besides Kolkata, the shows is sched-uled to be performed in Houston on May 2, 5:30pm at Stafford Civic Center

Preity Zinta is a Bollywood superstar with a string of awards and hit movies to her name. But as co-owner of a major cricket team, and following a course at Harvard Business School, she has started a transition from actress to businesswoman.

An English graduate who went on to study criminal psychology, Zinta, 34, told CNN she fell into acting by chance, but had always been interested in business.

"It's not that acting was something I'd al-ways wanted to do. I had no formal training; I'd never really imagined I'd be an actress," she said in a telephone interview from In-dia. "Business was something that had al-ways been in my mind, but when I got into acting, I learned everything on set, and for me at that point I wanted to excel at what I did." Zinta had been acting for 11 years when, in 2008, she decided to buy a stake in Kings XI Punjab, one of the eight cricket

teams in the fledgling, multimillion dollar, In-dian Premier League (IPL).

"I was at the top of my job, doing extreme-ly well, everything was great and then I said 'now what?' There has to be a natural progres-sion," Zinta told CNN.

Hugely popular in India, the IPL attracts some of the world's top cricketers and has a sizeable following in cricket-playing coun-tries. No silent partner, Zinta said that when she bought her stake she was determined to be involved in running the team.

"I'm pretty hands on. The partners I was working with all come from business fami-lies, and they're all running billion-dollar

businesses, so for them, this was too small a business to run day-to-day," she said. "So I decided I would go for it, be hands on, learn the business from the start and see how it goes."

Zinta said her expe-rience in promoting her movies helped

when it came to being involved in mar-keting the team. But last November, Zinta decided to add to her business skills with a stint at Harvard Business School, taking a short executive education course in negotia-tions and deal making.

“After the second IPL season I decided I should go in for a short course in busi-

ness to broaden my horizons and actually understand the structure of business,” she told CNN “It’s one thing to be passionate about something, but it’s equally important to understand the way things are done in a particular fashion.

“As an actress I never went to film school and I think if I had gone to film school I would have started with a great advantage. If you have a strong intent to do anything in life you can do it, but it always helps to have formal training.” While she was the only movie star on the course, she wasn’t the only high achiever. “I was in very esteemed company,” she said. “There were big CEOs, people who ran multinationals, and bankers. I picked up ideas from them.” “The course taught me how to structure things, which is extremely helpful now. But India operates very differently from the west: When in Rome do as the Romans,” she added.

Preity Zinta: Star Sets Sights on Business World

E N T E R T A I N M E N T


37 Indo American News • Friday, April 02 , 2010ONLINE EDITION: www.indoamerican-news.com I N d I A

MOCK DRILL: Civil Defence and CISF personnel carry an injured man during a mock security drill at the Mandi House Metro station in New Delhi. Photo: V.V. Krishnan

India in PicturesA paramilitary force officer chasing a rioter engaged in stone pelting near Asha talkies after fresh violence broke out between Hindus and Muslima at Shahalibanda in old city of Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh. Photo: Mohammed Yousuf

A model presents a creation

by designer Nida Mahmood

at the ongoing Wills Lifestyle

India Fashion Week Autumn

Winter 2010 in New Delhi.

A Hindu devotee walks with steel rods pierced through his body during the Panguni Uthram festival in Chennai, Tamil Nadu.

PURELY PRAYERS: Offer-ings to the Sun God in the River Ganges on World Water Day in Allahabad



Food TalkIndoAmerican News

STRAIGHT UP


India Struggles Under Rampant Food Inflation - Farmers Feel the PinchFuelled by surging demand for

goods, government duties and drought, runaway inflation is rock-ing India. Rana, an Indian farmer like others is not too happy.

The unwelcome trend has forced the wizened sugar-cane farmer to oversee a rudimentary factory that produces jaggery – unrefined sweet patty cakes that are coveted by many for their rich taste and health benefits.

Retail sugar prices have surged 55 per cent in India in the past year, but prices paid by sugar mills to Indian farmers for raw sugar cane have increased by only 25 per cent. So instead of selling his sugar cane directly to the mills this year, Mr. Rana is using his crop and those of his fellow farmers in the village of Daha, in the state of Uttar Pradesh, to make jaggery.

The sugar mills are promising to raise prices soon but Mr. Rana and the other farmers are making jaggery because they need money now to cover the rising cost of food and other basic necessities.

“I have been a farmer for 36 years. I have never seen inflation like this,” he says.

The worry is that India’s inflation problem could crop up in the rest of Asia and, subsequently, the global economy, which is struggling to emerge from the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. Central banks have responded to the crisis by keeping lending rates artificially low, triggering concern that the excess liquidity will cause rapid price increases and derail the recovery.

Soaring prices threaten not only India’s economic comeback but also its position (alongside China) as a world leader in the global finan-cial revival. China and India’s con-tinued strong demand for natural

resources and consumer products helped keep the global economy afloat through the downturn. But in China, worries about rising pric-es are beginning to take root fol-lowing more than a year of extreme-ly loose lending policies.

Chinese con-sumer price in-flation hit 2.7 per cent in February, a surprise spike from January’s 1.5-per-cent lev-el. Beijing is tar-geting consumer price inflation at around 3 per cent this year but may be hard-pressed to keep prices in check unless it raises lending rates or allows Chi-na’s currency to appreciate.

It’s not just sugar prices that are skyrocketing. Prices for rice, wheat, milk, vegetables and puls-es are soaring too. India’s overall inflation rate jumped to 9.89 per cent in February as a government decision to raise duties on diesel and gasoline sent fuel prices surg-ing higher. Consumer prices are up more than 16 per cent from a year ago, giving India the world’s sec-ond highest inflation rate accord-ing to Bloomberg, ahead of only Venezuela on a list of 78 countries. Despite weak loan growth, India’s central bank recently ordered a surprise increase in lending rates in hopes of controlling rising prices.

“Because of inflation, my cost of plowing the land has gone up, the cost of planting crops has gone up and the cost of diesel fuel has gone up. What used to cost 150 rupees

[about $3.40CDN] now costs 300 rupees. Water, fuel and electric-ity. Everything has gone up. It’s

getting very difficult,” Mr. Rana says.

To be sure, India’s struggles with rising food costs are more extreme than most. Sugar is a prime ex-ample. India has the world’s biggest sweet tooth. It con-sumes more sugar than any other country on the planet thanks to a healthy appe-tite for sweets, a widespread use of sugar in mainstay dishes and a taste for cavity-inducing chai (tea).

Until re-cently, India

had been largely self-sufficient in sugar, but a poor rainy season or monsoon in July severely hurt

cane production. The drought forced India to become a net importer of sugar in 2009 and it is expected to remain so for 2010.

As India’s economy and population has grown, de-mand for food has outstripped supply. While demand has in-creased by about 7 per cent a year, food production has in-creased by between 3 and 4 per cent.

Unlike North America, Eu-rope and parts of China where large agri-businesses have improved crop yields, agricul-ture in India remains primarily a small-business enterprise. Even though farming employs more than half the country’s

work force, India’s major private-sector firms have largely avoided getting into the agriculture busi-ness.

In New Delhi, India’s federal

government has been quick to ac-knowledge the food inflation cri-sis, but its annual budget unveiled in late February provided little relief to India’s poor and middle class who are most affected. If anything, the increased levies on fuel and diesel made the situation worse.

“It is huge,” says Jayati Ghosh, an economist at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. Prof. Ghosh noted that 40 per cent of India’s population already spends half its income on food and half the overall population is depen-dent on basic foods like rice, sugar and grain.

The lack of strong public outcry to soaring food prices has sur-prised the academic. The wide-spread political unrest that led to the state of emergency declared on the advice of then-prime minister Indira Gandhi in 1975 was due in part to runaway inflation, Prof. Ghosh points out.

Now the economic reforms of



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S T R A I G H T U p F o o d T A L K

By JacoB DaviDEaster is round the corner. I re-

member celebrating Easter back home vividly. Easter celebrates the resurrection of Jesus Christ. People around the world however have different ways and traditions on how they celebrate Easter.

Coming from India, my parents who are Malayalees from Kerala State, my mom used to make the Pesaha Pal Appam (Passover Bread) which is unleavened bread which the Jews ate to commemorate the Passover of the death angel in Egypt killing the first born of the Egyptians, the night before their liberation from 400 years of slavery. In India, however, I think they add yeast to make the bread rise, it is fermented batter and sugar and raisins are added to make it sweet. Some go overboard and add gold-en brown cashews in it as well.

What stands out in memory is when we used to eat the Hot Cross Buns for Easter at the St.George’s Home’s School in Ketti, near Ooty. That was quite the treat, buns with raisins and Icing on top of the bun in the form of a cross. That brings back fond memories. I just got homesick and so had stayed in

Hot Cross Buns for Easterthat British boarding school for just one year. Here’s the recipe for Hot Cross Buns. Hope you make it and enjoy it with your family this Easter season. And do think of us at Indo-American news when you eat those Hot Cross Buns:Recipe:

5 gms Active dry Yeast 1/2 cup warm Water 1 cup warm milk (doodh)

1/2 cup Sugar (Cheeni) 1/4 cup Butter 1 tsp Vanilla Essence 1 tsp Salt (Namak) 1/2 tsp Nutmeg (Jaiphal) Powder 7 cup Refined Flour (Atta) 4 Eggs 1/2 cup Currants (Kishmish) 1/2 cup Raisins (Kishmish) 2 tblsp Water 1 Egg Yolk 1 recipe Icing

Method:Heat the milk and water to 110-

115 degrees fahrenheit.In a large bowl, dissolve the

yeast in warm water.Add the warm milk, sugar, but-

ter, vanilla, salt, nutmeg and 3 cups flour.

Beat until smooth.Add the eggs, one at a time, beat-

ing continuously.Stir in the dried fruit and enough

flour to make a soft dough.

Turn out onto a floured surface and knead until smooth and elastic for about 6-8 minutes.

Place in a greased bowl and turn over to grease the top.

Cover with a damp towel and keep aside in a warm place till the dough rises to double its original size (about 1 hour).

Punch the dough down and divide into 30 balls.

Place on greased bak-ing sheets.

Using a sharp knife make a cross mark(x) on each ball.

Cover again and let it rise until doubled (30 minutes).

Beat the water and egg yolk to-gether and brush over the buns.

Bake at 375 degrees f for 10-12 minutes. Cool on wire racks.

Drizzle icing over the top of each roll following the lines of the cut cross.

Credit: Indian Food Recipes &

India Struggles Under Rampant Food InflationContinued from Page 38Prime Minister Manmohan Singh are under scrutiny. Prof. Ghosh says that the inflation crisis is highlighting the government’s unwavering focus on strong GDP growth at the expense of true eco-nomic development.

The Reserve Bank of India has begun raising some lending rates, which should help cool infla-tion. Food inflation has recently dropped to a 16-per-cent annual rate.

Still, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee warns that the country may be saddled with high inflation for some time.

Farmers are scrambling to adjust

to rising costs for basic necessi-ties including electricity, food and fuel.

The state government has slashed subsidies for manure and fertilizer, which has further hurt crop yields.

There has been less electricity and water available to improve pro-duction. “The government should motivate the farmers. We don’t get things on time. They should see to it that we get electricity and water and they should return the subsidy on manure.” Rana says.

India’s overall annual inflation rate is almost 10 per cent – a price surge that threatens to undermine the country’s strong economic growth.

Prof. Ghosh said the Indian gov-ernment needs to vastly improve its public distribution system of basic foods that should be expand-ed to include many people who live above the country’s poverty line. She also blames speculators and food hoarders for the price in-creases, because they take advan-tage of a tight food supply to make profits at the expense of others.

Prof. Ghosh said the Indian gov-ernment should provide a parallel food distribution system to prevent such opportunistic activities.

“Food is far too crucial a com-modity to leave to market forces,” she said. Photo: Wikipedia.org

Credit: The Globe and Mail



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Handicapped? Physically Challenged? You’re on Your Own!By Jawahar Malhotra

NEW DELHI, 17 March, 2010: My mother enters the Metro car and with her hand taps the arm of the sardar holding on to the armrail, motioning him, also with her eyes and a wiggle of her eyebrows, to move. Startled, the thin faced man with a mini turban wrapped around his head and the crinkled, long hairs of his black beard standing straight out, lets go and moves back. Mama shuffles inward and surveys the crowded area for someplace to sit. Another man standing by mutters to his seated companion, texting on his phone. The man stands up and offers mama the seat, which she takes in relief just as the train begins to lurch forward. People do practice at least this cour-tesy around town for the old.

She has had a tough morning al-ready, going from the apartment down a lift that she views suspiciously as the door that will swallow her. Our neighbor had warned her not to take the lift alone, as it might get stuck, which it has done on rare occasions. That the lift doors open sometimes very slowly but close back quickly only adds to this suspicion.

But then there is the long walk to the front gate along the driveway, dodg-ing cars and speedbumps that seem like little hills to her as she takes care-fully measured, small steps. A couple of steps later, by the driveway ramp with the steep incline, she reaches the curb and waits for the rickshaw driver to pull up.

Decades ago, Indian city and traffic planners were pulling their hair out at not being able to curb the people’s notion that a road is an omniflow pavement that you could willy-nilly navigate, backward and forward. It was very common to drive on the wrong side, cross wherever, even loiter at the many stalls that opened along this conveniently offered pub-lic frontage space and traffic lights were an amusing, but annoying odd-ity. They hit upon the idea of making medians using very high – about 18 inches – curb stones, first crudely handmade with square edges and now milled with rounded topsides, in an alternating black and white or yellow pattern. Now the medians have wrought iron fencing to stop jaywalkers and rickshaw drivers who

would jump their carriages over.So mama waited patiently for the

rickshaw driver to pull up to the curb, as the footrest is two inches above curb height, and heaved herself in. We had to negotiate a short, about 1,000 foot section, to the Metro sta-tion, along the blacktop road and a couple of rough patches that had still not been repaired, but with her weak legs and heart, it was too long for her. And then there were six curbs in between to cross that might as well have been the Himalayas for my 82-year old mother.

At the Metro station, they cer-

tainly didn’t make it any easier. One step, a long land-ing, three steps, a long walk to the security checkpost, step up, step down past the bored po-lice officer in dark khakis and a black beret, through the turnstiles with the autocard reader and a 50 foot walk to the lift. A sign read that the lift was for the physically challenged and el-derly, but several able-bodied young people rushed to get in, which hap-Sunny Valley apartments in New Delhi

Alighting at the other end at Ra-jouri Garden, the lift was even fur-ther, tucked away about 150 feet away, near an alcove where a teenage couple was working out a touchy situation, the boy pouted and lingered feigning a text message as the girl walked away and called him to fol-low. The lift dropped down near the exit turnstiles, and then another lift 25 yards away dropped down to the ground level. Mama walked across the 25 foot landing to the exit, down two steps and along a 50 foot ramp to another step and …. the formidable curb. We hailed another rickshaw.

On the return side at Rajouri Gar-den, the highest station in the Metro system, the entrance is more of an obstacle course. Curb, landing, ten steps. An escalator up – but no guar-antee that it works all the time, the alternative being taking 60 steps up, which mama had done once so she was afraid of this station, and no lift in sight - a 60 foot work round to the next escalator and then another 60 foot workaround to the security check-

Mama gets off the rickshaw.

pens all across the Metro system. How challenging was this for them?

The lift opened to the platform, 50 feet from the track’s edge. Up and down, there were many head-height backlit billboards – hoardings they are called here –and only two 4-seat, stainless steel benches about 100 feet apart. Mama looked gingerly for a place to sit and was daunted by the distance to walk. Fortunately, the train came in a minute later. She had startled the Sikh, but the row of seats with the sign above that read “For the physically challenged, elderly and ladies” was already taken.

Mama enters one of the Delhli Metro stations.

point. The final lift went upto the platform and the dearth of benches.

Around town, the situation is pa-thetic for the elderly and physically challenged. Across torn up stony roads, endless traffic and dusty patch-es that masquerade as sidewalks, the entrance to the banks is up a flight of stairs, some without handrails, and through narrow doors. Restau-rants, malls and shops are likewise an ordeal for them to navigate. At the Sahara Mall in Gurgaon, my mother had just trudged 500 feet over broken pavement and a roped off narrow aisle next to the exit drive for cars. When she walked in the Mall, she went to the security guard at one of the stores and asked him, “Bhaiya, yahan baat jayoon thori deyr?” (Brother, can I sit her a bit). He obliged.

But the final hurdle is the entrance to the flats in the four-story buildings that make up the townhomes that dot Delhi. They have no lifts. The prospect of going up another three flights of 15 steps each was enough to downhearten mama.

Mama in the Delhi Metro carriage.



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e n t e r t a i n m e n t

Bollywood Calling

Wasim Akram will report-edly make his acting debut in Nikhil Advani’s next film, Patiala House, which also stars Bollywood actor Akshay Kumar. The script of theatiala House is apparently based on cricket and Wasim Akram will be playing the role of a coach for Akshay’s cricket team.


45 Indo American News • Friday, April 02 , 2010ONLINE EDITION: www.indoamerican-news.coms p o r t s

Dinesh Karthik Lifts Delhi Daredevils to Fifth IPL Win

By rakesh raoNEW DELHI: Dinesh Karthik’s ex-

ploits lifted Delhi Daredevils from a spot of bother to an overwhelming 67-run victory over Rajasthan Royals at the Ferozeshah Kotla on Wednesday.

Daredevils’ fifth win and its third in a row ended Royals’ four-match winning streak. The result raised Daredevils’ tally to 10 points and kept Royals at eight.

Karthik produced a priceless 69 and effected three dismissals to walk away with the Man-of-the-Match award. Leg-spinner Amit Mishra scalped three wick-ets, while David Warner took four catches and pulled off a run-out to make amends for his failure to fire with the bat.

Chasing Daredevils’ 188 for six, Royals was never in the chase after losing Michael Lumb and Faiz Fazal in the opening over. In-form Naman Ojha and Yusuf Pathan took turns to re-ignite Royals’ hopes but did not last long. Daredevils set up a challenging target after losing early wickets. The last eight overs produced 88 runs, including 20 off the 18th over bowled by Shaun Tait. The Australian speed-ster, who had Karthik off the last ball of the innings, conceded 53 runs in

four overs — the most by any bowler in a complete spell this season.

The innovative Karthik rotated the strike well with Gambhir, who was content on keeping the scoreboard ticking. Once settled, Karthik over-took Gambhir with a flurry of strokes before the skipper became Sumit Narwal’s third victim.

Undeterred, Karthik continued the good work with McDonald. Two of his four sixes came in succession off Narwal and three of his six boundar-ies came off consecutive deliveries of Tait.Earlier, Daredevils ran into a now-familiar situation of losing wickets upfront. Openers Warner and Virender Sehwag fell in the fourth over. When a confident Paul Col-lingwood was run out and Kedar Jadhav unwisely tried to give Warne the charge, it left Daredevils looking worried at 67 for four in 8.3 overs.

After the clinical assault from Gambhir and Karthik produced 79 runs off 8.2 overs, Daredevils never let the advantage slip. Thereafter, Karthik consolidated the gains by adding 42 runs with Andrew McDon-ald in just 3.1 overs.- The Hindu

Dinesh Karthik blasted a 38-ball 69 as Delhi Daredevils steamrolled Rajasthan Royals by 67 runs.

Super Comeback by Chennai Super KingsBy karthik krishnaswaMy

CHENNAI: Much of Chennai Super Kings’ woes in the IPL’s third season have stemmed from a lack of home-grown heroes to complement its foreign stars.

At Chepauk on Wednesday, Murali Vijay announced his candidacy for that post with a 39-ball 78 that gave Super Kings its first win in five games, a five-wicket victory over Royal Challengers Bangalore, which posted 161 for four after opting to bat.

Vijay’s knock demonstrated his gift for timing, his strokes on both sides of the wicket a product of a keen eye and fluid bat-swing. The opener was severe on Praveen Kumar, and took 24 off his second over — lucky at first to see a top-edged hook carry beyond the long-leg ropes, but imperious thereafter, an effort-less six over wide long-on and whips off successive waist-high deliveries for four and six.

At that stage, Vijay was on 31 from 16 balls, and Matthew Hayden on zero from one. With Royal Challengers in dire need of a wicket, Anil Kumble brought himself on and dismissed Hayden, leaving the left-hander stranded yards down the wicket with a googly. Vijay carried on unaffected, swung Kevin Pietersen’s off-breaks for three sixes in two overs before skying one

to Manish Pandey at long-on.That left Super Kings with 58 to get

in just over 10 overs, a task tailormade for the finishing skills of Suresh Raina and M.S. Dhoni, who combined for a run-a-ball 34. The wickets of Dhoni, Albie Morkel and S. Badrinath caused a late flutter, but Raina’s composure saw the home team through with an over remaining.

Whenever a boundary was needed, the left-hander found one, critically a six over cover off a Vinay Kumar no-ball when 10 was required from seven balls.

Man-of-the-match Murali Vijay’s scintillating knock of 78 took the Chennai Super Kings to a victory over the Royal Challengers, Bangalore.

On a wicket affording substantial lift, the early overs of the Royal Chal-lengers innings pitted the batsmen against a ring of five fielders stationed between backward point and mid-off.Thilan Thushara bowled a controlled first spell, straightening the ball from left-arm over and cramping the bats-men for room. In his second over, he dismissed Manish Pandey, forcing him with extra bounce to top-edge a pull to mid-off.

Robin Uthappa made the same er-ror in the next over, underestimating Morkel’s bounce, but was dropped for the third time in two games against Super Kings, Manpreet Gony the culprit. Uthappa took 19 off the next over, bowled ironically by Gony, but soon departed for 21, slogging Shadab Jakati to deep midwicket. The left-arm spinner dented Royal Challengers’ progress with his final over, a wicket-maiden that saw Virat Kohli and Jacques Kallis depart at the same score after a 63-run stand, the latter run-out for 52.

This, in the end, caused Royal Challengers to finish about 15 runs short, despite Kevin Pietersen and Cameron White’s big hitting late in the innings.

Sania: I Will Support My Country from DubaiHYDERABAD: Tennis star Sania

Mirza remarked that her wedding with Pakistani cricketer Shoaib Malik should be looked at as a simple wedding like that of any other Indian girl and that she is not trying to make any statement on India-Pakistan relations through it.

Speaking to the media late on Tuesday evening at her residence, Sania said the wedding would be held in Hyderabad on April 15 and she was delighted at the whole idea. “There is mutual admiration and more importantly the two families are really happy at it,” she added.

“The wedding-cum-reception will be in Hyderabad and the venue would be decided later,” Sania revealed.

“Essentially, the sporting career will continue for both of us. I hope to play for my country and wish he plays for Pakistan for a long time to come,” Sania said to a query. “I knew him since the last seven years and found him to be very affable and simple,” she said. “I saw him playing and am a big fan of his batting and I remember his stunning knock in

the Bangladesh Premier League some time back. I wish he keeps playing for the country,” she said.

The tennis star from Hyderabad also brushed aside whether she was wor-ried about the controversies surround-ing Shoaib Malik (when referred to his reported marriage to a Hyderabad girl some time back). “I want to live in the

present and not look back. I do believe even Shoaib also believes in this,” she replied.

Referring to the strained relations between India and Pakistan and asked whether she feels that things would im-prove, Sania said that she would be lying if she was not aware of this factor. “But, well, if things improve, there is nothing like that,” she remarked. “I cannot say whether I am setting an example [by marrying a Pakistani sportsperson] for others. These things don’t matter to me,” she said.

Whom will you support after marriage – India or Pakistan? “My country India and my would-be husband Shoaib Ma-lik,” was the reply in a flash from Sania.

Sania said she would be settling down in Dubai after the wedding and despite the fact that she would be away from her fam-ily, she still looked at Dubai as her ‘second home’ ever since she started playing there. “Yes, Dubai is our favourite place,” Imran Mirza, father of Sania, intervened to say.- The Hindu

Sania Mirza addressing the media outside her residence in Jubilee Hills, Hyderabad.



RELIGIOUS SERVICES

c o m m u n i t y c o n n e c t i o n s

Arya Samaj of Greater Houston

281-242-5000

BAPS 281-765-BAPS (2277)

Durga Bari Society832-347-4003

Hare Krishna Dham

Hindu Worship Society Temple

Satsang Assembly accompanied by Santos from 4:30pm - 6:30pm followed by arati and mahaprasad. 281-765-BAPS (2277)

Havan Satsang 10 AM - 12, discourse by Dr. Premchand Shridhar: 281-752-0100 DAV Sanskriti school 10 AM - 12 - Havan, Hindi and Naitik Shiksha classes. Shekhar Agrawal: 281-242-5000

Saumyakasi Sivalaya

281-568-1690

Temple hours: Mon - Fri: 8.30am-Noon, 5-8pm, Sat & Sun: 8.30am-2pm, 5-8pm, Aarti: Noon and 7.30pm, Chinmaya Prabha, 10353 Synott Rd, Sugar Land, TX 77478. www.saumyakasi.org, Bharati Sutaria: 281-568-1690

Temple hours: Monday - Saturday: 9am- 11am and 4pm to 7pm; Sandhya Aarti 6.30pm. Sunday 9am- 7 pm. www.houstondurgabari.org, Champak Sadhu. • 13944 Schiller Road.

Daily Darshan & Arati Times: 4.30am, 7am, 8.30am, 12noon, 4.30pm, 7pm, 9pm. See darshan live on www.iskconhouston.org. Sunday Festival: 5.30pm to 7.30pm. Located at 1320 West 34th St, Houston, TX 77018.

Priest – “Bhibhdutt Mishra Ji”. Open for Darshan all days, except Thursday, from 8am -10am & 5pm - 8pm. Sunday 11:30am to 1:30pm – Regular Puja, Religious discourses and Prasad. Website www.hwst.org

JVB Preksha Center281-596-9642

Regular weekly program of Yoga and meditation Mon-Thu 7.15pm to 8.15pm. On Saturdays from 9.00am to 11.15am. Located at 14102 Schiller Rd.

Sanatan Shiv ShaktiMandir

713-278-9099

Rudrabhiskek every Monday followed by Aarti and mahaprasad. 5645 Hill-croft, #701 Houston TX 77036.

Shri Radha Krishna Temple

281-933-8100

Four Arti daily: 6:30am , 12 noon, 7pm & 9pm. Tuesday & Saturday 7:10pm. Sunday Bhajan and Kritan at 6pm. Maha Arti 7pm, More information www.srkt.org Located at 11625 Beechnut Houston, TX 77072.

Sri Ashtalakshmi Temple

281-498-2344

Daily Schedule: 7:30am – 9:30am -Suprabhatam, Sri Murthy Aaradhana, Tiruppa:vai Sevakalam, Theertha Ghosti, Balabhogam, 9:30am – 11am :Temple is open, 6:30am – 7pm, www.jetusahouston.org

Swaminarayan Mandir (ISSO)281-530-2565

Darshan: Daily 7.30am-12.30pm, 4-8.30pm. Aarti: Daily 7.45am & 7pm. Ha-numanji Aarti: Sat: 7.15pm. Rajbhog Thaal (No Darshan): 10.30-11am. Din-ner Thaal 5.30-6pm. Located at 10080 Synott Rd, Sugar Land TX 77498.

Vedanta Society 5906 Cypress • Classes Sunday from 10.30am to 12.30pm on Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, 1st &3rd Sunday; Bhagavad-Gita, 2nd Sunday; on works of Swami Vivekananda, More information visit www.houstonvedanta.org

Please note: The above section for Religious Services has been provided as a free service for many years. We are now updating this section to make it informative for our readers. To help provide this service on an ongoing weekly basis, we are making these listings available for a nominal annual charge. Give prominence to your religious services with a special block ad for an annual cost of only $150. That is only $2.88 per week. Paid Service listing starts Feb 2010. Thank you for your ongoing support.

Give Your Religious Services a Facelift

CURRENT EVENTSapRIL 2010

Shri Kripalu Kunj Ashram

713-344-1321

Satsang & spiritual discourses, Sun: 10.30 am.-12.30pm. with simultaneous prog. of Hindi, Sanskrit and Moral science for kids, dance classes for children and adults every Fri:8 pm, www.shrikripalukunj.org

Free Citizenship Classes @ Houston public Library

February - May 2010Mondays & Thursdays

5.30-7.30pmCarnegie Neighborhood Library

832-393-1970

Wednesdays7-8.30pm

Henington Regional Library832-393-1820

2Fri

7pm: Nasha 2010, Indian Students Association at the University of Houston, University of Houston, Vaidehi Bhatt: 832-692-8539

21Wed

Sat-Sun

8-9.30am: Free Yoga Classes by Patanjali Yogpeeth Center, Arya Samaj, Anil: 281-579-9433

15Thu

11.30am: Wells Fargo Lecture Series on South Asia: India-U.S. Can they Reinvest Partnership?, Asia Society Texas Center, The Houston Club, [email protected] , Fritz Lanham: 713.439.0051 x17

10Sat

3pm: Jagadguru Srimad Vallabhacharya(Mahaprabhuji) Pragatyotsav, VPSS, VPSS Haveli, 281-564-8777, www.vpsshaveli.org

24Sat

7.30pm: Vaisakhi Celebration, Punjabi Society of Houston, Cullen Performance Hall, University of Houston, Jasmeeta Singh: 713-858-8229

6pm: Annual Family Spiritual Camp, JVB Preksha Houston, Gordon Ranch, Pramod Bengani: 281-596-9642

7.30pm: Rahat Fateh Ali Khan Live in Concert, Rehan Sid-diqi, Arena Theatre, 877-786-1180

1Sat

6.30pm: Pratham Houston Gala 2010, Pratham USA, Westin Galleria, 713-774-9599, www.prathamusa.org

may 2010

2Sun

5.30pm: The Blue Mug- A Comedy Play, Media Circle and Art Promotions, Stafford Civic Center, Surender Talwar: 713-668-2948

22Sat

8pm: Sukhwinder Singh Jai Ho, Hum Tum City, Arena the-atre, www.humtumcity.com

6pm: Free Seminar on Osteoarthritis, Methodist Sugar Land Hospital, 800-451-2006 Ext. 3335, www.managingosteoarthritis.com

14Wed

7pm: Vishu and Tamil New Year, Sri Meenakshi Temple, 281-489-0358, www.meenakshi.org

16-18Fri-Sun

Annual Tyagaraja Utsavam, Sri Meenakshi Temple, 281-489-0358, www.meenakshi.org

17Sat

8.30pm: Asha Bhosle Live in Concert, Star Promotions Inc., Arena Theatre, Rajender: 281-222-4500

21Fri

8pm: India Jaz Suites, Indo American Association, Wortham Center, 281-648-0422

6Tue

5.30pm: TiE Social with Kanwal Rekhi, Young TiE Houston, The Flying Saucer, Jyoti Gupta: 713-929-1900 Ext.210

25Sun

Noon-5pm: Bibi Bridal Show, Hilton Americas, 713-992-4085

send event information to [email protected] listings should be concise and occur within 15 days of submittal

040210b

Documents

indo american news

indoamerican news

way indoamerican association

american public

amjad ali khan

rais khan

rashid khan

vilayat khan