India Abroad - Person of the Year 2003-2008

Archives 2003-08

2008

Fareed Zakaria

2007

Mira Nair

2006

Indra Nooyi

2005

Bobby Jindal

2004

Mohini BhardWaj

2003

Sonal Shah

Pages 03-38

Pages 39-71

Pages 72-91

Pages 92-103

Pages 104-112

Pages 113-128

India Abroad Lifetime Achievement Award 2008

Fareed Zakaria India Abroad Person of the Year 2008

Jhumpa Lahiri India Abroad Publisher’s Award for Excellence 2008

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COLLECTOR’S ISSUE

Zubin Mehta

India Abroad March 27, 2009

The International Weekly Newspaper

India Abroad March 27, 2009

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ver the years Fareed Zakaria has become a fixture in the foreign policy establishment. Whenever objective analyzes of the burning policy issues of the day needs perfect articulation, he tells it sans any semblance of an ideological bent while being sensitive to the historical, religious and cultural background.

Many of his articles in his role as Editor of Newsweek International like the award-winning ‘Why They Hate Us,’ and his best-selling books, including his most recent The Post-American World, have clearly given him iconic status like the leading foreign policy thinkers of the day from Henry Kissinger to Zbigniew Brzezinski.

But as much as 2008 was a defining year for the United States with the election of the first African American president, it was a defining year for Zakaria too when he began to host his own program on CNN – GPS, a Sunday afternoon fix for all political and foreign policy junkies.

He says why it’s particularly important, is because now he’s in control of what he’s trying to do “to change American attitudes about the world.”

Zakaria believes there is such a hunger out there by Americans, after years of sheer parochialism, to understand the world, particularly post 9/11. He believes GPS is doing what journalism really should be doing, which is public education.

Let me start off with a fun question — what did you think of Slumdog Millionaire’s roaring success at the Oscars?

I loved the movie. It was an amazingly energetic portrayal of Bombay and captured the energy and vitality of life in Bombay, its complexity and diversity.

There was a small amount of protest in India, and I know the director was a little worried. I explained to him that in India, you stop the traffic lights, you can get a thousand people assembled for anything and that it didn’t mean anything, but the reality is people in India are excited by the movie.

In terms of Mumbai itself, it’s really a shot in the arm for the city after the horrific terror attacks. It’s an affirmation of what makes Mumbai a great city. There are parts of it that are horrendously poor, and the great task is to try to change that. But one of the amazing things is that even in that poverty, there is so much energy, dynamism, vitality, and the movie beautifully captured that. Any Indian who watches it will recognize in that portrayal of India, that amidst the poverty, there is enormous dynamism and energy.

Just one more 4 question on

Global Soul Each week, Fareed Zakaria brings the world into living rooms across the United States because, he explains to Aziz Haniffa, it is important to understand the world before you can live in it PARESH GANDHI

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India Abroad March 27, 2009

4 COLLECTOR’S ISSUE Mumbai. On GPS, just after the 26/11 attacks, you were both angry and emotional and spoke of your ties to Mumbai and also the Taj, where your mom has an office. You said it was your intention to go to Mumbai and stay at the Taj as a sign of solidarity. Did you make it over there and stay at the Taj? Of course. I went there three weeks after the attack, I visited the Taj and spent some time there. I didn’t stay there because my mother would never forgive me if I were to go to Mumbai and not stay with her, any Indian will understand that.

But, I went to the Taj, hung out there, actually spent some money there as a sign of solidarity. What was striking to me about being at the Taj and being in Mumbai in general was the amazing sense of resilience among Indians.

There is much more of a traumatized feeling among my friends in New York about it than the people in Mumbai. In Mumbai, people feel the way you defeat terrorism is you move on. You don’t let it get you down…

And for you personally, was it cathartic?

I don’t know whether it was cathartic, but it was very important, because I felt as though I wanted to make sure not to feed into the idea that India was now a problem case — that it was a troubled area. There was something pathological about it, and I wanted to restore normalcy. So, in that sense, yes, it was cathartic.

In Barack Obama’s election, is there a larger message for us as immigrants who are Americans today? And more importantly, for our our children, for whom America is indeed home without any of the dual loyalties that some of us older guys grapple with?

It’s even an equally powerful message actually for non-African Americans, and that’s the significance of Obama.

If you were to have said to somebody that eight years after 9/11, the United States would elect a Black American as a president and that his name would be Barack Obama, and that his father would have been a Kenyan and that he has many family members, including his father, who were Muslim, and he had a step-father who was also Muslim, and that he spent four years in Indonesia, and had actually even attended Muslim schools for a brief period, you would say you are crazy.

What I think Obama represents is not just about Black America — while it is, of course, important — it is about a new America. It is about America made up of many different sources and strands and it is an America that is much more open to this new world that is shaping out there.

If Obama were to have run 10 or 15 years ago, the fact that his father was Kenyan, that his step-father was Indonesian, that he had lived in Indonesia, that he had in a sense, connections to Islam, that he had a

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Muslim name — Barack Hussein Obama — would all have been major negative traits.

In some ways, they were all positives last year because I think Americans understand, we are moving into a new world, and it’s a much more equal world —- it’s a post American world — in a sense and Obama has the ability to understand it — to understand these forces within America, these forces of diversity and these forces around the world.

For all of us, who come from — shall we say — non-traditional ethnic backgrounds to the United States and have non-traditional names, and look funny, he is a powerful symbol — and by the way, I will say this, it’s not just a symbol, Obama really is somebody who comes from that world.

This is not just an accident that his name suggests that. He does understand the immigrant experience. His father was Kenyan, and I mean, if you talk to him, he understands the world at a different level.

For him, Kenya, it’s not just another African country, it’s a country which his grandmother 5 lived in, in which he has

From left: Tasneem Zakaria (now Mehta), Arshad Zakaria, Fatma Zakaria, Mansoor Zakaria, Fareed Zakaria (with the headband) and a cousin

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From the Editors

At the height of the 2008 Presidential campaign, photographers captured Democratic candidate Senator Barack Obama as he stepped off a plane and homed in on the cover of the book he had in his hand: The Post-American World.

Fareed Zakaria’s latest book didn’t need the candidate’s implicit endorsement – it was already enshrined in the New York Times bestseller list. And therein lay the real surprise: Not that Obama was reading the book, but that America was reading of how the rest of the world was catching up with it.

It is a testament to Zakaria’s reputation that he alone of all commentators could have sold such an argument to a nation primed to believe in its global supremacy.

Fareed Zakaria has made a career out of telling inconvenient truths: As with his seminal 7,000-word Newsweek cover story in the immediate aftermath of 9/11.

Under the title Why They Hate Us, he challenged the assumption that the destruction of the World Trade Center owed to Islamic religious fundamentalism.

That defining piece on the meaning of 9/11 provided the platform for his pitchperfect interpretations of contemporary events.

Thus, when George W Bush launched his ‘shock and awe’ bombing of Baghdad, Zakaria’s response was a Newsweek cover story titled Why America Scares the World – in which he critiqued the President for acting unilaterally without an attempt to build international consensus.

Telling truth to power is proverbially dangerous. When you are a Mumbai-born Indian American of Islamic heritage who can tell truth to the fundamentalists of the East and the neocons of the West and be respected by both, you are special.

That special quality marries with another: Zakaria alone of the talking heads on American television has a global focus or, as he puts it, he is intimately aware of ‘the other 95 per cent of the world.’ He has thus positioned himself as the one authoritative voice that can speak to global issues, at just that precise moment in time when America wakes to the realization that events in remote corners of the world can impact on its wellbeing.

His ability to understand and interpret the world was most visibly manifest in 2008 – first, through his best-selling book The Post-American World, in which he pointed out that the global story was not so much about the decline of America as it was about the rise of the rest, and through the weekly CNN show GPS – the first time that an Indian American has been invited to host a major television program on national and international affairs.

No event, no issue, has eluded GPS’s scrutiny: whether it is the meltdown of the global economy or the terror attacks in Mumbai, Fareed Zakaria is there every Sunday, discovering meaning and nuance in the defining events of our time.

In troubled times, we seek compelling voices that can make sense of the seemingly senseless; voices that can lift us out of our skins and show us how to live in another’s; that can show us our place in this world and the world’s place in our lives.

For being the compelling voice that bridges East and West, fundamentalism and liberalism, the United States and the world, India Abroad salutes Fareed Zakaria, and honors him with the Person of the Year Award 2008.

COURTESY TASNEEM MEHTA

India Abroad March 27, 2009

5 COLLECTOR’S ISSUE taught English, and I had Fareed in my class for two years, the 9th and 10th standards. He belonged to an extremely bright class, a very high achieving class, and even so Fareed was always definitely a cut above the others. He had a logical bent of mind, understood things very quickly, could reason out a topic and take his argument to a logical conclusion, and he stood out for how he presented himself and more importantly, for his views.

He always had something to say about everything, and what he had to say was always well thought out. Also, he was a very good speaker, a very good debater. I think that comes through even now, when you watch him on CNN, or you read his articles. When I see him on television, he is just Fareed matured, that’s all – he was like this in school, and he has merely matured, honed himself to a fine point.

It was always apparent that he would do very well – and today I feel proud that this young man did pass through our school, and he has acquired the stature that he has right now.

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Meera Isaacs, Principal, Cathedral and John Connon School, Mumbai

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many relatives. [While] Indonesia, is a country he interacted with as a small child.

And, for crying out loud, when it comes to India and Pakistan, he even had Indian and Pakistani roommates and not only likes desi food, but can apparently make a mean Daal?

Precisely. And, he has publicly said that he thinks the call of the muezzin, the azaan, is one of the prettiest sounds in the world. Can you imagine an American President being able to be honest and open about the idea that you have this appreciation of the diversity of human life and the diversity of religion?

Do you see a dissipation of hate for America? Where do you see the Post-American World going? The real world with all its problems still exists — couldn’t this so-called return of the love for America post-Obama, be short-lived, because Obama in a sense has got to tow the US foreign policy line vis-à-vis Israel and also the muscular foreign policy with regard to Afghanistan and Pakistan?

That’s a very good question. Obama represents so much that it is inevitable that people have unrealistic expectations and hopes. But they are unrealistic not just because Obama — after all, at the end of the day is a human being.

They are unrealistic also, because, they in some sense, sometimes assume that these problems will magically go away.

When I wrote about it in that cover story, Why They Hate Us, one of the things I was trying to get across was that in the Arab world, there are deep dysfunctions that have built up over generations relating to oil, money and dictatorship, and therefore an extreme opposition movement has developed in these places.

That dynamic still exists, and the country in which actually you see it the most powerfully now, is not in the Arab world anymore, it’s in Pakistan, where the dictatorship has bred an intolerant opposition and that of course gives license to the Pakistani army.

These are very powerful deep dynamics. Obama being elected won’t magically make them go away. What one can hope is that Obama will take a somewhat more sophisticated and nuanced view of this world landscape — which is not new.

I hope that we will see is an Obama who tries to recognize that there are really a variety of Islams and that we are not at war with all of them. What we are struggling against at a military level is only the small minority of jihadi groups who are associated with Al Qaeda or groups like it that want to kill civilians, that want to disrupt civilian life — whether in Pakistan or in the West.

There are very religious movements which we may not like, particularly their attitude towards women, the attitudes toward education, but we are not at war with them.

We are in an argument — a political, cultural argument with them, which I strongly support, and we should be trying to educate women and we should be trying to make the case for secular education. But, we are not going to kill every person who feels that women should wear a veil.

Then there are just religious qazis and those are ones who may even be pro-American, but very religious and you see that in Iraq. One of the funny things in Iraq is to notice that we are allied with some very, very religious Shia mullahs in the South.

So, what we need is a foreign policy toward the world of Islam that recognizes these distinctions because otherwise, we are lumping everybody together and anyone who has a beard and anyone who talks about piety somehow becomes suspect as a potential jihadi.

That’s where we have to make an adjustment and that’s where we can hope that Obama will. But, it’s important to remember there is still a problem. There are people — the Al Qaeda and their groups and the radical elements of the Taliban —- who are trying to kill Indians, Pakistanis and Sri Lankans and people in London, Madrid and New York and they have not been seduced by Obama. And if you listen to al-Zawahiri after the election of Obama, they are as bitter and nihilistic.

With Pakistan as it is today being overrun by militants, and an economy virtually in ruins being propped up by IMF funding, etc, a civilian government, which many believe is hardly in control, is Pakistan today the most dangerous place in the world and could in a sense implode before too long?

There is no question Pakistan is the most 6 dangerous country in the world, and if you

India Abroad March 27, 2009

6 COLLECTOR’S ISSUE look at what’s happening over the last few weeks in Swat, you can only come to the conclusion that the government in Pakistan has become helpless.

It’s not just that they made this deal, it’s that you don’t even have a sense that the civilian government is speaking with one voice. The government in Peshawar is saying one thing, the government in Islamabad is saying another thing, the military is saying a third thing.

You get the feeling that these violent and militant forces are on the rise, the government is on the defense, and this is happening in a country that has large numbers of Al Qaeda activists still at large, including Osama bin Laden, Ayman al Zawahiri and is also a nuclear power. You throw that all together and it’s a very troubling situation.

Pakistan is extremely unstable and there is no path that one can see that will get it to stability. Unfortunately, this is the history of Pakistan. The level of instability is such that it seems quite plausible that you will have another period of military rule.

But, of course, then that sows the seeds for greater longterm instability, because you have again, shut down the politics and the only place where the politics come out is an extreme opposition movement, like the Taliban and like Al Qaeda.

In terms of a long-term prognosis, going by what is happening with regard to US policy, where do you see the Obama administration’s policy in the next few months going and if still in a flux, where do you think it should be going? In a recent cover story in Newsweek, you spoke about Afghanistan being Obama’s Vietnam.

I don’t think this will be Obama’s Vietnam even though there were important analogies and parallel comparisons to be made. Primarily, because they are well aware of the danger of a kind of unthinking ratcheting up of troops.

The troop increases are actually quite sensible because they are really trying to secure population centers and transport routes so that civilian life in Afghanistan can come back to some normalcy.

But, the people I’ve talked to, fundamentally agree with the central proposition of my article, which is that the Afghanistan problem cannot be solved without a Pakistan strategy — that there really is in some sense no Afghanistan problem without the Pakistan element.

No Afghan has been involved in a terrorist attack against the United States, or Europe in 10 years, including 9/11. All attacks, and certainly, post 9/11, trace back to the FATA — the Federally Administered Tribal Areas — of Pakistan. So, there has to be a concerted strategy toward Pakistan, and the Obama people get this.

I think they are going to try. Now, the problem is, Pakistan is a problem without a solution. So, at best, you can hope to bandage it. You can hope to ameliorate the conditions that are causing these problems.

But, the solution to Pakistan is a total re-orientation of Pakistan’s national interests, for the Pakistanis to understand that it is not in their national interest to have a weak Afghanistan. To have an India on edge. To have a South Asia that has greater attention. And, that while this may serve the short-term advantage of the Pakistani military, it is in the long-term disadvantage of the Pakistani nation.

If Pakistan can understand that, then we have a chance.

But, right now, I don’t get the impression that that’s likely.

Do you believe the Obama administration made the correct decision in appointing Richard Holbrooke as a Special Representative for both Pakistan and Afghanistan? And, also making sure that he 8 goes to India and in making India a partner in

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areed is someone who has always looked confident, looked like he can take on the world. When we were younger and all together, he would keep us in splits because he was a great mimic. There’s a big age difference between us. I remember how he used to take my paint brushes, and I had to chase him around the house.

He had a great sense of humor, was very mischievous.

What he has grown up into is just a very extraordinary human being. He is very sensitive, a wonderful family man, he is terrific with his children, has a lovely wife, they are very closely knit, he has three delightful children.

He was always very focused, even when he was very young.

He used to edit the school magazine, and was always very bright in his studies. I’m not surprised that he has achieved this level of success.

He is a fantastic speaker, an incredible orator. My father RAJESH KARKERA was an incredible orator as well. Fareed has taken it to the next level – he can talk for an hour on a subject without any notes and with great clarity, which is a remarkable thing. He says it just comes from years of doing it, but I think it also comes from there’s a great sense of being very together. He is just so very sure of himself and his opinions, in a humble kind of way. The wonderful thing about Fareed is there is no arrogance, there is a lot of humility, a willingness to listen and to ask questions and to learn, and that is very appealing because when you are so recognized and yet you can make the other person feel what they are saying is important and that you want to learn from them, I think that is a quality, a mark of leadership, and that is very clear when you watch his programs.

I have a great sense of pride in the fact that my baby brother is recognized internationally.

Wherever one goes, you have people saying they enjoy his writing and have the greatest respect for him, and that makes me feel very proud.

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Tasneem Mehta, Fareed Zakaria’s sister, an art historian

India Abroad March 27, 2009

8 COLLECTOR’S ISSUE Born January 20, 1964 in Mumbai, India, to politician and Islamic scholar Dr Rafiq Zakaria and newspaper editor Fatma Zakaria.

An alumnus of Yale, from where he did his BA, and Harvard, where he got a PhD in political science under luminaries like Samuel P Huntington, acclaimed author of The Clash of Civilizations.

His work on a Harvard research project on American foreign policy led to his being named managing editor of Foreign Affairs magazine. In 2000, Newsweek named him editor of its international edition.

Besides his seminal columns and cover stories for Newsweek [including, famously, the Why They Hate Us cover story immediately following 9/11] and his writings on, among other things, wine for the online magazine Slate,

Zakaria has written three books. From Wealth to Power: The Unusual Origins of America’s World Role (Princeton, 1998), examined a historical dichotomy: Wealthy countries naturally extend their influence abroad, why then was the United States strangely quiescent in world affairs in the late nineteenth century? In The Future of Freedom, he argued that democracy without liberty is cosmetic, and thus critiques the Bush administration’s holding of elections in Iraq without having first built institutions of law and governance. His latest book, The Post American World, points to a game-changing seminal shift in world affairs: Not so much the decline of

Fareed, left and older brother Arshad

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the regional approach that is being envisaged to tackle this problem.

Absolutely. Holbrooke is exactly the right person because you need a very skilled negotiator and a diplomat. The mandate is exactly right because there is no distinction really between the Afghanistan problem and the Pakistan problem, and yes, you should try and draw in the regional actors.

India is going to have a very important place in all of this, but I do think that at the end of the day, I hope what it does is spend as much as he can on Pakistan, because that is the variable that needs to be changed. That is the area where you need to change the most.

Maybe, you can get the Iranians involved a little bit, maybe you can get the Chinese involved. But, the key issue is going to be, can you get the Pakistani military to really understand that it’s not important to just turn off the tap, they have to destroy the plumbing of this infrastructure of terrorism.

So far, whenever, they are pressured, they turn off the tap, but they leave the tap so that COURTESY TASNEEM MEHTA they can turn it on the next day. And, the question is, are they willing to break the tap — destroy the infrastructure — because otherwise, you are just going to play this permanent America, he says, as the rise of everyone game on the defense against these groups, and the most important thing the Pakistanis else. need to understand is, their country is being destroyed by these forces.

A hugely popular television host for his And, not to belabor the point, but is this because a Pakistan that implodes could have insights into world affairs, Zakaria has repercussions not just for Pakistan and the region, but for the United States and the entire hosted the weekly news show Foreign world?

Exchange with Fareed Zakaria on PBS. If you look at terror activities in Europe and the United States and Southeast Asia, there He has been a news analyst on ABC’s is only one country that has consistently been involved in almost every one of those plots This Week with George Stephanopoulos. and that it Pakistan.

In June 2008, he began hosting the It has really become a kind of international training spot for all kinds of jihadis. So, weekly show GPS on CNN, designed to there’s that element, which is very powerful. But, there’s the other element, which is not to bring global thought leaders into be forgotten, which is, where Pakistan is located. It is right next to American living rooms.

Afghanistan, it’s right next door to China, it’s right next door to India.

His growing influence in the world of The regional implications of a Pakistani implosion — totally outside of terrorism — are public policy and global affairs has led to extremely destabilizing and not to mention the fact that they’ve got nuclear weapons, Forbes magazine listing him, in its which we try to keep forgetting about, but it is a very real problem.

January 2009 issue, as one of the 25 If tomorrow you have a situation where the rings of these Taliban groups — of these most influential liberals. Earlier, in 1999, Taliban fighters — come and take over Peshawar, a major, major city in Pakistan, which Esquire named him in its list of the 21 appears to be possible, where do we stand then, in terms of the viability of the government most important people of the 21st centuin terms of what happens to the sense of panic. ry; in 2007, Foreign Affairs magazine So, when we talk about Pakistan imploding, this is not an idle rumination. This is an had him on its list of 100 most influential actually quite real fear that I hope is keeping both US and Pakistani policymakers up at intellectuals worldwide. night.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made her first overseas trip to Asia, which included China, but did not include India. Was this a mistake?

Is there reason for India to be concerned in some sense about an Obama administration, particularly since US-India relations during the Bush administration was excellent?

In fact, President Obama has made it clear that he would like India to work with the US to ratify the CTBT (Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty).

I don’t believe it was a mistake for Hillary not to go to India.

There are a limited number of countries you can go to. This was very much a trip not to Asia, but to East Asia, and one of the things we have all got to The house in south Mumbai where Fareed Zakaria grew up understand is that 9 there is no such

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COURTESY TASNEEM MEHTA

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India Abroad March 27, 2009

9 COLLECTOR’S ISSUE hen it comes to American journalism, India Abroad can be proud, and it couldn’t do better, than honoring Fareed Zakaria. Fareed has established himself as one of the pre-eminent foreign policy analysts in America.

His columns and essays in Newsweek are a must read, and I congratulate him, and I congratulate India Abroad for honoring him – what a great choice! All of us, his colleagues, are so very proud of him, and India should be too.

Congratulations, Fareed, and good going!

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Thomas L Friedman, columnist

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thing as one Asia.

Asia is a vast continent, and what she was dealing with was, a very specific part of it. She went to Indonesia for reasons actually that have more to do with Obama than anything geo-strategic.

I think that the Indo-US relationship has actually achieved a level of depth and maturity that it doesn’t really depend on these kinds of symbols anymore.

I am sure there will be a major trip at some point by Obama or Hillary to India. I think that right now the relationship is actually operating at so many levels, that there really isn’t any real danger. Now the question that you raised…

And, that India doesn’t see it as a zero-sum game either?

Exactly. India no longer views these things as zero-sum games. But the question that you raised regarding the nuclear issue, there is a real concern.

It is fair to say that many of the people around Obama were less enthusiastic about the nuclear deal or opposed to it. Bush pushed it almost single-handedly — the entire nonproliferation community was opposed to it and I think Bush will always have a special place in India’s heart for that reason.

But I think the Obama people are very practical in recognizing the benefits geo-strategically of having India, both as an ally, but also having India inside the tent on the nuclear issues rather than outside.

And, secondly, they have already indicated, there is no intention of changing that (the nuclear deal). Obama, remember, was a Senator, when all this came up in the Senate, he never even raised an issue, let alone try to oppose it.

What I do think will happen is, that they will ask India to play a more active role on nonproliferation issues, which I believe is right. I believe India should play a bigger role — on CTBT, India should take a lead — and on Iran, India should be more involved, perhaps in crafting a compromise — not necessarily following the US line.

But, if India wishes for people to now see the benefits of India being taken into the tent — into the nuclear club — they need to start behaving like a responsible nuclear leader.

Not just saying, we got our special exemption and we are going to go back to quietly doing whatever we want. No, the whole benefit of having India’s program ratified was that you got this emerging great power to be participating in the rule-making process and rulesetting process.

I hope that (Indian Prime Minister) Manmohan Singh takes a more active role and by the way, my sense of Manmohan Singh, is that he would share this view entirely…

After all, India was the original sponsor of total and universal disarmament — the Rajiv Gandhi proposal.

Precisely. You go back to Nehru, to Rajiv Gandhi, it’s always been part of the Indian effort to play a leadership role on these issues, and it couldn’t because it had been placed in this situation where it was in a black box. Well, now, it’s out of the black box, and I am glad that it will have the opportunity.

A personal question — 2008 was a defining year for you too — you got your own CNN proRAJESH KARKERA gram, GPS. How important in your own evo-

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lution is this program, are you happy the way it has turned out and the way it is progressing?

2008 was most important for me because of the birth of my daughter — I had a third child.

But also, yes, the birth of my television program. For me, this is a very important step, because what I am trying to do is to change American attitudes about the world, and I realize that you now have to do it…you have to be a multi-platform provider.

You have to be able to do it in various media. You can’t just do print, online. And, television is a very powerful medium.

Despite all the disaggregation of media that’s taken place, there is nothing like television in terms of capturing people, getting people’s attention, getting them to focus on these issues. And, what I’ve tried to do is really be true to my mandate in my own sense — my agenda — which is to bring the world to America and make Americans think about the world and understand there is a new and different world out there.

What I am most gratified by is that what was started in the thought that this was a prestige product and would be kind of have a great marquee value for CNN, but you know, of course, it wouldn’t have good ratings, actually, it’s turned out to have very good ratings, and what it shows is that there actually is an audience for this kind of thing. I am actually, in some ways, trying to both reflecting and building this America that I am talking about that elected Obama.

Journalism is a very important function of public education and we forget it sometimes. But I always try to keep that in mind with the show. So, I will not do merely what is in the news but what I think the public should know about.

Of course, you have to make it engaging and exciting and interesting, otherwise it’s a recipe for boredom. But, you must try to embrace the public education function.

You’ve become a fixture in the foreign policy establishment, and have your own program.

There is also Sanjay Gupta and Ali Velshi on CNN. Then there’s Governor Bobby Jindal, touted as a Republican presidential hopeful and there are quite a few Indian-American state legislators too. Indian Americans have moved far beyond the world of only physicians, engineers, IT entrepreneurs, etc.

Is this a clear manifestation that Indian Americans have arrived in terms of mainstream participation, involvement and empowerment?

Oh, of course. But it’s important to point out that if not for those first generation, you wouldn’t have this second generation…

You mean the first generation who could send their children to Harvard and Yale and all that…

Precisely. These doctors and engineers came to this country and went to places nobody wanted to go to, and raised their children to be real Americans — to give them a sense of pride in both the country they came from and the country they’re in.

It’s an amazing tribute to that generation of Indians that you now have the second and third generation of Indians who have no limits in terms of the fields and the areas they are going to.

They have no mental limits or any sense of thinking of themselves as having any glass ceilings, completely comfortable both in the East and the West, both in India and the US… generation of Americans who are hardworking, achievement-oriented, loyal Americans, but with a profound connection to the country they came from – that’s the American Dream in a sense.

And, in a way, I guess Obama has been catalytic in helping in that involvement and empowerment too now, going forward?

And, they have been catalytic in helping Obama get elected — I would say the arrow moves in both directions.

India Abroad March 27, 2009

10 COLLECTOR’S ISSUE

The literary superstar Jhumpa Lahiri, winner of the India Abroad Publisher's Award for Excellence 2008, discusses her craft with Arthur J Pais

ittle Octavio can light up any visitor’s day with his stories. As his mother gets ready for an interview in her Brooklyn home, Octavio is set to amuse the visitor. As his father, journalist Alberto Vourvoulias, coaxes Octavio to go upstairs, I see daughter Noor spying on me from atop the stairs.

A year after the interview and the publication of Jhumpa Lahiri’s third book, Unaccustomed Earth, the images of her children are alive in my mind.

“You know, both your children could become storytellers,” I tell her recently. “Octavio could be a more outgoing story teller and Noor, an oblique…”

“We’ll see, we’ll see,” she says with a chuckle.

Her parents’ home in Rhode Island is full of books — including foreign versions of her books that have been translated into more than three dozen languages. And then there are paintings, many created by her maternal grandfather.

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Journalist and editor Alberto Vourvoulias-Bush has a habit: Sunday mornings, he abstracts the New York Times Review of Books section from the main paper and hides it.

If he had done that on the second Sunday of April 2008, wife Jhumpa Lahiri might have missed witnessing a phenomenon: Her second collection of short stories, Unaccustomed Earth, debuted that week in the bestseller lists – in the number one position.

Lahiri’s life reads like one of her own short stories. Born in London to Bengali Indian immigrants, Nilanjana Sudeshna, as she was known before a teacher made her pet name ‘Jhumpa’ official, moved to the United States when she was just three.

It was during her stint at Boston University – from where she acquired MAs in English, Creative Writing and Comparative Literature, and a PhD in Renaissance Studies – that the hyphenated life of an Indian-American began to move her creative muse.

She began distilling the dilemmas of the immigrant experience into a series of evocative short fiction. ‘What drew me to my craft,’ she has explained, ‘was the desire to force the two worlds I occupied to

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Fact file Nilanjana Sudeshna Lahiri is born in London, July 11, 1967. Her family moves to the United States when she is three.

She considers herself an American; “I wasn’t born here, but I might as well have been.” Her father Amar K Lahiri is a university librarian; her mother Tapti, ‘Tia’, a teacher.

Her kindergarten teacher in Kingston, Rhode Island, begins calling her by her pet name Jhumpa because it is easier to pronounce than her ‘good names’.

‘I always felt so embarrassed by my name...’ the writer has said. ‘You feel like you’re causing someone pain just by being who you are.’

She receives a BA in English literature from Barnard College in 1989, goes on to earn three master’s degrees from Boston University and a PhD in Renaissance Studies. She teaches part-time at the Rhode Island School of Design and Boston University, hoping for a full time career as an academic. Deep within her is a passion to write stories and novels.

Her career alters its course when she accepts a two-year fellowship at Provincetown’s Fine Arts Work Center in 1997.

During her six years at Boston University, Lahiri works on short stories, nine of which are collected in her debut book, Interpreter of Maladies, published in 1999. She re-writes and polishes the stories during and after the Provincetown fellowship. The stories focus on the lives of Bengali immigrants in America and the problems of marital discord, cultural identity and the conflict between first and second generation immigrants.

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’When I first started writing I was not conscious that my subject was the IndianAmerican experience. What drew me to my craft was the desire to force the two worlds I occupied to mingle on the page as I was not brave enough, or mature enough, to allow in life,’ she notes.

The book receives high praise from leading critics in America. ‘(Lahiri) announces herself as a wonderfully distinctive new voice,’ declares The New York Times. ‘Indeed, Ms Lahiri’s prose is so eloquent and assured that the reader easily forgets the Interpreter of Maladies is a young writer’s first book...

Ms Lahiri chronicles her characters’ lives with both objectivity and compassion while charting the emotional temperature of their lives with tactile precision. She is a writer of uncommon elegance and poise…’

Interpreter of Maladies wins in 2000 one of the most coveted prizes in America, the Pulitzer. Immediately, the book, which had sold well, becomes a huge bestseller.

More than a million copies of the book have been sold in over two dozen languages.

In addition to the Pulitzer, it receives the PEN/Hemingway Award, the New Yorker Debut of the Year award, an American Academy of Arts and Letters Addison Metcalf Award, and a nomina-

At her wedding with Alberto Vourvoulias

As a child tion for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.

In 2001, in Kolkata, she marries Alberto Vourvoulias, then deputy editor of Time Latin America. He is currently the executive editor of El Diario/La Prensa, New York’s largest Spanish daily and America’s fastest growing newspaper.

She is awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2002.

In 2003, she publishes The Namesake, a novel, spanning more than three decades in the life of a fictional family and their life in America. An instant bestseller, critics love the book. It is later made into an acclaimed movie by Mira Nair.

In 2005, she becomes vice president of the PEN American Center, an organization designed to promote friendship and intellectual cooperation among writers — - and fight for the rights of writers.

Last year, her new collection of short stories Unaccustomed Earth once again explores Bengali immigrant lives. It goes to the top of The New York Times best-seller list on debut. Major critics worldwide acclaim the stories and their sensitivity.

The distinguished British newspaper, The Guardian, headlines a profile of the

With children Noor and Octavio, right writer: ‘Unlikely bestseller who changed the future of the American novel.’ The deck-head adds: ‘Now her tales of immigrant life are being hailed as a new direction in US literature.’ The newspaper says American fiction ‘no longer could it be considered under the direction of white, American-born men; the new direction of American letters — allowing for minor adjustments in course by writers such as Jonathan Franzen, David Foster Wallace or Michael Chabon — is now informed by the experience of the immigrant.’

Awards and good reviews never distract her, she has often said, asserting that her loyalty is to her craft. ‘I have to will my world, my life, back to that place, because that’s where I find the freedom to write,’ she tells The Guardian. ‘If I stop to think about fans, or best-selling, or not bestselling, or good reviews, or not-good reviews, it just becomes too much. It’s like staring at the mirror all day.’

PHOTOGRAPHS COURTESY JHUMPA LAHIRI'S FAMILY

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The literary superstar

there is quite a bit of India. But there are

11 also Mexican masks and artifacts from

Guatemala and Mexico where her husband grew up.

Until now she has been mining her community, offering quietly mesmerizing, often wrenching, occasionally funny stories of Bengali immigrant life in America and the burdens and challenges the younger offspring carry in their every day lives.

“Your children are American and have Indian, Spanish and Greek heritage,” I ask her. “Are you thinking of characters from other worlds?

“I have always thought that,” she says. Lahiri is occasionally irritated when people ask her why she only writes about Bengalis in America. She has wondered why such questions were not directed at writers like John Updike who wrote mostly about White Anglo Saxon Protestants and Saul Bellow who featured Jewish characters in his books.

“I’ve never thought anything else,” she says, measuring as always each word she utters. “When you write, the world is an infinite sea; you can go anywhere you can set your characters in any time and anyway from any walk of life. I guess it’s just pulling it off. But I just happen to be interested in these (Bengali American) characters.

“Just yesterday, I went up to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to see the paintings by the French painter, Pierre Bonnard. He painted almost exclusively paintings of his home and of a certain view and a window and a table and variations on that theme. There are so many painters I know who and really love; just to look over and over again at the same subject, this happens so often in the world of painting and whenever I look at the paintings of these artists, I think this is what I’m trying to do as a writer: I keep looking at the same subjects, but I see different things inside. And that’s why it continues to interest me. If it didn’t interest me, I wouldn’t be down to writing about this.”

She is now working on her second novel.

“I don’t want to talk too much about it,” she says. “There’s a section of it that takes place in Calcutta in the early 1970s.”

Unlike many writers who feel the compulsion to publish a book every second year or so, Lahiri is under no pressure to complete her new book. Don’t expect it till early 2011.

The paperback edition of Unaccustomed Earth will be published next month.

Jhumpa Lahiri, who has a doctorate in Renaissance Studies from Boston University (and three master’s degrees in English, creative writing, and comparative studies in literature and the arts), is one of the most acclaimed writers of our time. Unlike many distinguished writers she is a bestselling author not only in America and India, but worldwide. At least three-and-a-half million copies of her three books are in print.

Her debut story collection, Interpreter of Maladies, won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, as well as the PEN/Hemingway Award, the New Yorker Debut of the Year, and an American Academy of Arts and Letters Metcalf Award. It was translated into more than thirty languages, and was an international bestseller.

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‘I keep looking at the same subjects, but I see different things inside.

And that’s why it continues to interest me. If it didn’t interest me, I wouldn’t be down to writing about this’

PARESH GANDHI

The Namesake, her first novel, was a New York Times bestseller, a New York Times Notable Book, was selected as Best Book of the Year by USA Today, Entertainment Weekly, Newsday, and the San Jose Mercury News, and was New York magazine’s Book of the Year. It was also made into a successful film by Mira Nair. Lahiri also received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2002, and a NEA Fellowship in 2006.

One reason she will not race through the second novel is because she wants to spend quality time with her children.

Six years ago when I met her at the office of her publisher Houghton Mifflin, Octavio had been born and she said that being a mother had changed her sensibilities as a writer. Now that she has two children, how does it affect her life as a writer?

“I can’t spend days and days just thinking about my work,” she says. “I have many, many responsibilities: My children are still very young. They need constant day-to-

day maintenance and care. It’s not like a plant that you put in the ground and it takes care of itself. They need me to prepare their meals, pick up their clothes, give them a bath, walk them to school, bring them back from school, read to them and all of that. That’s where they are in life right now. Because of that my life is divided between taking care of them and trying to make time for writing.”

“I try to work when they are in school,” she says. “I have a woman help me twice a week; on those days I have the afternoons. So, it’s a challenge. Sometimes, I find it is difficult to find the time, but finding the space in my head to satisfy all the day-to-day concerns and believe that everything is going smoothly. There’s a constant sense of having to stay on top of their lives and you know you realize they are not adults; their bodies are literally growing; you turn around and suddenly they have grown out of their shoes. You have to run out and buy 16 them (shoes) again. They cannot be without

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‘She brings out her memories onto the page’ Amar and Tia Lahiri reminisce with Arthur J Pais about a daughter who was born to write ou may be tempted to ask Amar K Lahiri to take care when he is travelling alone, say to Russia. Don’t be surprised by what he tells you in response. “I often say I have survived three continents,” he chuckles, adding, “I know how to survive anywhere.”

The Rhode Island University librarian told his family precisely this when they came to see him off as he travelled from Boston to Moscow in 1998.

Lahiri, who migrated to America with his wife Tia, a teacher, and young child Nilanjana Sudeshna nearly 40 years ago after working as a librarian in London, had no idea that his elder daughter, whose books have drawn upon her experiences as well as those of her parents, friends and acquaintances, would use the expression as the title of a story in her first book, Interpreter of Maladies.

Amar and Tia Lahiri reminisced recently about their daughter’s evolution and progress as a writer. They showed us her room filled with books including those by contemporary writers to those who created literature in Russia and Sweden in the previous century. They pointed out a pile of magazines and newspapers on her winning the Pulitzer Prize in 2000, and remembered her telling them to put it away.

“She doesn’t like being in the news,” explains her mother.

“She wants to have all her time for her family and her writing. She doesn’t even want to read the reviews of her books, even when people tell her they are very nice.”

Amar Lahiri reveals how his experience of living as a tenant in Cambridge, Massachusetts, inspired his daughter.

The elderly landlady, who was large hearted and helpful, lived in her mind in a ‘Victorian age.’

“She was very different from people of her age I had met in Boston,” he says. “It was not the custom to call a grown up man a boy. But she called me just that. I did not mind because I knew she did not mean any harm.” Jhumpa Lahiri took some elements from her father’s experience and turned them into a story.

The writer has often said how her stories have autobiographical elements in them and how frequently she draws upon her life as well as the lives of her parents, friends, acquaintances, and others in the Bengali community with

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which she is familiar.

“She wants everything to be thorough and detailed in her stories,” her mother, who used to read to her the Bengali stories of Ashapoorna Devi when Jhumpa was growing up, says.

Even now, the writer calls her mother to find out about life in Kolkata, about festivals and traditions, and about politics.

Recently, she wanted to know about the water problem in the city about five decades ago.

Recalling her research during a discussion some years ago, Jhumpa Lahiri explained that when she began writing fiction, her first attempts were, for some reason, always set in Kolkata, a city she knows quite well as a result of many visits with her family, sometimes for several PARESH GANDHI months at a time.

Even so, her parents’ insights and information are important to her writing. She supplements this with her own research.

‘These trips to a vast, unruly, fascinating city so different from the small New England town where I was raised shaped my perceptions of the world and of people from a very early age,’ she had said then. ‘I went to Calcutta neither as a tourist nor as a former resident — a valuable position, I think, for a writer. The reason my first stories were set in Calcutta is due partly to that perspective — that necessary combination of distance and intimacy with a place. Eventually I started to set my stories in America, and as a result the majority of stories in Interpreter of Maladies have an American setting.’

‘Still,’ she added, ‘though I’ve never lived anywhere but America, India continues to form part of my fictional landscape. As most of my characters have an Indian background, India keeps cropping up as a setting, sometimes literally, sometimes more figuratively, in the memory of the characters. The Namesake is, essentially, a story about life in the United States, so the American setting was always a given. The terrain 15 is very much the terrain of my own

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From the Editors

mingle on the page.’

That fictional fusion of a real-life dichotomy resulted in the Interpreter of Maladies, winner of the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction – a rare instance of the highest literary award going to a collection of short stories.

Segueing seamlessly onto a vaster canvas, Lahiri then produced The Namesake, a sweeping saga of a fictional family that immigrates to the United States. The debut novel firmed up her reputation as a master storyteller; acclaimed film-maker Mira Nair then distilled its essence into a critically-valued film starring the likes of Kal Penn and Bollywood stars Tabu and Irrfan Khan.

Continuing to shift effortlessly between styles, Lahiri followed up with Unaccustomed Earth – a rare instance of a work of short fiction jumping to the top of the Times bestseller list on debut.

Awards and accolades have rained down on her faster than her books have vanished off bookshelves; the shy, retiring Lahiri incongruously found herself the darling of fashion magazines and paparazzi alike; a couple of hundred mediapersons descended on Kolkata to cover her 2001 marriage to Alberto Vourvoulias – yet somehow, Lahiri remained unmoved, untouched, by it all.

‘I accept it graciously and try to wear it lightly,’ she said of her Pulitzer. ‘It is no magic potion. It doesn’t help me with what’s really important to me: to learn and grow as a writer.’

Her almost eerie detachment is symptomatic of a writer who cocoons herself in her own words. Criticism doesn’t unnerve her, praise doesn’t puff her up, because she writes entirely for herself.

Writing, for Lahiri, has been a means of making sense of the world around her and, simultaneously, an escape from the life of a brown immigrant in a white world; a life spent stretching her sense of identity, of self, to touch the twin worlds of India and the United States. It has simultaneously been a means of processing the world around her.

For an acknowledged master of craft whose words flow with the seductive smoothness of honey, Lahiri says ‘writing is the hardest thing I do.’

Why, then, write? Because she must; because, she says, she does not have a choice. ‘If I don’t write, I feel dreadful. So I write.’

For being the cultured voice of the community, for her stories that help us parse the dimensions of the hyphenated immigrant experience and make sense of it all, for teaching us how to wear excellence with modesty, grace and charm, we honor Jhumpa Lahiri with the India Abroad Publisher’s Award for Excellence, 2008.

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‘She brings out her memories onto the page’

life — New England and New York, with Calcutta always hovering in the background.’

Like her younger sister Shimanti, who is a professor, Jhumpa is familiar with Bengali. “In India, people who do not know her would assume she grew up in Bengal,” notes her mother. “She has taught Bengali to her children; her son Octavio speaks the language, her daughter Noor understands it.”

Tia Lahiri, who prefers bright saris and a large bindi and has never worn pants or Western attire, says her daughters were given an Indian childhood.

They were American at school, she adds, but Indian at their Rhode Island home.

Her daughter has said she often found the cultural code the parents enforced on her uncomfortable.

‘My parents were fearful and suspicious of America and American culture when I was growing up,’ she said.

‘Maintaining ties to India, and preservShimanti, left, and Jhumpa Lahiri with mother Tia ing Indian traditions in America meant a lot to them.’ don’t grow up hating the culture of their They are more at home now, she adds, parents or belittling it.” ‘but it’s always an issue, and they will When Mira Nair was working on The always feel like, and be treated as, foreignNamesake, based on Jhumpa’s bestselling ers here.’ novel, the filmmaker spent more than a day ‘Now that I am an adult I understand and with Amar and Tia at their Rhode Island sympathize more with my parents’ predicahome, which has several framed portraits ment,’ she explained in an interview. ’But of Tia’s father’s paintings. when I was a child it was harder for me to “Mira wanted us involved and wanted my understand their views. At times I felt that family in it, and I was moved by her their expectations for me were in direct thought,” Jhumpa recalls. “She put a lot of opposition to the reality of the world we these little things in the film that are very lived in. Things like dating, living on one’s personal to me and my family, like having own, having close friendships with us appear in there for a split second, shootAmericans, listening to American music ing a ceremony with my little daughter and eating American food — all of it was a mystery to them.’

When Jhumpa went to Barnard College in New York, Tia Lahiri says she advised her daughter to join an Indian association.

“Soon, she called, saying that she did not like being there,” Tia says with a chuckle.

“She said they were too much into partying and drinking. What is Indian about it, she wanted to know.”

Today, Tia Lahiri says she understands that it is not important for a second or third generation Indian American to know an Indian language or love Indian food. “What is important is that they appreciate the culture and want to know more at their own pace,” she explains. “It is important they PRESTON MERCHANT Brought to you by:

Noor in it for a second, and using a painting of my grandfather’s — things that only make sense for just about a dozen people in the world.”

Amar Lahiri explains both Tia and he were keen on setting examples to their daughters rather than drill lessons into their heads.

Many of their parents’ observations have stayed with Jhumpa and her sister.

When Indians would tell their mother they were moving into an all-white neighborhood where there were no blacks, Tia Lahiri would ask: ‘What do you think you are?’

‘Though I’ve never lived anywhere but America, India continues to form part of my fictional landscape’

Her daughters never wanted to live in any exclusive neighborhood, she adds.

“When Jhumpa (who is married to an American journalist of Greek-Guatemalan origin Alberto Vourvoulias-Bush) was living in Park Slope in Brooklyn, she was disappointed there were not many nonwhites around,” says Tia. “’But Jhumpa, I see a lot of African Americans around, just look at the park over there.’ Jhumpa looked at me with sad eyes and said, ‘Ma, they are the baby sitters’.”

Jhumpa and her family now live in a brownstone house in Brooklyn. “She could not be happier than in that neighborhood. She says, ‘Ma, I have to just look around and the whole world is passing by’.”

Amar Lahiri, a man of few words, who says with a chuckle that the real friends in America he has are his two grandchildren, remembers telling Jhumpa many years ago that a tree is judged by its fruit.

A mostly self-taught man who worked as a postal clerk in Kolkata for over seven years, he also recalls telling his daughters: ‘If you want to get god, you get god by work.’

Jhumpa Lahiri began writing when she was in school. “We knew she loved writing,” her father says, “but we weren’t sure if she could make a career out of it.”

When Jhumpa was working on her PhD in renaissance studies at Boston University, she felt diffident as she approached the final stages of her research.

Her father reminded her of the men who climbed palm trees in rural Bengal. “They found the final stage, the last few feet, quite daunting, even though they had done the same thing for many years,” he said.

He added that his wife and he wanted Jhumpa to have an advanced degree.

“It is good to have something extra in your pocket,” he says, smiling.

What do her parents think is the strongest point in Jhumpa’s craft?

“She is like a sponge. She observes everything important and absorbs it,” says Amar Lahiri. “When the time comes, she brings out her memories onto the page.”

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The literary superstar these basic things.”

She says she cannot say she is a mother part time and a writer part time “because I do both of those things fully at the same time.”

Slender, tall and with an olive complexion, the soft-spoken writer doesn’t do many interviews, and her public appearances are few.

“It’s not that I half-tend to my children and half-tend to my writing,” she explains, “because I have to do all the things in the course of one day or in the course of a week.”

The relationships between parents and children (and in some cases grandchildren) are important material in Lahiri’s books. How is parenthood affecting her — and her writing?

“My relationship to time and mortality is completely different,” she says. “You are aware that you are relatively young and one day sixty is the next and all living creatures are born and eventually die. I know these truths. But when you have children, for me I understand these things at a visceral level. The passage of the generations. I think of my children growing older, then myself, then my cousin or my sister growing older, then my parents growing older: the whole thing, everything, is shaken up in my senses. That it’s all passing, that it’s all finite; that’s because the children change so rapidly, so astonishing, not only from year to year, but from month to month, sometimes week to week, they are doing something different.”

“My son Octavio surprised me a few days ago when he picked up the pen and started writing sentences; he couldn’t do that six months ago. Noor, my daughter, will surprise me in other ways. They use different words, they express themselves differently, they interact differently with their friends, they develop different interests, their personalities deepen and grow more nuanced.”

“To witness all of that is really remarkable, and I think, children keep you very much bound to the present because they live in the present; at the same time, because I am an adult I can remember their past and look forward and think about their future. The way I think about life is two things: One is living very much in the moment, very close to the ground, learning things, doing things with my kids, discovering the world through their eyes, learning about what are the seasons, learning why does the moon’s shape change, why does it snow only in winter, and all of these millions of questions they have for me every day.”

Growing up with children can be a humbling experience to anyone, even a distinguished novelist.

When children ask questions, she says, “You think about them, sometimes you answer them and sometimes you don’t even know the answer. This is very humbling.”

“Adults don’t question the world in a fundamental way any more. So, one part is being in the present moment with

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COURTESY JHUMPA LAHIRI'S FAMILY

them. And, the other part is remaining outside their experience, of being an adult. I think about my own childhood.

I think about my growing older; what will it be like when they are my age? Where will I be? Will I be alive? I think about all of that much more actively than I used to.”

In Unaccustomed Earth, Lahiri says, “a lot of that got a way into these stories thinking about these questions.”

Her reading shelf is filled with writers ranging from Gogol (Dead Souls) to Thomas Hardy (The Return of the Native) to Alice Munro (The View From Castle Rock) and William Trevor (Cheating at Canasta).

“They inspire me to try to do what I do: Going, to keep going and realize there’s always a new way to tell a story and always a new way to look at your writing just to keep it new and keep it alive and to not make it mechanical,” she muses. “And, so when I read other writers and I feel a little connection to their work, I find it both inspiring and reassuring that other writers have worked so hard and created such amazing works in their life time; to a degree I don’t think I can attain, frankly. “ “I feel when I read, when I discover, when I rediscover an author I really love, I feel I’m reminded again of the power of art, of literature, and why it’s important and why it’s important for people to write books and for people to read books. How it’s the only thing that keeps me sane, to be honest, as a human being is the presence of books. And, the fact that I’ve been able to read them and to be able to write them came much later. The reading was always the main thing.”

In between writing stories and novels, Lahiri is occasionally persuaded to write the introduction to new editions of books by well-known writers. She wrote an eloquent introduction to Penguin’s paperback edition of R K Narayan’s Malgudi

‘I find it both inspiring and reassuring that other writers have worked so hard and created such amazing works in their life time; to a degree I don't think I can attain, frankly’

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Days three years ago. She has also written an introduction to the re-issued version of The Magic Barrel: Stories by Bernard Malamud.

She was in Paris recently to meet with one of her favorite writers, Mavis Gallant (The End of the World and Other Stories). Her interview will run in the literary magazine Granta soon. “Right now, I’m in the process of typing and editing that interview with the editor there (London),” she says. “Then, I will write an introduction to a new volume of her (Gallant’s) stories that the New York Review Of Books What does she admire most in Gallant’s stories?

“It’s hard for me to summarize,” she admits. “I’ve been reading her work for over a decade. She has taught me an enormous deal about how a short story can be written: The capacity, the sheer elasticity of the form. She is a virtuoso. I think she really is extraordinarily gifted as a story teller. The concentration of her writing, the clarity of it, and the density of it, but at the same time the translucence — I think this is very, very hard to achieve.”

“She will be 87 years old this year. This is a long life, an enormous legacy in terms of her work, and, I was so honored, so thrilled, to be able to spend some time with her and to talk to her. You know, she’s one of a kind; you don’t see a writer like that any more.”

Why is that?

“Probably, because of her decision to live her life and move to Europe, her dedication to her work and also the intelligence of her writing,” she continues. “I think, it speaks to a just a general higher level of intelligence amongst human beings, in general.”

She sighs. “I don’t know: People want things to be simpler and easier these days. It’s very depressing,” she adds.

“She wrote stories that you really had to be smart, and you had to be on your toes, and you had to be paying attention; and if you are, you are in for an amazing ride. But if you want things to be easy and simple, you will find yourself frustrated. Her books demand solitude and concentration.”

What does she take from her favorite writers?

“I can’t say,” she says. There is a pause, then: “Consciously, no; unconsciously maybe. Even with Hardy: I don’t know if anything of his writing has seeped into my own; I doubt it. Just reading him – it’s hard to explain. You know, the reading life and the writing life: There is no obvious correlation; but one doesn’t happen without the other.”

Jhumpa Lahiri has often said she writes for herself; the reader, the publisher and possibly a filmmaker never enter her solitary process of writing. ‘I’ve always never loved anything more than sitting quietly in a room by myself,’ she told The Washington Post, ‘imagining things.’

Say a few years from now, if Octavio or Noor come to her and ask, “Will you write a book for us?”

“I would think about it,” she says, chuckling. “If I wasn’t inspired to do it, I wouldn’t do it. I give them as much as I can as a mother, but my writing life is my own and I determine what I do. That’s how I would like to keep it.”

“I already think about how it would be to write a book for children of a certain age at some point; but it’s very deep on the back burner. If it never happens, it won’t matter to me; let’s put it that way.”

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Maestro!

Conductor extraordinaire Zubin Mehta, winner of the India Abroad Award for Lifetime Achievement 2008, discusses his life and times with Prem Panicker An interview with Zubin Mehta is a crash course in functioning across international time zones.

The ace conductor is in the United States when we first touch base; he provides a number in Tel Aviv where, he says, he will be a day later. “Call me around 10.30 at night my time,” he says, adding after a beat, “I know that is around 3 in the morning in Mumbai where you are, but unfortunately I am working with the Israel Philharmonic and won’t be free to talk before that time.”

You call. He is not there. You call again. Finally, the game of phone tag ends with a catch – and the first thing he tells you is, “I’ve been sitting here watching on Sky, a bunch of West Indian cricketers uprooting stumps and running around like crazy!”

We segue into a cricket conversation prompted by the crushing defeat the West Indies cricket team has inflicted on the visiting English team.

From there to a dissertation on how well the Indian team, which he follows with a passion, is just a short step; it is some considerable time

D

From the Editors

Where do you begin to tell the story of a genius that transcends his art?

At age four, when he crouched in a corner of the room while his father Mehli Mehta, arguably the founder of the Western classical music tradition in India, conducted practice sessions of the Bombay

Symphony he had founded?

At age 11, when he decided that he wanted to be a conductor? Or at 16, when he picked up the baton and conducted his father and the Bombay Symphony in a flawless rehearsal that stunned the seasoned musicians of that ensemble with its early intimation of incandescent talent?

At 18, when legendary teacher Hans Swarowsky recognized in the young protégé a ‘demoniac conductor’

before he interrupts himself and calls the telephonic meet to order: “My god, it must be four o’clock in the morning for you, how are you staying awake? Come on, let’s not waste time, let’s do the interview,” he says – and typically, he does not wait for the prompt of a question but, with the practiced ease of a man who has been in the media spotlight for over five decades, he starts the conversation precisely where you would want him to: the subject of his early, seminal influences:

I

do not remember the very first time I heard music – it was that early in my life. In other words, it is not like there is a conscious moment in my life when I was eight or nine, say, and I happened to hear Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony and some electric bulb lit up in my brain to illuminate the word ‘conductor’.

19 In my home there was music

who ‘had it all’?

Just where, and when, does genius begin to manifest?

If the career of Zubin Mehta is exemplar, genius does not manifest per any known biological clock – it exists, in and of itself; the ‘milestones’ that lesser careers are measured by are, in the case of true genius, merely those points on the calendar when the eyes of the world are opened to tran20 scendent talent.

COURTESY WWW.ZUBINMEHTA.NET

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India Abroad March 27, 2009

19 COLLECTOR’S ISSUE At a concert in his native Mumbai

FARROKH CHOTHIA

Maestro!

everywhere, long before I was old enough to

17 make conscious choices and to say whether I

wanted it or not. I call it my second language, when I was growing up — I spoke Gujarati and I spoke music, and both came naturally. Like you as a child learn the language that is spoken around you, I learnt music, because that was the language spoken in my home as much as Gujarati was spoken.

My father Mehli Mehta, who founded the Bombay Symphony, practiced all the time; he had this string quartet that came to my house to practice, and I would go to his rehearsals whenever I could, whenever I was not in class.

Then he left for America for four years, when I was nine.

He had left a huge collection of records behind, and I was hungry to hear as much as I could – so I heard music every single day, every moment I could spare from my studies.

When he came back, I began helping him with his orchestra — by then I was 14, and by the time I was 15 I conducted his orchestra for the first time.

I believe this was when Yehudi Menuhin visited Bombay and played with the Bombay Symphony.

That’s correct, though I must point out that I didn’t conduct Menuhin. The Bombay Symphony was rehearsing for the Menuhin concert, and my father played the solo part that Menuhin would eventually play in concert, so as to get the orchestra acclimatized to the part. Since it was not possible for him to both play and conduct, he asked me to conduct, and I did.

Your father was originally, and largely, a performer – a

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hugely accomplished musician who played many instruments and particularly the violin with considerable virtuosity. You are known to play a wide variety of instruments yourself – but I hear that you always wanted to conduct, not be a performer. What prompted such an emphatic – and for those times when Western music was in its infancy in India, unusual – choice?

I grew up in an atmosphere where individual musicians played individual instruments, but they all combined into the larger instrument that we called the orchestra.

Fantastic as it may sound to you, I wanted to play that larger instrument – the orchestra. I grew up with orchestral music; I would sit with my father at home, with an orchestral score; and he would point out to me the various aspects – how to read the score, which instrument is joining in when, and which instrument is leaving; all the technical nuances of a score, that is what formed our conversations at home.

It was thanks to him that I became aware of the beauty and of the immense possibility of hundreds of musicians playing together. When I went to Vienna to study at the Akademie für Musik, I did study across disciplines: theory and composition, and the piano and the bass, but I always had in mind that the end of my tunnel would be the conductor’s podium.

The first step towards that goal was when you studied conducting under the legendary Hans Swarowsky.

Yes. For two years I studied the basics, and then I entered Swarowsky’s class and studied learning conducting under him – in the deepest sense of the word, he was a second father to me. He was a very strict classicist, and that is something I picked up from him – both the discipline, and the classicism. With my orchestra, I am very demanding.

A layman would say, what’s the deal with the chap who stands on a podium waving a stick around? Why is he even

there? The music was written centuries ago, by a maestro. Each member of the orchestra has the score in front of him, has his part in front of him and knows when to come in, what to play, when to stop playing. So why does an orchestra need a conductor, what does he bring to the table?

Why is he so relevant to the process that most times, the major orchestras are known by their conductors and not even by their soloists?

One hundred people cannot decide how the music should sound, should be interpreted – there has to be one person who decides. The score is just a composition – and remember, a lot of the classical scores were written at a time when some of the instruments we know today didn’t even exist.

So who decides what instrument plays when? That is not part of the written score. Someone has to decide the pace, the interpretation.

For instance, there are 16 people playing what we call the first violin section. If you let them play on the basis of what is written down they will come to 16 different conclusions.

There must be a man standing in front who decides how they are going to play that, how they will interpret that section of the music and at what pace they will play it. Then there is the second violin section, then the violas, and so on, the woodwind section…

The man standing in front waving a stick, as you called it, is the one who decides what the composer has intended – and I spent seven years in Vienna learning, educating myself, to be in a position to make such decisions with authority. The musicians have to trust the conductor to make the right interpretation, they have to trust him and follow him implicitly, and it is his power of persuasion and his knowledge of the music that is very important.

Knowledge is the most important factor in a conductor’s make up. We conduct music that starts say in the beginning of the 1600s. This music changes, the style in Europe changes once every fifty years, just to round it off. The conductor must be at home in every one of these styles of music. And he must be able to communicate that mastery to the orchestra, get every single member of the orchestra to trust him and to follow his lead – otherwise, you would get cacophony, musical anarchy.

To rewind a little bit to your beginnings – Western music in India was and has largely remained a preoccupation of the Parsi community. What is it about your community that explains this leaning towards the art and culture of the West?

Oh that is very simple – it is because Parsis don’t have any culture of their own. That could be a very infuriating statement, but it happens to be true. When we came from Iran we brought Iranian painting, Iranian poetry and other elements of Iranian culture, but then we lost it because we didn’t value it. We did not continue practicing it. There are no examples of the Zoroastrian people who lived in Bharuch and Porbunder and other seaside villages where we first settled carrying their Iranian culture with them to Bombay; we have nothing left over from those times by way of cultural heritage. So we adopted European culture as it was fed to us.

You will find Parsis doing Indian dance and playing Indian music too, but not to the extent that we took to Western culture, particularly music. We became city folk, business people, in Bombay. The British brought us over from those fishing villages and small towns, like Navsari where my family came from and 21 from where the Jeejeebhoys, the Tatas, the

India Abroad March 27, 2009

20 COLLECTOR’S ISSUE

Fact file Born in Bombay, now Mumbai, April 29, 1936 to Mehli Mehta, founding conductor of the Bombay Symphony Orchestra, and Tehmina Mehta.

Though his father originally intended his son to study medicine, he travels to Vienna at age 18, and studies conducting under legendary instructor Hans Swarowsky.

Debuts as a conductor in Vienna in 1958; that year, also wins won the International Conducting Competition in Liverpool, and is appointed assistant conductor of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra.

Named Music Director of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra in 1960, and holds the post till 1967.

In 1961, is named assistant conductor, and shortly after, Music Director, of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, a post he holds till 1978. At this point, he becomes not only the youngest conductor of an American orchestra, but also the youngest to conduct two different orchestras in North America at the same time.

In 1978, appointed Music Director of the New York Philharmonic, a post he holds until 1991 – a 13-year tenure that is the longest for any conductor with the fabled orchestra. The Israel Philharmonic names him its Music Advisor in 1969 and Music Director in 1977; he has since conducted over 2,000 performances with that orchestra alone. In 1981, named Music Director for Life at the Israel Philharmonic.

Since 1985, has been chief conductor at the Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino in Florence. From 1998 to 2006, Music Director of the Bavarian State Opera in Munich. Has conducted the famed Vienna New Year’s Concert four times, the latest being 2007.

In 1990, he conducts the Orchestra del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino and the Orchestra del Teatro dell’Opera di Roma in the first-ever Three Tenors concert in Rome, bringing together Spanish vocalists Placido Domingo and Jose Carreras, and Italian tenor Luciano Pavarotti. He brings back the three tenors in 1994 at a performance at the Dodgers Stadium in Los Angeles.

In June 1994, conducts the Sarajevo Symphony Orchestra in a performance of Mozart’s Requiem at the ruins of the Sarajevo National Library to raise funds for the victims of the Yugoslav conflict.

In August 1999, conducts a joint performance of the Bavarian State Orchestra and the Israeli Philharmonic Orchestra near the infamous Buchenwald concentration camp, to help heal the wounds of the Holocaust.

Brings the New York Philharmonic Orchestra to India in 1984 and ten years later, tours India with soloist Itzhak Perlman backed by the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra. In December 2005, he marks the first anniversary of the tsunami that devastated large swathes of South Asia with a fund-raising concert in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, with the Bavarian State Orchestra.

In 1997, he collaborates with Chinese film director Zhang Yimou on a production of Puccini’s opera Turandot, staged first in Florence, Italy, and then in Beijing, China where it is performed eight times in the Forbidden City.

Among his many awards: The Lifetime Achievement Peace and Tolerance Award from the United Nations in 1999; the Padma Vibhushan, India’s second highest civilian award, in 2001; and the Kennedy Center Honors in 2006. He has been named honorary citizen of Florence and Tel Aviv. He has been named honorary member of the Vienna State Opera in 1997; Honorary Conductor of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra (2001); the same title with the Munich Philharmonic (2004); the Los Angeles Philharmonic (2006) and the Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino (2006). Honorary Conductor of the Bavarian State Orchestra and Honorary Member of the Bavarian State Opera in November 2007.

Has a Muppet – Zubin Beckmesser – named after him. Legendary American musician Frank Zappa inserted a reference to him in the lyrics of his hit song Billy the Mountain.

Brought to you by:

HERWIG PRAMMER/REUTERS

D From the Editors

Zubin Mehta’s career is

17 too storied, its many mag-

ical milestones too well known, to merit extended iteration. And milestones alone do not capture the magic.

There are conductors who have knowledge and skill – and then there are those rare conductors touched with what conductor Charles Munch once called ‘a magic emanation’.

Mehta emanates that rare magic. ‘Mehta is a torch; he lights the way,’ Israeli violinist Ivry Gitlis once said of him.

His list of achievements across a fivedecade career would suffice, in and of itself, to inscribe Mehta’s name in the list of all time greats. But there is more – much more – to Zubin Mehta.

There is the humanitarian who has conducted to raise money for the victims of Yugoslavia’s terribly fratricidal wars; conducted the Israeli and Bavarian orchestras simultaneously to honor the dead of Buchenwald; raised money for the victims of the tsunami that devastated South Asia…

‘If, through music, I can ease the pain and alleviate the suffering, what greater purpose could there be?’ he said.

There is the human being of enveloping warmth who, despite being the darling of

the celebrity circuit stays in constant, affectionate touch with the friends of his youth, running up the kind of telephone bills that could feed an orchestra.

There is the visionary who devotes time and energies to the task of taking the musical legacy forward through a foundation he has created in honor of his late father Mehli Mehta.

There is the consummate performer who dresses up the mechanics of his craft in the theatrical flair of the born performer, his hands twin chisels that sculpt the greatest of compositions in thin air.

And there is, finally, the peripatetic gypsy who shrugs off age and continues to travel the world making music – because for every great performance he has given through 50 glittering years, there are a dozen more within him still to give.

Cellist Jacqueline Du Pre once said that Zubin Mehta ‘provides a magic carpet for you to float on.’ Through the course of his career, we have been mesmerized passengers on that magic carpet, as Mehta takes us on a wonderful, vibrant, enchanting ride through the world of Western classical music.

For all that Zubin Mehta was, is, and continues to be, India Abroad honors him with the Lifetime Achievement Award 2008.

India Abroad March 27, 2009

21 COLLECTOR’S ISSUE

Nowrojis all came from – they all drifted or

19 were transplanted to Bombay which did not

have an intrinsic culture of its own, and we therefore began looking to the West.

To come back to your early days, shortly after you finished your studies and won the Liverpool International Conducting Competition in 1958, you found yourself heading up two major orchestras – the Montreal Symphony, which you began heading in 1961, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, for which you became music director in 1962. I’ve read that working with one orchestra is an extremely demanding job; here you were working with two, in different parts of North America. What was that experience like?

Actually, by the time I took over the Montreal Symphony in 1961, I had already conducted the Vienna, Berlin and Israel Philharmonic Orchestras. What was that like?

Intense! I guess at some level I didn’t even know what I was getting into before I actually got into it. Suddenly I found myself with two orchestras to manage – and there is more to it than just getting into a tux and waving the baton around.

You have to study, intensely. You study compositions and come up with programs; even there, you decide on pacing and interpretation for the particular performance; you then convey all that to your orchestra, which means working with different sections, then bringing them all together; you rehearse with them… it is a relentless routine, and I was doing that with two different groups, spending three weeks in Montreal and then three weeks in LA and going

Maestro!

quality about Zubin is that he always remains very close to his roots and to his friends. No matter how famous he became over the years, he remained in touch with the friends of his youth. There is a photograph of the two of us outside his home – 21, Cuffe Parade – taken around 1941, when we were children. Whenever Zubin comes to Bombay, we would go to the exact same spot and get our photograph taken again.

Everyone knows everything there is to know about Zubin the extraordinarily gifted conductor. I have his printed itinerary with me – and based on that I can tell you that every day of his life till the end of 2012 has already been filled, with concerts and rehearsals and travel and so on. I keep telling him, Zubin, we are Yusuf Hamied getting old, why don’t you ease up a bit and he says no, as long as I am able to, I want to continue making RAJESH KARKERA music.

Rather than talk of his musical gifts, I’ll tell you of his love for cricket. If there is an important cricket match on, wherever he is in the world he rings me up, wanting to know what the score is. One day, I got a phone call from Zubin while an Australia-England Ashes Test at Lord’s was on. He wanted to know the score. I told him Australia has England on the rack at 11 for three. He banged the phone down.

When I met him a month or so later, I told him Zubin, you banged the phone down on me that day, what happened? He began to laugh. He said, I rang you up from Tasmania. I was giving a concert there, and the guests included the entire Australian cabinet, including [then] Prime Minister Bob Hawke. After the concert, there was a reception, and that is when I rang you up. Hawke gave a speech and I had to respond. So I responded by saying, gentlemen, there is something I know that none of you do – Australia has England on the rack at 11/3.

Zubin has a vast collection of cricket memorabilia, including a bat signed by the legendary Sir Don Bradman, and a letter Bradman wrote to him, that he carries around in his wallet all the time.

Dr Yusuf K Hamied, Chairman and Managing Director, Cipla

A

back and forth.

But the most important thing was, I was doing it all for the first time in my life; the programs we were performing, they were for the first time. In Vienna I had studied a lot of music, but I had no practice of conducting such large orchestras across a variety of styles and programs – so when I suddenly found myself conducting two major orchestras, I was I could say unprepared, or at least under-prepared, and I had to learn on the job.

Could you talk us through this process of understanding and interpreting a score?

That process begins with the score. Take, for example, a Beethoven Symphony. Beethoven has written down on paper a certain amount of notes, but very few instructions.

So you have to know his handwriting, you have to know his style, his period; you have to know what he has gone through personally. You have to know some of his other works to correlate them, etc.

It takes a lot of knowledge – of music, of the orchestral experience, of the instruments – before you read that score and come to certain conclusions, because it is not enough for you to conclude something and to say, this is what Beethoven intended, this is how we are going to play it. You have to be able to convince your orchestra of the correctness of your interpretation.

We are telling them what we think the composer really had in mind, we are telling them of our interpretation of the composer’s intentions, and if we can do that, they play with complete trust, they play with their hearts. If on the other hand you fail to convince them of the correctness of your interpretation, then their hearts are not in it, and that will become apparent when they play.

The inter-relationship between conductor and orchestra, that seems so effortless on stage, is actually the result of enormous hard work. When you see a conductor and his orchestra perform, you have to know that for just that performance, the conductor has met with his orchestra a minimum of four times, for two and a half hours at a time at least. With those four rehearsals he has to imbibe in them the rightness of his interpretation, and put together the evening’s program. It takes a lot of knowledge, know-how, courage and two-way trust – the orchestra has to trust you, and you in turn have to have implicit trust in your orchestra.

Plus, you have to remember always that you are dealing with human beings, not instruments. You have to know what to say and what not to say, how much to talk and when to stop talking. Some conductors talk so much they talk themselves out of a job – the musicians get bored, they stop listening, and that lack of attention reflects in the performance of the orchestra. That is why though the music we play is the same, some orchestras and their conductors do brilliantly, and others produce mediocre performances.

It is not enough for the conductor to know his music – he has to be a bit of a psychologist as well; we have to know our musicians, what makes them tick, how to make them catch fire.

As a young man conducting in Los Angeles and Montreal, I had the very good fortune of having excellent musicians of an older generation who had played the same works with other conductors. I learnt a lot from them; they were very generous – it would have been easy for them to dismiss me as a raw young man, and to think 22 they knew more than I did. But instead, they

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India Abroad March 27, 2009

22 COLLECTOR’S ISSUE

Maestro!

taught me what they knew, and I encouraged

21 that process, I told them my door is open, if

you have any advice for me, please walk in any time. And occasionally, they would come and give me advice based on their own knowledge and experience, and it was invaluable.

What are your earliest memories of America, where you have such a distinguished career record?

When I first came to the United States, to find an Indian was a rarity. Things have changed so much in these 50 years, and I am so proud.

Funny, when you asked me this question, the first thing I thought of was, there was just one good Indian restaurant in New York – it was called Kashmir. It was owned by Bangladeshis, though, of course, there was no Bangladesh then, it was East Pakistan. And then, you remember India sent its army into East Pakistan in 1971, the restaurant I had been coming religiously to for ten years refused to serve me! I was so insulted.

Every interview I gave in those days, I would talk about that restaurant, because there was no other Indian place to go to. It was not even a very clean, let alone stylish, place – but I would take everybody there, all the great musicians, actors, the great personalities I was friends with, I’ve taken them all to Kashmir – and then they refused to serve me!

Now, of course, you have dozens of Indian restaurants not just in New York, but all over America – and that is just one trivial example of how our community has grown and put down roots here.

To return to your early days as conductor in the US… My first glimpse of America was when I was invited to Tanglewood – it is one of the most prestigious points on the summer calendar and in 1958, I came here to conduct. Not the Boston Symphony – they don’t let students conduct the main orchestra; that year, I conducted the student orchestra as a student conductor, and that was my first glimpse of America. And what I remember most was how beautiful New England was, and what a pleasure it was to be there.

There I met a wonderful American composer, Lukas Foss, who thought I had talent, and he introduced me to my agent, Siegfried Hearst. Hearst took care of me till he passed away in 1963. He made my first contracts with the Montreal Symphony and the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

He was very experienced, and I profited from his advice.

As you probably know, I first conducted the Montreal Symphony as a substitute and after that one concert, they took a huge risk and offered me, a young man with very little to show on his resume, the job of full-time conductor. I was 24 then, and it felt to me very much like a fairytale.

And I got the job with the LA Philharmonic in similar circumstances – I substituted for two sick conductors, I had two weeks of concerts, and they offered me first the assistant conductorship and soon after that the full time conductorship.

I don’t want to bore your readers and myself with a list of all the orchestras I have conducted since then, but it occurs to me that this year, I have been 40 years with the Israel Philharmonic alone.

That is an enormous historical span. From that vantage point, how has the landscape of Western classical music

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Nusli Wadia

RAJESH KARKERA

ubin is one of the warmest human beings you can find on this earth. He is also the most sincere of friends, and one of the most affectionate people you could possibly come across. I’ve known him since 1968, when he came to Bombay with the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

You can’t find a better friend than Zubin when you are in trouble. I remember when I was caught up in some court cases and the government was trying to deport me from this country, and Zubin flew down all the way from Australia just to see me and be in court when my case was on, to give me moral support. I can’t think of anyone else on earth who would have done that; I don’t know that I’d have done it, but he did.

Zubin not only has a tremendous passion and love for Bombay, where he grew up, he is very proud of his heritage, his city, his country, but more important than that, he is really India’s greatest ambassador – and that stems from the passion he has for this country. That is one of his greatest qualities.

Nusli Wadia, Chairman, Bombay Dyeing

Z

changed?

The electronic media has certainly made a huge difference to the landscape, although the recording industry is

itself in a slump where Western classical music is concerned. I remember when I was doing ten records a year – now I am not doing anything close to that number, and none of my colleagues are either. I think in retrospect we all over-recorded and saturated the market.

But then, new techniques are coming up. We have high definition television now, so we are recording operas for that medium. And it is such a pleasure to see it on the giant screen, to hear the music through today’s sophisticated systems. So we are now doing much more of that.

But overall, I must say appreciation in America has gone down. In New York and Los Angeles you won’t feel that – a New York Philharmonic concert is almost 95 per cent sold out. But if you go to the middle of the country, you feel it; concerts can be half empty, and that was never the case before.

Is there any reason you would pinpoint for this diminishing interest?

Well, there is no music being taught in schools in America, for one thing – or at least, hardly any. A music school like Julliard costs a lot of money to run, and a majority is not able to afford sending their children there.

How about the Indian-American community – has exposure to Western classical music in this country triggered their engagement?

Oh, Indians have been delving into Western music in America, most certainly. To give you just one example, one of the star violinists of the LA Philharmonic is a boy called Robert Gupta from New York. I have been nurturing him since he was about ten years old. Wonderful boy – he has already graduated from the Yale Medical School, he is a little genius on the violin, and you are going to hear a lot more about him.

To return to the question of declining interest, is one reason the fact – or at least, the impression I as a lay follower get – that all the great composers belonged to a long gone age? Is there a stasis in the field of composition?

No, that is not true — there is a lot of very good composition going on. But the thing is that in this field, one has to let age take care of things – like good wine, the real goodness of good music only becomes apparent with age. In Mozart’s time for instance, he was not recognized for the genius he is known to be today, and no one thought his music could last for centuries and still be so hugely popular.

There is a lot of composition going on – I don’t know if they can be compared with Mozart and Bach, but there are talented composers in America and Europe. They write very contemporary music, which not everyone who is steeped in the classics would like – but what is contemporary today is what becomes classic in time.

Has the Internet, with all its tools, created a new audience for Western classical, allowed more people to access what earlier was a somewhat elitist art?

Well, more people are able to access it, for sure. But who is taking advantage of that, and whether this new class of listener is then converted into followers of Western classical, and whether this will in turn spark interest in a whole new group of people – those are questions we can answer only after a decade or so.

What are your personal favorites among the composers, and their compositions?

Ah yes, every interviewer asks me that – 24 and I never know how to answer that. As I

India Abroad March 27, 2009

24 COLLECTOR’S ISSUE

T

Mehroo Jeejeebhoy

he Mehli Mehta Music Foundation was set up in Bombay as a tribute to Mehli Mehta, who is Zubin’s father. Zubin wanted to have something in his father’s memory, because his father spent 20 years of his life to the promotion of Western classical music in this city. We got these premises in 2002, and we owe a huge debt to Zubin, without whom this would not have happened.

The funding has come mainly from the various concerts Zubin has given in this city. In fact, I would say the whole country owes a great debt to Zubin because if it hadn’t been for him, some of the great orchestras of the world would not have come to India to perform, and audiences here would never have had this level of exposure to such wonderful orchestras.

Zubin is one of the great conductors of the century. He is a remarkable musician with great charisma; I have rarely seen a conductor with such great rapport with his orchestras. He is also an extraordinary human being, who has always been touched by and responded to disasters, whether it be war, or the tsunami, by conducting concerts for the benefit of the victims.

Mehroo Jeejeebhoy, Trustee, Mehli Mehta Foundation

RAJESH KARKERA

was telling you earlier, our field encompasses

22 over four hundred years of very good music.

As a conductor, I cannot afford to have favorites.

There are certain composers I cannot live without, definitely – one of them is Mozart; Wagner also; Brahms; Verdi; Richard Strauss, Mahler and, of course, the new Viennese school of Arnold Schoenberg, which I am very close to – it’s called the Second Viennese School. He was a great revolutionary of the early 20th century.

From my little understanding of your work, you seem to find Wagner particularly compelling, and his work is integral to your repertoire across orchestras. Why is that?

All through our history there have been individuals who have changed the course of music. Bach changed the course of music early in the 18th century. Then came Beethoven and after him, Wagner – it kind of happens every fifty years or so. A genius comes along who can change the direction of music, and Wagner was undoubtedly one of those – he brought romanticism to its fullest heights. And then, Schoenberg did the same.

Each of them took what the earlier geniuses had done, and took it in a different direction. Schoenberg’s early compositions for instance sound like Wagner-lite. And then he broke the tonal system and found a whole new vista composers are still practicing today.

You know, the Indian ragas didn’t do that. You have the age old ragas, and no one came along to take them in different directions. In Indian classical, the musicians who

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Maestro! interpret them are the greats, the soul and spirit of the music resides in them. The raga remains intact.

You mentioned earlier that you always wanted to play the orchestra like an instrument. So how different is it working with just instruments, and with human voices? You’ve conducted the Three Tenors, for instance. Are there different challenges involved?

Well, orchestral instruments imitate voice. A trombone or a cellist playing a lovely solo is really a baritone, singing.

Are you so totally immersed in Western classical that you have no time or even inclination for other forms of music, or do you listen to more contemporary forms and seek inspiration from them?

I used to listen to jazz but you know, my life is so peripatetic, I am so constantly in motion that I don’t really get a chance to listen to much music outside of the work I do.

But, of course, pop music you are forced to hear whether you like it or not – the minute you step into an elevator you are inundated with that stuff.

A R Rahman is the flavor of the period now, and everyone across genres hails his talent. Have you heard his music?

I’ve seen the film, Slumdog Millionaire, and I thought he wrote a wonderful score. But I’ll confess that is the only

thing by him that I’ve heard, so it won’t be fair for me to comment on his talent.

I was interested to see Anil Kapoor at the Oscars. I used to know Raj Kapoor very well, and when I used to visit him there were always little children around, and at first I thought Anil Kapoor was one of them. I only realized my mistake later.

In recent times there has been much experimentation even in your field. For instance, the heavy metal band Metallica has played with the San Francisco Orchestra.

There was Pavarotti fronting a U2 concert. Are these gimmicks with no long lasting resonance, or are they serious attempts at amalgamation of different musical forms?

Oh, these are more than gimmicks. I’ve done that kind of thing. When I was in LA I did a concert with Frank Zappa. And I’ve done many concerts with fine jazz musicians who would write for jazz and orchestra. So yes, even we classicists once in a while stray, if you want to use that word. Those are experiments and like any experiment, it is up to you to learn what you can.

I do it, personally, because I am a curious musician; it’s my curiosity that prompts me to do that.

That same curiosity brought you together with Pandit Ravi Shankar on the Ragamala project…

Absolutely, yes, Ravi Shankar has been my hero since my youth, and the fact that I could make music with him was a dream that came true. He wrote a concerto for the NY Philharmonic and it was wonderful, absolutely magical to see that glow in his head, and to see the orchestra take fire from his work. I really love that man a lot.

You are held up as an inspiration for future generations of conductors. Who were your own inspirations?

Well, obviously the great pillars of orchestral interpretation were [Arturo] Toscanini and [Wilhelm] Furtwangler and they are obviously among my biggest inspirations.

Is there something inherently masculine about being a conductor? I am no expert, but I can’t think up the name of any great women who have distinguished themselves in that field.

Well, they are coming up. This generation of young women is taking to the field and some of the young ones are quite talented. Like I said when we spoke of new music, it takes time to tell how lasting their work will be, but it is not like women cannot do it; there is no real hypothesis to make about that.

To move off the subject of music for a bit, the November 26 terrorist attacks in Mumbai basically targeted the area you were born and brought up in, an area intimately familiar to you…

I was glued to the television while it was happening, whenever I could get away from work. I talked to my friends in Bombay continuously. I even talked to Ratan Tata on the second day of the attacks. I knew the manager of the Taj, Karambir Kang, who lost his wife and two sons.

We were there just a month before the attacks, don’t forget, with the Israel Philharmonic.

I cannot sit in some remote part of the world and analyze all that went on then, I have no right to do that, but I know the Indians I spoke to, in Bombay, were very critical about the security lapses. I believe the commandos took some 36 hours or so to get there. I must say, once they did take charge they were very good. They brought the situation under control, but I can’t help 26 thinking if they had been brought to the

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ground earlier, so much of damage and

24 destruction and death could have been avoid-

ed.

I’ve done concerts for various charities before, and hundred per cent I want to do one, I will do one for the victims of Bombay; we will even create and play a special piece for them, that is definitely on my plans.

Over 50 years you have done pretty much everything a conductor could dream of, and then some. At this point in your life, do you still have goals, a vision for your future?

Oh I still have goals and dreams; to stop having goals to work towards is to die. I want to do as much as I can possibly to bring Israelis and Palestinians together. I can’t do it politically, but I want to try and do it through music and through other means.

This February with the help of an Israeli bank I have started a project to educate Arabs in the north of Israel.

There is a lot of talent there, and we plan to teach those kids free of charge. I have a school at Tel Aviv Music

With the children of the Mehli Mehta Foundation Brought to you by:

Maestro!

University where we train young Israelis and also people from outside Israel to play in an orchestra. My dream is really to have an Arab playing in the Israel Philharmonic.

In Bombay I want to build a school of Western music in my father’s name. The Mehli Mehta Foundation exists already, that is why I had come down in October, just a month before the November attacks, for a concert to raise money. You can’t build an entire music school from the proceeds of one concert, though. We want to now talk to people for private donations, so the school can be built.

We have so much talent in India seeking avenues. Look at what the Chinese are doing – in every American orchestra you will find Chinese performers. And you must remember that to get a place in an orchestra, you have to win through

against fierce competition. They have beaten 30 to 50 people for that one place in an orchestra. It is not easy getting into a good orchestra.

When a musician retires, a competition is announced. People write in, send in their tapes, we chose about 30 on the basis of that, then the committee listens to them live and picks six to eight finalists, and then people like me, the music directors, listen to them and pick the people we want. That boy Robert Gupta I told you about, he won a competition – he would win a competition anywhere, he is so good.

So that is my point – there is an enormous amount of talent in India waiting to be tapped, and I’d like to do whatever I can to help that process. I am not saying this for effect – I believe that properly nurtured, Indian talent will emerge in sufficient numbers to totally replenish the orchestral world, as the Chinese are doing today.

FARROKH CHOTHIA

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Spelling s-u-c-c-e-s-s It’s all about staying calm and collected, national Spelling Bee champ Sameer Mishra tells Arthur J Pais or half a dozen months before the 81st Scripps National Bee competition last year, Sameer Mishra spent over six hours a day studying thousands of words, their roots, pronunciation —- and, of course, the spelling.

You may call Sameer, the 2008 national Spelling Bee champ, a number of things, but never call him a nerd. He says he has a life of his own, and he enjoys the outdoors, video games and the movies. He has begun reading the Harry Potter novels and is getting ready to see the newest blockbuster in the series that opens in a few months.

“A sense of humor is very important to me,” he says with a chuckle. “You should be able to laugh at yourself, the mistakes you make, and you should be able to laugh at the world around you.”

But he does take a lot of things seriously. “People ask me about the time I spent mastering words and how it would help me in my career,” Sameer, the younger child of a Lafayette, Indiana, couple, muses. “I learned the Latin and Greek roots of hundreds of words. I plan to be a neurosurgeon. I am sure I will have a far easier time learning complex medical terms because I am familiar with the roots of many medical terms.”

Nearly nine months after winning the Scripps National Bee on his fourth attempt, beating 288 children in the 8 to 15 age group, receiving $40,000 in prizes, giving scores of interviews and meeting with President George W Bush in the Oval Office, Sameer is still connected to the world of the Bee. He recently served as a word judge at a regional competition in his home state; there were other invitations to judge con29 tests. One of the most important lessons he learned was to

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From the Editors

If there is one reason more than any other for the IndianAmerican community earning the tag of ‘model minority’, it has to be the phenomenal success of its young.

In any given year, the pages of India Abroad are filled with the stories of that success, as the children of the community win laurels across a wide variety of fields and in so doing, raise the bar for academic excellence to undreamt of heights.

Take 2008, as the latest exemplar: Sameer Mishra took first prize in the Scripps National Spelling Bee; Akshay Rajagopal won the National Geographic Bee on his very first attempt; and Shivani Sud placed first in the prestigious Intel Science Talent Search competition.

At one level, the story of Akshay, Sameer and Shivani is the story of prodigiously gifted young children excelling in their chosen fields of activity.

At another level, their achievement — and the achievements, too numerous to enumerate here, of hundreds of other children from the community at various levels — tells the story of a community that, more than any other, sets a high premium on education as the key to success.

PARESH GANDHI

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Sameer with his mother Alka and sister Shruti

Fact file Proudest possession: Entire Harry Potter collection and state coins collection. The Harry Potter books are a fun read, he says, and each state coin is interesting because it represents the history of that state.

Next big competition: Nothing immediately, but down the years he has his sights set on major scholarships that would take him down the road to be a neurosurgeon.

The best way to progress during competitions: Remain cool, calm, and collected.

Favorite movie or TV show: Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Favorite food: Samosas and pizzas On unwittingly providing ‘comic relief ’ during the Bee: One round was at 2:30 pm and the spellers had not had lunch. When his word came, he asked for the definition.

It turned out to have something to do with fruits, and he responded, ‘That sounds good right now!’

The best lesson he has learned from sister Shruti: How to work hard and concentrate.

The best help he got from Shruti: She quizzed him for many hours a day in the three months preceding the Bee. She had a faster speed than her mother and had Sameer on his toes all the time. And she has an American accent!

His favorite short word: Echt.

What India means to him: “The bond between my relatives and I and the family values instilled in those relationships.”

Tryst with religion: “We go to temples once in every three months and pray for the well-being of our entire family and friends.”

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PARESH GANDHI

‘It was my last opportunity to be in the competition, and I told myself, what if I miss many nights of sleep, there would be plenty of time to catch up’

remain cool under adverse cirexplains Sameer, 27 cumstances, who is 14. And he takes this message with him when he serves as a judge or his schoolmates ask his advice.

“My parents have always told me to be cool, calm, and collected, because it’s hard to not stay nervous during competitions,” Sameer, whose parents are professors of science, adds.

“Often, a speller can get nervous when they hear a word in the round that they don’t know how to spell. What is important is the word that he or she gets, not what the other spellers get. So, be happy you didn’t get that word and just focus on the word that you will get. My parents gave me a speech similar to this, right before my first regional Bee. It helped because this happened in many of the Bees I participated in.”

Sameer’s father, Krishna Mishra, teaches microbiology at Ivy Tech Community College in Lafayette; his mother Alka is a professor of anatomy at the same institution.

Has he wondered why so many IndianAmerican children excel in the national Bees?

Six champions this past decade were of Indian origin. And look at who featured among the dozen top contestants last year: Sidharth Chand, 12, who stumbled on prosopopoeia, leading to Sameer’s victory with the word guerdon (meaning reward); Kavya Shivashankar, 12, who tied for fourth place, and Jahnavi Iyer, 14, who tied for eighth. Sriram Hathwar, 8, made history by becoming the youngest contestant. The judges included Dr Balu Natarajan, who won the Spelling Bee in 1985, the first Indian American to do so.

“I haven’t really thought about why Indian Americans seem to excel in competitions,” says Sameer, “but it is most probably because of family support. In my family, our whole family would talk about spelling at the dinner table. We would discuss plans about what needs to be studied, how much time I had left till my next Bee.” He recalls his debt to sister Shruti, now at Caltech.

“My sister had participated in the Scripps National Spelling Bee three times before I did. She offered me great encouragement and spent many hours getting me to pronounce and spell words,” he continues. “When she was contesting, I was there to root for her and so I developed a sense of what a Bee was going to be like. Her

advice on how to spell words and how to communicate with the judges really gave me an insight on spelling on stage.”

In the months leading to the competition, he spent many nights mastering words, with his sister and mother often keeping vigil. Recalling those nights, he offers a lesson to other contestants.

“It was my last opportunity to be in the competition, and I told myself, what if I miss many nights of sleep, there would be plenty of time to catch up,” he says with a chuckle.

What helped him most with concentration? “I think the walnuts and almonds my mother gave me day after day,” he adds.

Having lived with the massive Webster Dictionary for months, is he still spending many hours with it?

“I don’t spend that much time with my dictionary,” he admits. “However, I do look at the Spanish-English dictionary from time to time because I am learning Spanish at school.”

Words fascinate him. “I recently acquired a book that included all the words that Shakespeare made up,” he says. “I found that this book held many words we use today like reinforcement. This word was made up by Shakespeare and used in Troilus and Cressida. It was very interesting to read because it showed how these words originated. Time magazine also included a new lexicon which recently occurred in literature today. It is very interesting to think that this new vocabulary will be common in a few years.”

Reading biographies is another passion with Sameer.

“I recently read an autobiography of Bill Clinton and that really told me that anything is possible,” he enthuses.

“Coming from a childhood where his stepfather is estranged from him, he comes into the world of politics very interestingly. He takes his future in his hands and creates something. He becomes a Rhodes Scholar and goes to Yale Law. I saw how he took his future and molded it to his wishes. Another book was Gandhi’s autobiography because of the wishes he had for society. His insights on people and events were amazing and his wanting to change the world was absolutely astounding. After reading his book, I fully understood why so many people revere him.”

His favorite word, he says, is Bewusstseinslage. “It is from German and means a state of consciousness.”

Pneumoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis is another favorite word, because it is very long, he says, laughing. It means a lung disease contracted from very fine silicate and quartz dust. “I will remember very complicated medical names as I study medicine.”

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ome people may consider winning the national Intel Science Talent Search last year as Shivani Sud’s finest hour. But Shivani, 18, thinks what she has been doing post the Intel award – which she won for her project on colon cancer — is more important.

Along with her mother Anu Sud, who has a PhD in genetics and works for the Durham Public Schools, Shivani is getting younger people with limited resources improve their education and competing abilities.

She has helped start Scientifica at Durham Public Schools to help students (currently, 25 of them) find opportunities to explore the sciences and mathematics through resources that they would have difficulty locating independently.

“I remember the frustration that I faced initially when I wanted to pursue scientific research and could not find opportunities,” she says. “Unfortunately, local students have not participated in a lot of research activities or competitions, and I did not want for the region’s interest in science to fade after I left.

“My mother and I thought of Scientifica as a way of making sure that other students like me who are passionate and hardworking can have access to the resources necessary to pursue their curiosity,” says Shivani, whose Intel win also brought her a $100,000 scholarship. “I am proud that this program has been started, and that I can be involved as a mentor.”

Anu Sud remembers how she felt discouraged some months ago over the progress Scientifica has been making.

“Shivani reminded me about the obstacles both of us faced while preparing her for the Intel competition,” she says.

“Shivani told me ‘You were dealing with one kid. Now, think that you are dealing with more kids and naturally the challenges are more’.”

31 Encouragement is a sacred mantra in

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From the Editors

Important as these points are, there is a larger over-arching narrative to the individual stories of Akshay, Sameer, Shivani and their peers.

At a time when the United States ponders a failing education system and the consequent loss of its intellectual edge, these children and thousands of others like them set an example not just for the community, but for mainstream America. Through their success, they convey a key message: It is not about the system, it is not about the academic infrastructure, so much as it is about the individual.

Our children, through their efforts, are telling us that if you have the desire, the drive, the will to succeed, then you will succeed — system or no system.

For the successes they have earned, for the examples they provide not just for the community but for mainstream America, for the lessons they teach us and for the promise they hold out for the future, India Abroad is proud to honor Akshay Rajagopal, Sameer Mishra and Shivani Sud with the India Abroad Youth Achiever Award 2008.

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The all-rounder It is important, Intel Science Talent Search winner Shivani Sud tells Arthur J Pais, to explore multiple academic fields before deciding on life goals

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Fact file Biggest achievement: The Intel Science Talent Search for developing a ‘molecular signature’ that may help identify which colon cancer patients face the greatest risk of having their disease recur. The work developed out of a summer project she did at the lab of Dr Anil Potti, assis-

tant professor of oncology and a faculty member in Duke’s Institute for Genome Sciences and Policy.

Dr Potti’s assessment: It was a high risk project with a very high benefit project if it worked out. And it worked out. I believe if someone is interested in doing research, we should give them help. I gave her this project with colon cancer, and she started looking for a gene expression genotype. It was supposed to be just a summer project, but the summer ended

Shivani’s family; while her mother is involved in education, her father Ish, who has a PhD in engineering, runs a business.

Scientifica, says Shivani, is one of her greatest successes because she is able to apply her experience and knowledge to help others achieve their aspirations.

Shivani was speaking to India Abroad after writing three demanding examinations at Princeton University last week, and after participating in the Nacho dance competition. Last semester she took physics, molecular biology, math, economics and physics. This semester, she has comparative politics, developmental psychology, physics and economics plus a writing seminar.

“I am interested in many subjects, and I believe strongly in an inter-disciplinary approach to research so I think that a diverse education is essential,” she explains. “I have a strong interest in politics, especially how they impact the scientific and medical communities.”

The Suds have two daughters. Ishani, who also studied at Princeton, is a huge inspiration for her younger sister.

While she was at Princeton, Ishani worked with the Global Development Network to change the lives of schoolchildren in Kenya and Tanzania, pioneering ways of solving energy and water problems through using solar energy.

“Every time Shivani won a prize or a competition, she would ask me if her sister too had won it,” says her mother, chuckling.

You have been winning a lot of honors and awards following your success at the Intel competition.

I have been fortunate enough to receive honors from many organizations following the Intel award. The Junior Science and Humanities Symposium awarded me first place, I also placed first in the Medicine and Health category at the International Science and Engineering Fair and was named Siemen’s North Carolina Advanced Placement Award winner.

The North Carolina Biotechnology Institute was kind enough to award me the ‘promise for tomorrow’ award presented by (then) North Carolina Governor Jim Hunt. The awards given by the Junior Science and Humanities Symposium and the International Science and Engineering Fair were generous and kind honors of the effort that I put into my research project and academics.

I was especially humbled by the honor given by Governor Hunt and the Biotechnology Institute. Knowing that such a distinguished panel of scientists and community leaders believe that I represent hope for a brighter future in medicine is indeed humbling, but it is inspiring and hearttouching to know that people believe in me.

There are many moments when I hope that I never disappoint the people who have trusted me, believed in me,

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and she wanted to continue so she started coming to the lab three days a week after school.

On her bookshelf: “My mom always tells me that I do not read enough books.

But I read carefully many newspapers, magazines and science journals.”

Favorite prayer: The Gayatri Mantra.

Favorite food: Ice cream and cakes.

“But when I am at home, I must have my Nanima’s Mutter Paneer.”

Favorite movie or TV show: House.

‘I am interested in many subjects, and I believe strongly in an interdisciplinary approach to research so I think that a diverse education is essential’

and been so kind and gracious towards me.

Other awards include the highest GPA in the history of Jordan High School and the first place from the Anti-Vivisection Society.

Have you decided a major at Princeton University?

While I have not decided a major I am pretty sure of the career path that I would like to continue on once I graduate. The Intel award did not really change what I want to do in terms of cancer research study, but I do believe that it has opened many opportunities and affirmed my interests.

Many people still remember the moving story that started your interest in cancer research.

When I was 6, an immediate family member of mine had a brain tumor and had to undergo surgery. While it was certainly not the happiest time in my life, I think it was one of the most defining moments.

I don’t think that people realize the toll that diseases like cancer take until you are that young child wondering whether or not someone you love will be with you tomorrow.

At the age of 6, I did not know what cancer was, but I quickly learned, and I think that the remnants of that experience have largely compelled me to pursue cancer research.

What kind of a reader are you? Stanford medical professor and writer Dr Abraham Verghese (Cutting for Stone) believes that doctors should read novels to understand the human nature better.

I do not think it is particularly important to read fiction to find out how people feel about disease and death. I actually think that the nonfiction and the personal accounts are what matter most; these are what have made the greatest difference to me.

Authors do an excellent job of portraying attitudes and emotions, but I think your heart is deepest touched and you are most empathetic when you listen directly to a patient or a mother worried about her child’s condition.

I definitely agree that it is essential that physicians understand how people grieve and fight disease, but how they chose to understand depends on the physician. I spend a lot of time staying up to date with current events. I enjoy watching the news, reading the paper and keeping a close eye on politics and world events. I generally read

Arts and Culture: Learned Kathak for many years. Joined the Nacho group at Princeton. “First, I thought it had to do something with Mexican food,” she says. Loves Bollywood dancing. At Princeton, she choreographed, apart from entering a dance competition, the song and dance sequence from the movie Thoda Pyar, Thoda Magic.

biographies and books on theory regarding historical events.

What have you taken most from your parents?

My parents, family and mentors have been endless sources of lessons and knowledge for me. The most important lesson I have learned from my parents is belief in God, and respect for my elders, family and myself. My mentors have, of course, taught me invaluable research skills and scientific knowledge. Dr Maria Tsokos and Dr Anil Potti have also taught me how to live a life of service by pursuing research and medicine for the benefit of others while finding a balance between research, practice and the family. When I think of Dr Potti, I think of his brilliance and dedication, but I am always inspired by how regardless of his intelligence and success, he is one of the kindest, most generous, helpful and humble individuals that you will ever meet. I look to my mentors as inspirers and role models like who I aspire to become.

Who are some of your heroes?

I think that nearly all of us have been inspired by Gandhi’s example of handling conflict with peace and Dr Martin Luther King Jr’s example of fighting for what is morally right. I admire Hillary Clinton for her leadership as she broke a mold and proved that women are capable of holding the highest post in public service and her courage as she handled criticism and personal strife in the public arena.

I am inspired by John McCain’s honesty, his service to this great country and his sacrifice when he chose to stay in Vietnam despite treacherous conditions out of respect for his fellow soldiers.

Are you religious?

I do believe in God and His ability to guide, teach and strengthen us. Whenever I am afraid or uncertain I recite the Gayatri Mantra and pray, and when I am happy and joyous I thank God for the life I have been given. In healing and sickness, I believe that God is with us and that praying to God renews our faith and impacts our ability to heal. Yet, I also believe there are some things beyond our control, and sometimes we are unable to understand God’s plan and intentions for us. Either way, in happiness or grief, He and His strength are with us.

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Atlas National Geographic Bee winner Akshay Rajagopal carries the world in his head because, he tells Arthur J Pais, it is important to know the world before you can learn to live in it

t Akshay Rajagopal’s home in Lincoln, Nebraska, be prepared to see many atlases, geographic dictionaries and a couple of globes. You may also meet his younger brother Dwith, who at age 7 dreams of following in the footsteps of his famous sibling.

Last year Akshay, taking part in the National Geographic Bee for the first time, won the title with a flawless score. The 11-yearold could teach his kid brother quite a few life lessons. Apart from preparing well for any high profile contest, he says keeping cool plays an important role.

‘If you make a mistake in the early part of the contest, don’t keep thinking about it. Focus on the next question,’ says Akshay, adding that competitions like the Geographic Bee are more than mechanical processes.

Serious participants ought to feel like explorers, he feels, looking beyond the names of places. His father Vijay, who gave him an atlas some years ago and helped trigger his elder son’s passion for places and their legends, echoes Akshay.

“As he said, it is important not to think about the wrong answer as long as you are still in the competition,” adds Vijay, an engineer.

“There is certainly an element of luck. I told him that the more he learnt, the luckier he would get.”

Akshay, who won a $25,000 college scholarship and a lifetime membership to the National Geographic Society, won a competition that starts with 5 million children across America. Most of the children are eliminated in the first round. Fifty-five state and US territory winners took part in the preliminary rounds of the 2008 National Geographic Bee Soon after his victory, which made Akshay the second winner in the Bee’s 20-year history with a perfect performance, Nebraska Governor Dave Heineman declared May 27 as Akshay Rajagopal Day. ‘I don’t think we’ve ever done this for a young student, but we’ve never had a young student who’s excelled like you,’ Heineman said at an event at Akshay’s school.

Akshay was the youngest of the 10 finalists; the list also included 2008 National Geographic Bee champion Nikhil Desai of California and Akshay Rajagopal meets the media at the Milan Sandhu of National Geographic Society headquarters New Hampshire. after his win 34 At the Lux Middle

A

REBECCA HALE ©2008 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC

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‘And the Himalayas: I want to see the Himalayas from the Indian side.

I believe it is very majestic’ School, students and teachers still remember the historic day. ‘It (Akshay’s win) shows sixth-graders and the rest of our school what hard work really does,’ school teacher Bill Bucher had said as several students stood to display Tshirts they made reading ‘Got Akshay?’

Lincoln Public Schools Superintendent Susan Gourley has said Akshay is an inspiration for every student in the state — and beyond. ‘This is a history-making day for me,’ she said. ‘I have never stood beside a National Geography Bee champion. I am so proud that you are a student in Lincoln Public Schools.’

Akshay likes collecting coins, playing chess and video games and reading sci-fi. “I am currently reading I, Robot

by Issac Asimov for a school project and it is very interesting,” he says. “I read science fiction books. I find their imagination fascinating.”

He stresses the importance of sacrificing a few things to be an achiever. “To prepare well for a high-level competition,” he says, “you may have to give up some of your other interests and stay optimistic at all times.” He now has his sights set on the Science Bowl.

From his childhood Akshay has been fascinated by travel and places, reveals his mother Suchitra Srinivas, who has a background in accounting and computers. While the family drove long distances, Akshay would pore over his reference books. On one eight-hour journey, he learned the capitals of every American state and details about American presidents, and quizzed his parents thereafter.

Preparing for the 2008 Geography Bee, he did not read any travel books, says Akshay, but he watched a lot of travel DVDs, mostly from Globe Trekker and National Geographic. He also read Grolier’s Lands and People. “My father condensed a lot of material from the Grolier’s series onto a digital tape recorder (about 40 hrs) which made my preparation simpler,” he adds.

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Fact file Biggest achievement: Winning the 20th annual National Geographic Bee in 2008, breezing through the two-day national finals without missing a question.

Answer that made him a winner: Cochabamba is the thirdlargest conurbation in what country? Bolivia.

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Akshay lived with his parents in China and Malaysia for a few years before coming to America. He was too small when the family moved to remember the details of life there. His collection of atlases — he has over a dozen — grew in Lincoln. “I don’t think I am going to have (atlases) anymore,” he says with a chuckle.

Are there dream destinations for him a few years from now?

“Among the places I would like to visit very much there are three,” he says. “Pamukkale in Turkey is one of them.

The accumulation of limestone and travertine gives the place the appearance of a frozen waterfall and makes it very beautiful. The shallow pools there seem like a great way to relax.”

“I have been to Australia when we lived in China and I don’t remember any of it. I have some cousins living there and it is a beautiful country.”

“And the Himalayas: I want to see the Himalayas from the Indian side. I believe it is very majestic.”

His favorite places include Bengaluru [formerly Bangalore, in Karnataka] where many of his relatives live; he likes “all the varied cultures in India” that he finds in the Karnataka city. And there is there is the Langkawi island in Malaysia. ‘I especially liked the high-speed boat trip from Penang Island to Langkawi,’ he has said. And, of course, Washington, DC, where he won the geography competition. He loves the monuments and history of the nation’s capital.

Who are the people in public life he admires?

“Al Gore. He has used his position and passion to raise the environmental awareness of a large section of the population,” he says.

Who has had the most impact on his young life?

Father Vijay says mother Suchitra has had the most impact on Akshay.

His other winning answers: The western-most Asian national capital (Ankara in Turkey); the country where Makossa is a popular type of music (Cameroon); and the location of Tillya Tepe (Afghanistan).

Keeping in touch with Indian culture: Has attended the Bala Gokulam in Lincoln for several years. Can recite a few shlokas he has learned from his grandparents Offerings to God: Whenever he wins a competition or a

school contest, he offers raisin to the Gods. He says he believes in God, but doesn’t pray everyday.

Favorite dish: Lemon Rice, replacing Chicken Tikka.

Favorite possession: His coin collection. His interest in coins began at age six in Malaysia. A soft drink vending machine returned Indonesia rupiah instead

“She has taken an active interest in his academics from the beginning and certainly been a major force in his performance at the National Geographic Bee and the (ongoing) Science Bowl. For anyone to win the National Geographic Bee at their very first attempt at any level is not an easy task and for this I have to give her a lot of credit,” he explains.

“That is not to take anything away from Akshay’s own interest in geography that started at a very young age.”

There are many things about last year’s competition the family remembers. Akshay’s mother recalls the thrilling moment when the National Geographic Bee discovered a key fact about her son.

“Half way through the banquet the day Akshay won the Bee,” she recalls, “the chairman of National Geographic, Gilbert Grosvenor, asked how many times Akshay had taken part in the Bee (at the school or state level). When he learnt that it was Akshay’s first attempt, he made an announcement to this effect, leading people to give Akshay a standing ovation.”

Akshay may have stopped collecting atlases, but his passion for places continues.

‘I wonder how many mental maps I have in my head,’ he mused in an interview not long ago. ‘Countless, probably.’

Jeopardy! host Alex Trebek, who has moderated the Bee for 20 years, called it the ‘national annual humiliation,’ because it exposes that ‘a group of middle schoolers has vastly more knowledge of geography than most of the nation.’

Akshay says his fascination with geography and other sciences will never cease. What has he learned most from his pursuit of geography?

“It’s important to learn about the world, how it works,” he says. “Once you learn all that you can learn to live in it.”

of Malaysian ringgits. Akshay was intrigued by a currency he was not familiar with. He still has the Indonesian coins. His favorite coin is a Euro, among the first batch of coins introduced in 2002.

Thoughts of gratitude: “I would like to thank all my teachers and friends at Lux Middle School who have supported me last year on my way to the championship. My friends were more confident than I was that I would win.”

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35 COLLECTOR’S ISSUE

COURTESY MANJUL BHARGAVA’S FAMILY

Number one T Manjul Bhargava, winner of the inaugural India Abroad Face of the Future Award, explores the magical mystique of numbers, in conversation with Prem Panicker

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From the Editors

There are usually two classes of achievers: Those who stand at the pinnacle and look down on their vast array of accomplishment, and those who stand at the foot of the mountain, confident of their own abilities to climb to the summit.

And then there is a rarer third category: The achiever who stands at the pinnacle with a vast body of accomplishment spread out at his feet, and knows that what for others is the end of a journey is for him just the beginning, that he has it in him to scale even greater heights.

Into this extremely rarefied category falls Manjul

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he tall, slender young man in kurta and jeans waiting at the gates of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Mumbai could easily be mistaken for a post-graduate student. And then someone walks up to him and asks for an autograph – and you realize that this is Manjul Bhargava, the boy wonder who cracks 200-year-old problems for fun and who became the youngest full professor at Princeton University at the ridiculously young age of 28.

When we met him at TIFR, Bhargava

Bhargava — math genius, music whiz and ace academic.

His achievements already suffice to mark him out as one of the truly gifted – and he is yet just 34 years old, and poised at that moment of personal history where he can reflect on a glittering past, and know that it is merely the prelude to an incandescent future.

Manjul was born in Canada and raised in the United States by immigrant parents from Jaipur, in India’s Rajasthan state. Mother Mira played the seminal role in shaping his early life: a math professor at Hofstra University, she imbibed in her young son a love of numbers; a classical musician of considerable ability, she also taught Manjul the first notes on the tabla, the paired Indian hand drums that provides the percussive under-

was recovering from a combination of a viral infection and a very late night out. “I was with guruji,” he said, referring to globe-trotting tabla maestro Ustad Zakir Hussain. “I spent the evening with him, and then saw him off at the airport.”

In his temporary office at TIFR, one of India’s primary scientific institutions, Bhargava swept a mass of paper aside and settled down to discuss the three loves of his life: Math, music, and teaching.

Manjul, you are described generally as a pure mathematician, a pure researcher who chases mathematical problems simply because they are there to solve. The question that would occur to the layman though is, what is the point? How does what you do apply to my daily life, how does it make my life better?

It is true to say that almost all pure research in any field, and pure math is no exception, eventually has applications that will eventually touch the lives of ordinary people. But it is also true to say that people like me who do pure research are not thinking about the applications. In fact, some of the best pure research happens because you are not thinking of the applications – you are thinking only of what is the most beautiful thing happening at the time, what’s the most interesting line of thought to pursue.

I try to go in the direction that seems most interesting at the time, the most beautiful and pure. Thinking pure math is an adventure, and when you are engaged in it you pick the direction that seems new and unexplored and therefore adventurous, the most intrinsically beautiful.

37 You use the word beauty

current to Indian classical music.

Even before he had entered his teens, Manjul was asking himself questions in advanced math and solving them on his own; he was also studying the tabla under Pandit Prem Prakash Sharma.

He excelled in both disciplines, and when it came time to make his choice, opted for the music and poetry of numbers. While majoring in math at Harvard, he quickly demonstrated that he had made the right choice, producing a body of original research that won for him the American Mathematical Society’s Morgan Prize for Outstanding Research in Mathematics by an Undergraduate.

38 Moving on to graduate studies at

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37 COLLECTOR’S ISSUE

you speak of math. How do you define 35 when ‘beauty’ in a context where the majority of us

just see dry numbers?

Lot of mathematical theories bring together areas that on the surface seem totally disconnected, and then suddenly there’s this connection. For example, take Gauss’s work – without going into highly technical detail, he found this magical connection between three different areas that nobody realized were so closely connected. He developed this theory called the Gauss Composition that brings all these three elements together.

That’s one of the things that makes one feel enlightened, where one sees beauty, the logic, the connections between what we thought was unconnected. You are trying to build bridges between different things, and when you build such bridges it triggers in you a sense of beauty, of adventure.

Gauss built bridges between these three areas, and what I realized in my thesis is that these are not the only connections: that in fact the connection he had found was only one of 14 different possible connections you can make. So my contribution was to show that this was not an isolated

Number one thing, it was not a coincidence.

The language you use, of disparate islands of mathematical knowledge and building bridges between them – it’s the language I would expect an explorer to use.

When we are working, that is exactly what it feels like – an exploration of terrain that hasn’t been charted. If you think about it, that is what the explorers did: they went where no one had gone before and thus opened up new vistas for the rest of us. And they showed us connections between land masses, and helped us go from one place to another.

That is what I do. I am exploring, with no idea of what is out there for me to find. You find a direction that seems promising and you set out. And sometimes you find a fork, two directions you could take, and you go down one and if that turns out to be a dead end, you change tack and go in

‘I don't know how he does all that’ Even as a child, Mira Bhargava tells P Rajendran, son Manjul was demonstrating a mathematical ability way beyond his years mother recalls. Playing Pacman “He uses only very simple matheon the office computer, solving matics. He tells me it is all elethe Rubik’s cube, or writing promentary mathematics; I don’t grams to calculate something or know how he does all that, but he other, were other activities he has these results that are beyond preferred to class. my understanding,” says Mira By age ten, Manjul was trying Bhargava. to find a formula for prime And that is saying something numbers, and in his ninth grade since Mira is, besides being the he was already taking underperson who first sparked her son’s graduate classes at Hofstra, interest in the subject, a math where he taught numerical professor in her own right, at analysis, advanced calculus, difHofstra University. ferential equations (which was As a young child, she recalls, his mother’s subject), linear Manjul was full of energy and algebra… would never sit still. “As he grew Periodically, Mira Bhargava up he changed completely. He’s so took her son on visits to India. mature, cool, collected, sober, “He has a very close bond with serene. His mischief transformed his grandparents, particularly into a good sense of humor. So it’s his grandfather,” says Mira just a different person…”

Bhargava. During these visits, Even as a baby he was quick Manjul steeped himself in with a shape sorting box, she Indian culture, from getting into recalls, and when he was just PARESH GANDHI kite competitions during Makar three he devised a complex count- Mira Bhargava Sankranti to studying the sitar ing system for himself. “I don’t under Pandit Shashi Mohan know what method he devised,” Bhatt, the elder brother of Grammy grow up to have a reputation as a says Mira Bhargava. “He used his winner Pandit Vishwa Mohan teacher par excellence, Manjul fingers, something about the fingers Bhatt. Later, Bhargava gave up the hated school, ducking classes as of one hand running over each sitar when he found that it toughmuch as he could and going off to other. I asked him several times, ened the fingers too much and his mother’s office. “He would ‘How do you do this?’ He wouldn’t interfered with his other great musiattend my classes, or he would sit in tell me. It was like a secret.” cal love, the tabla. my office and write stories,” his Ironically for someone who would

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the other direction.

So anyway, going back to the original question of applied versus pure mathematics, there are also applied mathematicians whose thinking is driven by a certain destination.

What they are looking to do is find a path to a particular destination, and they pick that destination because there is an application there. Against that, the pure mathematician doesn’t know where he is going, or even why he is going in a particular direction and what he might find when he gets to the end of that path.

The thing though is, the applied mathematician and pure mathematician are inter-related; they intersect at many points. And eventually, all pure mathematics ends up with some application.

Can you give us an example of how that synergy plays out?

Take, for instance, number theory – one of the oldest areas for pure mathematical research. For centuries, it was considered pure theory, and it was thought it would never be applied; it was considered a very artistic part of mathematics that people worked on purely for the joy of it, for the art of it.

But today, number theory is one of the most applied branches of mathematics. Computers, coding, cryptography, secure communication signals — these are all done using sophisticated number theory. Creativity doesn’t reach its full level until you have total freedom – for an artist, an explorer, a mathematician, whoever. If you have someone sitting there telling you where you need to go, then it becomes mechanics. Some of the best mathematics has happened because no application was being sought, because the person who was thinking about things was totally free to think of what they thought was the most interesting.

So here’s a famous problem that is very old. Suppose you take two two-hundred digit prime numbers and give them to a computer and ask it to multiply the two numbers. Your ordinary computer will do it in the blink of an eye and give you a four-hundred digit answer.

Now you give that four hundred digit number to another computer and ask it to go the other way; to tell you which two prime numbers combined to give you that four-hundred digit number. Should be easy, right? But here’s the thing: the best known algorithms of today running on the most sophisticated computers in existence can’t give you that answer; they can’t back track and tell you which two prime numbers combined to produce that particular fourhundred digit number, not if you had it working on the problem for billions of years.

This is a very old, very famous problem called Factorization. To multiply is easy; to go the opposite way, to factor, to find the two original pieces, that is a problem every mathematician has thought about and no one has solved.

Here’s why it is important: this is the basis for all cryptography. You use the four-hundred digit number as your encryption key, and the only way you can decrypt is if you know the original two two-hundred digit prime numbers that produced it. Modern government communications, bank operations, security systems — so much of what we do today depends on this basic mathematical problem.

Here’s where the real fun is though – we haven’t proven that we cannot go back. For instance, what if there is some Russian researcher out there 38 who knows how to break the four-hundred

India Abroad March 27, 2009

38 COLLECTOR’S ISSUE Manjul Bhargava, seen practicing at home in 1996, learned from tabla maestro Ustad Zakir Hussain

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From the Editors

37

lage of the legendary Andrew Wiles. Under his tutor’s guidance, Manjul decided to build on the work done by Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss, the legendary 18th century German mathematician.

The Gauss Composition, in layman terms, found the inter-connectedness of two quadratic equations – a discovery that has remained a mental tease for the best mathematicians of two centuries. Manjul discovered 14 more composition laws, and created a cogent mathematical frame in which to set them. ‘It took everyone completely by surprise,’ his tutor Wiles, himself a prodigious talent, was to say. ‘And he did it in a way that Gauss himself could have understood and appreciated.’

That achievement alone would have led to his acing his master’s thesis, but Manjul went even further, solving several other math problems that had defied the best minds of the age – any of these, his tutor was to note, would have qualified him for a PhD. Popular Science magazine honored the budding mathematical genius by naming him to its ‘Brilliant Ten’ list in 2002. At a more practical level, Harvard and Princeton both offered him lectureships, and vied to recruit him onto their faculties.

COURTESY MANJUL BHARGAVA’S FAMILY Princeton held out the better lure – at the ridiculously young age of 28, Manjul Bhargava became one of the youngest ever to hold a full professorship. But what really tipped the scales, he said, was the opportunity to impact on the way his favorite subject was taught.

Princeton was finding that the math department was losing talentme, and because I had ed students to other disciplines. In between teaching a graduate someone to ask, I could research seminar, he developed an introductory course titled ‘An explore the joy of matheIntroduction to Mathematical Thinking’ aimed at providing a more matics and not get stifled enlightening overview of the field, and firing up the imagination of by the formulaic learnundergraduate students, filling them with a sense of math as art, as ing process that is the adventure. norm in school.

‘It’s not always easy to find, in young people who are having very Give me an example of active and exciting scientific lives, this interest in and commitment to a mathematical question reaching out to students and getting them interested in math,’ said that would occur to a kid, Nicholas Katz, chair of Princeton’s math department. ‘So when you but that a teacher in find someone who combines great scholarship with great teaching, it’s school would think was just wonderful.’ weird?

Established as one of the most sought-after faculty on Princeton, Okay, this was when I Manjul shuttles constantly between his home university and India, was five or six years old. where he works with the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research and We used to have a juicer with various Indian Institutes of Business to develop fresh courses, at home, and mom re-purpose staid curriculums, and fire up a new generation of stuwould buy oranges in dents with the love of pure math that courses through him. bulk to make juice with. Manjul, left, as a 1st grader And everywhere he goes, he carries with him the tabla. “It can be a So while she was doing bit of a problem,” he laughed, in course of an interview for India that, I’d make these pyrAbroad. “Indians recognize it for what it is, but sometimes when I am amids of oranges. So then I one day wanttravelling in Europe, customs officials get curious. One asked me to open it up and ed to know, if I want to make a pyramid say show him what was inside – I had to set them on the table and play a little concert seven oranges high, how many oranges do right there before he realized it was a musical instrument.”

I need?

No matter – his favorite tablas go wherever he goes. He spends his days immersed If you asked this kind of thing in school in the magic of numbers, and his nights making music. they’ll think you are being frivolous – you “There is terrific synergy between the two,” he said. “Both are structured discijust make the pyramid, that is all, and the plines, yet permit of tremendous creativity. Sometimes, I stop work on a problem, height depends on how many oranges you play till it is time for bed, and when I wake, I realize that I have found the answers have to play with. But I wanted to know if I’m looking for.” it was possible to derive that number, to Thus he lives, this prodigy who is nearly the same age as the students he teaches, know ahead of time how many oranges I inspires. Each day brings fresh problems for him to solve; each solution pushes back need to make my pyramid. I asked my the frontiers of our knowledge in one of the most challenging disciplines known to mom, but she didn’t know the answer. But man. she was very encouraging, she thinks like a He has already achieved enough to qualify him for the highest awards in his field. mathematician so she told me that’s interYet, it is the glittering promise of future achievements that India Abroad recognizes, esting, try some examples today, by conferring on Manjul Bhargava its inaugural Face of the Future Award, for yourself and see what 2008.

39 happens.

Number one

digit down into its original two parts? If he can do that, it means that none of our encrypted communications is secure – so imagine what that means to financial security, to national security. If we prove that the parts can be discovered from the whole, we crash modern cryptography. If we prove it cannot be done ever, we validate cryptography.

Either way, it is a problem worth thinking about; pure mathematicians have devoted thought to this for centuries, and we still do.

For most of us, math is a subject to pass.

How does someone begin to love mathematics for the joy of it?

The problem is that mathematics in school is taught by rote instead of as a process of discovery, of creativity. It is not taught as an art but as a set of formulas you memorize, beginning with your multiplication tables. If you are only stuck in that, then it becomes impossible to appreciate the beauty of mathematics. It is like if you taught painting that way – if you taught that you have to mix primary colors in this proportion and you have to use this type of brush for this type of stroke. If you do that, you are teaching technique, but the creativity of the painting is lost.

So how did you discover the creative side of math?

I always had a natural curiosity about mathematics since I was very small, and I was very lucky to have my mom, who was a mathematician and a professor, and so I could ask her things. Sometimes you can’t ask some things in school — they think you are asking weird questions. The fact that I had mom to turn to proved convenient for

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Princeton, he immersed himself in the rar-

35 efied fields of number theory under the tute-

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39 COLLECTOR’S ISSUE

So I did small examples, you know, you 38 start with triangles, small pyramids with a

triangular base – you know, you put three oranges at the base and one on top and you have your basic pyramid two oranges high. Then I’d expand that, make the base bigger, and see what happened. I took a year to find the answer – I wasn’t thinking about it constantly, of course, but that is how it went. So if you want it to use n oranges on one side of a triangular pyramid, the answer is n times n+1 times n+2 divided by six. That’s the kind of exploration I meant – if you can encourage that in children, then math becomes creative, it becomes a joy.

As a child, you were interested in both math and music.

That’s right. They complement each other and they are both very creative. The thought processes are similar in a way, but also they are different avenues for creativity.

So what prompted your decision to pursue math, rather

Number one than music?

I actually hoped I would never have to decide. I guess the reason I chose math is that in academia, it is possible to keep up with both.

Did it pan out that way?

It’s getting harder and harder every year. It’s basically math during the day and music at night. In any case, most music sessions, concerts and practice and such happen in the evenings, so yeah to the extent possible, I have the best of both worlds.

Do you have a group you practice music with, or is it in isolation? Math is a very lonely process…

Only sometimes, sometimes math can be as collaborative

‘His students think he is the greatest thing that walked this earth’

as music. I work a lot with my students; also, these days you can do a lot of collaborative work on e-mail.

And sometimes you do it with other mathematicians – you know, you scribble down a thought on a blackboard and your colleagues goes, hey, what if we went this way, and he scribbles down his thought, and pretty soon you are batting theories at each other, riffing off each other’s thoughts.

That sounds like you were describing a jugalbandi…

Exactly. In music or in math, it is the same thing actually – you toss an idea up there, and your collaborator picks it up and sees what he can do with it and throws it back at you and that back and forth 41 goes on until you discover one avenue that

A lot of young people, when they’re strong, they intimidate everybody because they can answer anything. He’s not like that at all. People around him, they feel better.

That’s an unusual thing. He’s not trying to show off how much he knows all the time. Other students would look up to him when he was a student. Now he’s a young faculty, we can attract many more young students just because of him. The first thing they say is, ‘Where is Sitting in his office at the School of Manjul?’ He’s a big magnet.

Mathematics at the Institute of Advanced Another thing about him is he’s a very, very good Study in Princeton, New Jersey, Eugene lecturer – crystal clear. He can explain at any level Higgins Professor of Mathematics at that you want: he’s almost hypnotizing the audience.

Princeton University Peter Sarnak apologizes He’s in great demand for big-audience lectures. He’s for putting his feet up on the table. “I have a also taught some unusual undergraduate classes. As bad back,” says the much-awarded South a consequence, some of them turn into math majors.

African-born mathematician, and settles I think India should be very proud of him. I hope down to talk of Manjul Bhargava, the prodithat the Tata Institute [Tata Institute of gious talent he had helped mentor: Fundamental Research in Mumbai] doesn’t conanjul is perhaps the best student vince him to leave us. He has great connections to we’ve had in many, many years.

India. His family was very grateful to [mentor We’re lucky enough to have the Andrew] Wiles and myself for mentoring him, so very best students from all over they had some kind of party to which the whole the world. His generation produced some department was invited. There, there was a picture of really outstanding people — Terrence Tao his grandfather. There was clearly reverence for the [who was in Princeton earlier and won the culture, and the reverence for the old man that I was ultimate accolade in mathematics, the Fields taken by. Unlike many modern youth, he does feel medal]; Akshay Venkatesh, now a professor PARESH GANDHI very Indian and very much part of that culture. at Stanford; many others.

Peter Sarnak His students think he’s the greatest thing that What’s unusual about Manjul, even in this walked the earth, and so do we. He will have many, very elite group, is that his thesis was so many students. His problem will be too many students. lot by Japanese mathematicians, particularly Mikio Sato exceptional. We didn’t make the other guys professor And he doesn’t know how to say no. As I was saying, he and Takuro Shintani. straight out of graduate school, though they are all fanis a good man, as opposed to a guy who’s trying to prove Sato and Shintani studied these spaces and others foltastic and we have since tried to attract them all here. himself and desperate to be the best. He’s beyond that, lowed him, including Akihito Yukie and David Wright.

Manjul’s thesis had two parts to it. One side of his theand for a young guy that’s extremely unusual. He’s just at But they were still looking at this theory over the theory sis was so original that nobody ordered it – the genius ease. of fields. Manjul, like Gauss, studied these over the intekind of insight; something he did that generalizes someHe is ambitious. His papers appear in many top jourgers – and found gold. He looked at a much more primithing of [Johann] Gauss. Gauss did compositions of tive aspect of this [area of research]. That was completebinary quadratic forms, and it was the basis of much nals where I’m editor, and he’s very particular about ly unexpected. It was extremely unusual and, for a gradresearch in number theory since. The theory of fields every little symbol in his paper. One of his papers was uate student… we’d never seen anything like it. developed tremendously after Gauss. But Gauss saw published in a form that was not quite the final paper – For a thesis, that would have been fantastic. But that them as quadratic forms, higher degree forms in which there was a mistake somewhere – and we sent out whole coupled with his extremely original idea of composition Manjul found similar composition rules – and that was new volumes of this particular issue to make sure he was made this the best thesis we’ve seen in 20 years. He won quite unexpected by any of us. He found a structure that happy. He’s not worried about getting credit; he’s worried a Clay fellowship immediately. And we were not going to nobody had guessed was there. about what’s written there for the future. I think he let him go anywhere but come back as a professor. He What Manjul was studying in his thesis were preunderstands that these papers are historical papers. was made a professor maybe two years out of graduate homogenous vector spaces, abstract mathematical conschool – and we want to make sure he doesn’t leave. structs that were not his invention. It’s usually studied a Peter Sarnak spoke to P Rajendran

M

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India Abroad March 27, 2009

41 COLLECTOR’S ISSUE

The playful professor

life. That, I think, is very special.”

Fifth-year graduate student Wei Ho had wanted to run away from math.

Talking to Manjul Bhargava at a house gathering at Harvard where Wei was an undergraduate helped settle her immediate doubts and make her realize that she liked the subject.

“He always tries to relate his life to mine.

I don’t really believe him when he talks of his doubts, but I don’t think ever had these doubts,” she laughs. “But When his teaching assistant squirted maybe he did, too. It was nice talking him with a water pistol, Manjul to someone who had been through all Bhargava knew he was finished. of it.”

Bhargava had entered into a game The point, Wei says, is that even if of Assassins with his students, which professors did have doubts of that involved squirting people with a kind, they wouldn’t talk about it, and water pistol and thus ‘eliminating’ certainly not to young students. That is them, leaving the last person standwhere Bhargava scores with her – he ing as the winner. could talk to her at her level, tell her of “I was doing quite well too,” his own doubts and fears.

Bhargava reflected in humorous self“I was very scared about going on in mockery, “I was one of the last few math and he admitted that it was scary standing but alas, I was killed by my for many people. And that is someown TA [Teaching Assistant], who I thing I haven’t had anyone tell me. should not have trusted so much!”

Obviously, he’d be happy that I stay in When he is not working, mentoring math, but I think he’d be happy that I or being felled by water bullets, find something that makes me happy,” Bhargava spends time watching teleshe says. vision with his students and disIt is not merely his ability to cussing Harry Potter with Piper empathize that makes Bhargava a rock Harris, a student who was uncomstar on the Princeton campus. “He’s a monly drawn to subject. brilliant teacher. He makes everything Combining brilliance with humility Melanie Wood sound so simple. Even the most mysteand friendliness has made him popurious things — he explains the heart of lar, but he is also a solicitous guide. them, and so it just becomes clear,” says Second year student Arul Shankar Arul. says he first saw Bhargava at a grad“His lectures, his classes, they stand uate students’ seminar. Clad in a out in this department,” says Melanie. cyan-striped white T-shirt and slacks “They attract a broad range of students and sporting a stubble, he was speakbecause they’re taught so well, the ing under portraits of illustrious ideas are so beautiful.”

Princetonians on the wall behind Thus, when Bhargava decided to hold him. a class for non-math graduate stu“I saw this person I’d never seen dents, the class was so large that it before – and he looked extremely couldn’t be held in the usual graduate young…. I hadn’t seen him before student classrooms. and I didn’t think he was a graduate “Using examples from the real world student. I assumed he was an underthat everyone could relate to – such as graduate,” graduate student Melanie the popular Fibonacci (or Wood laughs, recalling the same inciPHOTOGRAPHS: PARESH GANDHI Arul Shankar Hemachandra) sequence, which is dent. “And when I went up to the replicated in natural phenomenon as from other mathematicians is that he office to meet the professor and saw him, I diverse as pine cones and sea shells – cares about all of us, his students, as peocouldn’t believe it’s the same guy. And he Bhargava ran an extremely popular class ple. Of course he cares about our mathewas so friendly and so nice. It’s – like – called the Magic of numbers,” Melanie matical work, but he cares about us as very comfortable talking to him.” recalls. whole people, and what’s going on in our It is clearly his humanity and approach“His perspective was more about relatlives,” she said. ability that separates him from the other ing the beauty of math to art, just sort of “He understands that being a mathestars on the faculty, says Melanie, a super give it a different perspective than the matician is being a part of being a human achiever in her own right who till 2004 usual, which is relating it to science and being.” She laughs uncertainly as she diswas the only woman on the US technology. One of the things important to cusses vulnerabilities, clearly uncharted International Math Olympiad Team, the him is not just for people to see the utility territory. “Not all mathematicians get that. first American woman Putnam fellow for of math – of course, it’s very He got to know me as a person and knows undergraduate math research, cheerleader useful – but also the beauty about my family, so he can advise me and school newspaper editor.

42 in the context of music and mathematically – but in the context of my “As an advisor, what distinguishes him

What sets Manjul Bhargava apart, his students tell P Rajendran, is his ability to empathize, and inspire

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Number one

you both like, and then

39 you go down that path

together.

You began teaching while still a graduate student, and went on to become one of the youngest professors ever. Did your students have a problem with that, with being taught by someone who was their age group?

The opposite, actually – the fact that I am close to their age made it easier for them to relate to me. Sometimes on the first day of class I pretend to be a student myself, and I trash the professor, tell the others I’d heard he is the type who is always late – and then I’ll suddenly get up there and start teaching. It breaks the ice wonderfully.

Also, being young, I can relate quickly to where they are having problems, where they are getting stuck, because I have gone through that very recently myself, and I still have that memory.

Besides teaching, you are working on revising the curriculum at Princeton.

In a sense, yes – I am trying to get Indian classical music taught in US universities. Music departments in the US are very Eurocentric. At best, they will have one world music position, and world music means anything that is nonEuropean. You could go to one of those places and say hey, you don’t have any Indian classical music or Chinese classical music or whatever, and they’ll say oh, we have someone who teaches African drumming. That attitude has historically been there, but it is changing just a little bit, and this feels like the right time to try and change things, have a broader, more unbiased curriculum.

Is the course on-stream now?

Yeah, we now have a proper course in Indian classical music at Princeton. I went to Zakirji [his guru, Zakir Hussain] and asked if he could recommend someone to teach it, and I just kind of hinted that if he did it, it would be amazing — and he said sure, I’ll do it. So a couple of years ago he came and stayed there for one semester and it turned out to be the most popular music class on campus.

42 That was a one-time

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42 COLLECTOR’S ISSUE

to see if it worked, and it obviously did.

41 thing, One hundred students came for the class, and

Number one

there was a waiting list. And what was fasciespecially in math and the sciences, we have a long tradinating was that more than half the students who signed up tion of excellence in those fields but the opportunities have were from non-Indian backgrounds. So it is clearly somejust not been there. thing of interest to the general student population. We had One reason is the poverty the country struggled through some 30 students with an Indian background, and 70 with for the first fifty years – there were more immediate preoca non-Indian background. Also, the appeal was universal – cupations than develop theoretical science institutes. But twenty music majors, and 80 non-music majors. So yeah, it in the long term it is very important for India to have such was totally impressive, the demand is clearly there and now institutes, to cultivate the talents we have plenty of. Take we are trying to make it permanent. the US, for example.

How did it happen that you Here, they invested in became Zakir Hussain’s disciple? pure scientific research I was playing the tabla since I from the very beginning, was young, anyway. One day he and the fruits of it are had come to Harvard, and a friend now showing in this past introduced us. We talked a little century. bit, I even played a little for him, One thing I noticed in and he said you should come learn India is that some stuwith me, come to my class in dents are very talented California. I was shy; I didn’t go for in science — but such another two years. I learnt with students get pushed by him for about eight-nine years, their parents to go either though since I also had my regular into engineering or into studies, it wasn’t continuous. medicine. It’s hard to Have you played in concerts with blame the parents for him? that, because the opporNot at concerts. But when he was tunities lie in those teaching in Princeton, when he fields. If you went into sang I’d accompany him. He is a pure scientific research very accomplished singer, which or into pure art you not that many people know about couldn’t possibly suphim since the focus is always on his port yourself. You needamazing playing. ed to become an engiHow connected are you with neer or a doctor, so the India? brightest minds would Very much. I come down twice a go to these two fields. year, mostly these are work-related That is changing. It trips but I go down to meet my hasn’t changed enough, family in Jaipur whenever possibut it is trending that ble. I come to TIFR, to the IITs and way and institutions like other universities to lecture, do TIFR are driving that student workshops. I am very paschange; the new Indian sionate about Indian education, COURTESY MANJUL BHARGAVA’S FAMILY Institutes of science and about trying to improve it. I feel Research that are comthere is so much talent in India, Manjul Bhargava, right, at Harvard, June 1996 ing up are creating positions for pure research, so all of this will help propel this change even more.

Paradoxically, the US seems now to be going in the opposite direction – as with recent laws designed to hinder immigration. art.”

41 His students are also appreciative of Bhargava’s Yes, and that’s a scary thing. The reason the US led the world in science and technology is it deep investment in their research. “I don’t think opened its doors to the best minds across the many mathematicians realize how important teaching and menworld, and gave them the opportunities to do toring is. He really makes a difference to students’ lives,” says Wei. whatever they wanted to creatively, and the Arul speaks of how Bhargava chose his topic of research. “Once fruits of that creativity have benefited the US to he found out what I knew, what I wanted to learn, what my interan immense degree. It’s scary if they lose that ests were, he gave me a problem that would fit all these needs,” edge.

Arul says.

I must say, though, that the best universities, Bhargava’s biggest problem is saying no to the large number of the best opportunities are still in the US. I mean, students who wish to work under him – and, says Wei, the young who wouldn’t want to go to Harvard, Princeton, professor is known to have a hard time saying no.

Stanford – the facilities are so good, and they are “One thing I’ve really appreciated is that he’s put a lot of so encouraging of talent, they encourage people thought into the kind of problems I would be interested in,” she to do whatever they want. says. “As Melanie was saying, he does care for us as whole people.

I am very passionate about trying to bring that And he cares for us as whole mathematicians.” mindset to India. People have talent, and it needs to be cultivated. It is not that you try to fit

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them into some box – you have science talent so okay, you should become an engineer. The point is you should do whatever you want to do – even if there is no immediate goal or benefit in mind. Your talent for instance could be for pure chemistry research, and if it is, then you should have the opportunities and the facilities to do just that. That is what is going to be optimum for the country and for the individual.

That is one of the things I want to do at IIT for instance.

All the best scientific minds in India, so many of them go to IIT, but there they are forced to do some kind of engineering, because the pure science track is not there. So one of the things I am trying to encourage them to do is have pure science streams, and I think it is going to start in the next year or so.

You pointed out that in India, education is very job-oriented. Your proposal seeks to change that fundamental paradigm. How receptive has the establishment here been to your ideas?

Very receptive; I was very impressed with how much. The previous director at IIT here in Bombay was Ashok Mishra.

He really deeply cared about the institution, about the students, and so he was very receptive to ideas that would make life better for them. He recently stepped down, but his successor is equally good.

What is scary to me is sometimes, when one director steps down and someone else takes charge, the new person wants to pursue his own agenda. But here, the new director is keeping the momentum going about the projects Mishra had on stream. So it is a good time in India right now – people understand the imperative and they have begun to care, and things are moving in the right direction at last.

Give me an example of this changed mindset?

I think for instance that scientists shouldn’t only know about science. They need to develop both sides of the brain.

Creativity is at its peak when you use the left and right brain, so you have to develop both the logical side and the artistic side. Creativity in science is going to come only when the creative side of your personality is stimulated. IIT has the best people in the world, but what makes Harvard and Princeton and MIT and such institutions different than IIT is that at these American institutions, they actually have to do humanities. You can’t just do science all the time, whereas at IIT you do science all the time and anything else is considered a waste of your time.

We used to be broad minded about education. Traditionally, all types of education was valued – even the classical arts, dance, music, whatever. It is only in recent times that education has been totally job-oriented, and the more artistic streams were seen as lacking in what we call future prospects.

You can’t blame this mindset – it stems from the economic situation the country was in.

But we need to change that. People should be able to do things alongside their core studies. So for example, I was trying to get the IIT here in Mumbai to start a music curriculum.

The good news is they’ve bought into the idea and started a course. Pandit Nayen Ghosh – he is a very famous tabla and sitar player, very good teacher, he is a good vocalist also — he’s going to be the first teacher in this music program that the IIT is starting. We’ve hired him, he is very excited and the students are very excited, and the course starts in April. So yeah, we lost our way there for a little but now we are coming back, and that is one of the best things that is happening to us here just now.

India Abroad March 27, 2009

44 COLLECTOR’S ISSUE

‘Every member of our community has a voice’

D

HRISHI KARTHIKEYAN

lthough I have long been captivated by the electoral process, the 2008 race presented a unique and historic opportunity.

In backing Democratic Presidential candidate Barack Obama from the outset of his campaign, we knew we were signing up for an underdog campaign, but it was one that we believed had the potential to bring real change to our country.

Our goal in forming South Asians for Obama way back in 2007 was two-fold: Firstly, to organize the community to act under a collective banner and second, to mobilize the community to get involved earlier, more consistently and more extensively in the political process.

From the outset, we had faith in our ability to challenge time-worn ideas about our community’s political participation. Many South Asian Americans had become somewhat disillusioned by a government that had grown increasingly unresponsive to the needs of ordinary citizens in recent years. And many of the old players in Washington and beyond viewed politics as nothing more than a cynical undertaking in which money is traded for disproportionate access and influence amid the halls of power.

Yet we were confident that by working to build a grassroots movement from the ground up, we could show that true change was possible and that arcane notions of government could give way to a new model of civic activism.

In many ways, SAFO represented a return to the ideals that drew our families to the shores of the United States in the first place: the idea that this is a land of opportunity, of equality and justice; the idea that we have thrived most as a people when opportunity is shared broadly. So week by week, event by event, we began spreading our message — that every member of our community has a voice, and that those voic-

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Hrishi Karthikeyan PARESH GANDHI

es can make a difference.

Before we knew it, that message was taking hold across our country — fuelled, of course, by a dynamic and engaging candidate who actively promoted the value of grassroots community organizing.

SAFO organized house parties, voter registration drives, fundraisers, and other outreach events. In the end, we assembled a team of organizers, volunteers and activists that stretched across the country. And we turned out to the polls in record numbers to make history last November, and to usher in change.

Of course, the real change we seek is only just beginning. The 2008 campaign was a down payment on a

political movement that will continue to evolve in the coming years. As the debates about our country’s future unfold in board rooms, classrooms and living rooms across America, our community has a critical role to play in that process. SAFO will continue to provide a forum for South Asian Americans to contribute their ideas, talents and energies to improving our country. We have come far, much further than we had dreamt of at the outset – yet the real journey now stretches out ahead of us.

New York-based attorney Hrishi Karthikeyan, 30, is co-founder of South Asians for Obama

From the Editors

The Indian-American community’s record of sterling accomplishment across the fields of science and medicine, academics, entrepreneurship, information technology and the arts is an established meme in the public consciousness; one that has won for the community the tag of ‘model minority’.

In one all important respect, however, the community has historically lagged: Political empowerment. It is a critical lacuna, and it has meant that the community has been unable, down the years, to make full use of the soft power it has acquired in all other fields, and to translate that into political power.

Traditionally, the community’s political involvement has been transactional in nature. The more well off members of the community have contented themselves with writing checks and engaging in fund-raising for the politicians of their choice; in return, they have remained content with social invitations and photo-ops that, while stoking individual egos, have rarely if ever translated into larger community empowerment.

The year 2008 marked a paradigm shift. Inspired by an election that played out against American setbacks at home and abroad and fired up by Barack Obama’s insurgent candidacy, young Indian Americans across the country entered the political arena in unprecedented numbers, and through their activities changed the nature of the community’s political involvement.

Some individuals, like Democratic strategist Toby Chaudhuri and Republican activist Dino Teppara, acquired a mainstream profile through proselytizing activities on behalf of the respective political parties. While Chaudhuri went on to become director for communications at the headquarters of the Campaign for America’s Future, Teppara signalled a changing of the guard when he took over the chair of the Indian American Republican Council.

Elsewhere, the Indian American Leadership Initiative and its founder Varun Nikore worked to identify young, accomplished Indian Americans who could run for public office at various levels; trained them for the rigors of mainstream political campaigns; helped raise funds to fuel their run for office; and worked 45 to ensure that through broad-based partici-

Preeta Bansal PARESH GANDHI

India Abroad March 27, 2009

45 COLLECTOR’S ISSUE

‘The value of public service was often not emphasized’ VARUN NIKORE

y true start in politics was through an essay that I had as an assignment in 10th grade which asked me to illustrate the difference between the two main American political parties. This exercise caused me to define my ideological philosophy at a very early age.

During the time I spent working on the presidential campaign of then Democratic candidate Al Gore in 2000, I saw amongst our community a lack of message and sense of mission. We were focused inwards and thought of politics as a means of personal reward.

The Indian American Leadership Initiative was started to help achieve true community empowerment. After months of discussion, we determined we were under-performing in the numbers of Indian Americans elected, and that it was the purest measure of our political success. The value of public service was often not emphasized as a worthwhile profession or even avocation, and achieving success in this realm was extremely important to a growing second generation.

In early 2001, there were only Varun Nikore his wife Trusha three Indian American legislators with President Obama at the state level — Kumar Barve, Satveer Chaudhury and Hansen Clark. Based on the population of appointees, Indian Americans will be able to Indian Americans at the time, that roughly show our community’s talent through the meant that we should have at least three in power of good government and effective manCongress. While those were lofty goals for a agement. newly arrived ethnic group, it was a truly So, what comes next? It is imperative that our meaningful benchmark. strategy for achieving objectives has to be crysToday, the concept behind the Initiative is a tal clear, and our mission and objectives specifforegone conclusion. Our political movement ic and measurable. The mission of IALI can be continues the cause of expanding Democratic defined as ‘Identify, Train and Fund’: identify majorities across the US and shows all high calibre young Indian Americans with the Americans that not only can we achieve success potential to enter the political process; train in business, medicine, law and other profesthem in the methodology of local and national sions but we can also contribute back to our politics, and fund their bid for elected office. country through selfless public service.

We have a goal that defines our short term Along the way, successive IALI leaders like objective: 10 in 10. That is, 10 members of the Jay Chaudhuri and now Kathy Kulkarni have community elected to state-level office by taken the organization to even higher levels.

2010.

With a Democrat now in the White House, IALI will move to further heights as the mesPolitical activist Varun Nikore is founder of the sage of our community and President Obama Indian American Leadership Initiative are completely aligned. Through political

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From the Editors

pation, the community meshed with the mainstream at local,

44 state, and federal levels.

Meanwhile, young attorneys Hrishi Karthikeyan and Devendra ‘Dave’ Kumar got together with like-minded activists to found South Asians for Obama, a group designed to further then Senator Obama’s electoral prospects.

It was an effort that captured mainstream imagination. SAFO was founded at a time when conventional wisdom decreed that New York Senator Hillary Clinton was a shoo-in for the Democratic Party’s nomination for president; the group rapidly stepped into space that had hitherto seen little if any community participation.

SAFO established chapters across the country, built a network of volunteers, put the community’s feet on the ground for campaigning, fund-raising and get out the vote efforts, and meshed so effectively with the larger campaign that Obama, on being elected President, publicly praised the young organization for its role.

In the electric rush of the elections and the euphoria of the election of the first African American to President of the United States, two small but hugely significant developments have escaped general notice.

First, the 2008 election saw record participation of the community, and particularly its younger members, at all levels of the political process: Running for office, campaigning, doing grassroots work for various candidates and parties and, finally, voting.

And second, for the first time in the history of the community, the top fundraisers were not the established elders of the community, but their young: The likes of Preeta Bansal, Dave Kumar and Hrishi Karthikeyan comfortably outraised the traditional leaders.

Several activists have since been picked for the Obama transition team and for the new administration, and more are likely to be picked. But again, there is a key difference it is impossible to over-state: those who have made it to the new administration and those whose names are on the short list for upcoming appointments owe it to their exemplary records in their chosen fields, and not as a quid pro quo for their activities on behalf of the campaign.

Nicholas Rathod In one election cycle, thus, the PARESH GANDHI young Indian Americans have moved the community’s political participation from the cash-and-carry transactional style to a newer, more confident style: in politics, the community is now willing to engage on its own terms, to back the candidate of its preference with more than money, and to let their professional skills speak for them when it comes to a seat around the administration table.

These seminal changes have been brought about not by one individual or by a dozen, but by the community acting in concert across the country. India Abroad recognizes this change, and in honoring Preeta Bansal, Hrishi Karthikeyan, Devendra ‘Dave’ Kumar, Nicholas Rathod, Varun Nikore, Toby Chaudhuri and Dino Teppara with the India Abroad Gopal Raju Award for Community Service 2008, we honor all those unnumbered activists who have made this change possible.

India Abroad March 27, 2009

46 COLLECTOR’S ISSUE

‘It is clear that Indian Americans are looking for change’

‘The community is beginning to fully embrace its role within the mainstream’

TOBY CHAUDHURI

DAVE KUMAR

e are at a seminal point in our history. The recession is deepening, and the economic devastation is getting worse. Workers everywhere are feeling the pinch with job losses mounting across the country and around the world.

Everyday there’s another haunting sign that we must get the blood moving through the global economy once more. There needs to be a plan for the banks still on life support, and we need to cobble together an initiative to help millions of families on the verge of losing their homes.

The crisis leaves little alternative. Even as the administration struggles to fend off a full-scale depression, it faces the task of constructing the foundations of the new economy out of the ashes of the old. That old economy was Toby Chaudhuri with President Barack Obama founded on stagnant incomes and unsustainable debt.

Indian American families struggled to federal appointees and state legislators – are keep their heads above water by taking money transforming America’s political debate. out of their homes and assuming ever higher Members of groups like South Asians for levels of student, car, credit card and consumer Obama and the Indian American Leadership loans. The new economy must seek to provide Initiative raised millions in the election cycle, a sustainable and widely shared prosperity, and Indian American households made up one where the American dream remains in critical percentages in key electoral markets. reach for working people. That will require The political laurels the community has new thinking and bold reforms. earned are certainly impressive, but this is no The silver lining is that the Indian American time to rest on them – rather, this is the opporcommunity and particularly the younger gentunity for us to raise the bar higher still, and eration is more energized than ever. They’re on define a new direction. the march to change the direction of the counWe must continue to build on our efforts of try.

2008 to drive the debate and expand our manWith record turnout in last year’s elections, date. We have a real opportunity in the new it’s clear that Indian Americans are looking for political landscape to lead in the new media, change, and they’re helping to build a movemobilize our community and help recruit and ment to offer a clear alternative to the failed support Indian American candidates. This is policies of the past. our moment – it is now up to us to make the The year 2008 saw the largest and most most of it. impressive mobilization of our community. We gained political strength and sophistication, Democratic strategist Toby Chaudhuri directs popularity, institutional capacity, an expanded communications at the Washington headquarcoalition and exciting new leaders. Indian ters of the Campaign for America’s Future American leaders – led by a growing class of

had long been interested in politics, but had not taken a very active role beyond attending the occasional fundraiser. However, after living in Washington, DC and witnessing the disastrous policies of President Bush, I decided that it was time to get involved and do something to help bring change to Washington and to the country. I remember being inspired by then candidate Barack Obama’s speech in 2004 at the Democratic National Convention, by his vision of a politics that unites the country rather than divides it, and his call to the American people to come together and help solve the problems we face as a society.

Some friends and I got together and started South Asians for Obama, and we were soon joined by like-minded people around the country. Like much of the Obama campaign, SAFO was a grassroots effort, so our structure meshed well with that of the formal campaign. With the help of more experienced members of the community like Preeta Bansal, Ann Kalayil and others, SAFO was able to focus on grassroots outreach and fundraising in the South Asian American community around the country. And while I certainly enjoyed meeting then Senator Obama a couple of times, for me the best memories of the campaign were from grassroots efforts and engaging my fellow citizens in the political process.

I think the changing nature of the community’s involvement in politics reflects the changing nature of our involvement in all aspects of society. If you look at virtually any endeavor — not just medicine and IT — the South Asian community is coming of age, be it television, movies, literature, cooking shows, you name it. The desi community is beginning to fully embrace its role within the mainstream United States society — particularly 47 the second generation, which has benefited from the hard work of

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Dave Kumar, right, with Varun Nikore

India Abroad March 27, 2009

47 COLLECTOR’S ISSUE

‘We have an opportunity to play a disproportionate role in mainstream politics’

DINO TEPPARA

believe passionately in the importance of our community’s participation in the political process, irrespective of party affiliation.

The more Indian Americans who get elected to office irrespective of affiliation, the more we break down barriers, and the more we cement our acceptance into mainstream American society.

Every immigrant group in American history has faced some type of discrimination or outsider status for years, even decades. Now, those same groups are wholly integrated into the fabric of contemporary American culture — be it in the entertainment field or sporting arena, they are as American as apple pie. But one of the keys to their successful assimilation was political empowerment.

We as a community are coming into our own in many different ways in the United Dino Teppara, right, with then Secretary States. Indian Americans have of State Condoleezza Rice, center, and established themselves as sucUS Representative Joe Wilson cessful physicians, IT consultants, hotel owners, small business owners and entrepretheir civic duty by voting and becoming neurs. We are making a name for ourcompletely engaged in the political selves in the entertainment field, with process. more award-winning authors every year, No matter how fast our numbers grow, and with actors, musicians and others as a community we will always be smaller making their mark in Hollywood. than other larger ethnic groups in the US. The one area we are lagging behind is However, we have an opportunity to play the political arena – and that, as I pointa disproportionate role in mainstream ed out earlier, is key to cracking the mainpolitics, by coming together to exercise stream conundrum. There is no magic political clout and showing a strong colbullet to achieve this end – we just need laborative front on issues important to to broaden and widen the scope of our us. political activity. We need more members While the existence of so many Indian of our community running and winning American groups reflects our diversity, elected office. We need more people that very diversity can weaken us when securing political appointments at the we come to bridges we have been unable state and federal level. We need more to cross thus far. It is therefore imperative people becoming citizens and exercising

their parents and has been opportunities that weren’t available a generation

46 afforded

that while we pursue the politics of our choice, at a more macro level it is imperative for us as a community to put aside all of our political, ideological, and cultural differences in order to become united and to forge a politically empowered community.

This is my dream, and abiding passion: to do what I can to unite the community, to be a leader everyone looks up to as someone with integrity and who has the community’s best interests at heart.

ago.

Political involvement follows the same path.

A decade or more ago, our involvement was mostly a few wealthy members of the community giving money to candidates for little more than a photo op. Now, members of the community are getting involved early in the campaign season, getting involved on policy committees on a range of issues, and becoming part of the process rather than just observing it.

The community is also engaging on a variety of mainstream issues and not simply issues such as South Asian foreign policy. These contributions are reflected in the wide-ranging involvement of members of the community in the administration, from Preeta Bansal at the Office of Management and Budget, to Neal Katyal at the Department of Justice, to the likes of Sonal Shah, Nick Rathod, Madhuri Kommareddi and others.

Now, it is up to us to take this forward, to remain engaged and not merely sit back and wait for the next election cycle. President Obama has called upon all Americans to roll up our sleeves and help address the problems we all face, and we should all be doing our part — political involvement that is broader and deeper than just writing a check and casting one’s vote.

SAFO will be playing a role, as we plan to utilize our grassroots networks to get the community involved in various volunteer and policy initiatives. But there are already numerous organizations that we can get involved with, like SAALT (South Asian Americans Leading Together), which does great work to promote civic engagement by our community, and Indicorps, which not only helps more marginalized groups in India but also helps train the next generation of leaders from our community.

The line between civic engagement and political engagement is a blurry one, and so by continuing to stay engaged in society around us, we will ensure that we continue to grow our political voice.

Advocate Dino Teppara has taken over as chair of the Indian American Republican Council, replacing founding-chairman Dr Raghavendra Vijayanagar

Attorney Devendra ‘Dave’ Kumar is co-founder of South Asians for Obama, and served as Grassroots Co-Chair of the Obama campaign’s Asian-American Finance Committee

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India Abroad March 28, 2008 M 1

COLLECTOR’S ISSUE THE India Abroad

2007

AWARD FOR COMMUNITY SERVICE Dr NAVIN SHAH

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2007

PUBLISHER'S SPECIAL AWARD FOR EXCELLENCE Dr RENU KHATOR

THE India Abroad

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AWARD FOR LIFETIME SERVICE TO THE COMMUNITY Dr JOY CHERIAN

YOUTH ACHIEVER

2007

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PADMA DESAI AND JAGDISH BHAGWATI

PERSON YEAR OF THE

MIRA NAIR

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PERSON OF THE YEAR COLLECTOR’S ISSUE

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M 2 India Abroad March 28, 2008

Lights! Camera!

Passion!

ARTHUR J PAIS salutes director MIRA NAIR, the India Abroad Person of the Year 2007

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2007

THE India

he applause at the end of the first screening of Monsoon Wedding went on for nearly five minutes; the 300 people who had turned up for an early morning media and industry screening at the Toronto International Film Festival, it seemed, were eager to spread the word that they had seen a heart-tugging and exhilarating movie.

It is not easy to impress the media at any major film festival. For one thing, there are many outstanding films from all over the world, and after a while, having seen many films a day, your senses become jaded. So the lusty applause Monsoon Wedding received was not an insignificant matter. Most of the people at the screening were nonAsian, and I was immensely proud to see them cheer a film from India.

This was the film of which Pulitzer Prize-winning critic Roger Ebert would soon write in his syndicated column and announce on his television show: ‘This is one of those joyous films that leaps over national boundaries and celebrates universal human nature. It could be the first Indian film to win big at the North American box office.’

As I headed to the media center for a press conference with director Mira Nair, I wanted to tell her how well the film, which had arrived in Toronto after winning a major award at the Venice Film Festival, had been received. After the conference, I had an interview scheduled with her and Naseeruddin Shah who plays a key role in the film. But the media center was empty. It did not take me long to realize that I had missed the sign outside the door, which said the press conference had been cancelled.

It was September 11, 2001.

I called Mira an hour later. Like most festival-goers in Toronto that terrible day, I had been also reaching out to my friends, colleagues and family in New York, praying they were all safe. I was sure Mira was also doing the same.

I had to call several times before I could speak to her. She

had been calling her friends and family in New York, where she has lived for more than 20 years, she said. They were safe, she added, but she couldn’t be sure if anyone of her students at Columbia University or dozens of people she had worked were safe. She was worried about what would happen next.

I wanted to ask Mira if we could do the interview the next day or a few days later.

She insisted we should talk that day. She told me she would make sure that Naseeruddin Shah too would talk to me.

I remember her saying something to the effect that the attack was devastating and tragic and could lead to war but life would still go on. Art, I recall her saying, has the means of healing the deepest wounds, and her film Monsoon Wedding was a film that was also in a way about healing.

Mira spoke to me for nearly an hour about the film though the publicist had said it would be a 30-minute interview. Among many things, she spoke about how Sabrina Dhawan, a student at Columbia, had proposed the story about a family against the backdrop of a wedding,

FROM THE EDITORS Roger Ebert, that doyen of film critics, once wrote: 'This is one of those joyous films that leaps over national boundaries and celebrates universal human nature.'

The Pulitzer Prize-winning critic was writing about Monsoon Wedding, the riotously colorful 2001 sleeper hit about a Punjabi family in the throes of a wedding.

He could just as well have been writing about its director, Mira Nair, whose cre-

and how she and Sabrina had worked on expanding the scope of the project, making sexual abuse in the family one of the film’s key factors.

She said her first feature film Salaam Bombay!, which was the second Indian feature film to be nominated for an Oscar following 1957’s Mother India, was about street children. But how many people are aware that there are hundreds of young boys and girls across India who are victims of sexual abuse by relatives and family friends, she asked.

Mira could not find investors for the film; people told her it won’t work. In India, the film would not be welcomed because it was revealing dirty secrets about sexual abuse in a family. And in the West, some wondered if people were willing to see a film about an Indian wedding. So she had made the film on a very tight budget investing much of her own money. It cost less than $2 million in comparison to her 1997 film Kama Sutra, which cost over $3 million and The Perez Family which cost about $10 million in 1995.

Of course, she would prove the doubters wrong.

Monsoon Wedding would make about $14 million in North America, and some $16 million abroad. In India too it would have a decent run.

“Mira is like me,” producer Ismail Merchant one told me.

“If she were a chef, she would make a banquet out of a straw. She makes a small budget film look as if she has spent quite a fortune on it.”

In Toronto, I marveled at Mira’s passion and courage.

And how she would quickly rise above setbacks and personal crises, and serve the cause — be it teaching filmmaking at Columbia, speaking her mind against the war in Iraq or making documentaries on a wide ranging subjects including India’s laughter club. Not to forget the AIDSJaaGO omnibus she produced a year ago, directing one of its segments.

Early in her career she had announced a biopic of Buddha. Around the same time, Bernardo Bertolucci too announced a Buddha project. Though his Little Buddha was different in scope from Mira’s project, financiers started worrying if there was room for two Buddha films. Mira then turned her attention to other projects including a short film, and The Perez Family.

Al Pacino was to star in the film which told the story of how a few Cuban refugees find hope, love and livelihood in their new home in America. But when Pacino was not available, she cast then up and coming actor Alfred Molina. “I have always believed a well-made film doesn’t need to have big names,” she told me not too long ago. “But I have nothing against movie stars. I admire people like Johnny Depp and Amitabh Bachchan (who will both feature in Shantaram, which she will shoot in Mumbai next year) who are willing to step out of the box so often.”

When her Vanity Fair — the Reese Witherspoon starrer, based on William Makepeace Thackeray’s classic and a book Mira had loved when she was introduced to it at age 16 by a nun in school — did not thrill many critics and was a box-office disaster, and talk of an Oscar nomination evaporated the week the reviews came out, she did not despair.

She looked at her many options but decided to do a proj-

ative leitmotif has been a joyous, transcendent celebration of the universal nature of mankind.

Her oeuvre is too well known, too dearly loved, to merit extended iteration: Salaam Bombay!, the 1998 breakout film that trumpeted to the world the emergence of a major talent and broke a 34year-old drought, becoming only the second Indian film to be nominated for an Oscar; Mississippi Masala, the 1991 film that proved a vehicle for the as-yet-unremarked talent of Denzel Washington; The

M 3 Perez Family, which in 1995 lined up stellar talents like Marisa Tomei, Alfred Molina, Chaz Palminteri and Anjelica Huston under the director's increasingly assured helm; Kama Sutra; Monsoon Wedding…

The way to a country's heart is through its pop culture - its art and music and sport and film; while achievements in academia and other areas are admired, it is through pop culture that communities connect, to the cause of greater under-

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M 2 ect she had never considered making before, with bereavement playing a key role in it.

Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake had hit her deeply when she read it soon after her motherin-law’s death following a botched surgery in New York.

“There are so many compelling movie projects I keep weighing each month,” she had said. “I am relieved when something like The Namesake insists I take it up.”

In Hollywood where there are just about a dozen women filmmakers, Mira has broken into this elite club. With the Johnny Depp-starrer Shantaram on her hands, she is also on the Alist of Hollywood directors.

While chatting with her last year before the release of The Namesake, she did not hide her joy at the prospects of directing a big film for a major Hollywood studio, Warner Bros. But she repeats again that she is not overawed by big budget films. She had been offered Harry Potter and the Phoenix, she said, but she was keen to do The Namesake, which at $5 million had a minuscule budget compared to the $150 million plus Harry Potter.

As for being on Hollywood’s A-list of directors, she has said: ‘I’ve never sought to be on an A-list.

I’ve done my own thing and my own thing has thankfully now brought me an audience.’

Hollywood’s A-list includes directors like Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, Clint Eastwood and James Cameron. There are just about 50 such directors in Hollywood. Often, an A-list director is privileged to have his or her name above a film’s title.

When I think of her achievements, I think of her as a writer and filmmaker, as a professor and jury member at major film festivals like Berlin and Cannes. I think of her as an artist prepared to work on different kinds of entertainment — feature films, television films, documentaries…

Now she is transforming Monsoon Wedding into a Broadway musical. Knowing Mira well, I am not surprised that she is not worried by the failure of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Bombay Dreams to recoup its $12 million investment. And I admire her as a pioneer who started a film school in Uganda, where her husband Columbia Professor Mahmood Mamdani grew up, that awards fellowships to about 20 screenwriters.

I wonder who else from India has achieved so much in world cinema.

“It doesn’t matter where I make my films,” she once told me, “I want to make films about the people around me. If we don’t tell our own stories, no one else will. “ There have also been times Mira feels her work has not been fully appreciated either in India or in America.

She is known for her films but she wonders how many people know that her television film Hysterical Blindness, made for HBO, had about 20 million viewers, six times more than the viewers for her hit film, Monsoon Wedding.

Made in 2002 and set in working class New Jersey in 1987, the film starred Uma Thurman (who also produced it), Juliette Lewis and Gena Rowlands. Thurman and Lewis play single women looking for love in all the wrong places; Rowlands is Thurman’s mother. She upsets her daughter when she finds Mr Right. The film received great critical acclaim, won three Emmy awards and Uma Thurman a Golden Globe.

Now ready to make Shantaram, the biggest film of her career which will star Johnny Depp as an Australian fugitive in India who undergoes life transformation after a raft of dangerous missions and criminal activities, Mira believes she is still an independent filmmaker. Though Shanta-

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‘Mira has walked many paths around the world’ roducer Lydia Dean Pilcher, who has made eight movies with Mira P Nair, tells Archana Masih about their

has children, has a father, has lived in different places, it’s just a story about that stage in life when you investigate your own identity and the relationship with your family and how to separate and how hold on to it.

Mira has irrepressible energy. One of the most rewarding parts of my relationship with Mira is the amounts of history that have crossed our paths within. We all grow with the experiences that we have and the significance of what we do becomes much deeper, the older we get.

I think in terms of looking at Mira’s body of work and what she’s accomplished, she has a very strong connection with telling stories that connect with her in a very deep personal way. These stories come from a personal vision, which are the most important stories to tell. I look forward to making movies with her that tell these authentic universal stories.

18-year working relationship: My relationship with Mira is longstanding and we are in the process of making our eighth movie together. Mira is an incredibly charismatic woman.

She is a very talented filmmaker. She is passionate about her stories. Her strongest movies are those that are told from her heart. She crosses different cultures and brings people together. She tells universal stories about the ties that bind people — and shares strong political convictions and aesthetic values that I deeply respect.

My association with Mira began 18 years ago when one of the producers I was working with had been an executive producer on Salaam Bombay! and introduced me to Mira. She was getting ready to put Mississippi Masala and we ended up A scene from Salaam Bombay! doing this movie together. The rest is history.

Since Mississippi Masala, there are many different kinds of films we’ve worked together. We did Kama Sutra, a deep historical piece set in India, The Perez Family — a Cuban migration story, Vanity Fair — based on the Thackeray novel, Hysterical Blindness which was in the industrial parts of New Jersey, The Namesake which was a very elegiac, expansive story between India and America. Now we are up in Toronto working on a film on Amelia Earhart with Hillary Swank. The combination of the eclectic stream of material tells us that Mira has walked many paths around the world and is connected to people of all walks of life.

I have a special place in my heart for all of the films that I have produced with Mira. The Namesake, which is the most recent, has a special strong value because Mira and I have raised our children together. The Namesake has a particular resonance for anyone, who

‘Mira just inspires you’ rrfan Khan, who acted in Mira Nair’s first film Salaam Bombay, The INamesake, and in her latest short film, Kosher Vegetarian, co-starring Natalie Portman, tells Vaihayasi P Daniel why he loves working with the director: When you talk to Mira about a character you realize she knows every character completely. She is compassionately attached to the character.

Like when we were doing Migration (a short film produced by Mira Nair promoting AIDS awareness) I was playing the role of a gay. I asked her, ‘How I should play the role?’ The way she described it! She said, ‘Irrfan, this is a beautiful love story. You take it as a love story.’ It suddenly gave me a different way to look at the character.

Mira has lived her life in both worlds — here (in India) and in the Western countries. She has a very interesting way of seeing these worlds and that’s why when she tells a story it is very interesting. She can laugh at it. She can be compassionate.

Mira just inspires you. She shoots a lot in a day’s time, which in the beginning you feel unnerved about. But then you get used to it. She does her work with a lot of speed. She is a person I have been fortunate enough to be with for a long time. I have learned a lot, so many things. She is so positive.

Mira does a lot of multitasking. That’s unique. While she is directing a film she knows what is being cooked in her house!

She is equally focused and serious and committed about everything. She does so many things at a time with an equal amount of intensity and sincerity. And love! And compassion.

She is constantly growing. Mira does films on a small budg-

et, which look like (they have been made on a bigger budget).

She approaches everything through her heart. She is very compassionate about a story and the character. And that’s what she wants from the actor (doing the character). She is not shy of showing emotion and she wants her actors to be immediate.

She brings out things in you (as an actor) from areas you would not have gone to on your own. She challenges you to bring out something extra.

You know (for The Namesake) we were arguing. I never wanted to have a Bengali accent. I wanted to play it the way I speak in English. But she forced me, she forced me. We argued. I felt (Ashoke Ganguli, chief protagonist Gogol’s father in Jhumpa Lahiri’s book of the same name was) a guy who has been teaching and his job was to teach and therefore he must have got rid of the accent quite early because his job is to communicate. She said. ‘No, you see Jhumpa’s father. He has been living here for 30 years he still has an accent’. That’s why she asked me to meet Jhumpa’s father. And that really, really convinced me and helped me a lot.

Whatever Mira does is typical Mira Nair. Monsoon Wedding is a stunning film. When I was doing The Namesake I used to think this will not go beyond Monsoon Wedding. I never realized it was a completely different story that would have a different impact. I was reading the book (The Namesake) at that time. I never thought that this role (the father’s) can become so important. I thought this is Gogol’s story and this guy (the father) is just there. I never thought this guy would be a major league kind of character as it turned out.

I would like to keep working with her. All my life! She makes you feel so important. She brings out things (in you) that you will never push yourself to do. And it is a pleasure to see her energy. It charges you.

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M 3 ram could cost $100 million — over $20 million above the average cost of a Hollywood film — “I still remain an independent filmmaker at heart,” she says.

It has been 20 years since she made her first feature, Salaam Bombay! but Mira, who turned 50 October 15, still gets excited about each new venture, as if she is making a film for the first time in her life. “I fought long ago to have the final cut on my films. I am never intimidated by the prospect of making a big budget film. What is important to me is whether I have made an honest film.”

When the Hollywood writers strike derailed the Shantaram shoot, which was to have started last month in India, she told me, using a Punjabi saying, “My mother always said there are good reasons for things to get postponed. I know my mother is right.”

In typical Mira Nair mode, she took up another project, Amelia. The story of legendary Ameri-can aviator Amelia Earhart, who disappeared while flying over the Pacific Ocean in 1937 in an attempt to fly around the world, the film stars Oscar winner Hilary Swank (Million Dollar Baby, Boy’s Don’t Cry). Mira has also just finished shooting Kosher Vegetarian, a 5-minute segment for the film New York, I Love You. The film celebrates encountering love within the five boroughs of New York City.

Mira joins the Oscar-winning Coen brothers (No Country for Old Men), Woody Allen (best director Oscar for Annie Hall), Alexander Payne, Gus Van Sant, Alfonso Cuaron and Wes Craven on the project. Her segment stars Irrfan Khan and Natalie Portman.

Having known Mira by then for about 20 years, I was once again struck in Toronto by how in the middle of the post 9/11 chaos, she persisted and went on with her work.

She could not have known then she would return to Toronto — a city that has welcomed most of her movies at its world famous annual film festival — with another film a year later.

The film 11’09’01 brought together 11 filmmakers from across the world; each had 11 minutes to tell a story about September 11.

Some people had warned Mira not to join the project, which was going to be produced by a French company.

There were fears that the film, which had segments by moviemakers like Amos Gitai, Sean Penn, Youssef Chahine and Danis Tanovic (whose No Man’s Land won the Oscar for best foreign film the year Lagaan was nominated) could have ‘anti-American’ sentiments.

Mira’s segment was indeed political but she chose to tell a very American story — the fear of strangers. Like the other films in the omnibus, hers too was 11 minutes, 9 seconds and one frame long. It focused on a Pakistani family in Brooklyn and told a real story. A young man in that family has not returned home. There is a suspicion that he has been involved with radical Islamists. But soon we realize that he had been killed trying to save lives.

She says she can never stop being fascinated by characters who are not fully part of society, who are outsiders for most part, and who are striving to find a place in the society they live in. She is intrigued by those characters, never mind their ethnicity. It all goes back to her upbringing, she says. A Punjabi, her father ‘anglicized’ the family name to Nair. “In the beginning, soon after Salaam Bombay! I used to be invited to so many functions run by immigrants from Kerala,” she said. “Even today, there are some people who believe I am born to parents from Kerala or married someone from there.”

Rourkela, Orissa-born Mira once said she grew up in a very small town ‘which is remote even by Indian standards.’ And that is one of the reasons, she says, ‘I always dreamed of the world.’

Though she is very much a New Yorker, who lives in Manhattan with her husband Mahmood Mamdani, a dis-

tinguished professor at Columbia and their only child Zohran, she feels she is an outsider from time to time.

There are many things about America she just cannot understand says Mira, who first came to this country as a student at Harvard in 1976. She does not understand, for instance, why there is so much of fuss about Christmas trees in America. Is one surprised then that the most poignant moments in her acclaimed film The Namesake unfolds against the background of Christmas?

Mira, whose teenage son Zohran was instrumental in her casting Kal Penn in The Namesake having loved the actor in the comedy Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle, says she loves directing children.

‘I always like to reveal the fact that the emperor has no clothes,’ she is quoted as saying on IMDB.com. ‘And children are best at that. They teach us how to see the world in that sense. They are without artifice; they see it for what it is. I am drawn to that ruthless honesty.’

I also remember her telling me in 1988 that she was her own person and she would always remain so, whether she made hit films or films that did not do well. I have never been to her home after that day. But whenever we have met at a media briefing or at a social event, she never fails to say a ‘hello.’ If I have written critically about any of her films, say her sexual fable Kama Sutra which I found gorgeous but lacking a soul, she has not been resentful.

Last year, she decided to give me a little extra time for an interview about The Namesake even though the studio had arranged for over a dozen television and press interviews the same day. She put her arm around me and told the studio guy “Arthur and I have known each other for over 20 years.” I told her be-fore The Namesake was released that she should have black chilies to ward off the nazar (the fabled Indian black eye). She was into so many exciting things, I said, including getting ready with the Shanta-ram script. But she was excited and anxious about The Namesake.

Despite the excellent ovation the film received at the annual Toronto film festival, she wasn’t sure then how audiences would react to it. She need not have worried.

The Namesake was a critical and commercial success.

A scene from Mira Nair’s much talked about film, The Namesake

‘Mira is always interjecting romance into everything’ Her energy is incredible. She can do 10 things in a day. llyson Johnson, who edited Monsoon Wedding, She can come in and out of the editing room, go to an A Vanity Fair and The Namesake, interview, a luncheon meeting, come back and get right spoke to Archana Masih about the Mira Nair she knows: Mira always translates her passion for life in her films. She is a very vibrant person and has enough energy for an entire crew.

We met on Monsoon Wedding.

We had one meeting and I was hired for the job. She went off to India after that for shooting and I didn’t see her till the shooting ended. So our encounters for the first couple of months were over the phone from India.

We got to know each other in the editing room. We had only met once and we were tossed into the edit room together to finish the film and get to know each other — as people and as filmmakers. Monsoon Wedding is very special to me because our working relationship began there.

On the sets, Mira is smiling and ready to go every single day, doesn’t matter how long she has worked the night before. She is the same way in the editing room; she always wants to try new things and wants to have a passion in her films.

Mira is always interjecting romance into everything.

I find Mira’s films incredibly photographic. When I edit her film, I can’t just think about the dialogue, acting, camera work — I have to think about every frame. When we work together, Mira speaks of the individual frame because of her photographic way of looking at things.

back into the editing and creative process.

Wherever she happens to be at the moment, that’s where her creative mind is. Her concentration is amazing.

I can never forget that day when we were just about to lock the picture on Monsoon Wedding. We were just making little tiny changes and Mira got up to wipe the dust off the television screen. As she touched it with the cloth, the static electricity made the entire computer blow up. Literally, one edit before the final cut of Monsoon Wedding, the computer went down and it was down for days.

We both couldn’t believe it. It was just a burst of laughter and devastation because we were so close to cutting the negative.

I have a soft spot in my heart for Monsoon Wedding. It was our first collaboration and a beautiful film filled with life and love. Salaam Bombay! was the first Mira film I saw. The way it was conceived, the performances were so real, believable and heart-wrenching. The Perez Family had incredible visuals and a wonderful love story.

Working with Mira has brought me closer to India.

Though I haven’t been there, I feel as if it’s become a huge part of my life. Actually when my son was born I was thinking of having a traditional naming ceremony because the scene in The Namesake was so wonderful and touching. Working with Mira has brought me so much closer to India in every aspect — from clothing, food and tradition. When Mira goes to India she always comes back with a gift for me. I can’t wait to go there and experience it myself.

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‘She is this modern Renaissance woman’ abrina Dhawan, who wrote Monsoon Wedding, tells S Vaihayasi P Daniel about the Mira Nair she knows: I was studying screenwriting at Columbia (University) and Mira came to the department because she had just moved to New York from South Africa at the time. She had asked the Chair (of the department) who the gifted students were. They said there was an Indian girl. So I met her. I had written a script for a short film. She read the script and really liked it. She said we should work together on something. So then I wrote Monsoon Wedding while I was at school. I showed it to her. She liked it and then…

(Meeting her for the first time) was great. I was in awe of her. She was this really accomplished Indian director.

And she was female. She was almost like a role model. I

thought she would be a little more intimidating. But the thing about Mira that is so fabulous is that she is so warm and so accessible. No sense of ego. I was just a student.

When I was writing the script it was half in Hindi and half in English. That makes it a foreign film, so it becomes less commercial in America. So (I thought) maybe it should be all in English. (I asked her), ‘Do you think I should write it all in English?’

She said, ‘No’. Be truthful. That’s how we think. That’s how it is. She wanted the film to be as truthful as possible.

It is fiction but within it should be accurate. (She said), ‘Do it truthfully’. That’s a really brave thing to do… you know the idea of being truthful to your material.

When you make a pretty low budget film — even by the standards of low budget films — to get people to work for you and get it all together is so impossibly hard. But Mira just manages to make things happen. Whatever it takes.

Whether it is getting great talent on board or great crew or figuring out the logistics of shooting in Delhi (which is not

‘The first word that comes to mind is sensitivity’ ira Nair, director-composer Vishal Bhardwaj tells Ronjita Kulkarni, is his favourite director among M his contemporaries. Bharadwaj will compose the score for Nair’s Shantaram, the Johnny Depp starrer, which will be shot in Mumbai next year: When did you first meet Mira?

We were supposed to meet at a film festival. I couldn’t reach on time because I had missed my flight. So Mira presented my film, Maqbool. She loved the film.

We met for the first time on stage, at a filmmaking conference in New York. From that day, we’ve shared a very special relationship. Mira has been my favorite director. I’ve learnt so much just by being with her.

I remember a few months back I was struggling to find an idea for my next film.

I found an idea and bounced it off Mira. She was quiet for a long time, for hours.

Then she said, ‘Please don’t make this film’ and gave me her reasons for it. They were valid creative reasons that I hadn’t thought of. I thanked my stars that I know Mira and she saved me from making that film!

She is the only director among my contemporaries whose films I look forward to.

What are your conversations like?

We bitch a lot (laughs)!

Frankly, we talk about trying to surpass our own work, because your work becomes your enemy. She has to surpass The Namesake and I have to surpass Omkara.

We talk about cinema, stories, other films that we have seen. I’m very fortunate that she shares her scripts with me. We talk about music. She has a lovely ear for music. Look at the music she has in her films. See the background score of Namesake, of any of her films.

Does she give you feedback about your music?

Yes, she loved Omkara’s music.

In fact, when we were working on Shantaram’s music, she told me she wanted a song better than Beedi jalaile.

What kind of music will you have for Shantaram?

We will have two Sufi songs and one item number.

So will we see Johnny Depp doing an item number?

Yes, I pray and I hope! Doing an item number for Johnny Depp will be a pleasure!

As a director yourself, what do you think of her directorial style?

The first word that comes to my mind is sensitivity.

Our medium is to show our sensitivity, either as a composer, writer, director. We have to show that we’re more sensitive than you.

Your favorite Mira film?

I’m torn between Monsoon Wedding and Namesake.

Also, Salaam Bombay. It has such great raw energy. It’s good to see films about our country, from her point of view, which is very fresh and unseen.

the easiest thing in the world)… You just really learn from her just how important it is to not to give up. And to really find a way to make the film you want to make without either giving up or giving in.

There are so many (surprising) things about Mira. For one, she is extremely warm. She is capable of multi-tasking on a level that few people in the world are. She is extremely brave, extremely strong. She not only has a full-on life as a professional filmmaker, she is also a full-on wife, mother and homemaker. She has a beautiful home, which is all hers. She has raised a fantastic son who I think is her greatest production. She has a huge body of friends and family. She has a very welcoming home. She cooks really well. In a way she is this modern Renaissance woman. She can really do everything.

‘Her warmth with people gets the best performances out of them’ ewsweek recently called Ronnie N Screwvala the Jack Warner of India’s motion picture industry. Chairman of the UTV entertainment company, he co-produced The Namesake and discusses the experience of working with Mira Nair with Ronjita Kulkarni: How did The Namesake happen?

Ever since I saw Salaam Bombay, I knew at some stage when we (UTV) started making movies we needed to do something with Mira Nair. I stayed in touch with her, exchanging ideas, understanding her work, seeing if we could bring her cinema to India.

Later, we met, and talked specifically about The Namesake. The film snowballed very fast, which was the interesting part.

Normally, you know, we have a great conversation; then she goes back to New York and I come back to my office, and things go on. But in this case, she had the energy; we

pursued it, and it moved very fast. It took about three or four months.

I’m really glad that we started off our relationship with Namesake. Hopefully, we’ll do more (films) in the future.

What do you think about her style of filmmaking?

The key element is the warmth that she exudes behind the camera, and with people.

Her warmth with people gets the best performances out of them. She has a very insightful nature. She’s also very clear about what she wants and how she wants to portray what she wants.

How does Mira come across to you as a person?

She’s very forthright, very blunt, very clear, very frank. But it’s all in the nice kind of way. There’s an endearing quality about her.

What has the working relationship been like?

At the end of the day, it’s really the director’s vision that you’re backing all the way.

The relationship has been very communicative and open; just-pick-up-the-phoneand-talk-when-you-wish kind of relationship.

There were changes from the original cast.

How does she take the ups and downs?

I think that’s what Mira’s temperament is about. There are challenges but it’s a moment that’s passed and then you move on. Those are the key qualities of leadership — that you don’t get bogged down by situations.

Yes, she had some original ideas about the cast, but it worked out well.

She keeps saying there were angels on my side.

In retrospect, one could not have imagined a better cast.

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‘She’s the best’

she does. Mira is the farthest you can get from lazy. I get exhausted sometimes just looking at her. I’m quite the opposite in that way. running along a quiet lane. The Another thing is that, as a filmsound of suburban trains every maker, she’s very well-quipped to few minutes adds its own charm deal with all aspects of filmmaking, to the neighborhood. whether it’s music, acting, cineAnd it’s a very special neighmatography, production design, borhood. It is here where Mira sound. She’s a complete filmmakNair’s celebrated film, Salaam er.

Bombay, was made.

She’s very humane and kind. She This is also where Nair’s friend remembers everybody’s names — and collaborator, scriptwriter from the crew to the spot boys. And Sooni Taraporevala used to she can meet the same spot boy five live before she got married to dentist Dr Firdaus years later, and still remember his Batlvala. name. I admire that about her.

Taraporevala, a distinguished photographer who has She has a strong opinion about every aspect of her worked with Nair on Salaam Bombay!, Mississippi films. She pays attention to every little detail — like Masala, My Own Country and The Namesake, met the what color someone’s chunni should be, who will be director at Harvard more than 30 years ago. cast in the smallest role, what the sound’s going to be In a conversation with Ronjita Kulkarni, she prolike. vides glimpses of Mira Nair that only a friend of long She’s done a tremendous variety of films, which I standing could. don’t think any Indian filmmaker has done. She’s How did Mira and you first meet?

We met at Harvard. I got a scholarship to study at Mississippi Masala starred Denzel Washington and Sarita Choudhury done films like Salaam Bombay! and then films like Vanity Fair; she’s worked with big time Hollywood Harvard in 1975. Mira came a year later. We had similar interests. Mira is a great storyteller and she loves to various facets of their life, hung out with them through actors, as well as non-professionals.

Tell us about Mira Nair, the person. make people laugh. And I loved to be her audience! I still the day.

Mira likes to make people happy and she likes to be I worked very closely with Mira on the script, and we do! refined it. We had a month-long workshop with (theater happy. She loves eating. She loves good wine. She loves How did Salaam Bombay! happen? beauty around her; she’s very sensuous. She has this talWe went to Hyderabad where her documentary India guru) Barry John, and the script was further refined. ent for making her surroundings beautiful. You can put How did The Namesake happen?

Cabaret was showing at a film festival. After seeing the She read Jhumpa Lahiri’s book on the plane. We Mira in a room like this and in five days, it’ll be aesthetireactions to India Cabaret, we decided to change course.

We wanted to do something more relevant, something dropped two scripts — Homebody Kabul and The cally gorgeous.

How do you rate her among her peers in India?

Impressionist — to make this film. that needed to be done.

The best! Are you kidding! Without a doubt!

I had already read Namesake. The story was so familiar How difficult did Mira find her directorial Why do you think Mira is the only Indian who’s to us. It was about our lives — between Cambridge and debut?

We didn’t realize how difficult it would be. If we had India. Even though we are not Bengali, both of us felt that made it in the West?

I think it is because of her variety of films. She’s done known, wiser counsel may have prevailed. But it was the we were born to adapt this book. documentaries, socially relevant films, big budget Is she a difficult person to work with? first time we were making a film, so we all jumped in head No, she’s not difficult to work with. She has very definite Hollywood films. And she makes all her films hers. She first.

The challenges were immense. Mira was not only direct- ideas but obviously, anyone with any talent does. She’s a puts herself into the film. All her films have the Mira ing the film, she was also producing it. So she had to raise perfectionist. On the sets, she can be a very hard taskmas- touch. I haven’t seen any other Indian filmmaker who has done that wide range of work. ter. But I don’t mean that in a negative way. the money at the same time.

Mira turned 50 last October. Has she changed Tell us more about Mira Nair, the director.

What was the scripting process like?

I have never seen anyone with as much energy as her. from what she was before?

Mira and I hung out with street children for a couple of She has become a little mellower now. months, some of whom lived down the road. We explored She has a huge appetite for life, a huge passion for what n the heart of south Mumbai is a Parsi quarter with old-style Ihouses and an Irani restaurant

‘She’s very sure of what she wants’ hen Monsoon Wedding released in 2001, Mira Nair’s W film stunned audiences worldwide with its raw appeal, brilliant cast and warm, realistic approach.

Actor and singer Vasundhara Das, who played a blushing bride in love with another man, spoke to Ronjita Kulkarni about Monsoon Wedding and Mira Nair.

How did you bag Monsoon Wedding?

Monsoon Wedding was my second film, after Hey! Ram. Mira gave me a call and told me to have tea with her at Mumbai’s Sun ’n’ Sand hotel. Being as green as I was, I expected to meet her and have tea, only to find 50-odd girls waiting for their screen test. That’s when I figured that I was there for a screen test.

Thankfully, one of her assistant directors saw me in line and ushered me in to meet Mira. She wanted me to read a scene from the film — it was the opening scene when we were having a conversation in the car. I read it absolutely unaware of what I should be doing. When I finished, she looked at me and said, “You’re it!” She came over and

Vasundhara Das and Parvin Dabas in Monsoon Wedding hugged me. That’s how I got the role.

Since this was your second film, how much did Mira help you?

Coming to an ensemble film like Monsoon Wedding after Hey! Ram was very a different experience. There were so many people! As a director she had to have her wits about herself at every given moment because there was so much going around in each scene. It was really challenging for her as well.

How exactly did she help you?

For one, she held a workshop for two weeks, which real-

ly helped me. In India, we don’t really do workshops. Except for very few filmmakers, they don’t insist on the cast getting to know each other before the shoot.

Also, if we had anything to add or improvise during the rehearsals, we were encouraged (to do so).

What was your toughest scene in the film?

The romantic scenes were difficult especially because we hadn’t known each other up until the point we had our rehearsals. So I had to depend on Mira a lot for support.

She would help me with my toughest scenes with humor.

What is Mira like?

She’s very sure of what she wants. She has already pictured the outcome. Her confidence spills over to the rest of us. She would say that it’s your baby as well — you should put your best foot forward so that I can do my best as well. That was the kind of teamwork that she wanted.

She’s a perfectionist. She’s either in it 100 percent or not in it at all. That’s one thing that I took away from Monsoon Wedding.

She was a bit of both — someone who would listen to your woes on the set and also a taskmaster.

What’s your favorite Mira film, besides Monsoon Wedding?

The Namesake. I loved the simplicity. And the fact that she got Irrfan and Tabu to bring out the characters like they did.

Abroad

PERSON OF THE YEAR

M 9 India Abroad March 28, 2008

2007

THE India

COLLECTOR’S ISSUE

Mira’s Milestones 1957: Mira Nair is born in Orissa, India, October 15. Her father is employed in Rourkela, Orissa, as a civil servant. She has her early schooling at Catholic schools, including Tara Hall in Shimla, Himachal Pradesh. She studies sociology at Delhi University, where she becomes involved in political street theater and performs for three years in an amateur drama company. Her interest in films is sharpened by her studies at Harvard.

1979: Makes the documentary Jama Masjid Street Journal.

1983: So Far From India focuses on Ashok Sheth, an immigrant who has come to New York to seek a better life for his family. Once here, he postpones sending them money, which is scarce. He loses his peace and the culture he grew up in. Meanwhile, his wife, who is dependent on her inlaws, is losing her morale. The tension mounts when Ashok journeys to India to confront the situation.

1988: After four well-received documentaries, including Children of a Desired Sex and India Cabaret, Mira makes her first feature film Salaam Bombay! It wins the Camera D’Or (for best first feature) and the Prix du Publique (for most popular entry) at the Cannes Film Festival and is also nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. It wins 25 other international awards. Critic Roger Ebert wrote: ‘Mira Nair has been able to make a film that has the everyday, unforced reality of documentary, and yet the emotional power of great drama. Salaam Bombay! is one of the best films of the year.’ Made for less than $1.5 million, the film earns about $10 million worldwide.

1990: Member of the jury at the Cannes Film Festival.

1991: Mississippi Masala, a film about Indian exiles from Idi Amin’s Uganda, who are already prejudiced against blacks, trying to make a living in the South. Imagine what happens when Mina (Sarita Choudhury), the daughter of the motel owners, falls for an African American carpet cleaner named Demetrius (Denzel Washington). The film gets very good reviews and becomes a medium range success, earning about $10 million worldwide.

1991: Son Zohran is born with her Ugandan husband Mahmood Mamdani, a Columbia University professor.

1993: The Day the Mercedes Became a Hat, a 10-minute film inspired by the assassination of Chris Hani, leader of the South African Communist Party. It is shown as part of the television omnibus, Human Family.

1994: Her first feature film with no Indian connection, The Perez Family, focuses on a group of Cuban refugees who become a ‘family’ as the US Immigration and Naturalization Service gives families priority over others. A political prisoner, who hasn’t seen his wife for 20 years, and a disaffected sugarcane cutter fall in love. The film cost about $10 million, a big budget for Nair, got mixed reviews and did not do well at the box-office. Later, she would say it was the only film she could not have ownership of, and that she was not allowed the final cut.

1997: Some people were shocked by the nudity in Kama Sutra. Nair saw it as a vehicle about empowering women. The film did modest business in America, earning about $5 million. It earned nearly $10 million abroad. ‘Although this story is about the pursuit of perfect love, it’s also about the enlightenment of women in a world dominated by men,’ wrote Desson Howe in The Washington Post. ‘She (Nair) makes this story (set in India’s 16th century) feel ancient yet applicable to modern times.’

1998: My Own Country, a television film based on Abraham Verghese’s moving memoir of his years in a small Tennessee town where he becomes the doctor, therapist and confessor to the first flush of AIDS victims, failed to capture the humanity of the book.

1999: Laughing Club of India. Mira often speaks talks about serendipity.

How she was stuck in traffic on Mumbai’s famous Marine Drive, fighting Mira Nair directs Reese Witherspoon in Vanity Fair

M2 standing, and affection.

In that sense, Mira Nair - whose films have brought unabashedly Indian cultural influences and grammar to increasingly mainstream Hollywood themes - has served as the bridge, connecting mainstream America with Indian culture and, through her work, creating for the Indian American community a greater share of the mainstream mind space.

That Mira Nair is increasingly beloved of Hollywood is evident in the fact that she - one of the very few women directors to establish a bridgehead in a male-dominated industry - is increasingly in demand by big studios, for prestigious projects.

M 10

In the upcoming Shantaram, two screen icons of the order of Amitabh Bachchan and Johnny Depp will take her direction; she is currently helming Oscar winner Hillary Swank in Amelia, a biopic of legendary aviator Amelia Earhart.

More recently, for the film New York, I Love You, which celebrates love within the city's five boroughs, Mira joins an elite list of directors including Oscar winners Ethan and Joel Coen and Woody Allen, besides Gus Van Sant, Wes Craven and Alexander Payne.

Nowhere is this acceptance of Mira Nair more in evidence than through her 2007 release, The Namesake, based on Jhumpa Lahiri's Pulitzerwinning book of the same name. While her 2004 effort Vanity Fair, wrought out of the

‘Mira’s energy is contagious, it’s infectious’ F

arhan Akhtar says he does not know Mira Nair “exceeding well,” but loves her films. The young director spoke to Ronjita Kulkarni about the Mira Nair, and the short film he made for her: Tell us about Positive, the AIDS awareness film you did with her.

She called me when I was in Goa and asked me straightaway, in true Mira style, if I would be interested in making a film for AIDS awareness. I was more than happy to do it.

Were there many discussions about the kind of film you would make?

Yes, there were a lot of discussions after she first spoke with me. By then, all three directors (Vishal Bharadwaj, Santosh Sivan, Mira herself) had finished filming their movies, so she was quite clear on what aspect of the issue those films were dealing with. So we had to think of something new.

Zoya, Rajesh Devraj (who also wrote the film) and I zeroed in on the idea of what a family goes through when the bread-earner is diagnosed with being HIV positive.

Mira was constantly in the loop. A lot of her inputs were incorporated because she has a great and respected knack of story-telling. Besides, she’s done films of similar duration. For me, it was a totally new experience to do a film below 15 minutes. I’m more used to the three-hour variety!

How does Mira come across to you?

She’s a very forthcoming person and honest with her views. She’s very large-hearted and helpful. I can’t claim to say that I know her exceeding well but at the same time, I know that if I need to speak with her, I would not have to think twice. That’s how comfortable she makes me feel about herself.

Mira’s energy is contagious, it’s infectious. When you’re around her, you’re taken in by her — whether she’s talking about her work or work that she’s seen somewhere, or your work. She has the ability to excite you, which reflects in the way she makes her movies. She has the ability to make you think about things.

She’s fiercely independent and confident about what she wants to make.

Whether a film is successful or not is secondary to your input into it, and her work has always been above par. As a director, you can’t ask for much more.

What do you think about Mira’s style of direction?

What’s great about Mira is that there really is no style. She adapts herself to what the script demands. She’s great with actors, with the use of background music, her edits are good. She recognizes a good story. She makes sure that once she’s read a book or script she keeps the essence of that alive in her film.

That’s not an easy thing to do.

What is your favorite Mira film?

Monsoon Wedding, Salaam Bombay! and The Namesake — in that order.

I was really blown away by Monsoon Wedding. It’s a really simple story.

And the way she made it, because I know how she made it — how quickly it was shot, and how she put it all together. It was moving and had a lot to say about Indian culture. It was very refreshing.

I watched Salaam Bombay! for the first time when I was very young. It did not have that kind of impact on me then as it does when I see it now.

Mira adapted the book extremely well in The Namesake. For me, the performances of Irrfan and Tabu are standout performances by Indian actors in any film that we have seen in the recent past.

Anything you admire about her?

Her independence, her belief in her work, her sheer determination to make sure that the project that she’s making will be made.

India-born William Makepeace Thackeray's iconic novel, indicated through its big budget and the casting of A-lister Reese Witherspoon in the lead that Hollywood had firmly embraced Mira Nair as one of its own, The Namesake raised acceptance to a whole new level.

Across the country, the mainstream joined with the community to appreciate a film that, as its tag line 'Two worlds. One Journey' indicates, was a touching portrayal of the immigrant experience. Again, it was left to Roger Ebert to best sum up the impact Nair left on her audience.

Rounding of a resounding paean to the story, the acting, the narration and direction, Ebert writes: 'The Namesake tells a story that is the story of all immigrant groups in America: Parents of

great daring arriving with dreams, children growing up in a way that makes them almost strangers, the old culture merging with the new.

It has been said that all modern Russian literature came out of Gogol's Overcoat. In the same way, all of us came out of the overcoat of this same immigrant experience.'

As the Indian American community, through dint of its own stellar accomplishments across a wide array of fields, wears its immigrant overcoat with increasing comfort, we honor Mira Nair - for The Namesake and its larger resonance; for her work in building bridges of understanding, empathy and affection between the community and the mainstream, we salute her with the India Abroad Person of the Year 2007 award.

Abroad

PERSON OF THE YEAR

M 10 India Abroad March 28, 2008

2007

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COLLECTOR’S ISSUE

always wanted to have a daughAfter my two sons were born, Iandter.

I was expecting my third child, I wished it was a girl because I couldn’t handle three boys.

Mira was a very nice, quiet baby, no trouble at all. She grew up with her two older brothers so she was a perfect tomboy. She had to keep up with her brothers in cricket, football and climbing trees.

Dealing with her brothers also made her very confident of dealing with men as a whole.

Also, right from the time she was 10 years old, she knew what she wanted and once she made up her mind about what she wanted, come heaven or hell, she would go and get it done.

This reminds me of her admission in Tara Hall in Shimla. We were in Bhubaneswar and she was not at all happy with the standard of education at the local school.

She told her father that she wasn’t happy there and would like to go to a better school.

Somehow or the other, we didn’t think it was the right thing for her to do, so she on her own — she was all of 11 years old at that time — contacted Loreto Hall in Delhi, where she had studied for a year. She requested the Mother Superior to find her admission in any school and she got her admission in Tara Hall. She was only 13 years old, it was in the middle of the session and she went to Tara Hall. She was determined about that and this trait she has continued to have. She is very determined, very focused and very caring — that is one trait I admire, not only in her but in both my other children and my grandchildren too.

From Tara Hall, she came to Delhi University. In Tara Hall she was very interested in theater and when she came to Delhi University she was very active on the theater scene, in Barry John’s plays. That she thought was going to be her career.

But after her senior Cambridge she thought she was going to be a journalist. She had interviewed people in Bhubaneswar, starting from the chief minister, artistes, the person who constructed the new capital and senior bureaucrats, which was published. Then she got admission in Harvard; but she was very disappointed in the theater there. She had majored in sociology and branched off into film making and that became her life.

M 9 moviemaker’s block when she discovered the source of traffic was hundreds of women dressed in all white crossing the street. She says she ditched her cab, followed them with her camera and some time later, the documentary on the unique club was born.

2001: Monsoon Wedding. A quickie shot on a shoestring budget of less than $2 million becomes her biggest hit in North America, the United Kingdom and several other countries. In The Guardian, Peter Brad-shaw wrote: ‘Nair directs with unflagging energy, style and pizzazz, periodically whisking her crew out into the teeming streets for external locations and using the real-life Delhi crowds as a seamlessly integrated real backdrop for her family drama.

This movie is a real tonic.’ The tonic could make it to Broadway as a musical in a couple of years.

2002: Unlike theater-bound films, television films often don’t call enough attention to their directors. Let it be said on record that Hysterical Blindness, an all American drama, which drew over 20 million viewers on HBO proved clearly that Nair can take any ethnic group and do justice to their story. Carla Meyer wrote in the San Francisco Chronicle: ‘Nair invests the movie’s working-class New Jersey milieu with the same emotional immediacy she brought to Monsoon Wedding.’

‘She is still the same — bubbly, full of laughter, grounded, down to the roots’ PRAVEEN NAIR on her famous daughter We did not support her anyway in financial matters. She got a full scholarship from Harvard. She is a very independent person and did not ask for any support except for love and affection which she had in plenty from the family.

Her first feature film was Salaam Bombay! which was a great experience for me. I was at the Cannes Film Festival, the standing ovation that she got, we didn’t know what was happening. It was so wonderful. That remains a big memory.

I have liked all her films but my favorite still is Salaam Bombay! — more so, because Salaam Bombay! resulted in the Salaam Balak Trust which is a non profit organization working for street and working children which I look after in Delhi.

Besides, I think it started people thinking that there was an entity called the street child because the government had many schemes for orphans, handicapped, mentally handicapped children, the blind, the deaf, the dumb, but they didn’t have anything for street children. They didn’t fit into any of the schemes. So it is very good to know that the film had a social impact as well and soon after this film was released, the government introduced a scheme for street and working children.

2002: Hardly seen in America despite a commercial release, 11’09’01 has Nair as one of 11 world directors making 11 segments of 11 minutes each on 9/11. Nair’s piece is about a New York Muslim suspected of being a terrorist who turns out to be a heroic rescue worker.

2002: She heads the jury at the Berlin International Film Festival.

2003: She produces Still the Children Are Here, a documentary by old friend Dinaz

Of course, Monsoon Wedding was great fun, it was shot in Delhi, all the decisions were taken in this room, in this house and it was shot in a friend’s farmhouse. That also has very pleasant memories, the discussions — taking my jewelry and my daughter-in-law’s jewelry. Even the paintings went from here for the décor.

I was very involved in Monsoon Wedding and then came The Namesake which is a very sensitive, emotional and beautiful film that touched my heart.

More than her becoming an international celebrity, for me it is more important for me to know that she is a good human being, very caring, very family-oriented and that makes my heart much warmer.

I always knew she was going to do something very great.

I always knew she was determined to get what she want.

But to me what is important is that in spite of her socalled international celebrity status, she is still grounded.

She still has her roots in the family. She is loved by the family and has wonderful friends. She hasn’t changed one bit. She is still the same — bubbly, full of laughter, grounded, down to earth. The celebrity part hasn’t changed her character at all.

I am very proud of her. I am very proud of the fact that she has made good cinema. I am also very proud of the fact that she is a very wonderful daughter, wonderful sister, wonderful wife and wonderful mother. When she is here, she likes to spend time with the family. We are a very close knit family. She loves going to Humayun’s tomb or the art galleries. One thing surprises me about her is what she can pack — it is beyond me. What a normal person will do in three days, she can pack into a few hours.

She comes to India very often. I go to New York. I am going there in May now and we meet up in Kampala, which is her family home. Every year I spend about a month with her and it’s beautiful. I love being with her.

I feel the value system has been engrained in her ever since she was a child. She has kept her Indian passport, she hasn’t taken American citizenship. She is very proud to be an Indian.

— As told to Archana Masih

Stafford about the Garo people of Meghalaya.

2004: Some thought Vanity Fair would be Mira’s ticket to Hollywood and an Oscar nomination for producer-actor Reese Witherspoon. Many critics were not impressed with the film, which cost $20 million and could not recover its investment.

2005: Mira launches an annual film laboratory called Maisha in Kampala, Uganda, to support writers and directors of East African

Indira Varma and Naveen Andrews in Kama Sutra

and South Asian origin.

2006: Makes The Namesake which opens at a number of film festivals with fairly decent reviews.

She also produces AIDS JaaGO, with the help of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. An omnibus of four AIDSrelated stories set in India, directed by Farhan Akhtar, Vishal Bharadwaj and Santosh Sivan and Mira, who directs Migration, about a young man whose one encounter with the sexually frustrated wife of a gay man leads to disastrous results.

2007: The most productive year in Mira Nair’s career. The Namesake becomes a box-office hit in North America and India.

She is also signed to make her first mega dollar movie, Shantaram.

2008: Even though Shantaram is delayed because of the Hollywood writers strike, she forges ahead with Amelia, a screen bio of the mysterious aviator hero, Amelia Earhart, starring Hillary Swank in the lead. She also joins a handful of distinguished directors from across the world in directing a segment of New York, I Love You. Her segment, starring Irrfan Khan and Natalie Portman, is called Kosher Vegetarian. She also mentors old friend Sooni Taraporevala’s feature debut, Little Zizou, starring John Abraham and Boman Irani among others.

— Arthur J Pais

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AWARD FOR COMMUNITY SERVICE

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COLLECTOR’S ISSUE

The Samaritan PHOTOGRAPH: DOMINIC XAVIER DR NAVIN SHAH: PARESH GANDHI

AZIZ HANIFFA on why Dr NAVIN SHAH, winner of this year’s Award for Community Service, refuses to ever give up

W

hen it comes to sheer doggedness and persistence, Dr Navin Shah is right up there with the best of the best.

Since 1980, he has been on a yatra, visiting India at least once a year — but many a time, twice and three times a year — on his own dime and on his own time, simply to try and make a difference. He wanted to use his years of experience, expertise and the vast network he had built up over the years with organized medicine in the US, to address India’s health care and medical education needs. He has asked for absolutely nothing in return, either materially or in terms of the national honors the government of India awards each year from the Padma to the Pravasi awards. Cliched as it may sound, to him, what he does is essentially a labor of love in service of the motherland.

From the time he helped found the American Association of Physicians of Indian Origin — arguably the largest and most influential international medical graduate organization in the United States — more than 25 years ago, either through AAPI or by striking out on his own, Dr Shah has done everything from launching medical equipment donation schemes to hospitals and medical teaching colleges in India, to taking delegations of specialists to lecture and conduct seminars and workshops on continuing medical education, to contributing funds, largely his own, to equip a medical library at his alma mater in Pune.

And then last year, besides being the catalyst in a USIndia program on bringing Ayurveda to America in a big way and also conceiving and publishing a book titled Fight for Equality about the IMGs battle for equal treatment in the US in those early years for immigrant physicians, he was the driving force behind the setting up of emergency medical services and trauma centers based on the US template in Mumbai. After pushing for it for more than four years, this has already been replicated in some major Indian cities, including New Delhi.

His sustained effort bore fruit in April last year, for which India Abroad honors him with the 2007 Community Achiever Award.

Among other things, the project envisages one dedicated emergency number — like the 911 number in the United States — and a command center for hospitals manned around the clock, backed by fully-equipped ambulances.

FROM THE EDITORS To succeed is relatively easy, especially when you are in an excellence-oriented environment like that of the United States of America.

So to say that Dr Navin Shah, who came to the US in 1971 with the mandatory $8 in his pocket, parlayed a residency in urology into a flourishing career both as medical practitioner and as chair of the urology and surgery departments at the Doctors Community Hospital in Lanham, Maryland, and as president of the hospital’s medical staff, is merely to reiterate a success story that has been replicated, by the hundreds, across the Indian-American community.

To want to give back to the community and to the country, as Dr Shah does, is equally a leitmotif of first generation Indian-Americans — the

Consequently, patients can be immediately treated at the accident site, during transport in the ambulance by trained paramedics and at the receiving hospitals with specially designed trauma centers, manned 24/7 by emergency physicians and surgeons always at the ready to perform surgery if required.

The project, when it was consummated, brought together four medical college hospitals, 10 major private hospitals in Mumbai, and over a dozen government and municipal hospitals that were supplemented by facilities that specialized in burns, rehabilitation and pediatrics.

A board of directors and an executive committee was also elected, with prominent thoracic surgeon Dr G B Daver — formerly dean of the J J Hospital and currently the medical director of the Hinduja Hospital in Mumbai — as chairman of the executive committee, which is entrusted with the mandate of coordinating with all of the participating hospitals and keeping the project going.

Dr Shah and Dr Subramanium Balasubramanium, then president of AAPI — which had given its blessings to the project — and a trauma surgeon at the University of California, Los Angeles Medical Center, were to serve as the

pages of India Abroad are rife with stories of achievers who, in cash or in kind, contribute to making life that little bit better in the land they left behind.

Where Dr Shah stands out is in this: His drive to give back to his native country has been so strong, so deep-rooted, that it has survived years of official apathy; through sheer dedication to a cause obviously dear to his heart, he has managed to make a difference.

And what a difference — those of us who have spent time in India’s metropolitan cities are inured to the sights of horrific accidents, caused by an exploding vehicular population coupled with imploding infrastructure.

We have seen, regrettably often, the sight of accident victims lying by the roadside, weltering in their own blood, waiting for medical relief

US representatives on the executive committee.

Dr Shah also announced four scholarships under which four Mumbai-based surgeons would visit the US trauma center for two weeks of training. The scholarships were fully paid and inclusive of return airfare, board and lodging in the US. The scholarships were courtesy of D0r J Wayne Meredith, medical director, Trauma Programs, American College of Surgeons; the US Section of the International College of Surgeons; the Shock Trauma Center of the University of Maryland; Dr Balasubramanium and Dr Akshay Shah of the Michigan Association of Physicians of Indian Origin.

Besides organizing these scholarships, testament to Dr Shah’s indefatigable efforts in bringing the private and public sector together in partnership along with the powers that be in state and federal government, were those present at the meeting to launch the project. These included Azeez Khan, principal health secretary, the government of Maharashtra, Dr S Damle, Mumbai’s municipal health commissioner, Dr Paresh Navalkar of Ambulance Services, US Consul General in Mumbai Michael Owen, and several CEOs of private hospitals led by Dr Pramod Lele of the Hinduja Hospital, the main backer of the project thanks to Dr Shah’s long association and friendship with S P Hinduja, chairman of the Hinduja Group. Owen provided one ambu-

while the life force ebbs out of them, one drop at a time.

Dr Shah saw those sights, too, as often as we did — the difference was, he decided that something needed to be done about it. Since the thought germinated, over a decade ago, he has made dozens of trips to India on his own time, spending his own dime; he has spent uncounted hours waiting outside the office of this minister or that secretary, seeking to interest officialdom in his plan; once he had the necessary sanction, he then went to work — again by giving generously of his time, his dime — on putting the nuts and bolts together.

So successful was he that he managed to line up four medical college hospitals, 10 of the top private hospitals in Mumbai, and over one dozen government and municipal hospitals, behind the

M 12 initiative.

The ultimate yardstick to judge his success is this: Today, for the once hopeless victims of road accidents in Mumbai, help — top flight, state of the art medical help — is a phone call away.

Dr Shah, typically, is not resting on his laurels he is already busy with plans to roll out the initiative to other metros, and cities, across the country, even as he works in parallel on an equally Herculean effort to popularize Ayurveda, the signature alternative medical practice of the country of his birth, in America, the country of his adoption.

Dr Navin Shah is India Abroad’s Award for Community Service 2007 — and every time we hear the wail of an ambulance rushing an accident victim from despair to hope, from near death to life, we are reminded anew why.

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2007

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COLLECTOR’S ISSUE

-lance on behalf of the US government as a sign of Washington’s strong support for the project.

Dr Shah has met with Prime Ministers Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi, P V Narasimha Rao, Atal Bihari Vajpayee and then President K R Narayanan in connection with his medical philanthropy and service-oriented endeavors in the past more than two-and-a-half decades. In the last couple of years, he always meets with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh when he visits India; before this latest project got underway, he once again met with Dr Singh, the prime minister’s Principal Secretary T K A Nair and Health Secretary Naresh Dayal. All of them not only spoke to Maharashtra government officials and endorsed the project, but also pledged the Indian government’s full support for the endeavor.

Since then the government of India has taken up replicating this project in major Indian cities as a priority and has allocated over $125 million as seed money for training and establishing emergency medical services.

Dr Shah says that of all the multiple projects he has mooted or undertaken in the past two decades in India nothing has been closer to his heart nor provoked him to launch as sustained an effort as he did — notwithstanding the hoops of a protracted and often uncooperative or lethargic bureaucracy both as the state and federal level — as this particular project because it had moved him by just the sheer heart-wrenching fact of how many lives had gone waste simply because of a lack of EMS and trauma centers.

About a decade ago, he says, he had been mortified to hear that India had the highest “mortalities and morbidities caused by automobile and train accidents in the world and that the majority of these fatalities and serious injuries — many of them permanent — could have been prevented if there had been a semblance of adequate emergency services and 24/7 trauma centers where these accident victims could have been rushed to for treatment and if necessary emergency surgery.

“On many occasions during my visits to India,” Dr Shah says, “I was appalled by the long delays in getting the accident victims to the hospitals. Even after reaching the hospital, some patients were not attended to promptly, resulting in death and severe disabilities.”

“It was a tragedy that in big cities like Mumbai with its massive traffic, the number of lives lost in accidents were trauma victims unnecessarily left at the accident site for hours on end because nothing moves till the cops arrive and record a statement and finally when they are taken to hospital — if they haven’t already died at the site — they succumb to their injuries, largely because of delays in the bureaucracy,” he says.

Dr Shah, a Maryland-based urologist, who has practiced as a trauma surgeon, “just couldn’t get over the fact that EMS and trauma centers in Mumbai could save more lives in one month’s time than the number of people I have saved thus far in almost a lifetime of practice in EMS — saving patients from death and disability.

“It was then that I thought, just imagine the impact that US-styled EMS and trauma centers could have and all it needs is a private-public center partnership to jump start such an effort and get it going and then replicate it in other cities.

“And, besides, there was no need to reinvent the wheel, although, of course, the necessary modifications according to federal, state and local laws in India could be woven in,” he added.

In the United States, he adds, EMS and trauma centers have been available for decades and this “has been instrumental in significantly reducing mortality rates and dramatically curtailing severe and permanent disabilities.”

Dr Shah recalls he first broached the concept of 24/7 EMS and trauma centers in Mumbai with S P Hinduja in 2000.

“Mr Hinduja promptly responded positively and instructed the medical director and the CEO of Hinduja Hospitals to work with me. The first step we took was to have an EMS and trauma seminar and a hands-on course in primary resuscitation provided by a US expert. This is when I tapped Bala (Dr Balasubramanium) to lead the delegation because he was a trauma surgeon and had helped to set up trauma centers in the US with full funding from the Hinduja Foundation.

“Many surgeons and physicians from Mumbai attended and obtained the training. In the meantime met with both

PARESH GANDHI

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government and municipal officials to assemble all the stakeholders to achieve this goal. For the next four years I met with state health ministers, health secretaries, other hospital CEOs, but the wheels turned very slowly if at all, but they finally did with a push from the highest level — from the prime minister himself.

“The main hurdle was centralizing the services for prompt dispatch of the ambulances,” says Dr Shah. “Mumbai had very few fully equipped ambulances. Treatment on the spot and during the transport of the patient was less than adequate due to untrained or partially trained personnel on these ambulances — especially for trauma victims. And, since the majority of victims were poor and were a drain on the system, it was considered unfeasible to even try to sustain whatever system — however insignificant — there existed.

“Can you believe, in India there were no paramedics — only in the military, but not for civilians. There were no trained paramedics who knew how to resuscitate patients from shock, trauma and all other emergencies. The whole structure was lacking and that was what we were able to put together in Mumbai in a small way, which is now being replicated in a few other cities.”

He acknowledges that most times the frustration level was immense, “but I kept going because I believed that once initiated it would save a large number of lives. Besides, it was a badly needed service and should have been in operation more than a decade ago.”

“But there was no urgency, no priority attached to it from the state level to the federal level and it was ironic that here I had all of the pledges of support from American authorities, organized medicine, other medical institutions, especially the American College of Surgeons and the Hinduja Foundation which stood ready with the seed money, but it was so difficult to get the powers that be to get a move on.

“After spending so much of my time and energy and my own funds,” he concedes, “when results were slow in coming if at all, it got me depressed at times. But at the same time, with each obstacle, my commitment and interest grew stronger.

“I wanted to get it done yesterday but they (state and federal government authorities) were thinking not about tomorrow, but perhaps about the next year, and many a time I would wish they had even a fraction of the urgency and priority I attached to this project. And here I was bringing all the people together — the private sector wanting to work with the public sector to get this going — most times from thousands of miles away sitting in Washington, DC.” Perhaps the fact that he was a product of indigent and humble beginnings — the son of a salesman in a cloth factory who worked 12 hours a day, seven days a week – Dr Shah says, “I felt strongly that these basic services had to be rendered to the poor and the lower middle class who had very little help in medical emergencies such as automobile and train accidents and that kept me going.”

He is not without his critics — some very stinging among his peers, including at AAPI, for what they believe are his go-it-alone efforts. But he defends himself, saying that in AAPI, for instance, “if you take on a project, you have to work with the president and the president keeps changing every year, before the project can get off the ground. And the next president who comes in or the new executive committee may not be as enthused about a project that was unanimously approved by the previous committee.

“I had three to four such bad experiences,” he says, “and, this is why I thought I just cannot wait because how many times can I go on convincing people of the viability and the importance of such a project.

“Everybody has their own agenda — and I admit I have

my own — but I wish there was continuity in AAPI, so that once a project is approved, it stays approved till the project is completed, whoever the president or executive committee it may be,” he adds. “But unfortunately that doesn’t happen.”

Born in Kolhapur to Chinmanlal and Lilavati Shah, the oldest of three children, Dr Shah, who had his early education in Poona (now Pune), supplemented the family income “by doing a lot of part-time jobs during both my high school and college days. I gave tuition to rich high school students, sold household items, worked as a turnstile man — essentially a doorkeeper — and even was an usher at the race course. I also did odd jobs.

“Being poor and a good student, I was awarded a partial scholarship, where I paid only one-fifth of the regular fees in the school. During my medical education at the B J Medical College in Pune, my fees were provided by a loan by one of my classmates’ rich father, Mr C M Patel of Kampala, Uganda.

“It is not easy being poor in India,” he says. “It was a struggle even to obtain minimal basic requirements, but we all worked hard and survived. And, of course, destiny, good karma and hard work improved our situation.”

He married into Gujarati aristocracy when he wed Leela Sanghvi of the Sanghvi family of Pune, whom he describes “as a devoted mother and a humble and service-oriented personality. She fully supported and assisted in all my philanthropic activities both in India and in the US. “It was Leela who coaxed me and my children to participate in the annual donation of clothes to the homeless shelters in Washington, DC for several years and also to distribute food to the men and women who lived in these shelters,” he remembers. In 1996, Leela succumbed to cancer.

After obtaining his medical degree, he did a residency in surgery for four years at the Sassoon General Hospital in Poona followed by a master’s in surgery at the University of Poona. He was an assistant professor of surgery at the same university before migrating to the US in 1971 with $8 in his pocket to accept a US residency in urology under the president of the American Board of Urology, Dr Dabney Jarman, at the Washington Hospital Center in Washington, DC. He rose to chief resident in urology in 1975 and, after completing his Urology Boards Examination in 1977, started in private practice with Dr Donald Kretkowski in the Washington, DC area and later bought the latter out.

Dr Shah is also the chair in the departments of urology and surgery at the Doctors Community Hospital in Lanham, Maryland, and also president of its medical staff.

He is the recipient of numerous awards including the Maryland State Medical Society Award and several others from AAPI. Of his three children, Shefali, an alumna of the University of Maryland and George Washington University’s Law School, worked with the US Department of Justice’s Criminal Division, before she resigned to be a full-time mother. She and her husband Prakash Mehta — a partner with the top Washington law firm Akin Gump — have two children, a daughter, 8, and a son, 5.

Sonali, an alumna of Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, the London School of Economics and the Wharton School of Business from where she received her MBA, is Director of Corporate Strategy at the Verisign Company in Boston. She is married to Praveen Tipirneni, who is both an MD and MBA and is vice-president of business development at Cubist Pharmaceuticals in Boston.

They have two children, both sons, aged 4 and 2.

Amit, who did his undergraduate studies at the University of Maryland and then a medical degree at Duke University School of Medicine, as well as a master of science on health science and clinical research at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, is currently the attending physician in the Emergency Department at the Washington Hospital Center in Washington, DC, after completing his residency in emergency medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is single. Dr Shah has two siblings, brother Vinod Shah is an automobile engineer in Pune; his sister Aruna, a homemaker, lives with her family in Sangli, Maharashtra.

Abroad

AWARD FOR COMMUNITY SERVICE

M 14 India Abroad March 28, 2008

2007

THE India

COLLECTOR’S ISSUE

‘A force for healing’ Peers appreciate the Samaritans

S

equipped “with wireless sets to ensure immediate contact so that the hospital receiving the patient is ready to commence the treatment immediately.”

Even though Dr Shah is based in the US, he was constantly in touch with Lele and Dr G B Davar, the director of professional services at the Hinduja Hospital, to coordinate the project. He was also in regular touch with S P Hinduja who had taken a personal interest in the project.

“We at Hinduja Hospital have always been in the forefront in any healthcare initiative which benefits society and the common man and Dr Shah’s thought process in respect of EMS and trauma centers blended well with the vision of Shri S P Hinduja, who always wants to support and encourage any social healthcare initiative,” says Lele.

“We are now in the process of roping in more hospitals and well equipped ambulances so that we have EMS and trauma centers spread all over Mumbai.”

Dr S Balasubramanium, immediate past president of the American Association of Physicians of Indian Origin, who is being honored March 31 by the American Medical Association with its prestigious Dr Nathan Davis International Award in Medicine for being a catalyst in helping to set up EMS and trauma centers in Mumbai, acknowledges that none of this would have been possible if not for Dr Shah and in many ways the glory being bestowed on him was thanks to Dr Shah.

Tracing the genesis of this project, Dr Balasubramanium says Dr Shah “was one of the few people who was very smart to realize that what India needs is help in setting up systems. He was persistent in using the public-private partnership, stimulating the government to take some action, stimulating the private sector like the Hindujas.

“I must thank him because he started me going with

SANJAY SAWANT

P Hinduja, chairman of the Hinduja Group, still remembers vividly how Dr Navin Shah approached him with the proposition that the Hinduja Foundation sponsor and fund a training session on emergency medical services and how to attend to trauma victims. This would feature some of America’s best surgeons in these areas like Dr S Balasubramanium who set up these systems in Texas and California.

He told India Abroad in an interview from Dubai that Dr Shah had been so convincing that such a training session for both Indian physicians, would-be paramedics and bureaucrats could jump start a project he had been advocating for years to be set up in Mumbai to tackle the exponential incidence of trauma victims on the streets and highways of Mumbai to automobile accidents.

Hinduja recalls how Dr Shah had struck an emotional chord with him when in almost surgical detail he explained how several thousands of these victims could have been saved from death and disabilities if only there were a few EMS and trauma centers and some ambulances to get these victims proper care in time.

“Here was a guy coming to India at his own expense and his own time and volunteering to do this through his own efforts without looking for anything in return — nothing materialistic but out of the goodness of his own heart — and looking for some support to get it going to save lives in our city,” adds Hinduja.

“On the spot,“ he says, “I instructed and directed my people that we have to welcome this because our hospital (the Hinduja Hospital in Mumbai) has always wanted to introduce all those facilities of world class standards and whatever the developed world has done for the human race. So all that has always been given a priority. What Navin was bringing to the table blended very well with our own vision and thinking.”

But the tycoon acknowledges, knowing full well how the wheels of bureaucracy in India turned slowly, if at all, he was skeptical that all of the necessary rules and regulations by the powers that be would be expedited to get the project going. Yet he should have known that Dr Shah would be unrelenting in making sure this private-public sector participation wouldn’t fail.

“His foresight and vision for India are simply commendable and his passion was so infectious and contagious, and like I said, he was, as he has been for years, once again, offering his services with no personal vested interest on this new project, just to try and make a difference by bringing his experience and knowledge from America and recruiting the expertise in helping us to put it into place here in Mumbai to help the people here,” says Hinduja.

Pramod Lele, CEO, Hinduja Hospital, recalls that when Dr Shah brought the project to the Hinduja Hospital among others to run with, he had virtually done all of the spade work. “He had met up with practically all concerned starting with the health minister of the government of India, the health secretary of the government of India, the chief secretary of the government of Maharashtra, the health secretary of the government of Maharashtra and also the chief minister of the state” says Lele.

“His efforts were pioneering,” he adds and says that if not for Dr Shah, this project, now being replicated in other Indian cities, would not have gotten off the ground. “We were able to get the support of four medical college hospitals, 10 major private hospitals and 12 government and municipal hospitals for the project, and also have a partner in Ambulance Access for All, an organization which has fully equipped ambulances to give emergency service to patients on the spot and in transit.”

Currently, Lele says 30 ambulances are equipped and have one designated telephone number. Now “in times of emergency, these well equipped ambulances with medical personnel inside can reach the patient in a matter of minutes,” he says. All the participating hospitals have been

funds from the Hindujas, kept that going, using the private sector to get the public sector activated,” he adds.

According to Dr Balasubramanium, that is one of Dr Shah’s “unique features — and what he helped start in Mumbai, as you know, we’ve been able to replicate elsewhere. Even the government of India has got into the act with seed money for getting some of these projects going.”

He spoke of how Dr Shah had “quickly sensed that I was a trauma specialist who had set up EMS and trauma centers in the US and could make a contribution and train these people, and one day, out of the blue, at six in the morning, I get a call and he had done all his homework on me and asked me if I could do this project in Mumbai.

“I was totally surprised, but pleasantly surprised and I said, ‘Yes, definitely.’”

Dr Balasubramanium said Dr Shah, then onwards, had “kept his promise and he delivered the goods, in terms of funding and support and arrangements. He brought all of these private and public sector people together and most importantly he did not interfere. Some people, when they

give support and make funds available, they want to have their way. But he said, ‘Here’s what I said I would deliver now the ball is in your court.’

“Or to give you another analogy, he said, ‘the goal post is wide open, here is the ball, you go for it.’”

Dr Balasubramanium spoke of how Dr Shah had gotten the infrastructure organized “and now that we’ve been able to do it in one area, in Mumbai, and it may be a small part of India, but you have to take one small step at a time and that first step is the most difficult and that he did.

“So, starting the whole program, which is now being replicated all over – the credit goes to him. Then, of course, it became much easier for us to take the ball and run,” he adds.

“For him (Dr Shah),” says Dr Balasubramanium, “it’s an absolute labor of love. He spends his own money, he makes all the phone calls, he does all of the spade work. He called me 10 times a day during those times to make sure everything is in order. Like I said, it was not to check on me but how he could help to further streamline and expedite the process. His life’s motto seems to be, ‘How can I help?’

“I think this humanitarian aspect of his character comes from a love of people — and it’s not only in words, but his heart is also there and he goes into action. It is words, heart and action, and he does it in a very simple, humble manner and that makes it very nice because he doesn’t have any egoistic ideas that he’s the big shot. That way, he’s a very giving person.”

Dr Balasubramanium dismisses the criticism by some, including some senior and longtime AAPI members, that Dr Shah is not a team player but always strikes out on his own.

“It’s no good being a team player when the team is not pulling its weight or the team doesn’t exist,” he says. “I tell the AAPI guys that it is AAPI that is very fortunate in having somebody like him, not the other way around. He is really showing AAPI what to do and when people criticize him, I tell them, ‘Don’t go any further. Let me tell you what my relationship with him is and what my understanding of him is — he delivers what he promises.’

“I can trust him,” Balasubramanium adds. “I can’t ask more of anybody. Somebody who delivers and who you can trust, that’s a colleague in my book and that’s exactly the reason why, when I was the president of AAPI, I gave him the Most Distinguished Service Award at our convention.”

Kenneth Bacon, a former Wall Street Journal reporter, ex-Pentagon spokesman and erstwhile Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs (1994 to 2000), who is currently the president of Refugees International, wrote the foreword for the book Fight for Equality that Dr Shah conceived and funded. He recalls how he — as a reporter with the Journal covering health issues — first met with Dr Shah when he was in the midst of the fight against established and organized medicine in the US that was discriminating against international medical graduates in virtually all areas from reciprocity in licensing across states to denial of hospital privileges.

Today, thanks to activists like Dr Shah the IMG community is a force to be reckoned with and part of the strong medical fraternity.

“He was one who believed that IMGs are a national treasure and a potentially powerful instrument of American foreign policy, a new type of soft power, “Bacon says. “US physicians educated abroad are a natural bridge back to their countries, where they can provide educational, medical and mentoring services that will build respect and gratitude to the US.” Bacon says only if the State Department had taken the advice Dr Shah offered years ago, it wouldn’t be scrambling as it is doing now to promote public diplomacy overseas. “For years, he campaigned to get the State

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Abroad

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COLLECTOR’S ISSUE

veryone refers to it as the call center. At first glance it looks like one of those E claustrophobic lofts in small-town accounting firms from decades ago, where accountants sit all day poring through ledgers. Four people compete for space with a computer server, three terminals, a radio base unit, and stacks of stationary in the 8 feet-by-4 feet mezzanine level.

Calling a place with such infrastructure sounds like an insult to call centers as we know them.

But the people who work there call it the command center. In reality, even command center is an understatement.

Because whoever mans those three phone lines at any given point is a crucial cog in a life-saving mechanism. They are the first and most critical point of India’s nascent emergency medical service.

One morning in March 2008 when, a call comes in from a hospital in Dombivli, a town neighboring Mumbai. One of the small specialty clinics there needs to shift a cardiac patient to the nearest hospital. The command center gets the details and calls an advanced ambulance stationed in Mahim, north-central Mumbai.

“There are 16 advanced ambulances — the big ones with all the necessary equipment to tend to a cardiac patient — and about 30 normal ambulances — minivans with the basic facilities,” says Sweta Mangal, one of the five founder members of Ambulance Access for All, the most important link of Mumbai’s emergency service chain.

At Mahim, Dr Sheikh Mohammed has been waiting for his first call of the day.

“Since I handle one of the few advanced ambulances in the city, I get at least three to four calls a day,” he says. It’s past noon, and Dr Sheikh, his driver and helper – each ambulance has a crew of three – have just finished lunch.

The radio comes alive, and the command center briefs him about the call. The ambulance is out of the hospital compound in 60

M 14 Department to set up an office to encourage international medical exchanges. To set up an American Professional Exchange Association to help match physicians, lawyers, engineers and other professionals in the US with counterparts from other countries to export American know-how, and serve ‘as a catalyst towards creating a peaceful and prosperous world community.’”

“Despite its interest in public diplomacy,” Bacon laments, “the State Department didn’t act on Dr Shah’s proposal.

“When I first Navin he was fighting for fair and equitable treatment of IMGs, a fight that he won. At the time, I didn’t know that Navin is always fighting for something and that he never gives up.”

Bacon also spoke about the humanitarian facet of Dr Shah’s character as had Dr Balasubramanium, but here on a personal basis. “First and foremost, Navin is a physician who wants to cure the sick.

When I was diagnosed with cancer, Navin swung into action to help me find the right specialists and therapies. I am lucky to have him as a friend and adviser and the world is lucky to have Navin as a force for healing.”

— Aziz Haniffa

Hope for the Hopeless In Mumbai, thanks to Dr Navin Shah, life is just a phone call away

DOMINIC XAVIER

M 15 India Abroad March 28, 2008

2007

THE India

An ambulance rushes to help the sick seconds flat. The traffic is heavy. Neither the beacon nor the siren comes on. “We know what the case is. We will only be doing the job of a mobile ICU with a ventilator. So there is no hurry. How soon we reach there is not an issue here. The patient will be in the hospital ICU. “If it had been an emergency, we would have switched on the siren. In such instances, 1298 will deal with the traffic issues,” says Dr Sheikh.

It takes an hour and 45 minutes for the team to reach Dombivli. Once there, Dr Sheikh checks all the equipment — just as he had done before leaving his station — and goes into the clinic to speak to the doctors. He gets the patient’s case history and all that he needs to know about the situation. The patient is then wheeled into the ambulance and taken to the specialty hospital, which is a 30 minute ride. There, Dr Sheikh and his team take the patient in and brief the doctors, who have already been alerted by the command center, which has all the while been monitoring the movement of the ambulance through GPRS. The patient is wheeled into the hospital and Dr Sheikh returns with his team to his station to wait for the next call.

Though the entire drill has gone off seamlessly, it is not an emergency call in the proper sense of the term. Mumbai’s EMS is one that is under a lot of strain and every day is a fight for everyone involved. It still has a long way to go, especially in terms of numbers.

But for a-set up that started with next to nothing five years ago, it has come a long way.

“Four years ago, five doctors came together to plan this thing. We didn’t have many things at our disposal. We started with an ambulance and with a tie-up with the Hinduja Hospital. The idea was to provide critical aid to emergency victims as soon as possible. We formed an organization called Life Supporters Institute of Health Services under which we began expanding it. After a few months, Ambulance Access for All came on board,” says Dr Paresh Navalkar, secretary, EMS. Ambulance Access for All receives the

emergency calls and anchors everything till the time the patient is wheeled into a hospital where he can be given apt treatment.

“We were five management graduates who wanted to do something for society through our business venture. We got in touch with the doctors who were doing something close to what we wanted to do and started the 1298 service in May 2005,” says Mangal.

When they started, EMS did not have many ambulances or even hospitals that were ready to take in emergency patients.

“We got the medical association on board and impressed upon most member hospitals the need to provide emergency medical care in a city like Mumbai,” says Dr Gustad Daver, chairperson, EMS, and the medical head at the city’s Hinduja Hospital.

Soon, Dr Daver says, Dr Navin Shah, former president, American Association of Physicians of Indian Origin, chipped in.

“He got down to organizing things for us,” he adds. “Dr Shah has been working on it for more than three years, trying to get all the required things in place.”

Pramod Lele, CEO, Hinduja Hospital, explains how Dr Shah helped the set-up go from barebones to being a well-oiled machinery.

“Emergency medical service is pretty advanced in the West and Dr Shah wanted to replicate it here. The idea was to make full use of the golden hour. Under normal circumstances, if somebody is witness to an accident, he would first take the victim to some hospital, and then if that hospital is not equipped to handle the situation, the victim has to be shifted to another hospital.

Too much time may be lost in this.”

“So, we wanted to ensure that our ambulances took the patient to the right place in as little time as possible. Either the doctor on duty does it or the call center finds the correct hospital in the vicinity and alerts both the hospital and the doctor on the ambulance. This way, a lot of precious time is saved,” Lele said.

Soon, the service expanded thanks to more hospitals coming on board and more trusts and organizations like the Rotary Club donating ambulances.

“We put in place a network of ambulances to be positioned all over the city. We have a unique special number, 1298. When people call this number, it goes to a call center. The call center people will determine which the nearest ambulance is and send it there. Primary treatment will be given in the ambulance for the patient. Then the key is to take the patient to the nearest specialty hospital,” says Dr Daver.

“We now have 30 normal ambulances, 16 advanced life support ambulances. We are hoping to get to 50 more ambulances before the end of March. We are also trying to rope in more hospitals into the scheme.

Already, we have an agreement with 20odd level one hospitals and all the (Mumbai Municipal) Corporation hospitals. We also conduct courses for civilians.

It is called the community paramedic program,” explains Dr Navalkar.

What about the money to run such a setup? Those who can pay are charged a fee.

Those who are poorer are charged lesser.

Those in poverty are not charged at all.

“For a cardiac ambulance, we charge Rs 1,500 (about $37) per hour for those who can afford it. For poorer people, it is Rs 450 (about $11) per hour. The normal ambulance costs Rs 1,350 (about $33) per hour and the subsidized charge is Rs 350 (about $9)/ hour. If people cannot afford it at all, we do not charge them anything,” says Mangal.

As the network of ambulances has grown, a new problem has emerged: Manpower.

“The attrition rate is high in emergency medical services. Doctors wouldn’t want to serve on an ambulance for long. They will take the first big hospital offer that they get. To overcome this problem, we got a course in emergency medical services, where we train people. We take graduates — from any stream — and train them in a short course on paramedical services. Our course is accredited by the New York Presbyterian Hospitals,” says Dr Daver.

“We have managed to overcome the problem to an extent. But we will soon need more people because we are planning to increase the number of ambulances,” adds Dr Daver.

Due to their working model, where they get corporate entities and other non-profit organizations to donate ambulances, Mangal feels the manpower issue will have to be sorted out soon. “Anybody can buy an ambulance. Maintaining it is the problem.

Even now, we have more than 15 ambulances that are ready to go but not enough doctors and trained hands,” she says.

Dr Daver feels the State can pitch in by introducing paramedical courses. “Another way in which the State can help is by introducing legislation for emergency medical services that will cover what the current laws do not. Gujarat has an emergency medical services act,” he says. “In Maharashtra — indeed all over India — we need legislation like that. We have given the State a good working model. The State just needs to take it forward and they are really showing interest about doing it too.”

— Krishnakumar P

India Abroad

PUBLISHER'S SPECIAL AWARD FOR EXCELLENCE M 16 India Abroad March 28, 2008

2007

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COLLECTOR’S ISSUE

‘An absolute superstar’ MATTHEW SCHNEEBERGER meets Dr RENU KHATOR, winner of the India Abroad Publisher's Special Award for Excellence, 2007

FROM THE EDITORS This is the story of a small town teenage girl from semi-urban India, who returned from college one evening to find she was to be married.

Within weeks, and despite her strenuous protests, she found herself in the United States of America — a stranger in a strange land, married to a stranger and with her dreams collapsing in shards around her.

Her one abiding dream was to study, to earn a doctorate, to parlay that into some kind of profession — doable in small town India, but when she went to Purdue University in West Virginia seeking a seat, her lack of familiarity with the English language befuddled examiners; she was given a

provisional seat, on probation as it were.

Cue sleepless nights and endless agony, as she spent classroom hours in an impenetrable well of silence, neither able to understand what was being said, nor contribute to the discussions swirling around her bewildered head.

Back home, she wrote, then re-wrote, her assignments a dozen times apiece while husband-turned-mentor Suresh groaned aloud at her ineptitude.

Snatching hours from sleep, she sat in front of the television screen, watching endless hours of television serials like I Love Lucy and Green Acres — her chosen tools for a fast-tracked understanding of the language.

And at the end of that first nightmarish semes-

PARESH GANDHI

D

r Renu Khator honors countless requests to relate the remarkable tale of her move from Farrukhabad, Uttar Pradesh, to West Lafeyette, Indiana. But as she tells it once more and lives the memories afresh, her face flushes red, her eyes mist over and her lower lip begins to quiver, rare outward signs of emotion from the 52-year-old wife and mother of two.

She recalls that during the ninth month of her first year at Allahabad University, where she was working towards her Master’s degree in political science, her family one day unexpectedly sent the driver to fetch her. When she reached home, alongside her father Satish Chandra Maheshwari stood Suresh Khator, a 26-year-old engineering student who her father indicated was to be her husband. They were engaged that very day, and married just days later. She was only 18 years old, but could envision her life post-marriage and saw her chances at a PhD slipping away.

“I really protested. I went on a hunger strike and didn’t eat food because I was so unhappy. I had never seen a woman continue her studies after marriage. In those times, you studied to marry,” she says. “At one point, Suresh and I went down to a nearby river to talk and he asked me why I was so upset. I told him that my problem was not with him, but with marriage itself. I said that I wanted to do my PhD, and that by marrying him, my dream would be crushed. ‘If you want to study, that’s a small thing, because we are going to the land of opportunity,” he said. “We’re going to America. There, you can study as much as you want!’”

And so, only a few short weeks later, the young couple set off for Purdue University in West Lafeyette, Indiana, where Suresh was studying to become an industrial engineer.

Because she had never left India and was unfamiliar with the American lifestyle, she credits her husband for her near seamless transition, and claims that, without him, she would have been lost.

“When we reached America, Suresh acted as my mentor and guide. I was fortunate to be married to him; he was supportive and progressive. Coming from a small town in UP, I had very poor English. I had never even watched an English movie before! So it was tough,” she says.

She remembers the humiliation and confusion she felt when she applied for admissions at Purdue University’s Graduate Studies office; her husband had to translate for her. “The man saw my age, heard my English, and told me to ‘Get up, walk outside and head over to the undergraduates studies office.’ But I insisted that I had earned my Bachelor’s in India; and finally, he gave me probationary admission, told me to take two classes and asked me to come back at semester’s end,” she recalls.

“That semester, I worked harder than I ever had in my whole life. I had to learn how to understand English. I had to learn how to write in English.” She says that she would write a research paper; and her husband would edit it and groan, telling her, ‘This English is so bad!’ She would cry with disappointment but write it again and again, until it passed the test. “I ended up writing eight copies for each assignment,” she says. “Also, I never opened my mouth in class, because by the time I had formulated a sentence, the conversation had already moved on. But I watched eight hours of television a day, including every episode of I Love Lucy and Green Acres, just to pick up the accent. I used every minute of every day as an opportunity to learn. And at the end of the semester, I got an A in both classes.

After that, Purdue said, ‘It looks like you can do it,’ and gave me admission. That changed my life.”

From that bottom-most rung, as a student unfamiliar with the language and on probationary admission, Renu Khator’s unlikely story has seen her climb the ladder to the pinnacle of American academia, through a combination of intellect, empathy and sheer grit.

Today, she serves as President of the University of Houston’s main campus and Chancellor of the four-campus University of Houston system, which counts over 56,000 students in its fold, and is the nation’s ninth largest university system. Along the way, she has accumulated a collection of awards, distinctions, and honors; it’s an impressive list

that clearly traces the trajectory of an extraordinary career: Her groundbreaking November 2007 appointment made her the first person of Indian origin to be named President and Chancellor at a major US university. Though Indians earn a disproportionate number of advanced degrees, they rarely crack the upper echelon into university administration. But it is not as if the University of Houston took a flyer on her because of her minority status. As Welcome W Wilson, the chairman of UH’s board of

M 20 ter, her will triumphed, when she received a straight A in her two papers. ‘You can do it,’ Purdue University decided, impressed by the perseverance and hard work, and gave her full admission.

Today, that once shy student, embarrassed into silence by her own ineptitude, is one of the most distinguished, most-awarded educators in American academia. As President of the University of Houston’s main campus, and Chancellor of the four-campus University of Houston system, she is ultimately responsible for the over 56,000 students that make up the country’s 9th largest university system.

“America is the land of opportunity”.

A dime for every time we hear that bland asser-

tion would make us all rich; often, that statement is underpinned by the naïve assumption that you merely have to set foot on American soil for the dollars to pour into your lap.

As the truly successful have discovered, success is not on tap, to drink deep from at will — it has to be mined, from deep within the bowels of the land; the process involves hardship and heartache in equal measure.

And if you seek a formula for that alchemic process, look no further than Renu Khator.

Through a lifetime of path-breaking achievement, she has done the community, and her adopted country, proud — today, by naming her winner of the 2007 India Abroad Publisher’s Special Award for Excellence, we do her honor.

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‘She is a very integrated person with both a traditional and modern outlook’

RAJESH KARKERA

ARCHANA MASIH travels to a small Indian town where Renu Khator’s family still lives and where her career first took flight

Renu Khator’s mother Suman Maheshwari, center, with her brother Rajan and sister-in-law Latika

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lipping open a thick diary, Rajan Maheshwari looks at the list of names and organizations that have asked him for a meeting with his sister during her next visit to Farrukhabad, Uttar Pradesh.

There are 25 names on the list and increasing every day, but the trouble is his sister is only going to be home for two days this month. “This town is so proud of her — she grew up and studied here, on this terrace she did her homework and flew kites. Farrukhabad still remains her main reason for coming to India,” he says standing in the central courtyard of their 73-year-old ancestral home.

As sunlight streams into the marble courtyard bordered with potted dahlias, pansies and phloxes, on a table lie magazines and newspapers with cover stories on Maheshwari’s elder sister, Dr Renu Khator, President of the University of Houston.

Regional newspapers have covered her rise to become among the most powerful university administrators in the United States, and the townspeople are well aware of her achievements. Be it in the small grocery store in the chowk near her family home or a retired teacher’s living room in the twin town of Fatehgarh — Renu Khator is a well known name in the hometown she left nearly 35 years ago.

“She is from here and has brought great pride and fame to our small town. To me she has given immense happiness. I always knew her flight would be very high and very strong,” says her 75-year-old mother Suman Maheshwari.

“When she was two-and-a-half, the principal of the mission school told me she was taking Renu to school and just enrolled her. She shone in her studies and persuaded her father to send her to Allahabad for her Master’s — apart from that she even wrote poems and regularly sent stories in Hindi that were published in Sarita magazine till very recently,” she says.

Sitting across her late husband’s photograph in her living room, Suman Maheshwari (center, above, seen with her son Rajan and daughter-in-law Latika) says Renu’s father would have been very proud of his daughter’s achievements. At a time when families within their community were not known to send daughters to pursue academics to another city, he had accompanied his daughter for admission to Allahabad University, the premier university in Uttar Pradesh state.

Aware that her father Satish Chandra Maheshwari followed her career closely, Dr Khator called him before every

important event in her life to seek his blessings. “If she had to make a speech or take a new appointment, she would call us first,” says her mother, her eyes widening in pride, “She called me to say she was going to Houston to take oath as President and wanted my blessings.”

“Whenever we think of her success we think of our father who died three years ago. When she became vice president, my father had told her we’d be happier when she would become President, so when she called us to give us news that she had become President, we both cried remembering our father,” adds Rajan, his eyes welling up with tears.

Restricted in movement because of a knee impediment, Mrs Maheshwari revels in her daughter’s success and applauds her son-in-law’s contribution to her success. “I give him full credit. If he had not encouraged her, what could we have done?”

A proposal from Suresh Khator, who was doing a PhD at Purdue University, had come for Renu when she was in the middle of her Master’s degree. The marriage was finalized and within 10 days the couple were married. Dr Suresh Khator encouraged his wife to continue her studies.

“He was like an angel who took her away and gave wings to her career,” says her brother Rajan.

By her achievements, it is evident that Dr Khator is an inspiration to her family. Her younger sister Rita, a PhD and principal of a school in New Delhi has preserved the card Renu gave her in 1987. ‘A place for a woman is anywhere she wants to be’ — says the card that Dr Rita Kabra shows us in her living room.

“After my marriage, I told her I wanted to continue my studies and she was such a motivator. She always told me marriage, kids, home all was fine, but you should do something for yourself. That way she is a great believer that women should do something.”

The children of the family have consulted with her about higher education constantly. “She has advised my daughters. One of them is in America and the younger did a degree in education for children with special needs,” says Rita’s husband, Group Captain Suresh Kabra, a doctor in the Indian Air Force.

There was a time Dr Khator had wanted to be an Indian Administrative Service officer, India’s prestigious civil services arm. Her father had cleared the written exam thrice but had been unable to make it through the interview round. He served as an honorary magistrate in

Farrukhabad for 18 years.

“But Jiji got her career opportunity after marriage and she did justice to it.

I am constantly amazed at the tremendous energy she has and the amount she can pack into each day. Once she was here for a conference and there seemed to be no jetlag, she was up preparing for her paper because she wanted it to be the best,” says Rita.

On her last visit to India, Dr Khator had a meeting with senior government officials. She had wanted her mother to accompany her but because of frail health Suman Maheshwari could not do so. In the times when she was healthier, Mrs Maheshwari, on trips to see her daughter, had carried along with her from Farrukhabad something that Renu has special affection for — kites.

“Oh, Jiji loves kites. We have a separate terrace in our home for flying kites,” says Rajan. “Even though she has been away for so many years she remains the central point of our family. She is in such a high post but when she is here it is like old times — eating Golgappe (Paani Puri), flying kites, playing cards and picnicking in the mangroves nearby.”

Although the Maheshwaris have made new homes in Delhi and Noida, Uttar Pradesh, the two sisters and brother have resisted making any renovations to their old home.

There is a comfort in the memories and values it holds and the warmth it provides.

A short walk away is the Mithia Devi temple where Dr Khator has bowed her head in reverence many times. The day we went to her home, two school girls got off their bicycles to make a quick stop at the temple on their way to the same school she went to.

“She may have been away from India for many years but she keeps her Tuesday fasts, does Karva Chauth…” says her mother. Rita Kabra says the best Karva Chauth and Teej she has celebrated have been with her sister in America. “I may take some shortcuts but she does all the rituals, in that you may say she is more Indian than me,” she laughs.

In the years that she has been away, Renu Khator has been able to strike a balance between the traditional and modern. Not blurring her love for saris, Indian embroidery, penning Hindi poems and short stories or festivals, she has established a blend that her family and friends applaud.

“She is a very integrated person – witty, well read, simple with both a traditional and modern outlook,” says Dr R B Jain, former head of political science at the University of Delhi.

A fellow author with Dr Khator and one who has attended many conferences with her, Dr Jain provides some incisive insights into her as a professional. Going back to a conference in Delhi, he cannot forget the last minute help provided by Dr Khator when the organizers realized there was no one to present a German scholar’s paper.

A jet-lagged Dr Khator, who had arrived a day earlier, was asked to present the paper on his behalf. She only had a couple of hours to go through the 35-page complex paper. “And lo and behold! she summarized the paper in 15 minutes in such a way that we were all flabbergasted,” remembers Dr Jain, who also wrote a two-page glowing note as her referee during her promotion to assistant professor at Florida State University.

Working on the belief of making the best of every opportunity that comes along the way, those closest to Dr Khator feel she has left a mark wherever she has gone. Be it her juniors at the City Mission School in Farrukhabad or scholars at international conferences around the world.

Her young niece Neeti Kabra borrows a favorite phrase by her aunt to sum her up. “She always says – ‘If life gives you a lemon and everybody is making lemonade, why not make margarita instead!’ That sums my aunt beautifully.”

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‘A special woman, destined to do such great things’ A familial feel of the academic superstar

Newly-weds Pooja and Derin with the Khator family: from left, Suresh, Parul and Renu

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he President’s office at the University of Houston tells quite a story, starting with the silver nameplate sitting atop the large, mahogany desk in the room’s rear. With elegant, feminine script that reads Dr Renu Khator, it’s clearly the namesake of an Indian woman.

On the executive-style bookshelf, behind the desk, stand three framed diplomas that reflect an international journey — 1973 BA Kanpur University (Liberal Arts), 1975 MA Purdue University (Political Science), and 1985 PhD Purdue University (Political Science/Public Administration). There’s also a Distinguished Alumni award from Purdue University and dozens of books on dramatically different topics (anthropology, religion, global governance, resource scarcity, bureaucracy, and Indian history, to name a few).

Alongside all this, and perhaps most prominently positioned, is the Hind Rattan (Jewel of India), an award given by the government of India to non-resident Indians for making outstanding contributions in their fields. In January 2007, she and husband Dr Suresh Khator became the first couple to both receive the award, when she was still vice president and provost at the University of South Florida and he a distinguished professor of industrial engineering and engineering management, also at USF. Roughly a year later, Renu Khator has moved on to a new challenge at the University of Houston, becoming in January 2008 the first-ever Indian to serve as President and Chancellor at a major US university. With nearly 57,000 students and 8,000 staff beneath her, she’s the administrative head of the nation’s ninth largest university system. Her American colleagues and associates find that she is well-versed in the minutiae of Americana, and always direct, frank and accessible. But at the same time, there’s no adopted American accent; and she’s natural with her Indian identity and faith in Hinduism.

“Soon, there will be a large Ganesha idol on that shelf,”

Dr Khator says, pointing to an already-cleared space surrounded by tiny plants, ornaments, and flowers. “It’s taken some time to get the office set up, because we’ve been meeting people, attending functions and working non-stop since the day we arrived. I want to make a few changes, perhaps make it more feminine, cheerful, and inviting.”

Family portraits and heirlooms, primarily of her two daughters and husband, dominate her desk and sit just an arm’s length from her while she works. Both daughters have inherited their parents’ thirst for achievement. Both studied ophthalmology, a dream their mother always pushed them to pursue.

Pooja, 29, studied at the University of Florida before completing her residency in 2002 at the University of Maryland. She lives with her husband Derin, her highschool sweetheart, in Tampa, Florida, where she practises as an ophthalmologist.

Pictures on Dr Khator’s desk capture the beautiful Pooja’s festive multiple-day wedding. Though they had an arranged marriage themselves, neither Renu nor Suresh Khator ever mandated who their daughters would marry.

And though Derin is a Caucasian-American, the Khators had no reservations regarding the union. “Derin’s a great guy,” says Dr Suresh Khator. “He’s almost been like one of ours growing up, because we’ve known him so long. He’s very respectful and hard-working.”

Parul, 26, is completing her residency in ophthalmology at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. Pictures show her to be equally stunning, with intelligent eyes and luminous black hair.

“Both girls are extraordinarily hardworking and intelligent. But it’s not only that; they’re well-balanced. They have highly developed social and personal skills. And most importantly, they have big hearts,” their mother says. She then relates how the two girls showed the gumption and wherewithal to travel to India as part of a program to per-

form operations on the underprivileged. “That really impressed me,” says Dr Khator. “Those were not easy conditions. They did all the surgeries for free. And they kept their attitudes positive throughout the experience. It showed a lot of character.”

She won’t take the credit for rearing the girls properly, not without her husband. “Suresh is so strong a person. He leads this family,” she explains. “I had to discontinue my education when we decided to have children. And from the time of Pooja’s birth through Parul’s infant state, I was removed from my professional life. Suresh always provided for us and ensured our needs were met. Without a stable environment our daughters wouldn’t have been able to flourish.”

She further maintains that when it came time to reimmerse herself in academics, Suresh was there to hold her hand and lower her in slowly. “That was a difficult time, raising children and earning a PhD. Without Suresh’s support, it surely would not have been possible. We did everything as a team, as partners. And when he went to University of South Florida in 1985, I followed him and got my start teaching there; but they really only hired me because they needed to ensure they got Suresh. He’s done so much to help me get to where I am today.”

He husband, for his part, gives his wife a touch more credit than she’s willing to give herself. “If you want to see the fruits of hard work and determination, just look at Renu. She has this unmatchable ability to take goals, break them into tasks, and then go out and achieve them. Once she started climbing the ranks at (USF), you could just see her career taking its own course. She’s a special woman, who was destined to do such great things.”

At their 11,000 foot home, named the Wortham House and reserved for the Chancellor of the University of Houston system, this sense of transition remains. “It’s so big and so beautiful,” Renu jokes, showing off the impressive artwork adorning the first floor’s walls. “Sometimes it feels like a hotel or a museum.” Upstairs, the couple, amidst half-emptied moving boxes, have set up a place they call home. She makes omelets on the weekend, they watch television in the University of Houston themed drawing room, and the two share an all-white office that offers a gorgeous vista of the expansive property.

Still, they sometimes feel pangs for their home in Tampa.

When news of the couple’s imminent departure became public in late 2007, the outpouring of emotion from the community surprised them. “They presented us this giant farewell card,” says Dr Suresh Khator, holding up a 3 foot by 2 foot card, full of signatures and best wishes.

Early each Sunday in Houston, they jog or do yoga with the Agarwals, fellow Indians whose patriarch Dr Durga Agarwal is a University of Houston alumna. “She’s been so active and involved in just one month,” says Dr Agarwal.

“It’s clear that she’s already made a big impact.” After jogging, the Khators freshen up before heading to a local Udupi restaurant, where they feast on a buffet.

Inside, it’s clear that both Indian and non-Indian patrons know her name and status, evidenced by the prolonged stares and subtle whispers. She handles the attention masterfully though, and meets any and all who wish to speak with her. In the evening, she goes to another Houston area temple, her fourth in as many weeks; she hopes to visit a new one each week, so that she can best understand the city’s highly active Indian-American community.

— Matthew Schneeberger

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‘An absolute superstar’ regents, says, “We chose Renu for her excellence and for her outstanding merit. Her diversity was an added bonus…

(Dr Khator is) an educational superstar; she’s exactly what the University of Houston needs as we reach tier one status. The former chairman of the board of regents at the University of South Florida told me, ‘Welcome, we’re sorry to lose her; but you could not have ever selected anybody better than Dr Renu Khator,” Leroy Hermes, who headed the UH selection committee, but who has since retired from UH, pushed hard for Dr Khator from the start.

Michael Rierson, a jolly man who peppers his speech with sports euphemisms, echoes the above sentiments, saying he has ‘had the immense pleasure’ of working with Dr Khator twice. He currently serves as vice president for advancement at the University of Houston; but he also once worked with her at the University of South Florida, where he held a similar position. “From the moment she stepped into an administrative role, she was a natural,” he says, examining a photograph of her interacting with a local business leader.

“When she was provost at USF,” he adds, “we treated her as a second President, even back then. She was assigned the staff and responsibilities of a second President; she was that good. In all my years, I’ve never seen someone so inherently talented, so naturally inclined to this type of work,” he says. “William J Funk, a recruitment consultant for the major universities, told me that every single university in the country had Renu Khator on their short-list of candidates. She’s an absolute superstar.”

He goes on to recall a 2005 incident that cemented in his mind her status as academic and intellectual heavyweight.

“The state of Florida holds these forums, where different academic leaders discuss and debate the issues most pertinent to the University system,” he says. “There was this official, a very bright guy, from another state university, a more well-known university, who thought he could run roughshod on Renu because she was a USF representative.

He was arguing that universities shouldn’t be required to offer tenure to distinguished professors, while Renu argued the opposite. You should have seen it! It was like Ali versus Frazier, a real life war. But, in the end, no one in the room doubted that Renu had whipped him. She was funny, charming, engaging, direct, intelligent, compassionate; you name it. I’ve never met a more skilled debater.

When I found out she had been unanimously chosen by the search committee here at UH, my wife and I celebrated for two days!”

Rierson’s anecdote illustrates Dr Khator’s enormous sense of personal challenge, and of a refusal to be intimidated. Though she had her choice of the nation’s top ranked universities, she opted for the University of Houston which, though on the cusp of becoming a top-tier research institution, is by no means an elite university. Her friends and colleagues describe her as a goal-minded visionary; and it’s this vision that led her to select UH. “The potential to become an elite research center is here.

The resources are here. Someone just needs to take up the mantle, involve the community, and build on what is already an exciting foundation,” she says.

She announced her arrival on campus with the launch of her ‘100 day plan’, a formal effort meant to solicit opinion, input, thought and criticism from student body, the alumni family and the community at large. The web site url, http://www.uh.edo/100days, is splashed across mailers, billboards and radio waves in the Greater Houston area, and seems to have activated the local population. She recently participated in a teleconference with over 14,000 households in the surrounding area. During the one-anda-half hour event, she fielded calls about her vision for the university, including tough questions about whether she plans to raise admissions standards, which might leave out some students who would easily have qualified in previous years. She minced no words in saying that UH must improve its selectivity if it intends to ever reach the top tier. Texas state Senator Rodney Ellis orchestrated and moderated the discussion.

“I want the city to give me my charge. I didn’t want to

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walk in with preconceived notions and plans. That was the idea behind it, to involve every one. And it’s working.

We’ve received over 5,000 distinct replies and ideas, and the number increases daily,” she says, obviously excited to discuss the details of her program. “I’m delighted to see such an outpouring of ownership, because it takes a whole community to build a university.” After the 100 days end in April, Dr Khator and her staff will use a two-day retreat to process the submissions. Then, she will share the results with the board of regents, and incorporate the suggestions into a five or 10 year plan.

“My first major goal is for University of Houston to be recognized as a top-tier research university,” she says.

“The quality of living in the Houston area is directly linked to the quality of education provided by the University of Houston. We graduate over 11,000 kids a year; and most of them enter the local job market. I want the community to take ownership in the university, and I want students to take ownership in their degrees. A degree is just a piece of paper, like a stock or bond. As the school’s reputation increases, so does the degree’s value, and vice versa. These students need to make their degrees as valuable as possible,” she says.

Though the 100 days are not yet over and she hasn’t yet hosted the two-day retreat, Dr Khator has already identified a few key improvements UH must make in order to boost its status. “The university must first double the number of postgraduate engineering students,” she says.

“Second, we must improve the medical school because medical research garners huge stipends and grants from the government. And third, we should merge with a research center here in Houston to ensure that we always have top level research affiliated with our university.” She has a clear strategy, and a knack for analyzing an array of issues. Rierson says, “I know a few well-placed CEOs who cannot do the things she does.”

On being a manager, she says, “When people ask me the secret to my success, I explain to them the two important lessons I learned in India. One, I grew up in an extended family, where you learn to listen to many different people.

And yet, you have to move your household in one direction. I saw my mom do that. I saw my dad do that. And I think I use that consensus building and ownership approach in my management style. The other thing I’ve seen growing up India, is that you do not worry about the resources around you. You have to dream beyond your resources, or beyond what seems possible. That’s always

given me a great sense of optimism,” she says.

But she is not a faceless manager, void of personality; she’s a natural leader and motivator. Beginning with her involvement in student government at Purdue during her graduate school days, and continuing through to today, people have always been drawn to her aura. Two of her former colleagues at University of South Florida actually left their stable careers behind in Tampa, along with loved ones and memories, just to further associate with her.

Dr Dan Gardiner, who was at USF for 17 years, the last seven as director of planning and analysis of academic affairs, left behind his post to be her chief of staff at UH. “It was so wonderful to work with her in Tampa; she represents the epitome of professionalism. Moving cities, leaving friends, changing jobs, those aren’t my major concerns right now. I’m excited about the future, because I know that Dr Khator will be a dynamic president; I’m happy to be part of her administration. She’s a remarkable woman who has a real presence. Every time we go to a function, staff, students and guests want to meet her and talk to her. She usually doesn’t even get to eat a proper meal because she’s too busy working to represent the university.”

Dr Gardiner, with his monotone voice and lack of emotion, is hardly an excitable man. But even he sits up in his seat and waves his hand while listing Dr Khator’s most pronounced traits. “She’s a visionary, but also thoughtful and deliberate. She’s willing to take the small steps necessary to achieve a larger goal. She’s committed to her mission, the improvement of the University of Houston. She’s creative and funny; but she can also be hard-nosed and direct when it’s required. She’s the ideal academician.”

Theresa Singletary, executive assistant to the president, also worked for Dr Khator at USF. Singletary, who was born and raised in Tampa, explained her decision to join Dr Khator’s staff from a spiritual perspective. “I’m a religious person,” she says. “I had to work through my options with prayer and conversations with my preacher. My soul searching and my preacher confirmed my instincts, that to work with Chancellor Khator was a great opportunity.”

Singletary says since she began working for Dr Khator in 2005, she has been amazed by her high energy and inspired leadership. “She has an ability to make people work harder, better, and longer, just through her example.

People want to give their all for her; I’ve never seen that in a person before. She naturally makes people excited to be part of her team.” Skyler, Singletary’s young daughter who enjoys a friendly relationship with Dr Khator, adds to her mother’s thoughts. “Dr Khator proves that not only boys are smart enough to be President. Plus, she’s really nice!”

This quality of being ‘nice’ helps to distinguish her from most leaders. While she can be shrewd and demanding when needed, she also empathizes with others, and can see multiple points of view on a given subject. She charms in conversation, and is an excellent active listener. These abilities, coupled with her steady doggedness, serve her well when she interacts with potential donors. Rierson says, “She’s the best fundraiser I’ve ever been around. And not any donations, mind you, but the right donations. She builds trust with clients, which is not an easy thing to do.

She’s terrific with interpersonal communication.”

His praise, while it sounds over the top, makes perfect sense when taking into account her record at the University of South Florida. As provost and vice president, Dr Khator oversaw that university’s alumni giving increase a staggering 43% in five years. She also secured the school’s largest-ever gift, a deal which ended up totaling $34 million.

“Donors,” she says, “will listen to a vision, but not to whining. If you can show someone a vision that provokes their passion, a vision that provides hope or a vision that is in sync with their intended legacy, people are very generous. In that sense, I think of the work as community serv-

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static and not real. It’s just a personal preference.”

Mrs Owen, 93 year old, a ubiquitous fixture at University of Houston soirees, and a philanthropist, is impressed by Dr Khator. “May I lift my glass and my spirits to your new, wonderful leader from India,” she says in a classic Texas drawl, raising her glass of white wine high in the air. “And if ever there was a need in the world, it was to bring together East and West. I truly believe that the University of Houston has found the other half of its soul in hiring Dr Khator.”

Dr Khator tends to look forward, and not backwards. “No good comes from dwelling in the past. Learn, and move on.” Today, when she looks into her crystal ball, she sees the University of Houston in a position of worldwide prominence. “Houston is a global city,” she says. “And the University of Houston has a global presence. We have the nation’s second most diverse student body; 23% of our students are from Asia, with Indians forming the largest bloc of international students. So students who come to the University of Houston will get global exposure, a global edge, and the skills needed to be successful in the global economy of today and tomorrow.”

She thinks globally by habit, and envisions University of Houston degrees one day awarded to talented but financially strapped youngsters in other countries, who have completed rigorously maintained accredited programs. “In the next six months, I intend to see some very substantial agreements and partnerships between University of Houston and India,” she says. “We’ll have programs that allow students to study a few years there, and then come here to finish their degree. We’ll hopefully have programs that allow students to move from the US to India as well; because the key to a healthy relationship is the bilateral exchange of resources.”

Forgotten in all the hoopla surrounding her appointment is her brilliant political science research, which stands apart from her role as administrator, but represents an enormous achievement in itself. As provost at the University of South Florida, she would stay up every Tuesday evening and work through the night on academic scholarship, while using the rest of the week to perform her prescribed duties. As her responsibilities have grown, she has increasingly been forced to rely on research assistants.

Still, she misses sifting through books at the library, and makes an effort to every now and then return to her roots.

Throughout her 32 years in US academia, she has published five books, including the self-authored Environment, Politics, and Development in India (1991), and numbers six and seven are on the way in 2008. Her dozens of published articles and book chapters include The 1994 Plague Outbreak in Surat, India: Social Networks and Disaster Management (2001) and Determinants of Policy Performance: An Empirical Examination of the

-ice. It can be a magical experience.” Because those with money often seek to invest it philanthropically, she says, universities provide “an avenue for donors that will result in long-term, sustained benefits for society.”

Dr Khator enjoys an impeccable reputation with staff and students, both at USF and University of Houston.

Hardly a month at the helm of University of Houston, and she has already garnered groundbreaking response, according to University of Houston Dean of College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences John Antel. “I’ve been here for 27 years, and I’ve never seen so much excitement about a new President,” he says. “She has created a positive buzz not only within the community, but also among the faculty. We really appreciate her energy. She has a tremendous presence to her; and she also gives us a true international flavor, which is congruent with what we’re trying to do here at the University of Houston.” James, her affable African-American assistant with a larger than life personality, says that in Dr Khator, he’s met his match. “She’s unstoppable, man. People just want to be around her. It’s hard to explain.”

Anup Pansari, a 24-year-old industrial engineering student from Pune, agrees that Dr Khator has injected life into the campus, particularly into the desi demographic. “I think every Indian is happy that a fellow Indian has made it to the highest level in the university. We’re all proud of her, and I think she’s doing a great job so far.” Four Pakistani girls eating lunch applaud the hiring, saying, “It’s a great step for diversity. And it’s awesome that she’s South Asian.”

N Vishal, a computer science student from Mumbai, says, “When we heard the news, all of us in the IndianAmerican student association were really excited. With an Indian in charge, we have a place to direct our queries or concerns. She’ll be able to relate to us; there won’t be any cultural differences.” And Gaargi, from Jharkand, says, “The fact that she’s an Indian makes me feel pride. It shows you what can be accomplished through hard work.”

The non-Indian students are equally impressed. Ian Frankel, from nearby Galveston, Texas, says he’s amazed by her visibility. “I’ve been here three years, and I honestly don’t think I once saw the old president. But Dr Khator has been here only a month, and I’ve probably bumped into her five times on campus. Two weeks ago, she was just chatting with students at Starbucks, in the middle of the day. I couldn’t believe it! It’s been really impressive.”

Ross Burnett, an English major, presents her a petition outside the main student center, as she crosses campus.

“President Khator,” he says shyly, at the head of a four-person pack, “this is regarding some things that happened under the old administration, some grievances we have. I hope you’ll review them.” “Certainly,” she replies. “And thank you for your input. Renu Khator receives the Hind Rattan Award Please don’t be afraid to send your suggestions electronically too, to our 100 days web site.” As she walks on, greeting random students and asking them questions, Ross and his friends seem shocked. “I can’t believe she was so personable and approachable,” says Burnett. “That was surreal!”

Eric Gerber, University of Houston director of communication, speaks about Dr Khator in fulsome terms. “She’s been excellent thus far, and has brought new life to this campus. I think in 10 years we’ll look back on this hiring as symbolic, because she is poised to take us to new heights. Much like she did at University of South Florida, I think she’ll improve this university in every measurable category. The moment I heard her acceptance speech, and noticed that she wasn’t using notes, I knew we had found someone special.” But Dr Khator dismisses this as a personal quirk, not something to be admired. “Honestly, I just go out there and say what I feel, from my heart. If I write it down, and read from cards, it seems too

Impact of Environmental Bureaucracy in India (1987).

Her research, grounded in empiricism and dense academic analysis, specifically focuses on bureaucracy and how it affects environmental legislation, particularly on issues of water scarcity. Not only is she comfortable interpreting data using high-level mathematics and analyzing it based on empiricism, she’s equally adept when talking in abstract theories and concepts. She’s a very organized, disciplined thinker; but at the same time, she is very creative. One minute, she sounds like an MBA student from Wharton or Harvard; the next she sounds like an impassioned lover of literature.

In her spare time, usually while catching connecting flights in airports around the world, she writes in Hindi on scraps of paper, and has compiled and published a few creative works, including short stories and poems. As her chief of staff Dr Gardiner says, “She has a phenomenal capacity for analysis, but she’s also off the charts in terms of creativity. Both sides of her brain work together, in unison. And they’re high performance machines.”

Her role as Chancellor emphasizes managerial and ambassadorial duties, but still follows her career’s natural progression. “At the University of South Florida, I was Provost for almost five years. For the first two years, the distribution of my work was about 80% academic and 20% administrative,” she says. “During later years, it was around 50:50. Here, it’s about 80% non-academic issues such as dealing with the community, with the legislator, and with the donors, and only 20% academic, or less.” As Chancellor of the 4 campus UH system, she takes responsibility for the physical safety, emotional well-being and career development of nearly 57,000 students, and roughly 8,000 staff members. After the recent spate of violence on US campuses, she immersed herself in University of Houston’s security protocol and worked alongside campus officers to improve the system.

Finally, as a foreign-born woman, she has a keen understanding of emotion, spirituality and the human side of our interactions. Her deliberate frankness in word and in action is softened by a feminine grace and strong sense of empathy. She’s spiritual and has attended a Houston-area temple each of her first four weeks in the city.

“I consider being Indian to be an asset. How many people are blessed to have their heritage so centrally important? I’ve learned a lot of my values from India, and I use them every day; so, of course, I’m very proud to be Indian.

It gives me something distinct, something unique and something exotic. And most of the time, when I’m meeting a person for the first time, it’s a fantastic ice-breaker. I don’t think my race has led to any discrimination. If it has, I’m either stupid, naïve, or fearless; because I don’t even see it or feel it.”

Says Shashishekhar Gavai, India’s consul general in Houston, “I have known Dr Khator since she was at USF. I’ve always been impressed by her commitment and drive. The Indian community here in Houston has achieved quite a lot in terms of education levels, standard of living and giving back to the community at large. And now we can add Renu to that profile. Her remarkable story personifies the American dream, and I feel her achievement deserves to be mentioned alongside Indra Nooyi’s.”

During the rare moments she allows herself to rest, Renu Khator proves to be quite contemplative. She’s been considering one point for the better part of an hour. “I am a very organized person, because it saves time and allows me to focus on what truly demands my attention. But even I disagree with those people who say, ‘You should plan your life. If I had planned my life when I was 17 years old, it would probably not be what it is today. I’m just thankful to God and to my family for helping me to achieve what never seemed possible in my wildest dreams.”

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2007

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COLLECTOR’S ISSUE

The Trail-Blazer AZIZ HANIFFA hails JOY CHERIAN, winner of the first India Abroad Lifetime Service to the Community Award

H

COURTESY DR JOY CHERIAN

PARESH GANDHI

groups and kept hammering away at is leadership talents were spotted early in his White House public liaison officials childhood by teachers at the St Mary’s Primary until the White House convened a speSchool. But political activism too was always in cial briefing on June 24, 1983 and welJoy Cherian’s blood and it began flowing durcomed nearly 100 Indian-American ing his high school days when as president of the Sacred activists.

Heart High School student association, he led an interSenior White House officials led by then national securischool student protest march in Ernakulam town against ty adviser William P Clark listed patiently to the concerns Kerala state’s then Communist government. of Indian-American and Asian American groups led by Dr The students were protesting the Communist governCherian and promised to convey these concerns to the ment’s educational policies, amidst fears that it was going President. to take over private schools and impose Communist ideolA few days later, then White House director of public liaiogy on the educational system and destroy the democratic son Linus Kojelis, whom Dr Cherian had cultivated, freedoms and autonomy these schools enjoyed. informed him that the President would oppose any For his trouble, he was arrested and thrown in jail for 15 attempt to eliminate the family reunification provisions in days, but his debut as a ‘political prisoner’ established his the immigration law. reputation and made him popular as a student leader and The Forum and Dr Cherian had recorded its first major fearless political activist with leadership qualities. victory.

This activism followed in his college days at St Joseph’s Dr Cherian wasted no time in deciding to cultivate memCollege, Trichy, now in Tamil Nadu, and the Sacred Heart bers of Congress, and on September 18, 1984, the Forum College in Kochi (then Cochin), when as a student union hosted its first Congressional luncheon on Capitol Hill that leader he led a delegation to meet with India’s then prime was attended by over a hundred lawmakers from both the minister Jawaharlal Nehru.

Senate and House and comprising an equal number of After graduating from Kerala University with a B Sc Democrats and Republicans. degree, the political activism bug followed him to law Soon, these interactions led to the Forum being invited school where he was a prominent member of the student union’s executive council.

So it was a natural evolution, when after migrating to the United States to pursue graduate studies and thereafter when working in the legal department at the American Council of Life Insurers in the early 1980s, Dr Cherian, after discovering that the community had no non-partisan political education group specifically designed to focus on political and civic issues affecting Indians and their families living in the United States, convened a meeting at his Silver Spring, Maryland, home on October 11,1982.

That day, the Indian American Forum for Political Education was born.

“We wanted the new organization to develop specific means to enhance political awareness of the Indian community and encourage them to get involved with civic engagements in their own community and become an integral part of the American mainstream,” he recalls.

“Many of these Indian immigrants who worked very hard, and were succeeding in every walk of life were still thinking they were in the old country, and forgot to become an integral part of the United States of America,” he adds.

And, as such, they were not equipped to fight the A younger Joy Cherian, second from left, with India’s first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru, third from right growing discrimination against the Indian-American community that had begun manifesting itself in very to testify before the Congressional Immigration overt ways. For example, in New Jersey, Indians were sub- and Asian Americans to the United States.

The Simpson-Mazzoli bill targeted in particular the pro- Committee and the emotional testimony that was provided ject to racial attacks by a gang of thugs calling themselves the Dotbusters. This gang would target Hindu women vision where US citizens could sponsor their adult children by the witnesses Dr Cherian had lined up led to the deathand married brothers and sisters to the United States as knell of the Simpson-Mazzoli bill and clones that had sporting bindis. cropped up.

Thus, in many ways the Forum was a result of a very immigrants.

If discriminatory immigration laws in the late 1940s and Dr Cherian, sensing that Reagan was “sensitive to the painful political lesson in discrimination.

If this kind of discrimination was overt and in-your-face, real concerns and needs of immigrants and their countries more sophisticated attempts at discrimination were also of origin,” formed coalitions with other Asian American M 25 afoot, with some lawmakers in Congress leading a charge to tamper with the family reunification provisions of the Immigration Act. FROM THE EDITORS work and a fierce determination to suc- ing trickle of immigrants became reborn This was when the Forum and Dr Cherian came into ceed; what they did not have was a larger as a ‘community’; on that day, it found its their own, going all the way to the highest levels of office by Prior to the 1980s, the story of Indian vision beyond individual survival, a purpose, its leader, and its voice — taking its concerns to President Ronald Reagan himself. immigration to the United States was greater purpose, a leader, a voice. requirements that crystallized as the Conservative Republican Senator Alan K Simpson had largely the story of random migrants The defining moment in this nascent Indian American Forum for Political co-authored a sweeping bipartisan immigration reform bill arriving in the ‘land of opportunity’ and community’s history, thus, occurred on Education. with Democratic Congressman Romano Mazzoli that fighting for a toehold.

October 11, 1982, when a group of The underlying purpose is best defined called for the elimination of some family reunification proWhat these migrants had was energy, activists met at Dr Joy Cherian’s Maryland visions that had formed the core of the immigration law in enterprise, an infinite capacity for hard home. In that seminal mo-ment, a grow M 27 the late 1960s and led to the influx of thousands of Indian

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COURTESY DR JOY CHERIAN

M 25 India Abroad March 28, 2008

2007

THE India

Joy and Alice Cherian greet then Indian prime minister Rajiv Gandhi as President Ronald Reagan looks on

M 24 1950s had brought forth the political activist Dalip Singh Saund, who went on to be elected a Congressman, serving three terms, Dr Cherian was the quintessential IndianAmerican political activist in the new era of immigration following the expansion of the country’s immigration laws that included many groups of Asians.

But he wasn’t done. He went on to become chairman of the Asian American Voters Coalition in 1986, of which the Forum was an integral part, and on January 10, 1986, a dozen AAVC leaders, including those belonging to the IAFPE, American Indian Association and National Federation of Indian American Associations, met in the Cabinet Room with Reagan, who asked what he could do for the Asian American community.

One major concern that these leaders expressed was the paucity of Asian Americans in the administration in senior positions.

Reagan delivered once again when a few days after he asked Robert Tuttle, the head of presidential personnel to look into these concerns, Dr Cherian was drafted into the administration as the first Asian American sub-cabinet level appointee as a Commissioner of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

On May 4, 1987, as part of a proclamation ceremony to celebrate Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, the President introduced Dr Cherian to over 150 Asian Americans as his new nominee to be a Commissioner on the EEOC. Dr Cherian served six years on the EEOC — from 1987 to 1993, after receiving two unanimous Senate confirmations.

He served through the second Reagan administration and through the entire administration of President George H W Bush.

His yen for public service was so great that even though he retired — after not being reappointed by the Clinton administration, and going on to establish an international consulting firm JCC Associates, based in Washington, DC, during which time he also founded the American Council of Trade in Services to advocate and promote the business interests of US-based small and medium-sized enterprises involved in service sector businesses in foreign countries — he then established the American Association for Civic Responsibility in 2001.

As he had done with the Forum, AACR, much more broad-based, was an educational association with a mission to bring together American institutions of all kinds, including US corporations and non-profit groups, to share

their past and current experiences of success and failure in the area of civic engagement.

Although some have dismissed AACR and its vision as utopian, Dr Cherian said he was not reinventing the wheel but using the same philosophy that had guided his founding of the IAFPE more than 25 years ago.

He said AACR’s philosophy, like the IAFPE, was to “educate and encourage all individuals and institutions in the United States to advance the public good of all the people by engaging in civic responsibilities such as volunteerism, social involvement and community service.

“This is something I believe is vital for the future generations of Indian Americans, including my children and grandchildren and everyone else who came here and have made America their home.

“All of our children and grandchildren will benefit if we give back to society,” Dr Cherian says. “We have only to see some of the incidents and historical antecedents of immigrants, including Indians in various parts of the world when they isolate themselves and don’t integrate and become part of the mainstream.”

Last October, the Forum celebrated its silver jubilee. It now has over 20 chapters nationwide and besides continuing with its original agenda of active political participation, promoting voter registration and working in coalition with other like-minded minority organizations in addressing issues of concern from immigration to racial profiling.

Today it also has one of the best internship programs for Indian-American college students who are placed in various Congressional offices, both in Washington, DC and around the country in the lawmakers’ district offices.

Dr Cherian, the trail-blazer, still works assiduously behind the scenes, promoting and encouraging secondgeneration political activists, providing ideas and an everexpanding vision to the old and new generations of the Forum’s leaders.

In January, the government of India honored Dr Cherian with the Pravasi Bharatiya Samman during the sixth Pravasi Bharatiya Divas in New Delhi for his ‘profound services for the Indian community in the US.’ When this correspondent called on him and informed him that India Abroad had unanimously decided to award him its first Lifetime Service to the Community Award, while acknowledging that he was “humbled and honored,” Dr Cherian protests that “what I was doing was not at all something that was unique.”

“What I was doing is from the lessons of history. That as people go to different parts of the world, if they isolate themselves, then when the issues come up, they don’t have

mainstream people to help them. I did not want this to happen to Indian Americans or immigrants in this country.

“I am just a canvas,” he declares, “Nobody should give credit to the manufacturer of a canvas. The credit should go to the artist, and my community is the painters and the artists of what appears on this canvas. So the credit should go to the people who created it — my community.

“Any immigrant who comes to this country unless they become part and parcel of the mainstream, they and the future generations will not be accepted because we are not involving ourselves,” he feels. “Even our own future generations will not respect us.

“And,” he adds, “If the community here gets involved, the country of their origin will also be respected.”

“The only way you can be part of the mainstream is to be politically involved and politically empowered and this you do by building coalitions.”

He says he still holds on to his contention that when it comes to political involvement and participation, “fundraising and political contributions, while important, is only one side of the political currency. The other side is participation.”

Dr Cherian recalls how people would tell him that “our people are so few in numbers, and how can we make an impact. I said, we do that by adding our numbers with similarly situated people and build coalition by numbers.

“Look at the clout and influence we have by building coalitions, even though in the whole scheme of things we are still insignificant in numbers.

He acknowledges even his own appointment, which in a sense set the ball rolling for other Indian - Americans and Asian Americans to be appointed to senior administration positions, came only by building a coalition and impressing upon the President at the time that Asian Americans need to be represented in the government at the highest levels.

“Look at our future generations now. They are getting involved and no one is questioning that. We may be small in numbers, but in politics, we are opinion-makers.

And he reiterates, “Once we get involved in the mainstream and build coalitions with Blacks, Whites, Hispanics, Asians and others, then we are making an impact on society, because we are opinion-makers.

“What I learnt from childhood about leadership is that a leader is not the person who carries the flag in front of the procession,” he says. “It’s the person who understands that once your mission is completed, you hand it over to somebody else and move out and support them.”

Dr Cherian bemoans that “a lot of people don’t understand that. That was the symbolism I was conveying in my book, Our Relay Race.”

Before coming to the US, he practiced law in India, and in 1970 obtained his master’s degree and his Ph D in 1974 in international law from the Catholic University in Washington, DC. In 1978, he received his fifth university degree, a master of comparative law (American practice) from George Washington University’s National Law Center.

His first book, Investment Contracts and Arbitration, published in 1975, to this day is used as a reference resource in graduate school libraries worldwide. Our Relay Race, published in 1997, is a reflection of his public and community services, particularly that of the IndianAmerican community coming into its own.

Married to Alice for nearly 38 years, the Cherians have two children, Sheela and Saj. Sheela, married to Sajan Thomas, an entrepreneur, lives in Seattle, while Saj, a Princeton University alumna and a winner of the Marshall Scholarship which took him to Oxford University for graduate study, lives with his wife Marissa in New Jersey.

The Cherians have five grandchildren, four grandsons and a granddaughter.

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COLLECTOR’S ISSUE

‘The leader we were waiting for’ Community leaders assess Joy Cherian’s work in conversations with AZIZ HANIFFA r Piyush Agrawal and Dr Ved Chaudhary have been associates of Dr Joy Cherian since the early 1980s while Joe Melookaran, a member of President George W Bush’s Advisory Commission on Asian and Pacific Islanders and an activist of recent vintage, is among his many proteges.

They could not be more elated that Dr Cherian had been selected by India Abroad for its first Lifetime Service to the Community Award and just couldn’t speak enough about how much he has provoked, inspired and influenced them to not just participate in the political process but become part of the mainstream in order to go that step beyond to gain political empowerment.

Dr Agrawal, who now lives in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, is a former national president of the Association of Indians in America and the driving force behind convincing President Bush five years ago to host an annual Diwali celebration at the White House.

He recalls that he first met Dr Cherian in June 1983 when the AIA held its Joy Cherian receives this year’s Pravasi Bharati Samman from India’s President Pratibha Patil annual banquet in Washington, DC, “and he organized the very first White his, I would say, personally imposed civic grant, not even knowing who the police House briefing for the community where duty to call the leadership in the Indian- chief in my town was, I realized that I did we were welcomed by President Ronald American community and the broader not know anything about getting politically Asian American community on a regular involved in the local community in Jersey Reagan no less.

“I can still remember how we all walked basis and always keep us abreast of the City, let alone the state level, to make a diffrom Joy’s office in DC to the White House. happenings at the EEOC which was of ference in this situation.

“So when I read in India Abroad that Joy It was a memorable and historic event in interest to all of us.

“I was one of the beneficiaries of those had been appointed by President Reagan as the life of Indian Americans.”

Dr Agrawal, a former educator, who sev- monthly telephone calls,” Dr Agrawal a Commissioner of the EEOC, I was overeral years ago served as a Commissioner in recalls, “and try as I would to be the one joyed. We found out about the national the US Census, remembers, “This was the who called him before he did as a courtesy, Forum, started a local New Jersey chapter first time in all of my community interac- I invariably failed, because he always and invited Joy to inaugurate the chapter.

From that day onwards, when he made tions that I found someone who was gen- remembered to call.

“What I am trying to say is that he was such a inspiring speech about political uinely and sincerely interested in bringing the community together. At that time, all committed to this mission of keeping the activism and its importance and how such the three major organizations, the community informed at all times about activism is the means to stave off hate Association of Indians in America, the developments that were important to us so crimes and racial profiling of groups like National Federation of Indian Associa- that we could mobilize if the need arose the Dotbusters by working with the maintions, and the Indian American Forum for and take pre-emptive or pro-active action.” stream, I was convinced that here was a He says, “Both of us were also in total charismatic leader who had the savvy and Political Education, were competing against each other and didn’t seem to agreement that community leaders must clout at the highest levels and was the understand that ‘unity is strength’. Joy not stay in their chairs longer than stipulat- leader we were waiting for.”

Dr Chaudhary, Assistant Commissioner quickly instilled it into us that this is the ed. I remember when I became national only way we could be effective, and it was a president of the AIA, after extending his for the Office of Management and Budget united group representing all three organi- congratulations to me, he asked when I was in the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, says, “He was, zations that attended that White House going to retire from the presidency.

“I jokingly asked him if I could at least and still is, full of great and visionary ideas. briefing.

He enthused people, got them involved and “There is no denying that Joy was the pio- wait till I finished my first term!

“If the Indian-American community inspired them to do more than what they neer in the 1980s for developing the roadmap for the Indian-American commu- takes one lesson from Joy,” Dr Agrawal would have thought possible. Most of all, nity’s political activism and how we could feels, “it will be to pass the baton to the he got us to shake off the usual Indian pasendeavor to serve in government and the next generation at the very first opportuni- sivity and take the fight to hate groups like administration — whether Republican or ty. We must not stick to our chairs any the Dotbusters by working with and within Democrat — and his book Our Relay Race longer than necessary or try to be presi- the system and educating ourselves of our rights and privileges. dents for life!” is a blueprint of that process he outlined.”

“His life and successful political career Dr Chaudhary still reminisces about his “Although Joy and I belonged to two different community organizations — IAFPE association with Dr Cherian in the mid- was a great model for many of us to emuand AIA — I quickly learnt from Joy how to 1980s, “when a few of us formed the New late and look up to. He coached and taught respect community leaders who belong to Jersey chapter of the Forum. It was the me all of the ropes in helping me to organother groups and how we could come time when Jersey City and its environs ize the National Conference on Equal Opportunity in May 1990, in Washington, together on a common platform when were terrorized by the Dotbusters.

“Even though I did not live in Jersey City DC,” Dr Chaudhary recalls. “The conferthere were issues and concerns that affected the community. Immigration was one I felt compelled to get involved to stop this ence was attended by several hundred prosuch priority on our agenda which we all hate group from harassing not just our fessionals from our community. Thanks to women, but the entire Indian community support from Joy and his contacts among worked together on,” adds Dr Agrawal.

“When he was appointed by President in the area — Hindus and non-Hindus the powerful network he had built up among the Asian American community as a Reagan as a Commissioner of the EEOC, he alike.”

But he recalls that “being a new immi- whole and also in the administration and was always so gracious and conscious of

Congress, we had some influential speakers.”

It was the success of this conference, he says, “that propelled us to organize the Indian American Leadership Conference the following year and this conference, for the first time, brought together Indian-American community leaders from all over the country and from all walks of life — elected and appointed officials in Congress and the administration, national, regional and state officers of social and civic organizations, leaders from the professional groups like scientists, engineers, physicians, and small business owners to identify issues that were of special significance to our community in the upcoming elections. And, you bet, Joy was the star of the event!

“They all came to meet him, to hear him, and to learn from him, and even as he was leaving the administration and his job at the EEOC, he coached me to organize the Asian American Conference on Glass Ceilings in May 1993 in Washington, DC. And due to his clout with the EEOC, the entire conference was co-sponsored by the EEOC and held at the EEOC headquarters conference hall.”

Dr Chaudhary says, “During my years of association with Joy, I have come to appreciate that he is different from other leaders in the community in that even though he had so much political access and held a high political office so early in his life here in the US, he does not hanker for any appointed or elected position.

“This is in spite of the fact that his heart and mind are always engaged in finding new ways to help the community in moving it forward to the next level of success and recognition. He has focused his energies on mentoring, working behind the scenes and promoting and encouraging other leaders in the community, to mentor the younger generation and to let them move forward.

“With the contacts he still has in high places, mind you, here and in India, he is indispensable to our community and continues to play a pivotal role as a mentor to so many of us yet,” says Dr Chaudhary. “He is still our senior political adviser, insider and ultimate guru to me and several others, who now spend our time working with the second generation.”

Melookaran, a Kansas native and a rising star in Republican Party politics, says his political activism is due directly to Dr Cherian, whom he met during a maiden visit to Washington, DC in 1991, when the latter was an EEOC Commissioner.

He said after he migrated to the US in the early 1980s “and once I was able to strand on my own legs financially, I was exploring how best I could give back to the community. Although I had read so much about Joy in the Indian-American media, especially India Abroad, and also the mainstream media, I had never met him.”

COURTESY DR JOY CHERIAN

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2007

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COLLECTOR’S ISSUE

COURTESY DR JOY CHERIAN

“So during my maiden visit to DC, I simply made a call to the EEOC to seek an appointment to meet him knowing well that he may be extremely busy and may not be able to see me because I had not given him any notice that I was coming or wanted to have a chat with him. I thought to myself, all he can say is no, and so I have nothing to lose.

“To my surprise,” Melookaran recalls, “I got an appointment for 10 minutes in August 1991. I can still remember those 10 minutes I spent with him that got me all fired up and we hit it off right from the beginning. My passion for getting involved in mainstreaming our community and his passion and excitement to help guys like me seemed to be a perfect match. He helped me start a chapter of the Forum in Kansas. And, with his help over the years, my team was able to grow the chapter into one of the most vibrant chapters in the country.

“The morning after the inauguration of the Alice and Joy Cherian with Pope John Paul II chapter, where he was the keynote speaker, he During his tenure at EEOC, Melookaran says, “He did all assembled the chapter leaders and gave us a three-hour coaching on mainstream political involvement. This was of us proud and served the country and his community the first time anyone of us had ever been given such a com- with so much integrity and dedication, not to mention hisprehensive step-by-step approach to political involvement tory as our first sub-cabinet level appointee in an adminiswithin our community. He taught us all the ropes and also tration.

“After George W Bush was elected President, and as I had the passion to follow through by regularly calling us and making sure we were successful in cultivating political was continuing my activities in the GOP, he connected me to some key people and advised me on how to identify leaders in the mainstream.

“Since I am from a smaller city, which doesn’t have much opportunities and pursue them,” he adds. “At the time, I of an Indian-American population, it was always gratifying had no idea about political appointments. It was Joy who to have someone like him to hold my hand and guide me through so that we could make our presence felt in the mainstream of not just our city but the state as a whole.”

M 24 Melookaran, who serves on the board of the Kansas World Affairs Council, recalls during Dr Cherian’s tenure

by Dr Cherian himself: If you isolate yourself, if you ghettoize, at the EEOC “how he would help so many people in our you doom yourself to a constant, losing battle against the maincommunity with valuable advice. He was a man of excepstream. To flourish as a community, you need enhanced polititional character and integrity and he would never interfere cal awareness, escalated involvement in the civic life of the largin anyone’s EEOC case where it was unethical to do so.” er community, a focused push to become an integral element of

The Cherian family He said this was the reason “some in our community, in 1994, wrote nasty letters to members of Congress and others against his term renewal in the EEOC. I was outraged at the kind of allegations some were raising, purely because he had refused to be unethical.”

Melookaran remembers, “Once I spent a few hours during a weekend at his home with him. There was a constant barrage of calls from across the country from Indians asking him about some equal employment discrimination issue or the other, and he would patiently listen for more than half-an-hour each and calm those people.”

“But, since in some instances because he could interfere in those cases, people would get mad and berate him for not doing anything for the community even though he was an Indian-American presidential appointee, and he would lament that some people in the community were simply ignorant and couldn’t understand the process.”

the American mainstream.

It was a time of stress and strife, of animosity and opposition. If the Dotbusters of New Jersey channeled mainstream rejection of the transplanted Indians in their midst through violence, lawmakers like Senator Allan K Simpson and Romano Mazzoli underlined the discriminatory mindset with a bill to reform the immigration laws in ways inimical to the community.

Dr Cherian sensed the looming dangers, and fought back, hard. Typically, he scorned half measures and took the community’s angst straight to the White House of then President Ronald Reagan.

So impassioned was his advocacy, so tireless his battle, so powerful the testimony Dr Cherian and other IAFPE activists tendered before Congressional committees, that Reagan was impressed; he assured the emerging leader that he would not permit any tampering with the immigration law, or any other measure designed to hamper the IndianAmerican community’s bid to be accepted on equal terms in a land that has ‘equality’ enshrined as a bedrock principle.

Dr Cherian had won — yet, to his own mind, it was merely a beginning, a baby step. His struggle taught him one major lesson: to be accepted, a fledgling community needs the goodwill of the host nation’s lawmakers. To this end, on September 18, 1984, the Forum hosted the community’s first-ever luncheon on Capitol Hill. Typically, he left nothing to chance — in a demonstration of focused networking that was to create the community’s template for the future, he lined up the support of over 100 lawmakers from the Senate and House, spanning both Republicans and Congressmen.

At that dinner, for the first time, the community and the country, as represented by its lawmakers, Democrat and Republican both, broke bread, formed links, found common cause.

In a natural extension of that theme, Dr Cherian created the Asian American Voters Coalition in 1986, to translate the larger community’s increasing numbers into political power; the Coalition pushed for the community’s representation in the Presidential administration — and won another seminal triumph, when President Reagan named Dr Cherian as a

COURTESY DR JOY CHERIAN

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told me to get a copy of the Plum Book that listed many appointed positions in various boards and commissions in government agencies. Thanks to him, I submitted my profile in September 2003 to the White House. In March 2004, I got a call from the White House seeking my updated profile for a position in the AAPI (Asian American and Pacific Islander) Commission.”

“If I hadn’t known Joy and been the beneficiary of his advice, counsel and guidance, there is no way I would have known how to go through this bureaucratic process,” says Melookaran. “My conversations with him were what were instrumental in helping me to say the right things and doing the right things to reinforce my chances of getting this Presidential appointment, and I could see how excited and happy he was for

me.

“He (Dr Cherian) at times is very disappointed that many from our community do not support civic activities since there ‘is nothing in it for them,’ although this is the way for the community to make tangible inroads into the mainstream and be accepted as an integral part of this mainstream, without being parochial.

“I have probably come across all of the community leaders in the past 15 years,” says Melookaran, “but he is one of a kind.”

Commissioner of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

Dr Cherian served six years on the EEOC from 1987 to 1993, as the first Asian American member of a US administration, under President Reagan and, later, President George W Bush; no American administration since then has been complete without talented people drawn from the Indian-American community.

For the visionary, the concept of ‘retirement’ does not exist; thus, Dr Cherian went on to found the American Council of Trade in Services — a vehicle for the community to ‘advance the public good of all the people by engaging in civic responsibilities like volunteerism, social involvement and community service.’ Not content with even that, he continues to work behind the scenes to encourage, and promote, second-generation political activists, providing them with ideas and an expanding vision.

Throughout a distinguished career spanning decades, Dr Cherian was learning from, and applying, the lessons of history.

“As people go to different parts of the world, if they isolate themselves, then when the issues come up, they don’t have mainstream people to help them. I did not want this to happen to Indian Americans or immigrants in this country,” he explained.

The growing political influence — a clout far in excess of physical numbers — of the Indian-American community has been a constant storyline across mainstream media in recent times.

The administration of President George W Bush has seen an unprecedented number of community members in positions of power and influence; elsewhere, Indian Americans occupy key slots in the Presidential campaigns of Senators Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John McCain. The collective strength of the community was on full display in 2006, when bipartisan activism was singularly responsible for overcoming the resistance of the nonproliferation lobby and securing the passage, by overwhelming margins, of the US-India civilian nuclear cooperation agreement through the House and the Senate.

We glory — deservedly — in such triumphs; we take pride in our emergence as a powerful segment of American mainstream polity, its economy, its civic life. At this moment, we pause to think back on that seminal moment in 1982, when this community found the strength to stand on its feet, to voice its concerns, to advocate for its needs. And we recognize the man who first gave the Indian-American community its voice; the visionary who filled its leadership needs and, in doing so, provided us with the template for the future.

For his unparalleled vision, his leadership, his tireless advocacy of the Indian American cause, for his role in mentoring the leaders of yesterday and today, and preparing the leaders of tomorrow, we honor Dr Joy Cherian with the first-ever India Abroad Lifetime Service to the Community award.

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2007

THE India

COLLECTOR’S ISSUE

A star is born MATTHEW SCHNEEBERGER catches up with SOMDEV DEV VARMAN, the first Indian to win the US collegiate tennis title and the winner of the first India Abroad Youth Achiever Award

T

PARESH GANDHI

hough he comes of Tripura lineage, Somdev Dev Varman was born February 13, 1985 in Guwahati, the capital of India’s Assam state, and raised first in Kolkata and then in Chennai. Upon reaching Chennai, the nine-year-old Somdev discovered a lovely tennis court buttressing his new home. Though he had fiddled with a racket once or twice, he’d never learned the game in earnest. Given the court’s location, the whole family began to play, though only every so often, and they kept it casual.

“No one in my family played competitive tennis,” he recalls. “Everyone just played for the heck of it; they pretty much picked it up the same time I did. What helped me is that I’m a very competitive person; so even while I was 9, and it was just a hobby, I was pretty competitive during practice and during matches.”

Without proper training, Somdev exhibited natural talent and improved rapidly, turning heads as he entered his teenage years. “I stuck with it, and really enjoyed it as I grew up. But it was still a hobby. Then, when I turned 15, I started to take it a little more seriously. Since then, tennis has been one of the top priorities in my life.”

It was at 15 that he got his first big break when he was admitted to one of India’s best tennis academies, the Britannia Amritraj Tennis scheme.

“Once I got to BAT, they helped me improve my game really quick. It was just me and like 5 or 6 of the other real-

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FROM THE EDITORS On one side of the court stood a 6’9”, 240-pound giant already famed, and feared, on the tennis circuit for serves that thunder down from impossible angles at brutal velocities.

Across the net stood his antithesis — a slim, graceful 5’11” kid who tipped the scales at 160 pounds; a player who, according to the prevailing punditry, lacked the skill sets to take on the best.

The Dan Magill Tennis Center at the University of Georgia, venue of the 2007 NCAA Tennis Tournament, was like a Roman amphitheatre — with hundreds of students and fans ringing the court, cheering for local boy and number one seed John Isner against Somdev Dev Varman, the outsider from the University of Virginia.

In many ways, the story of that day, that match, was like the story of India itself — a smaller, economically weaker country that, in recent years, has found in itself the will to go up against giants; the intellectual rigor to focus on what it needs to do; the mental strength to survive, to triumph.

“Nearly every person there was cheering for him. But there was nothing I could do to change those things; so I just decided to focus on the things I could actually control,” Somdev said, of that day.

Aware that he could not match his opponent’s power and strength, Somdev took a leaf out of Indian philosophy — he bent, so he would not break; he met fire and fury with gentle grace and steely resolve. Realizing that he could not break his opponent’s

serve, he concentrated on staying in the game, holding his own serves, and looking to the tie-breakers to give him his opportunity.

It dawned on the spectators that something special was happening; that they were privileged to witness one of the best ever games in the tournament’s proud 123-year-old history.

The third set began with Isner and Somdev locked at 1-1. The atmosphere changed. No longer was the crowd cheering for their local star; instead, it began to vocally appreciate the contrasting skills of both players.

It was one of those moments that define sport — when supreme athleticism, skill, heart, and courage can win over bias and parochialism; when transcendent ability erases artificial boundaries and binds us all into a community of the joyously admiring.

Long story short, Somdev proved the immovable object impervious to Isner’s irresistible force; he weathered his opponent’s furious assault and, with the patience of India’s fabled sages, waited for his opportunity. It came in the tiebreaker; Somdev took it and, with it, the NCAA singles title.

Against the odds, he had become America’s best junior tennis player; in winning the NCAA title, he laid claim to the legacy of tennis legends Arthur Ashe, Stan Smith and John McEnroe, and revealed himself as a player poised on the cusp of greatness.

His coach calls him one of the fastest players, one of the strongest minds, in the game. Tennis pundits say he is ready for the ATP tour, and the big time, now.

Yet, Somdev bides his time, racking up more victories on the collegiate circuit (in the fall season, he racked up a 13-1 record in singles play and a 13-0 record in doubles) and preparing mind, body

and game for the big time.

His deeds have made him a rock star on the collegiate circuit, yet he accepts it all with an unassuming grace that has seen him add the ITA Rafael Osuna Sportsmanship award to his growing collection of honors.

Impressive achievements, by an impressive young man — and yet the Somdev story is greater than the sum of these parts.

The Indian community has been long distinguished for its academic excellence; thus, the continued laurels the community’s young win in this field — Isha Jain, who swept the top prize at the 2007 edition of the annual Siemens’ science competition being merely the latest example — no longer occasion surprise; merely earn respectful admiration.

To win adulation, to capture the public imagination, the community has needed to step outside its core strength, to find achievers in the field of sport, or entertainment. In Somdev, thus, it has found its beacon, its torchbearer.

Coach Brian Boland frames Somdev perfectly, when he says he is the best possible ambassador, representative, for his country.

Somdev unabashedly flies his country’s flag, his heritage, on his sleeve: “There’s not a single part of me that doesn’t have pride in where I’m from. I love it,” he says, of his Indianness.

For his amazing tennis skills, we applaud him; for his admirable character, and the example he sets for the community’s, and country’s young, we hold him up for emulation; for giving the community reason to be proud, we salute him; for his current achievements and for the promise of future glories, we honor him with the inaugural India Abroad 2007 Young Achiever Award.

M 29 India Abroad March 28, 2008

COLLECTOR’S ISSUE

Abroad

YOUTH ACHIEVER

2007

THE India

Shock and Awe

PARESH GANDHI

QUINN ROONEY/GETTY IMAGES

MATTHEW SCHNEEBERGER relives the tense encounter when Somdev Dev Varman stunned the top seed to win the US collegiate tennis title

omdev Dev Varman, racket in hand and eyes fixed cross-court, stood opposite the University of Georgia’s S superstar senior, John Isner (above right), At a glance, the 6’9, 240 pound Isner, then the top-ranked US collegiate tennis player, seemed ready to overwhelm the much smaller, 5’11, 160 pound Dev Varman, then a junior at the University of Virginia and the US’s number two ranked collegiate player, just behind Isner. It was May 28, 2007; the two were ready to play for the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s Men’s singles championship.

Determined annually, it’s the pinnacle of collegiate tennis in America, and considered one of the world’s foremost amateur awards. And while he’d already cemented his place as the top Indian-born collegiate player of all time, if Dev Varman could triumph over the heavily-favored Isner in the final, he’d become the first Indian to snare the NCAA Men’s singles trophy in its 125-year history.

Before the match, some reports framed the entire affair as nothing more than a glorious send-off for Isner, in this, the final match of his tremendous collegiate career.

Because he had defeated Dev Varman three of the four previous times they’d squared off, it was assumed he would once again better the ‘physically overmatched’ Indian, and then rightfully claim his place in the ranks of illustrious former NCAA Men’s singles champs, alongside legends like Arthur Ashe, Stan Smith and John McEnroe. After all, from the time Isner was just 16 and still in high school, these same people had called him the prototype for a new generation of tennis players: Powerful, enormous, yet nimble.

But while the postulators prepared the trophy and coronation ceremony, Isner knew better than to take the native of Tripura for granted. He’d come to begrudgingly respect Dev Varman for his blend of speed, smarts and mental toughness. And he knew from the Indian’s expressive, dark brown eyes, which stared back at him from across the net, there was no fear in the smaller man’s heart.

Today, in March 2008, Somdev Dev Varman admits that he has never before or after faced an opponent with Isner’s combination of power, strength, athletic ability and technical skill, which might explain why Isner so easily bested him the first few times they clashed. “John’s an unbelievable player,” he says. “Earlier, he always seemed to be blocking me or in my way; because I just couldn’t beat him.

In February 2007, when I lost yet another match to him, I

had to really step back and try to improve my game. Every day I was at the practice courts, trying to think of different ways I could better compete with him. I just hoped to get another chance to face him, because I was very mentally prepared.”

But while hoping ‘suggests’ a passive role, his remarkable 2007 season was anything but. In truth, he answered his own prayers. He compiled an impressive record of 44 wins and five losses and won the Atlantic Coast Conference’s Men’s singles championship for the second consecutive year, positioning himself as the country’s number two ranked player.

The ACC is one of six major conferences that, along with a few smaller conferences and independent universities, make up the larger body known as the NCAA; and while the West Coast’s PAC-10 may be the greatest tennis conference historically, recently the ACC has been acknowledged by pundits and players alike as the nation’s toughest, counting elite teams in its fold like Duke University, the University of North Carolina, and Dev Varman’s own University of Virginia.

The elite level of competition he faced routinely in the ACC prepared him for the final tournament. With four brutal rounds of elimination tennis standing between Dev Varman and his dream match-up with Isner, he put his head down, so to speak, and began grinding towards his goal. When both Isner and Dev Varman won their respective semi-final matches in decisive fashion, the dream match-up was realized.

While many around the NCAA also saw Dev Varman as a premier player, in the lead-up to the event, Isner certainly garnered the lion’s share of media and fan appreciation; he also enjoyed a celebrity status far beyond that of other college players. Those associated with NCAA men’s tennis had long ago learned to fear Isner’s legendary serve with its elite velocity. By consistently registering between 130 and 150 miles per hour, still as an amateur, he stood quite possibly as one of the world’s top five servers.

Even today, less than a year removed from the May 2007 Championship match with Dev Varman, Isner continues to terrorize opponents with his impossible-to-handle missiles; the difference is that now he embarrasses marquee players from the Association of Tennis Professionals, tennis’s leading professional body. In less than a year on tour, he’s ascended to the worldwide number 92 ranking; and

he’s yet to complete a full year’s schedule. But Isner’s pro success hasn’t surprised Dev Varman, who says, “I’m not shocked at all. He’s that good; and I think, in the future, he’ll only continue to climb the rankings.”

Dev Varman, on the other hand, by the 2007 season, a standard opinion had been manufactured and regurgitated by many of those supposedly in the know: ‘He’s good, but he doesn’t have any truly dominant weapons,’ they said. ‘He can’t compete with world class talent. His serve is weak and most of his shots lack power.’ ‘There are questions abound about this guy’s potential; I just don’t seem him having a pro career.’

In retrospect, his critics had inaccurately characterized his talents, and failed to tell the whole story. For many, he’s so unassuming, and his skill set is so cultivated and subtle, that’s it easy to mistakenly put a guy with the big serves and screaming forehands ahead of him. But to doubt him as a player or as a person, shows time and time again, is to make a mistake.

Adding to the odds against Dev Varman, in a bad stroke of luck, Athens, Georgia, the site for the 2007 NCAA Tennis Tournament, is best known as the University of Georgia Bulldogs’ home. So, Dev Varman would be forced to play in his opponent’s backyard, in front of a hostile crowd, in what was tantamount to a home match for Isner.

With these pressures working simultaneously against him and for Isner, the stage was set for a modern version of the biblical tale of David versus Goliath, particularly when keeping in mind the glaring physical discrepancies.

Dev Varman, who operates on court with the incisive clear-mindedness of a swami or monk, seemed impervious to the onslaught of negative factors. “Of course, it was tough,” he recalls. “It was in Georgia, and John is from Georgia. Plus it was his last college match. Nearly every person there was cheering for him. But there was nothing I could do to change those things; so I just decided to focus on the things I could actually control. I just kept telling myself, ‘I’m here in the finals. This guy is trying to beat me.

How do I overcome this? How do I stop him?’ I only concentrated on myself, my opponent, and the match. That’s it. I didn’t let myself get distracted by anything else.”

As the Championship match began, the Indian quickly foresaw a grueling, protracted battle and prepared accordingly. “It was a case of two good players, each with a different style, elevating their games to another level. John especially was playing great tennis. The earlier match I had beaten him, he had not played a great match; he was off.

But during the Championship match, he was amazing. I was playing well too, but he truly did not leave any room for me to make an error. I had to fight him off just to breathe,” he remembers.

As was usually the case when playing Isner, Dev Varman found it impossible to break serve, which in turn dictated the flow of the match. “I was trying to figure out how to get a racket on his serve. It’s just so big, so fast, and it comes at you from a different angle, because of his height,” he explains. “Honestly, I just worked to hold my serve, because I knew that I would have trouble breaking his. I knew that if I was broken, even once, I would likely lose the set. And because I didn’t have a reasonable hope of breaking his serve, I decided that my best chance to win was through tiebreakers.”

This presentiment proved prescient, as the two opponents battled back and forth during the epic first set, with each man winning his respective six service games, sending the set to a tie-breaker. That’s when Dev Varman stepped up the pressure and capitalized on the tie-breaker format, where he was comfortable. “I tried to find a way to get myself more into the match, to make the most of cer-

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The Champion ly good players in India. We had one of the best coaches and support staff (in India). And, of course, we had the entire Amritraj family supporting us. It was great. I feel my competitive nature, along with their help, allowed me to get better and better. That’s what drives me today.

“By 18,” he says, “I realized I could accomplish something in this game.” He stood alone, the number one ranked junior in India in both singles and doubles. He’d won 11 tournaments on the International Tennis Foundation circuit, which oversaw perhaps the world’s most prestigious juniors and futures competitions.

He reached the All-India Tennis Association national doubles final in 2003, against the best India had to offer, regardless of age.

The buzz attached to his name slowly began to build as he lodged increasingly impressive results in very competitive tournaments, both in India and the US. It was during one such tournament in America, in the spring of 2004, that University of Virginia head tennis coach Brian Boland first saw him play. “He got me up to university for a recruiting trip. I really enjoyed it.

I loved the university. I was really impressed with the academics and athletics program,” says Dev Varman.

Boland decided he wanted to build his team around the scrappy Somdev, and was willing to travel to make it happen. “He pretty much sealed the deal when he came down to Chennai, to my home, to meet my family, and tell us about the university. Once I saw that the guy cared so much, and once I saw all that he had to offer, I was definitely sure it’s something I wanted to be a part of,” explains Dev Varman.

So, at 19, he elected to attend the University of Virginia and move to Charlottesville, to play collegiate tennis and to work towards a bachelor’s degree, in lieu of turning professional. While some around him derided the decision, he made what he thought was the best possible choice at the time; he sticks by it today.

“I wasn’t really sure whether I should turn pro or go to college. I just thought about it, and knew I had a ton of room for improvement in my game, and that I wasn’t even close to my potential. So I figured that getting an education in the States, getting the whole college experience, and trying to work on my game at the same time, would definitely help me grow as a person. And I thought it would also help my tennis a lot.”

While the first year he missed Indian food, and never found his true rhythm socially, the on-court adjustments came much easier. “I’m a very competitive person by nature; it takes a lot to intimidate me. So when I came in, I was really confident. I really got along with my teammates, which made it easier for me to play well on court. It was tough at the beginning. But once I got used to it, I got better and better. As the season went on, I got into the whole groove of college tennis.”

That year, he found himself thrust into an elite NCAA and Atlantic Coast Conference schedule, often playing opponents four years his elder, and with more experience.

The ACC is arguably the NCAA’s most difficult conference, boasting Duke University, the University of North Carolina and the University of Virginia, to name a few. Despite balancing his adjustment to life overseas with the increased competition, Dev Varman earned the Atlantic Coast Conference Freshman of the Year award, by finishing with a singles record of 39 wins and 8 losses, and a doubles record of 25 wins and 8 losses.

While reflecting on his tremendous start, he realized that his lack of physical strength made every match more challenging. He credits the University of Virginia’s training facilities, as well as his coaches, with developing his musculature. Treat Huey, his doubles partner, roommate and best buddy, expresses amazement at the transformation Dev Varman has undergone since his freshman year. “We met the first day, and hit it off immediately. I remember thinking back then, ‘How can he good? He’s too skinny!’

No 1 singles for the University of Virginia, because all the seniors from the previous class had graduated. Coach Boland says this is when Dev Varman transformed from a great player into something more.

“When he first came here,” says Boland, “we realized he was one of the fastest players on the planet. Despite that speed, he still wasted motions and wasted steps. He also might have had a tendency to run around his backhand. But by the middle of his junior year, he’d not only improved his foot speed and his ability to move around the court, he had improved his anticipation, the way he moved, why he moved.

That’s what makes a player like Federer so special, because he just knows how to ideally position his feet and his body, so that he has the best possible opportunity to strike every single ball.

Somdev’s not at Roger’s level yet, obviously, but he’s got that same knack, that ability to just set himself up and not get put in awkward situations.”

The 2006-2007 season started full of promise for the University of Virginia and Dev Varman. He’d turned his game up a notch, and soon established himself as the number two player, behind the University of Georgia’s giant John Isner. “John’s an unbelievable player,” he says.

“Earlier, he always seemed to be blocking me or in my way; because I just couldn’t beat him. In February 2007, when I lost yet another match to him, I had to really step back and look at his game, to try and find a hole in it. Every day I was at the practice courts, trying to think of different ways I could better compete with him. I hoped to get another chance to face him, in the NCAA tournament in May, because I was very mentally prepared.”

Though he chooses to highlight that mid-season loss to the 6’9, 240 pound Isner, he’s almost embarrassed to put the season in context. He won 44 and lost 5 singles matches; he won 38 and lost 8 doubles ties, an extraordinary percentage had he played as the last seed on his team, let alone the first. But these were no patsies; he played a tough, grueling schedule against the nation’s best. As the number two-ranked player, he always wore a bulls-eye. Of those 44 singles wins, 33 were against NCAA ranked players. “My singles record broke the University of Virginia record for wins in a season. Treat and I broke the University of Virginia’s season win record for a doubles team, with 38. That was cool,” he says.

After winning his second consecutive Atlantic Coast Conference championship, he found himself with a chance to make amends for the previous year’s disastrous final.

Before the NCAA singles tournament came the NCAA team tournament, which he had built up as the Holy Grail of collegiate prizes. “That’s the trophy I really wanted,” he says.

“For coach, for all the people who give to this program. An individual award should never override the team, so that’s why I wanted us to take the team tournament.”

But the Isner-led University of Georgia Bulldawgs rolled into the tournament unbeaten, and the nation’s clear number one team. Virginia had become top five in barely half a decade under Boland, but number one? It wasn’t to be, not yet. Despite Dev Varman’s gutsy straights set victory, the rest of the UVA team found the more experienced Georgia players too much to handle. The Bulldawgs bettered UVA in the semi-final, before dispatching the University of Illinois to win the crown.

Then in the NCAA doubles tournament, Dev Varman and Huey fell in the semi-final to a team from Middle Tennessee State University, a disappointing conclusion to a season that had seen them assert their dominance and chemistry together. They ended the year ranked the number two doubles team, knowing that if they both returned for their senior years, they’d have one more year to learn from one another.

Dev Varman’s 2007 NCAA record had seemed to this point a set of missed opportunities. But he redoubled himCOURTESY SOMDEV DEV VARMAN

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2007

THE India

But then I saw him play, and he just blew me away. He’s easily one of the fastest players in the world. But honestly, if you think he’s skinny now, take off 20 pounds. He deserves credit for that, because he takes his weight training seriously.”

Discussing Dev Varman’s legendary status on campus as workout warrior, Boland adds, “It’s rare to have a young adult so disciplined about responsibilities; he just gets it.

He knows the benefit it will have on his game, and therefore makes any sacrifice to get better. When we finish practice, he’s off to do 30 minutes of conditioning or to work on his leg strength.”

Moving into his second year, Dev Varman was already threatening to snare his team’s number one seed, which would earn him matches with the nation’s top players. “By the end of my second year, I was playing number one. I soon realized I was playing better players all the time.

Overall, I didn’t have a great second year, I lost quite a few matches (he finished 31-13 in singles and 26-11 in doubles), more than I’m used to losing.” He says he worked even harder on the practice court, and felt himself becoming comfortable with the elite-level players.

Then, after winning the Atlantic Coast Conference’s Men’s singles championship, the unthinkable happened.

He made it to the NCAA tournament and received a favorable draw, setting him up for a deep run. The NCAA Men’s singles tournament features the top 64 collegiate players fighting for survival. The winner, who has to win six matches on his way to the crown, genuinely faces pressure to turn professional, if he’s not already a senior. It’s unquestionably collegiate tennis’s foremost prize, and compares favorably with any international amateur competition, in terms of talent.

“I felt I had already had a lot of close losses to all the players I was playing at number 1 and number 2. So I was ready for them. And like any other tournament, a few things go your way, you get lucky a few times, and sometimes the big names fall out; and then the draw really opens up for you,” he says. Still a sophomore, and with more than a dozen blemishes on his singles record that season, he battled through five rounds of top-notch tennis.

Before he truly understood what had happened, he found himself up against the University of California Los Angeles’ Benjamin Kohlloeffel in the final. Fortune and guts had gotten him that far, but his luck ran out. He lost 6-1 6-4, and finished the year the number eight singles player in the US collegiate ranks.

Where others might block out the loss, blame others, or call it a fluke, he sought to understand it, to come to terms with it. “I’m a competitive person, so losing wasn’t the best thing. I didn’t come back home and celebrate, just because I got to the final. I was still pretty disappointed with the loss. I thought about it a lot. It definitely fired me up a lot for the next season to do better. Losing that final, in a way, definitely fueled the fire, and got me training at another level.”

Coming back for his junior year, he knew he would play

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M 32 India Abroad March 28, 2008

2007

THE India

COLLECTOR’S ISSUE

‘Fearless, determined, with a big heart’

DEEPTI PATWARDHAN

DEEPTI PATWARDHAN on why Somdev Dev Varman is an unusual member of the Indian tennis team

t three, Somdev Dev Varman was too small to hold a tennis racket. Even as his elder brother Aratrik and sisA ter Paulami played the game for fun in Kolkata, it was a good two years and a different city before the youngster could start hitting the straps.

“They wouldn’t let him touch the racket,” remembers his mother Ranjana. “I think that was a sort of motivation for him to play the game.”

Supported by their parents, all the three children took to sports. When the family moved to Chennai, arguably India’s tennis capital, Pravanjan Dev Varman, a keen

The Champion M 30 self and attacked the only tournament left on the horizon, the men’s singles championship. Its past winners include Arthur Ashe, Stan Smith and John McEnroe. 2004 winner Benjamin Becker from Baylor parlayed his championship into a top 50 world ranking within two years on the ATP. Put simply, if you win this tournament, you get noticed, and how.

Dev Varman did just that, stringing together five tournament victories to reach the final against the much-fancied Isner.

The now epic 2007 men’s singles final will remain etched in the collective memory of the tennis world, for it saw arguably the highest level of sustained play in the tournament’s 123-year history (see accompanying feature). Somdev Dev Varman became the first Indian to lift the title. His

sports enthusiast, would cycle with his kids in the morning to the club nearby since he didn’t want to spoil them with the comforts of a car. The practice started at six; Somdev would be up by five.

“All of us started playing because of my father. But we were not too serious about it,” says Aratrik. “Som was the one who took it seriously, very seriously. I think by the time he was eight or nine he was quite clear that he wanted to become a tennis player. He was very determined to do well.”

“I guess we were too lazy to become professionals,” adds Paulami, who now works as a freelance photographer in Bangalore. “Somdev has always been very hard-working.”

Being the youngest, he was also the naughtiest child in the house. “He was very mischievous,” remembers Paulami. “There was not a single day when he wouldn’t come back from school without a cut somewhere.”

“He was very spoilt. His sister and I would spoil him a lot,” adds his mother.

Somdev’s heart was set on tennis. Having spotted the goal, he then started to chart his path towards it. Though he was good at studies, he pulled out of mainstream education and opted for the National Open School so that he could spend time at the Britannia Amritraj Tennis Academy. It helped that his parents neither imposed their academic ambitions nor were the fanatic ‘tennis moms or dads’ that seem to infest the circuit.

In what Aratrik calls a “democratic family,” Somdev was allowed to dream his dreams and follow them.

Hard work and determination are his biggest weapons.

Something in his game also suggests it. Not armed with any overbearing strokes, Somdev is solid and consistent. If he can’t fly to the target, he’ll run to it.

That’s one of the reasons his coach Tony Bresky thinks he’ll be good on clay, a perpetual Achilles’ heel for Indians.

“A grinder” is how former Indian Davis Cupper Anand Amritraj classifies him.

Unlike his more illustrious predecessors, the 23-year-old does not swear by the serve and volley. The dimensions of the courts are changing, the shots being drilled deeper into the baseline; it’s a game of stamina more than skill. And having honed his skills in an eight-hour regimen in the US, Somdev is the only Indian up to it.

When asked during the Davis Cup tie against Uzbekistan if he could be able to last five sets after the grind of US collegiate tennis in the preceding weeks and the long flight from the States, Somdev plainly replied, “I can last seven.”

final accolades from the Spring 2007 season feature ITA national player of the year and NCAA singles champion. He closed the season on a 16-match winning streak.

Most telling may be another prize the ITA awarded him at season’s end, the ITA Rafael Osuna Sportsmanship award, which is awarded to the most outstanding tennis player by the following criteria — competitive excellence, sportsmanship, and contribution to tennis. Not only had he scaled the mountain of NCAA tennis, he did it the right way, with hard work and grace.

Dev Varman doesn’t march to the beat of another’s drum. Speaking of his decision to stay a student, he says, “Graduation is very important for me right now, to get a degree from the University of Virginia is very special for me. I’m going to focus on that part.

But I also know that when that’s over, I’m going to become a professional tennis player. I’m very excited about that, and hopefully I can play the Davis Cup, be one of the better players for the country; that’s the

Though he played just one match, making his much-awaited Cup debut against Uzbek No 1 Denis Istomin, the youngster made a definite impression.

Playing on uneven grass courts at the R K Khanna stadium in New Delhi, not the surface best suited to his game, Somdev fought on against Istomin’s experience and finesse.

He showed ample “heart”— the reason captain Leander Paes had chosen him to play the tie.

“He is fearless, determined and has a big heart; one of the fittest boys in the team,” Paes then said. “He has played a lot of tennis at the collegiate level which has toughened him.”

Apart from giving him a respite from the rigors of a protour, taking up the scholarship at the University of Virginia has helped Dev Varman to shun the spotlight of the ‘next best thing’ tag in India. He was a junior national champion in singles and doubles and already the focus of attention, the supposed solution to India’s tennis problems.

“Sure, he discussed going to the US with us,” says Aratrik. “But he made the final decision. He was the best person to judge what was good for him.

“I don’t understand it in the same way he does. But I’m guessing he has grown into a better player. Any sort of exposure helps; and when you are put in a situation like that you either crumble or become better, and in his case it’s the latter.”

While pro tennis is all about the ‘individual’, at Virginia Somdev, apart from the confidence of a sound academic backing, enjoys the benefits of being on a team. As a college player, he has his training and nutrition taken care of, the schedules prepared, and more importantly people to share his success and failures. For a person whose best quality, according to his mother, is “loyalty to his friends,” finding team spirit in an individual sport like tennis fit in perfectly.

Maybe, that’s why Somdev smiles; he certainly smiles a lot for a tennis player. In this usually harrowed group of young professionals, who are forever playing for something, or someone not knowing when passion becomes compulsion, Somdev comes along with a twinkle in the eye.

Either he is untouched by pressure, or hasn’t let it weigh him down. He still has the joy of a three-year-old itching to hold a racket.

one way for me to do it, to keep working on my game and to find ways to get better.

Hopefully I’ll put up a good schedule for myself, and just become better and better, move up in the rankings, but also represent India.”

A sociology major, he takes his studies seriously and attempts to use the same incisive problem-solving he uses on court when juggling a question off it. It seems he also wants to earn a degree in order to fulfill an obligation to his parents, himself, and the university. He does things 100 per cent, and would be left with a bad taste in his mouth to uproot himself when the preordained is almost complete.

Also, he wants to continue his assault on the UVA, ACC and NCAA record books. He says winning the NCAA championship has made a profound impression on him. “The NCAA tournament gives you a lot of confidence. Winning such a tournament, being in the same category with NCAA winners of the past has definitely given me a lot of

confidence, stepping out on the court every time, knowing that I (am) playing at a pretty good level of tennis. I feel it’s given me a little bit of a chip on my shoulder, helped me a little bit mentally. And I think I’m ready for the pros soon.”

He entered the NCAA Fall season a bit of a legend, on the team, on campus, and in collegiate tennis at large, though you won’t catch him stating the obvious. “I’m not that much of a star or anything like that,” he says. And though he receives weekly emails and calls from the media hoping to hear his story, he doesn’t find it all that remarkable himself. “I think I’m just another guy on the team. That’s how I like to keep it. Nothing’s changed. I like it that way.”

Coach Boland sees it differently, “The guy is so unbelievably popular; he knows everyone! Going to lunch with him on campus or in Charlottesville is like being with a

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Shock and Awe

PARESH GANDHI

M 29 tain situations. I was able to hit some lucky shots; and I forced a few errors out of John,” he says. “He showed a lot of skill and heart during that first set, but in the end, I got a good look at one of his second serves, and managed to sneak away with the set 7-6 (9-7).”

In the second set, Isner’s pressure proved too much, and Dev Varman slipped. With the set locked at three games a piece, he temporarily lost his edge during one of his service games, and Isner capitalized to break serve. With the match at its midpoint, only now had one of the players broken his opponent’s serve, a testament to both participants’s extraordinary talent. From there, as Dev Varman had earlier predicted and feared, Isner’s mammoth first serve, hovering around the 140 mph range, proved too much, leaving him handcuffed and unable to gain ground.

He continued to fight, but lost the set 6-4, absolutely unable to break the big man.

Still, as they moved into the match’s third and final set, Dev Varman felt good about his chances. He hadn’t yet broken Isner’s trademark serve, but the match was deadlocked, and would come down to a final set, where both sides had an equal opportunity to win.

The final set featured more surgical play from both players; once again neither could break the other. In none of the set’s 12 games was the server broken; actually, neither player managed to force deuce. And so Dev Varman’s premonition had come to pass; the national championship was to be decided by a tiebreaker.

“I was very happy to get to the tiebreaker because that’s always been a strong part of my game; I felt like I had the advantage there, where he might have had an advantage elsewhere,” he says.

With the tie-breaker score at 1-1, Dev Varman made a spectacular play that seemed to crush Isner’s spirit, and foreshadowed the fall of the University of Georgia’s Goliath. Isner had rocked one of his typical high-velocity, well-placed serves, which seemed destined to be an ace; but Dev Varman made an extraordinary return, befuddling Isner and causing him to weakly hit the ball into the net.

With the door blown open, Dev Varman used the momentum to win the next three points, and took a 5-1 lead at the changeover. The score soon reached 6-2, giving him four consecutive championship points. He wasted little time, however; for the next point he took a page from Isner’s book and smashed an ace right up the middle, confounding Isner, and clinching the Championship. He had

won 7-6 (9-7), 4-6, 7-6 (7-2), capturing the NCAA men’s single championship without once breaking his opponent’s serve.

“After I won the last point, it took some time to sink in,” he says. “I celebrated with my coaches, but I don’t know if it truly hit me at that time.” Though it may appear to be false modesty, Dev Varman simply shrugs and expresses his alternative understanding of awards, trophies, honors, and distinctions.

“To be honest, I didn’t want to get caught up in the celebration aspect of the victory. I was more pleased because I considered it confirmation of our team’s philosophy that if you put in your hours and train properly, you can expect good things to come down the road. That motivates me to keep training in the future, because I think a tennis player’s journey is always about change. You can always learn more and improve, or you can start to become rusty or lazy, and lose your skills. But you can’t stay exactly the same. It’s not possible. That’s why trophies and awards can ruin you, if you get too obsessed with them. You’re either getting better or you’re getting worse,” he explains.

When asked if his competitive nature would have allowed him any satisfaction had he lost, Dev Varman responds, “I’m very competitive; and I would have been devastated if I had lost. But I’ve also learned that regard-

The Champion M 32 rock star. There’s a (football) player here named Chris Long, who will be taken as one of the first picks in this year’s National Football League’s professional draft.

Somdev is just as popular and well known as him, if not more. It’s unbelievable.”

“Some people know me as the Indian tennis player, but I don’t think there’s any celebrity status. Sure, people are supportive, especially from the Indian community and the tennis community, when they come to see my matches, or when they approach me at the mall. That stuff feels good, especially when the Indian community gives me support.” Dev Varman indicates that he’s often asked about his Indian identity, and whether he must work to maintain it. He’s not sure why.

“It’s not hard to keep my Indian identity,” he says, “because I talk to my parents (father Pravanjan and mother Ransana) every other day. I talk to my sister and brother (Paulami and Aratrik) every other day. I love Indian food. I cook it every other day for myself and my roommates. I go out

for Indian meals with this one Indian professor pretty often. Besides, I’ve played the Davis Cup tie. That’s given me a good sense of my identity. There’s not a single part of me that doesn’t have pride in where I’m from. I love it. I’m proud of it. I have a lot of Indian friends in school, and we hang out all the time. I have a very good Indian friend on the tennis team, his name is Sonam Singh and we talk in Hindi all the time, to annoy everyone. And keep your eyes out for Sonam Singh, he just may be the future of Indian tennis in America.”

His Fall 2007 season served warning that his game has staying power; that he’s no flash in the pan. After starting the season ranked number one in both singles and doubles, he went 13-1 in the former and 130 in the latter. He won the ITA National Indoor Singles Championship, and paired with Huey to snag the ITA All-American and ITA national indoors doubles championships. He also set the record for all time singles win for a University of Virginia Cavalier, at 127 (and climbing). Most importantly for him, his Cavaliers won the Intercollegiate Tennis Association Indoor

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THE India

less of your results, you only feel true pride if you’ve given the effort that you, your teammates and your coach deserve. That holds true for any challenge or task you undertake, whether it’s academic work or weight training, not just tennis.”

University of Virginia Men’s Tennis coach Brian Boland considers the match one of the greatest he has every seen, and has much to add to Dev Varman’s humble comments. “Somdev is not just a special tennis player; he’s also a very special person. He handled the pressure leading up the match with total grace, even though the match was in Georgia and against a guy like Isner, who’s currently enjoying success at the highest professional level,” Boland says pointedly. “To not break Isner’s service the entire match, to have that kind of patience, to maintain that sort of discipline, and to exhibit that kind of mental toughness, is just astounding. This kid is unflappable. On the court, he plays within himself better than any one I’ve been around. He never overextends himself or tries to be something’s he’s not.”

Boland’s only concern is that as Dev Varman moves forward, the increasing clamor from people around him will cause him to change his game. “They make comments to him about how he needs to change his game to be more suited for the ATP, about how he needs to add weapons to his arsenal and constantly overwhelm opponents, but he doesn’t allow it to affect him. He has his own style, and he’s true to it; and he’s truly arrived as an elite player because of it.”

But most remarkable and most telling, according to Boland, were Dev Varman’s comments at the post-match press conference. “I mean, he’s got all these cameras and reporters asking him questions, telling him to go pro, asking him what it felt like to be the best. And what’s the first thing he says? ‘It’s only one match. That’s how I look at it.

I can still get better.’ That’s why this kid is great. What normal 22-year-old would say that?”

Between the several different layers of story-lines, the superb all-around play, the fierce competitive drive of both players, and the uncertainty of its result until the very end, the match has immediately vaulted up the annals of NCAA Men’s Tennis history to become an instant classic and alltime great NCAA Men’s singles championship match. In five years, when both players regularly compete for ATP tournament crowns, this match might be re-evaluated and redefined, not as the end of a college rivalry, but rather, the beginning of a professional one.

Team Championship this winter, beating Ohio State University.

“I’d definitely say, winning the National Indoor Team Championship, just a few weeks ago, has been the most satisfying experience, in my collegiate career,” he says. “We’ve tried so hard to achieve something over the last four years, and this is by far our biggest achievement, so I would put that up as the most satisfying experience here in college.” Does he value it more than individual awards? “Absolutely, I’m more of a team guy.”

“I’ve known Somdev for about five years,” says Boland. “He’s grown, not only as a player, but more importantly, I think, as a person. He’s as good a ambassador, or representative, of any young man I’ve had the opportunity to coach. His goal every day is to go out and to have fun and to improve himself and to improve those around him.

That is a great gift that he’s been able to translate to the rest of the team.”

In regards to the national championship, the coach feels it’s a crucial reason Dev Varman returned for his fourth and final year.

“We just won the national team championship indoors where Somdev was absolutely key in winning the match

against UCLA, the final point, as well as Mississippi. Then he played an instrumental win in our win in the national championship match against Ohio State. I know how bad he wants to go out there and win the outdoors tournament this May. He’s probably irreplaceable, but as they say, all good things must come to an end.”

When Boland compares him to current Indian professionals and assigns him a likely number, the true enormity of Dev Varman’s potential is laid bare. “He’s absolutely the best young Indian tennis player in the world. You could argue he is the best young tennis player in the world, regardless of country. If he continues to develop, I think he could be top 20 ATP, top 10 ATP, a few years down the line, certainly. Of course, that’s assuming all works out and he stays focused and true to his style. But why would I doubt this kid? I know him inside and out. I’ve spent nearly every day with him over the last five years.

I’ve learned not to doubt Somdev.

“People may think I’m exaggerating,” says Boland. “I’m not. I saw a good bit of Andy (Roddick) when he was younger.

Today, Andy is a superb player, one of the best in the world. But was he better than Somdev at the same age? I say no.”

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The perfect union ARTHUR J PAIS meets the legendary economists, Professors Padma Desai and Jagdish Bhagwati, joint winners of the India Abroad Award for Lifetime Achievement

W

PARESH GANDHI

hen Anuradha Kristina Bhagwati was hardly three, her day care teacher asked her: “What does your mother do?”

“My mother goes to conferences,” she said, possibly having heard her mother Padma Desai discuss her schedule with Anuradha’s father Jagdish Bhagwati.

“And your father? What does your father do?”

“My father talks.”

She had figured him out early on, says Professor Desai as her husband beams.

And talk he does, keeping his students enthralled and informed at Columbia University.

We are sitting in Professor Desai’s office at Columbia one recent evening, interviewing them for a story.

Professor Desai repeats a story that her husband loves very much. She had told the story three years ago at an event to mark his 70th birthday.

“When we moved to New York (from MIT where they both taught) in 1980, Jagdish walked her (Anuradha) every day four blocks to the Bank Street School for Children and back,” she says in her gentle voice. “There were memorable conversations of which only a few were reported to me. I will mention only one. ‘Daddy, are we Jewish?’ Anuradha asked him once. ‘No, darling, but we are the next best.’ And after a while, he added: ‘Just an epsilon away.’ To which she asked: ‘Daddy, what is an epsilon?’ With a magical touch, Jagdish had shifted the conversation from the complexities of religious differences to the secular realm of mathematics.”

When Columbia students decided to interview married professorial couples on the campus one Valentine’s Day, Professor Desai says she gave them just one line: ‘My husband enters a room and the sun comes out.’

For more than a decade, every October, when the Nobel Prize for Economics is about to be announced, Professor Bhagwati’s name comes up as a likely win-

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FROM THE EDITORS When her teacher asked Anuradha Kristina Bhagwati, then three, what her father did for a living, she said, with the straightto-the-bone simplicity of the very young: “My father talks.”

Jagdish Bhagwati, university professor, Arthur Lehmann Professor of Economics, and Professor of Political Science at Columbia University, has been talking, a lot, for the best part of five decades.

And when he talks, they all listen — his students, for whom his classes are a fast track to academic excellence of the highest order; Nobel Laureates in economics, for whom Professor Bhagwati is the laureate’s laureate; world leaders, who have in time learnt that listening to the world’s foremost apostle of globalization is a short cut to solving the economic ills of their respective countries.

To listen to the 73-year-old professor talk on any and all aspects of economic theory is, say the cognoscenti, intellectual pleasure at its most distilled, most rarefied. To ignore him, to dismiss his ideas, is conversely the route to considerable pain; a sure roadblock to progress.

India’s story is perhaps the best exemplar. In 1991, faced with the prospect of national bankruptcy, the country under then finance minister Manmohan Singh shed its decades-long policy of economic isolation and opened up to the world. Today, that is seen as a seminal moment in not just India’s, but the world’s,

fiscal history, for that moment sowed the seed of India’s remarkable spurt into the highest ranks of global superpowers.

It was Dr Singh himself who drew attention to the poignant ‘might have been’ that lay hidden in this story. In 1970, a full two decades before India’s seminal shift in fiscal policy, Professor Bhagwati co-authored the book India: Planning for Industrialization. At the time, isolationist India dismissed the book and reviled its author as a false prophet.

It took 20 long, painful years for wisdom to dawn, for the country to realize that its son had provided, gratis, the template for progress.

Padma Desai learnt two important lessons while yet very young: the first, that her husband was a giant, pre-eminently so in his field; the second, that nothing can grow in the shadow of a giant.

Most women would have been content to live in that overwhelming shadow, to bask in reflected glory. Professor Desai, however, was no ordinary woman; once she assimilated the enormous intellect of her husband Jagdish, she set out to become a giant herself – in an area where even her husband would not dare challenge her mastery.

“I wanted to go into an area that he won’t know anything at all about,” says Padma Desai, Gladys and Roland Harriman Professor of Comparative Economic Systems and director of the Center for Transition Economics at Columbia.

Thus, once she had memorialized the intellectual side of marital harmony by co-authoring the seminal India: Planning for

Industrialization with her husband, Professor Desai set out to become the world’s foremost expert on the Russian economy.

Thus, it was to Professor Desai the world turned to for a fuller understanding of the implications of the collapse of the Soviet Union, the economics of Mikhail Gorbachev’s perestroika. And today, it is to her that the world turns, again, for an appreciation of Russia’s economic resurgence under Vladimir Putin.

‘Marriage of minds’ is a phrase often used to describe domestic harmony; as often, that phrase is misapplied to embrace instances of husband and wife liking the same books or the same kind of cinema or music.

If ever a marriage could with perfect justice be described as a true ‘marriage of the minds’, it has to be that of Jagdish Bhagwati and Padma Desai, economic superstars in their own right who, as a domestic unit, become even greater than the sum of their individual parts — the admired, if you will, of all admirers.

For their stellar, sustained, path-breaking work in the field of economic thought and policy, for their lifelong work in shaping the leaders of tomorrow through their teaching, for their incredible collection of books and other scholarly material that has added immeasurably to our knowledge of the world’s monetary systems, for the rich vein of honors they have mined in their lifetime, bringing reflected glory to the community, to the mother country and to their adopted land, we honor Professor Jagdish Bhagwati and Professor Padma Desai with the India Abroad Lifetime Achievement Award.

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‘The WTO would not have found wide international acceptance without Jagdish Bhagwati’s persuasive intellectual effort’ MANMOHAN SINGH delighted to learn of the Festschrift Conference to celebrate the 70th birthday of my very dear and good friend Iof am long standing, Professor Jagdish Bhagwati. Jagdish and I have been friends and fellow travelers in the study of economics for almost half a century! We met first at Cambridge University, England, He passed out in 1956 and I in 1957, though he is younger to me, because I spent a few years teaching in India before I went up to Cambridge. We have since been friends, sharing rooms, sharing books, sharing experiences and, above all, sharing views!

Jagdish and I were at Oxford too and then at the Delhi School of Economics. Those were exciting days for an economist. The discipline was itself in great flux and change. Old paradigms were being challenged by new ideas. This battle of ideas was made more exciting by the fact that some of us had the opportunity to influence policy. Though both Jagdish and I returned home to teach, we did engage actively in policy-making. We went our different ways only in the 1970s, when he chose to go abroad to pursue his research and I joined the government.

Jagdish has since earned for himself an enviable place in the world of economics. As a trade theorist he is in a class of his own. He has not only influenced international trade theory and become a familiar name in every economics classroom across the world, but he has also helped shape trade policy by devoting his time to the reform and restructuring

great fame as an economist dealing with international trade. It is something which is affecting the economy of the entire world and he has made a tremendous contribution. I personally believe and what I am told is that there is no one who has made a greater contribution as he has so far as world economy is concerned.

Professor Bhagwati is my younger brother; we are a family of seven brothers, he is number six. From the beginning he distinguished himself as a student. Amongst us seven I rate him as the greatest intellectual — a person with a very incisive mind and a capacity which is really remarkable. I regard him as the most illustrious brother among the seven of us. He is a brother who I love very much but I also respect his learning, his scholarship and his great contribution to the world of economics.

Jagdish has done so well that I and the whole family is proud of him. He has brought great reputation and prestige to the family. All over the world the name Bhagwati has come to be known largely due to his contribution.

He loves India and is very involved with the problems relating to India. Though he is an American citizen, at heart he is still an Indian and is proud of being Indian. I regard him as a jewel of India.

In our discussions Jagdish and I feel India could have done much better than what it has. India’s great potential, wonderful capacity for progress and development has not been fully utilized because of party politics, which takes into account party interest and not national interest.

Professor Padma Desai has done very

Srinivasan. It helped calm the anxieties of our critics even as it showed us the way ahead. I have repeatedly reached out to Jagdish for his guidance, his advice and his friendship in difficult times. I say it with happiness that I have never found him wanting or ungenerous.

What is admirable about Jagdish is the fact that he has combined his commitment to academic rigor and discipline with an equally passionate commitment to popular education. His recent treatise on globalization offers a balanced and objective, yet humane, defense of globalization. He is not dismissive of the critics nor of the interests of those who perceive themselves as the losers. But he painstakingly shows us the way forward in dealing with a phenomenon that has the potential to do more good than harm. Further, he tells us how we must prepare ourselves to be able to maximize the benefits and minimize the costs. In the end, that is what economics is all about.

At 70, Jagdish has a long road ahead of him and I am sure he will continue to educate and inspire newer generations of students, teachers and policymakers. I wish him and Padma a long and fruitful life ahead.

Dr Manmohan Singh, the Prime Minister of India, sent this message to the Festschrift Conference to celebrate Professor Jagdish Bhagwati’s 70th birthday.

‘A jewel of India’ P N BHAGWATI, former Chief Justice of India, salutes his brother and sister-in-law well in Soviet economics and has made a remarkable contribution. She has been a great source of encouragement and inspiration for Jagdish. They are an ideal couple and have done very well.

Ours is a very closely knit family.

Their daughter is very affectionate. She is a wonderful girl. Last time when we went to America, we invited her for lunch and she wanted to spend the whole day with us.

Padmavati Bhagwati, Justice Bhagwati’s wife and the matriarch of the family, on Professors Bhagwati and Desai: They were a bunch of terrible seven and I had an excellent time with them.

For the first couple of years after my marriage, I could not see Jagdish’s face because it was always bent over a book.

He stood first in the matric (then the school-leaving) exam and I knew he would bring great credit to the family.

He is brilliant, excellent and at the same time a very loving person.

When I got married, Jagdish was in Class 6 or 7. These small boys used to run around me, tease me, it was a lot of fun. Jagdish and me have a very close Justice P N Bhagwati and Padmavati Bhagwati

RAJESH KARKERA

know Professor Bhagwati and Mrs Padma Desai have done remarkable Iwork.

Professor Bhagwati has achieved

of the world trade system. The intellectual leadership he provided in the early days of the World Trade Organization has without doubt helped shape this organization. The WTO and the multilateral trading system would not have found the wide international acceptance it has today without the persuasive intellectual and diplomatic effort of Jagdish Bhagwati.

It is a testimony to his scholarship, academic rigor, intellectual acumen and foresight in public affairs that the radical ideas he canvassed so long ago have now come to be accepted as mainstream economics. He was categorical in his assertion as early as the 1960s that Indian enterprise and creativity was being stifled by excessive control and regulation. Jagdish was clearly ahead of his times. When our political system was finally ready to accept the validity of his critique, we were able to bring about a sea-change in our economic environment. Jagdish’s views on ‘brain drain’ offer another example of what was regarded as unconventional barely a generation ago being regarded as received wisdom today.

While being a citizen of the world and truly international person, Jagdish has also been a true patriot. His love for India and his loyalty to our Motherland has been demonstrated again and again by the passion with which he has espoused our interests in the councils of the world. As finance minister in the early 1990s I greatly benefited from the fair and authentic review he undertook of our reform program, at my request and in collaboration with T N

relationship. I always loved him as (if he was) my son.

When we stay in New York for a month for a meeting of the United Nations

Human Rights Committee, Padma and Jagdish call us every day on the phone.

Jagdish tells us whether it is going to snow or rain, asking us not to go out if it is so and to take care. He’ll give us all the instructions. Padma cooks a lot of food and sends it to us so that I don’t have to cook. Without fail they call us three, four times a day asking us how we are.

First, I used to take care of him as a motherly figure, now they take care of us.

Twice a week they take us out and the two brothers have a lot of discussions on human rights, human values, child labor, the Indian economy, etc.

It is a matter of great pride for us that Padma is getting the Padma Bhushan this year. She the third member of the family (after Chief Justice Bhagwati and Professor Bhagwati) to receive the Padma award.

She has made a great contribution to the family and is a very loving person. We are more like friends than sisters-in-law. I remove the word ‘in-law’; when there are sisters around you the world is different.

Our children were also brought up in that manner, the cousins are very close to each other.

Padma has done a lot for the family and the children. Their daughter is a very nice girl — beautiful, talented and loving. She was in the Marine Corps for five years.

She is very independent-minded and caring.

As told to Archana Masih

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‘They are a good example of how two persons devoted to ideas can be together’ ABID HUSSAIN, the former Indian Ambassador to the US, on Jagdish Bhagwati and Padma Desai agdish is a giant of a man, he is an outstanding economist. As a matter of fact J whenever I think of an economist, Jagdish’s name comes to me. Whenever I think of the Nobel Prize, Jagdish’s name comes to me. It is a black mark on the Nobel selection committee that Jagdish hasn’t been awarded the Nobel Prize. He is most deserving. He has been denied something he richly deserves. I am sure it will come to him.

His intellectual contribution is immense.

He fought very hard for free trade and the interesting thing is that it was not just an economic theory, it was backed with historical evidence, supported by political analysis, was based on experience and the spark of his own genius. When these three, four things combine you have Jagdish.

He is a great economist. When we were together in Turkey — and the Turks are very arrogant people as far as intellectual arrogance is concerned — but with Jagdish they yielded. They said here is a man against whom we cannot stand up and say I am mightier or higher or better.

Another thing about him is that he never hesitates to speak the truth and that is not an easy thing. When I was in America as India’s ambassador, Jagdish had taken up this great fight for free trade against fair trade. You see that’s how they were confusing the whole thing. Jagdish is one of the few persons in the world who stood by the basics of free trade. When he came out with his book Stream of Windows, he put it

beautifully that the stream was really a stream of ideas — keep the widows open and let the ideas flow from all sides.

He was a great help and support in Turkey and later in America. He helped me get into areas I was hesitant to step in. It was Jagdish who would say — ‘Go on the road, be a traveler, be a wanderer.’

When he was talking about immigration he put it beautifully and said that a time would come when people would be moving from one place to another and Indians would not just have America as a destination but Italy could also be a destination.

And the time is not far off when someone of Indian origin in Italy would be able to shape the politics of Italy as Sonia Gandhi is doing in India.

That’s how he put across ideas. His articles, writings and books are extremely serious, there is no light-heartedness about them but he puts across his ideas in a manner which is highly persuasive.

That is one reason why Jagdish never believed that an authoritarian rule is necessary for growth. At the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation he delivered a marvelous speech which is a speech not by an economist but a political thinker. He brought out ideas as to what democracy really means, what a country needs to do to make democracy successful. In the thesis he proved as to how democracy gives sustainable growth than any other system of governance.

Jagdish was a hit in India. In the 1950s after Cambridge, economists like him and

Amartya Sen, who were contemporaries, all came to India. Jagdish made a mark even at that time — he said don’t have a closed economy, don’t think India will gain by import substitution, you’ve got to have export promotion and I’ve got to say in my own humble way when I took up the case of trade and liberalization it was Jagdish who helped me understand the importance and emphasis of this and get cracking on it.

Jagdish is not a man who can be caged.

His tongue cannot be twisted or sealed. He will never accept a role of that kind — that is one of the reasons why he has not taken any official position in the establishment anywhere.

Jagdish is a gem of a man. He has a generosity of heart. He has immense love and affection and we have been the recipient of his love and affection.

On Dr Padma Desai She is a wonderful, wonderful lady. There were many girls who were after Jagdish and he also had a weakness for beautiful faces but he finally found a girl in Padma in whom beauty and brains combine together with a sense of responsibility.

It was their intellectual commonality that brought them together. She is one of the finest scholars who has done work on the Soviet economy, not as a Marxist or anti Marxist but as a pure academician.

Her advice was not only accepted by the Soviet Union but Russia also. She has the same daring like Jagdish that she

could differ with the highest person and highest institution when they are going wrong and that she did so in the case of Russia. The IMF and others may have been angry with her when she brought up the fact that their approach to the Soviet Union could not be the same as their approach to other European countries. She really understood not only the history and ideology but also the character of the people of Russia. Her understanding of the institutions of the Soviet Union and later of Russia were remarkable.

When you look at her she has a beautiful face like a flower. There is a fragrance all the time and you feel she is a very harmless gentle creature. She is — but she is very tough also. She can tell you that beauty has its own strength.

She is a very good friend of ours. It is mighty interesting to see how Jagdish and she debate and argue. Amartya Sen wrote The Argumentative Indian — if you see this couple you will see how argumentative they are. Yet at the same time they love each other and are very fond of each other.

They are a good example of how two persons devoted to intellectual chasing of ideas can be together.

I was delighted when the Padma Bhushan was announced for her, but yet again too late. She never sought awards; it was intellectual pursuit and excellence of ideas that mattered to her.

As told to Archana Masih

‘Their contribution is enormous’ agdish and we met in 1962 — a very traumatic year for India because India lost a war with China. My husband J (Abid Hussain) and I were in Turkey and it was the first time we had stepped out of the borders of our own country. In a way we were representing India as well, though in a very minor capacity.

If my memory goes right, we met Jagdish on a boat and we just gravitated towards each other. It left such an impact though it was a casual encounter between people of different disciplines — Jagdish was an economist, Abid was with the UN, I had taken a teaching job at the Middle East Technical University.

Padma wasn’t there at that time, she entered our lives subsequently. We discovered that they were made for each other, not in the definition of a power couple but they were extremely humane, compassionate and a caring couple who made friends for lasting times.

It’s been four-and-a-half decades and our friendship has been very meaningful. Our spheres are different, they are part of the world of academia as internationally acclaimed and engaged economists. Jagdish has a tremendous sense of humor, is very impish. Padma is more stern but that is her and we enjoy each other’s frivolities, humor and have never personalized. Our conversations always lead into issues, concerns of the long term and concerns of the moment.

For the children as well, they have been great iconic examples. My son is an economist and Jagdish is very happy when our son writes essays and despite his extremely busy time goes through them and encourages him. He has not lost the names of my other children and they feel very happy.

When we came to know that their only child Anuradha was working in some jungle as a US Marine, we told them you are such famous, dedicated economists and your daughter takes to marine life for the US Army — what is this choice? And they said — well, she thought she had to do it!

So this is another facet of the couple that they are not imposing on their child or their friend’s children. They are taking us for what we are — with all our faults and foibles.

Their contribution is enormous. The times when Jagdish, Padma and we were just evolving was the first decade of India’s independence. Indian academics had to work very hard to prove they were as good as others or even better. It was a very challenging time for young economists like Jagdish. All this happened very incremently, it was not as if you just discovered something and shouted Eureka and the world recognized you. You can see the progression of their evolution as economists of tremendous caliber. They worked very hard and remained very focused and remain part of global academia without los-

RAJESH KARKERA

Political scientist KARKI HUSSAIN on her dear friends, who she has known for 45 years

Karki and Abid Hussain ing their identity primarily as Indians.

When an author dedicates a book to his friends it shows that they have a small place in his scheme of things. I am always indebted to Jagdish that his book India in Transition: Freeing the Economy – surprisingly when we got a copy — it was dedicated to Abid and Karki. It was a thrilling moment!

Very important memories of Jagdish and Padma reside with me and will reside forever.

As told to Archana Masih

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‘I was fighting various battles’ Padma Desai reflects on her epic journey of achievement and discovery

Professor Padma Desai with Professor Jagdish Bhagwati, left Russia. That was quite a struggle to achieve what I have achieved!”

Professor Desai, who has worn saris to her classes for several decades, worried for a long time about her non-American appearance, which often leads people to look at her twice when she is described as an American scholar.

There have been times people do not even think she is an Indian, she says.

In the late 1980s, she visited Tashkent to attend a State Department conference.

Since Tashkent is Muslim, she had been advised not to wear a suit or dress. She borrowed her daughter Anuradha’s salwar

hat could happen when you grow up in a home with two eminent scholars?

W Anuradha Kristina Bhagwati, 32, a former US Marine, A

kameezes.

“From Tashkent I went straight to Moscow and from the airport to the Moscow hotel,” she remembers. “The elevator moved slowly. The men in the elevator were trying to identify me, speaking in Russian. ‘Where is she from?’ asked one.

Another person spoke about my long, black hair. And one of them said, ‘She is a gypsy.’

As I got off the elevator, I said ‘Goodbye!’ in Russian. So this tells you how difficult it is to have a proper identity.”

In 1985, when she appeared on a PBS show on Russia, she was dressed in a suit.

“My Indian friends said I should have worn

suitable daughter

loves her parents dearly. She calls her father Jagdish Bhagwati, a ‘Laughing Buddha’, and declares that her mother Padma Desai is the kindest person she has known.

Like her parents she is not afraid of speaking her mind and taking an unpopular stand. Her parents had embraced the free market when they taught in India in the early 1960s. The daughter is an admirer of Ralph Nader, the Presidential candidate, and a foe of free trade as practiced by multinationals.

Anuradha, who is currently working on her first novel, has studied literature at Yale, journalism at Columbia, and how the government works at Harvard.

‘I joined the Marines in 1999 and I left in 2004 when I realized that my conscience and my values could no longer allow me to serve in uniform,’ she told an antiwar rally recently.

She has since worked at Middle East Non-violence and Democracy in East Jerusalem, providing human rights training to Palestinian forces as part of a project to help the transition of the Palestinian National Authority to Anuradha Bhagwati, left democratic law.

As a student at the Kennedy School of Government and cess with students. As for her mother, she says, ‘from a member of Iraq Veterans against the War, she co-found- what I have known from her students and other faculty, ed the Palestine Awareness Committee. She is particular- she makes extraordinary efforts to groom her students. ly vocal about the pressures within the military that She is always there for her students. I never had a profesrestrict dissenting voices, including peer pressure and the sor who was remotely like her.’

Anu, as her parents call her — also speaks about how her internal guilt of ‘abandoning’ your fellow troops.

She says she has taken a lot from her parents. Her mother replenishes her knowledge of Russian language father’s sense of humor reminds her why he is such a suc- and literature, and her interest in Indian classical music,

Anuradha Bhagwati, scion of economic nobility, finds her own feet

a sari,” she recalls. “So here too it was a problem of professional identity. I asked them why I should wear a sari. If you appear on American television, you will wear Western clothes right? You will not even wear a jacket without a tie. So what will viewers take me for? They would wonder where I came from, especially when I was talking on American-Soviet relations as they were developing under Gorbachev and Reagan. I told myself I did not want to give them a scrambled image of my views and my identity.”

Another big challenge was to prove that she was an original economist, not just a specialist in an area.

“I did not want to be known as an area studies person, with people saying, ‘Oh, she specializes on Russia, but is she a good economist?’ I did not want to be that area studies person. I did not want such questions to be raised about me, so I always did very tough economics work, econometric work, modeling data, churning out arguments and results in order also to be recognized within the discipline of economics. I was fighting various battles. But at the end of it, I feel that I have achieved my goal of becoming one of the topmost scholars in the field.”

Professor Desai, who has written several books on economics including her latest.

Conversations on Russia: Reform from Yeltsin to Putin, has recently completed her memoir.

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by taking courses or attending cultural events. A couple of decades ago, Professor Desai began learning about opera; today, she could give a lecture at the Lincoln Center on opera, her admirers say.

Professor Desai admires the way father and daughter bond together. At his 70th birthday celebration, she called him ‘a loving father to our daughter Anuradha,’ and added: ‘Actually, Anuradha and Jagdish have been, from day one, fun-loving, sparring companions rather than father and daughter.’

The couple has instilled a spirit of independence in their daughter and don’t regret it even if she is philosophically far removed from them Anuradha knows how to deal with her parents. When she decided to join the Marines, for instance, she went up to her father first, and gave him the news.

She has never hidden her politics from them either.

After all, the Bhagwatis were in their own way working outside the box, as they built their reputation as free market economists just as India was making its way as a planned Sate economy.

‘She is consumed by her human rights work,’ Professor Bhagwati has said about Anuradha. When his 70th birthday was being celebrated, she could not make it to the event because of her political commitment in Palestine.

‘She is our joy,’ her father said at his birthday celebration, the New York Sun reported in its account of the event. ‘And while I miss her tonight, I am delighted that it is in a good cause. After all, that is what counts.’

COURTESY THE BHAGWATI FAMILY

cerns women in politics and academics.

“Aren’t we living in a very interesting time?” Professor Desai mused the other day. ”Today, it is just mind-boggling that we may have a woman President in America.”

“This is where we disagree,” says Professor Bhagwati. “America is behind the curve in having a woman as President.

Around the world, women have had prominent positions as presidents and prime ministers.”

Professor Desai, arguably the world’s leading expert on the Russian economy, argues how tough it is for a woman to be in the Presidential race. It is still tough for women to be achievers not only in India but also in America, especially in the corporate and academic worlds, she adds.

Surat-born Desai, who grew up reciting Sanskrit shoklas and was trained in classical Indian vocal music, is a professor of comparative economic systems and the director of the Center of Transition Economics at Columbia University.

“I have worked very hard to come this far, every step of the way,” says 76-year-old Professor Desai. “It was not easy for me to be recognized as an American scholar on the Soviet Union and then on Russia. To be recognized in Russia itself was difficult for me. You could imagine many Russians saying, ‘This woman in a brown skin, she says she’s an American scholar on Russia.’”

“If I were an American woman with blue eyes and blond hair or an American man with white skin,” she says with a sigh, “it would have been so easy for me to be identified in Russia as an American scholar on

COURTESY THE BHAGWATI FAMILY

ome of the lively disagreements Professor Padma Desai has with her S husband Professor Jagdish Bhagwati con-

— Arthur J Pais

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THE India

Professors Padma Desai and Jagdish Bhagwati greet then UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and his wife Nane

The perfect union M 35 -ner. Some of his admirers, who are familiar with Professor Desai’s work, may wish that she too could get the Nobel.

Many experts wonder if there is any other equally esteemed academic couple — his reputation built on his legendary expertise of international trade and hers on the Russian economy — living under one roof anywhere in the world.

Professor Bhagwati, who is widely credited for sowing the seeds of economic liberalization in India, is clearly in awe of his wife. Last year, when a tribute was held for Professor Desai at Columbia on the occasion of her 75th birthday, it attracted some famous scholars including Nobel Laureates Paul Samuelson and Robert Solow. The New York Sun called the event, A Marital Tribute Like No Other. Professor Bhagwati planned the event which also brought to Columbia an array of dignitaries including Drew Gilpin Faust, later Harvard University’s first woman president.

‘It may be the most astounding party a professor has ever thrown for his wife,’ the Sun wrote, ‘and one that provided a rare public view into one of the most influential couples in world economic policy.’

Professor Desai, whose expertise on the Soviet Union and then Russia, was widely sought out after the fall of the Communist empire, smiles when her husband speaks about her, lovingly describing her as a kind mother not only to their daughter Anuradha, but also her students.

It was not just her “stunning beauty” that captured his heart, he says. At a student event, he recalls how attractive she was. “But she was also serving my favorite chicken curry,” he remembers. “I thought this is someone I would like to marry because I will have good chicken curry all my life.”

“Those were pre-cholesterol days,” he says, laughing.

“These days she makes excellent fish.”

They have known each other for over five decades; they were graduate students in the same town, he at MIT and she at Harvard.

“I knew about her because my parents and her parents were friends for 50 years,” he says. “My father, who was a judge at the Bombay high court, had met Padma. He mentioned that Padma was very attractive and very talented.

When I went to MIT, I met her first through a common professor.”

When she returned to India in 1959, she became a reader in the Delhi School of Economics. Jagdish Bhagwati was to join the School as an associate professor. The couple would marry and return to America in the mid 1960s.

Though they have made America their home, India is very much on their minds, especially Professor Bhagwati’s.

Seventeen years ago when then finance minister (and now Prime Minister) Dr Manmohan Singh launched India’s economic reforms he invited CEOs of major American corporations to a meal to impress on them the benefits of investing in the country.

“There were about 25 of them — from General Electric, General Motors, you name it — at the luncheon,” Professor Bhagwati remembers. “We were the only academic advisors to be invited and attend. Dr Singh introduced us as his friends who almost 25 years ago wrote a book about all the economic reforms that India needed to accomplish.

And he said if India had followed them at that time, I wouldn’t be having this lunch with you because all of you would already have been investing in India.

“It was very gracious of him to point that out,” the professor, who has known Dr Singh from their days at Cambridge University in England, says. “It was nice for us to hear.”

Professor Bhagwati, university professor, Arthur Lehman Professor of Economics, and professor of political science at Columbia, has a chair named after him at the university, which is currently held by a former student, Professor Arvind Panagariya.

He has been economic policy adviser to Arthur Dunkel, then the director general of General Agreement on Tariff and Trade, special adviser to the United Nations on globalization, and external adviser to the World Trade Organization. He has served on the expert group appointed by the director general of WTO on the Future of the WTO. While publishing more than 300 articles and authoring or editing over 50 books, he also written frequently for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Financial Times, as well as contributed reviews to The New Republic and The Times Literary Supplement.

Many experts describe him as the most creative international trade theorist of his generation and a most determined and fierce advocate in the fight for freer trade. His most recent book, In Defense of Globalization (Oxford, 2004), attracted worldwide acclaim. Five volumes of his

writing and two of his public policy essays have been published by MIT Press. The recipient of six festschrifts in his honor, the latest three on his 70th birthday he has also received several prizes and honorary degrees, including awards from the governments of India (Padma Vibhushan) and Japan (Order of the Rising Sun, Gold and Silver Star).

“My friends in India used to wonder why I had not been given the Padma Vibhushan,” he says. “I used to tell them, ‘Well, I have one Padma at home.’” This year, the government of India awarded Professor Desai the Padma Bhushan, another high honor.

She is the third member of her family, after her husband and brother-in-law former Chief Justice of India P N Bhagwati, to be decorated with the Indian honor.

Professor Bhagwati attended Cambridge University where he graduated in 1956 with a first in Economics Tripos. He then studied at MIT and Oxford, returning to India in 1961 as professor of economics at the Indian Statistical Institute, and then as professor of international trade at the Delhi School of Economics. He returned to MIT in 1968, leaving it 12 years later to join Columbia.

People have wondered how Professor Desai — the Gladys and Roland Harriman Professor of Comparative Economic Systems and director of the Center for Transition Economics at Columbia — came to be an expert on the Soviet Union and then the Russian economy.

“I did not want to go in the same area as Jagdish,” she says. “In fact, I wanted to go into an area that he won’t know anything at all. I decided to move into a field that was a total area of darkness for Jagdish. So when we returned from India to the US in 1968, upon Jagdish getting a tenure appointment at MIT, I moved into the Soviet field at the Russian Research Center at Harvard.

“I am very good at learning new things,” she says with a smile.

When in 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev became the Soviet leader, she says her professional life “moved into a dizzying orbit and has remained there, challenging and totally rewarding.”

‘As you can see, I cannot generalize from my experience about a professional couple working in the same discipline,’ she said in a previously published report.

‘Ultimately I feel that the joint probability of two independent events, namely Jagdish and Gorbachev, happening in a person’s life is minuscule. All I can say is that sheer good luck combined with an independent spirit and determination to chase ideas, with Jagdish as a stimulating intellectual companion, has brought me where I am.’

“We rarely speak about Russian economics,” he says continuing to smile, “because I have a tendency to butt into everything. I am knowledgeable on a variety of subjects.”

Once, Professor Desai was invited to a Congressional conference in Turkey, where United States Congressman and Senators and their spouses were also invited. The organizers were paying business class fare to the invitees, he says.

“I was excited to go,” he recalls. “But Padma said, ‘No, you’re not coming.’ When I asked why, she said, ‘You will butt in when we are speaking.’ I promised her I would go with all the Congressional wives, be a spouse, and not speak economics. I would visit the tourist places, the museums. But Padma said, ‘I don’t trust you.’ So, she didn’t let me go. She was right. I probably would have butted in. “ Professor Desai laughs heartily, but soon she becomes solemn and talks about her love and curiosity about Russia that goes back nearly six decades. .

She had fallen in love with the brooding Russian literature of Fyodor Dostoevsky, especially Crime and Punishment, when she was a teenager. Her father, who studied literature in England, introduced her to Dostoevsky and Shakespeare. Many years later, she would study Russian, one of the most intricate languages (“It reminds me of the beauty of Sanskrit”). Going into Soviet

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The perfect union M 40 economics seemed natural to her when she charted a career path different from her husband’s.

Her decision owes quite a bit to the book she had written with her husband in the late 1960s.

“In 1966, both of us went to Paris (for a conference) where we were invited to write the book, India: Planning for Industrialization that was later published by Oxford University Press,” she remembers. “The book established us as reformers getting away from the bureaucratized planned life of the Raj. I felt Jagdish was the star of the book. I was only a secondary author. I did not want to be in that situation all my life. I wanted my own professional identity.

“I had a huge drive to have my own professional life,” she says with a smile, looking at her husband. “When I am invited to speak to young students, especially women students, I emphasize to them the role of ambition in women’s lives. It is very important to have a goal that is outside of the home. I believe you have only one life.

Especially if you have family, you have to find a rewarding life but also financially independent. This demands selfesteem: You feel good about yourself.”

Professor Bhagwati returns to the subject of them working together.

“The only time we worked together was on the India book; what we brought out as a team in front of the world.

And that was a very successful book,” he says. “Everybody was against us (in the 1960s). We were completely denounced because we were against the license Raj (the regime in post-independent India where multiple licenses granted by the government were needed to do business).”

“But 30 years later, everybody was on our side,” he says.

“If you stick to what you believe in,” adds Professor Desai, “and if you’re lucky, the world will come around, and you don’t have to make compromises.”

“This is one lesson that we, as professors and scholars, want to teach our students. Whatever your task, if you think it is correct don’t give it up just because it is unpopular,” says Professor Bhagwati. “Stick to it; the world will change. Change your mind or views on further thinking and if you think it is necessary; but not because the world does not want what you think.”

Professor Desai notes it is not easy to voice one’s opinion in the public arena, as she has done many times, especially in the last decade talking about the new Russia, and in recent years where she has talked about Russia progressing under President Vladmir Putin despite his dictatorial

ways.

“Well, I think it’s tough (taking up seemingly an unpopular stand),” she says. “But I am an independent spirit.”

Though she jokes about her husband “butting in,” she relishes the opportunity to discuss her themes with him. ”I think a very strong part of our more than 50 year relationship is the intellectual companionship,’ she explains, “Because I, on my part, if I have a riddle or analytical doubt I will generally speak with Jagdish and ask him to sort out the analytics of that situation.

“I handle a lot of information originally of the Soviet Union, then Russia; I will model and then I will churn out some results,” she continues. “In some of my earliest work, I did models to find out how productive the Soviet system would have been under Communism, especially under Stalin, if it had worked out according to the (American) market economy. These are some of the exercises that I began doing; but I always do empirical applied work. I have eight or nine books on empirical models that have been published by MIT Press, Princeton University Press and Oxford University Press, involving information, data, facts.

“If I were to tell Jagdish about numbers and show him a couple of papers full of tables he gets rattled,” she says, chuckling. “He tells me to go away. He says, ‘I don’t want this stuff, these numbers’. I am into numbers and models.

That’s what I enjoy doing.”

“She is a better macro-economist than I am,” declares Professor Bhagwati. “So I listen to her on interest rates and (Chairman of the Federal Reserve) Ben Bernanke and so on. I specialize in certain areas and she specializes in others. But we are economists and we have very good discussions from time to time in dealing with our research.”

Economics for her, says Professor Desai, is like a mystical experience.

“Economics makes you think magically, analytically and very rigorously,” she says.” There is no flabbiness of argument. Even when we speak on a non-economics subject, we tend to develop a story in a very coherent fashion and that’s part of the discipline.”

Adds Professor Bhagwati: “For instance when you listen to Henry Kissinger or Zbigniew Burzynski, they have an implicit model: Everything is coherent. In economics, you have a structure; you do not pronounce something without a structure. When I watch Padma and her analysis of Russian economics, she is easily the best compared to a whole lot of others in political science and international relations and so on; she has a lot of facts about what she has to say; but she puts them into a coherent framework.

So you have both the structure and the facts.

“In my case, it’s the structure,” he says. “She puts a table

in front of me and my eyes collapse.”

The couple is admired at Columbia for the time they have for their students.

“When in 1957 I taught Principles of Economics to Harvard students, I used Paul Samuelson’s The Principles of Economics. It was the Bible for economists. It led to a series of textbooks that people wrote later on following the model. The book was just published and I taught from that book,” says Professor Desai.

“When I came to Columbia in 1980, I myself chose to teach The Principles of Economics class,” she continues.

“Many professors avoid teaching the basics of economics to the class of about a minimum of 200 students who are bored and falling asleep because you have to put across to them certain abstract concepts of economics like marginal utility; but, then, you must remember they are always trying to connect it to the real world.

“In my evaluation which I get back from the students, they say the professor is very good in giving concrete examples and they love it; but at the same time you have to tell stories in the classroom and keep them awake. Once a student was fast asleep in the second row and I said to his neighbor, ‘Wake him up!’ So he looked at me and said to me, ‘Professor, you put him to sleep, why should I wake him up?’ It can happen only in America. It is a very challenging discipline; a constant challenging to the mind.”

“Besides the way she teaches in a very engaging way,” butts in Professor Bhagwati, “she spends an enormous amount of time looking after the kids in the class.”

The couple love eating out. “With such a wide range of cuisine in New York, there is no excuse for eating at home all the time,” he says. And they love going to theater and opera.

A few decades ago, Professor Padma Desai had wondered if her husband could have a life outside the classroom.

At his 70th birthday celebration in 2005, she remembered a visit to coastal California in the mid 1970s.

‘I thought, given the abundant sun and surf, Jagdish might take up a vigorous sport,’ she says of their Berkeley sojourn. ‘The very first week, we were driving along the coast and Jagdish looked out the window and said memorably: ‘What shall we do with this dumb ocean and these dumb mountains?’ We realized we were hardy, work-oriented New Englanders and returned to Cambridge, Mass.’

At one point, she suggested to Professor Bhagwati that he might take up golf.

To which he said, she recalls, ‘What is the point of wanting to put a little ball in a distant hole?’

But she had some success in another department.

“For years, I have wanted Jagdish to take up the culinary art because he is a sophisticated sampler of gourmet food,” she says. “Perhaps he might start making the morning coffee. So as a total novice, Jagdish asked me: ‘Darling, how do I know the water is boiling?’ To which I responded: ‘Darling, when it looks like champagne.

“Believe me, it worked like a charm,” she says. “Jagdish has been making coffee ever since. The other day, I read that the President makes morning coffee for the First Lady.

So I savor my White House moment every day in our Columbia apartment.”

Home life is very important to her, says Professor Desai.

“This is the secret of a fulfilled life, again, I emphasize to young women,” she says. “If you have a professional equilibrium outside of the home, then remember as I do that when you go home, it is your refuge, your retreat.

“After having done eight, nine hours of work here (at Columbia) I then want to take charge with energy and cook good food,” she adds. She was brought up in a Brahmin household in Surat, reportedly the best location to savor Gujarati food. “I was brought up vegetarian but we eat a lot of fish. It is so simple: You clean it, spice it up and put it under the broiler. It is ready in 10 minutes. Then I prepare a little vegetable and rice.”

Her husband looks at her adoringly.

“There is a saying in Gujarati,” he says, “the translation of which is you die in Banaras, but you eat in Surat.”

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‘He is the most entertaining writer on serious economics today’ SANJAYA BARU

industrialization. That was a major contribution to the thinking of economic policy in India. It was regarded as a Bible by the economic reformers in India. The book was a critique of the economics practiced by Indira Gandhi in the 1960s and 1970s.

Jagdish Bhagwati and Padma Desai were among the first to make a case against the Licence-Permit Raj. Many of us who were then trained at the Jawaharlal Nehru University were critical of their views. But, subsequently, when the reforms came in 1991, they were proved right!

Their basic argument was that too much government interference and excessive trade protection was proving counter-productive. That it was restraining growth and productivity and holding the economy back.

They saw in liberalization a way of boosting growth. That was the basic argument which has since been empirically validated.

As an early critique of accepted orthodoxy in India, Bhagwati became the guru for a lot of people who were unhappy with the statist policies of Indira Gandhi’s time.

Ironically, if in India Bhagwati was regarded a ‘rightwing’ economist, in the US he came to be viewed as ‘too liberal’!

He was, of course, for free trade, but was also a critic of IPRs (Intellectual Property Rights) getting into the World Trade Organization. His critique of globalization is very nuanced. Not the kind that would find favor in rightwing American institutions!

In the 1990s when there was a debate on ‘gradualism’ versus ‘big bang’ in economic reform and liberalization in India, Bhagwati took a nuanced position, favoring the Indian model. As finance minister Dr Manmohan Singh invited Bhagwati and T N Srinivasan, sometime in 1993, to write a report reviewing the Indian reform experience.

Their support for India’s gradualism helped. They rejected the big bang approach being advocated at that time by many at the World Bank, the IMF and the US Treasury.

They said Dr Singh was conservative and not moving fast

PARESH GANDHI

met Jagdish Bhagwati when I was in The Economic Times. But, as a student of economics, I Ihadfirst read his and Padma Desai’s book on Indian

enough. The examples of Mexico, Thailand, Poland, Russia and so on were given to push for the benefits of faster liberalization.

When India escaped the Asian financial crisis of 1997, while first Mexico, then Russia and then many ASEAN economies were hurt by crises, the Indian gradualism was validated. We must thank Bhagwati for backing our approach. It mattered at the time.

Bhagwati played a constructive role in the WTO. He didn’t take an extreme free trade view. He was a rare neoclassical economist who was not comfortable with intellectual property rights protection through the TRIPs agreement. In India, there was protest against it.

Bhagwati, too was not comfortable with it. He took a nuanced position on IPRs. Bhagwati’s wife Padma Desai is one of the most renowned experts on the Russian economy. She took a very balanced view of Russia. She was very critical of the IMF’s role in Russia. She wrote a critical book lambasting the US and the IMF’s role when Russia was passing through transition. I once reviewed her book Soviet Economy and Perestroika in Perspective. It was an eyeopener for me. I find both of them warm and natural personalities. Padma Desai is low profile, Bhagwati is high

‘I was fighting various battles’ M 39 “The memoir is really about how a woman with my background invents and reinvents herself in America,” she says. “It’s really about America: what kind of opportunities it gives to someone like me.”

“I grew up in a provincial town, Surat where my father was a college professor. He got his BA degree from Cambridge, England, in 1927. My father taught English literature and I got all my love for the English language and Shakespeare from my father. He was also a great disciplinarian but a man with great faith and a great sense of service. And, that is what I think I have imbibed from him: That is, to say, he gave me certain rules of right and wrong; how to conduct myself in life with people around me. That has really given me an anchor in America where one’s life is full of stresses and tensions.

“From day one, I had a very fierce ambition to excel academically. When I passed my BA examination, topping the list of all candidates in Bombay University in economics, I was called by the education minister of (then) Bombay state. He told me he would like to send me to America on a four-year fellowship to one of the women’s colleges,” she continues.

“I said, ‘No, I do not want to go to a women’s college but a proper university where I can compete with men.’ I remember this well and this was almost 55 years ago.

“I wanted to go to Harvard and I did so, arriving there in 1955, and some years later, ending up with my PhD. I was

profile. Desai is softspoken while he is more gregarious.

What makes Bhagwati unique is the style, quality and elegance of his writing. He is the most entertaining writer on serious economics today. He is a true inheritor of the Galbraithian tradition in economics writing.

John Kenneth Galbraith was witty, lucid and profound. I would say Bhagwati, like Galbraith, is truly entertaining. Galbraith wrote on economics but also for non-economists.

Bhagwati’s books on Protectionism and Globalization are fine examples of Galbraithian wit, humor, candor and, of course, profound learning.

While I admire Bhagwati, Desai and Amartya Sen, my intellectual hero, when I was a student, was Professor K N Raj. Because I belonged to a generation that chose to stay at home and study here. We looked down upon the Oxford-Cambridge and the Harvard-Yale types. We saw ourselves as desi products and felt people like Professor Raj not only chose to remain in India but also move away from Delhi to a far off place like Trivandrum (now Thiruvanathapuram). Dr Raj was a critic of Bhagwati. So, as students, we were never enthused by either him or Amartya Sen, who also migrated from Delhi. Moreover, Dr Raj was an institution builder in India. He built up the Delhi School of Economics, and later the Centre for Development Studies in Trivandrum.

Overall, I would say we have good reasons to be proud of that generation of Indian economists. There were many other distinguished men and women, of great learning and genuine patriotism, committed to India’s progress.

Bhagwati and Desai were certainly among them.

a teaching fellow. I taught at Harvard College to American undergraduates.”

She has more than classroom memories of her Harvard years.

“It was such a thrilling experience (both) for me as well as for the students because they had never seen a sari-clad woman teach them,” she says with her gentle laughter. “My photograph appeared in so many newspapers; my father sent me a cutting from the Singapore Times; I do not know how he got it. There were stories on me in newspapers from The Times of India to the Boston Herald.”

In Cambridge, Massachusetts, American children followed her as they had never seen a sari-clad woman.

“Then I would ask: Can I ride your bicycle?” she continues, laughing. “They had never a sari-clad woman ride a bicycle during the years I was at Harvard.”

“You talk about reinventing yourself here,” I ask. “Tell us some of the ways you reinvented yourself.”

“Well, I felt a lot of restraints in my Indian upbringing, despite growing up in a progressive household,” she remembers. “There were a lot of don’ts in the way a girl is brought up in India, even today. If you think of India as, largely, a rural country and the way a girl is brought up: You can’t do this and you can’t do that and I had serious ambitions, I had to reinvent myself in the sense of feeling free from inside. I had taken an almost secret promise to myself that for whatever profession I chose, I will go to the top of that profession.

“It has been a very hard life ever since I was a college

Dr Sanjaya Baru, currently media advisor to India’s Prime Minister, spoke to Sheela Bhatt undergraduate in India. I wanted to study literature but when my older sister did so, I took to my next love, economics. But my passion for literature continued. I read Dostoevesky’s Crime and Punishment, a translation in English when I was in India. It just bowled me over. I could not sleep or eat for a day. I was just about 13 then. I was reading about sin and redemption, things like suffering of soul, haunted by guilt and how murder can lead to redemption. I said to myself that I must read Dostoevsky in Russian.”

Some people have assumed she learned Russian when she prepared to concentrate on the Russian economy. She wonders if her passion for Russian writers had a role in nudging her towards Russian studies.

“When I went to Harvard, I registered myself in the Slavic languages department and began to learn Russian,” she says. “Russian is a beautiful language; it resembles Sanskrit. In Surat, I had read the Gita in the original form; I read a lot of Kalidas’s plays in the original. I got the prize for best performance in my sophomore year in college at Bombay university for staging Kalidas’s plays. Russian, like Sanskrit, is very ornate; it has long words, long sentences, and everything is defined, six cases, three genders, and so on. It’s a very complex language. Yet it is very beautiful; very rhythmic, almost mathematically structured just like Sanskrit. So I love it.”

And so is economics, she adds.

“It is very vigorous, it is very demanding, and you can never surrender to it easily,” she says. “In a small way it is very much like Russian language and the novels of Dostoevsky.”

— Arthur J Pais

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Person of the year 2006

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Immigrant, person of color, and female — Aziz Haniffa on how Indra Nooyi took on unimaginable odds to come out on top

hen the community chose, by an overwhelming majority, Indra Krishnamurthy Nooyi as India Abroad Person of the Year 2006, it reinforced a virtual no-brainer. Nooyi, 51, has been blazing a trail of glory from the time she joined PepsiCo in 1994 as senior vice president of strategic planning. In August 2006, she made history once again when the cola giant’s board of directors named her to the post of chief executive officer — promoting her from the post of president and chief financial officer of the $33 billion company — from October 1, 2006.

With its humble roots to corporate icon ring, what her story strikes is a power chord. The rock guitar — and rock star — allegory could not fit anyone better than Nooyi, who led an all-girl band in college, who reportedly still belts out electric guitar riffs at some of Pepsi’s more informal parties, and for whom a friend reportedly tweaked the heavy metal song Iron Man by Black Sabbath — ‘Driving them up the wall/Iron Woman rules them all.’

And, like the ideal power chord, the Indra Nooyi story marvels with its simplicity and awes with its impact. Simplicity, because all the girl from Chennai did to emerge as a global corporate idol was follow her dreams and be herself; impact, because she has hit the proverbial glass ceiling with the force of a few-megaton hydrogen bomb.

Nooyi is only the 12th woman to head a Fortune 500 company, and the only Indian-American woman to make the cut. She is also only the fourth member of the community — after Raj Gupta, CEO of Rohm and

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Haas, Ramani Iyer, chairman and CEO of Hartford Financial Services Group, and Surya Mohapatra, who heads Quest Diagnostics — to head a Fortune 500 company.

That is hardly the end of her meteoric rise. January 2007, the board of directors of Pepsi met again, and announced Nooyi had been elected chairman of the board, effective May 1, becoming the fifth chairman and CEO, and the first woman to hold those positions in Pepsi’s 42-year-old history. All of this, in just a little over a decade.

It prompted Gupta to remark to India Abroad that her achievements were not only ‘a phenomenal story’, but a ‘double-whammy’, because ‘she is not just Indian, but a woman — and there are two minority sectors for you.’ Throughout her career, Nooyi has had to put in more than 100 percent, as she admitted to Forbes in 2005, when the magazine ranked her the 28th most powerful woman in corporate America: ‘Being a woman, being foreign-born, you have got to be smarter than anyone else.’

The hurdles in her way only helped strengthen her resolve. Even now, by her own admission, she does ‘market tours and walking the grocery stores, for at least half-a-day a week.’

Gupta also acknowledged that Nooyi had left her Indian-American counterparts like him, Iyer and Mohapatra in awe because when one considered all the facts — ‘the size of the company, the fact that it’s a consumer product company, and also that it has the largest market-cap’ — it was a pretty phenomenal accomplishment. PepsiCo Inc is now ranked 61st on the Fortune 500 but, according to the research organization Catalyst, Nooyi ranks Number 2 among the top 10 female CEOs of the biggest Fortune 500 American companies, second only to Patricia A Woertz, chief of Archer Daniels Midland Company, number 56 on the list.

At Pepsi, Nooyi saw the future beyond the fizz. She was the primary architect of Pepsi’s restructuring and transformation, including the merger with Quaker Oats and the acquisition of Tropicana, and was instrumental in pushing for the addition of some of the world’s strongest health and wellness brands to the company portfolio. Her stellar reputation as the company’s chief strategist for over a decade had her predecessor as CEO and now as chairman Steven Reinemund, who retires in May, declare, ‘PepsiCo is in extraordinarily gifted and capable hands.’

At a 2005 event in New York, Nooyi spelled out her mantras for success. The first: aim high and put your heart into it. She recalled how her mother would reward whoever — her or her sister Chandrika, who is also a successful businesswoman — delivered the best after-dinner speech about what they wanted to be. The reward: bits of chocolate. The other mantras Nooyi spelt out were: never stop learning, keep an open mind, and be yourself. They are mantras she has followed diligently.

After her bachelors degree from the Madras Christian College — which now rightfully claims her as one of its distinguished alumni, along with the likes of Dr Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, India’s second President — Nooyi joined the Indian Institute of Management-Calcutta.

In 1978, she arrived in the United States to do her masters in management from Yale, ‘on a whim,’ as she put it.

Like most Indian students in this country, she had little money. For a summer job interview, she bought a $50 suit. In her own words, she looked like ‘a complete country bumpkin’ in the ill-fitting clothes and snow boots. She recalled there was a ‘collective gasp of horror’ from the interview panel at the sight of her. She did not get that job.

In tears, she approached her career development counselor for help,

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Indra Nooyi at the Republic Day reception at the Indian Consulate in New York, January 26, 2007

M2 who told her to be herself. She wore a sari for the next interview, and got the job. Till today, more often than not, you will find one of the most powerful women in corporate America in a sari. As she told Hinduism Today in 1998, ‘I’m so secure in myself, I don’t have to be American to play in the corporate life.’

Nooyi began her corporate career in India, as a product manager at Johnson & Johnson and at the textile firm, Mettur Beardsell, Ltd. After her masters, she spent six years directing international corporate strategy projects at the Boston Consulting Group. Her next stop was Motorola, where she served from 1986 to 1990, joining as business development executive for the automotive and industrial electronics divisions, and rising to be vice president and director of corporate strategy and planning. From 1990 to 1994, she served as senior vice president of strategy and strategic marketing for the power and automation technologies company Asea Brown Boveri.

By 1994, she had built enough of a buzz about her that Pepsi knew they wanted her. ‘She was one of the smartest candidates we had met,’ Christopher Sinclair, then chairman and CEO, PepsiCo, told The Economic Times later, when the Indra Nooyi story had caught the attention of the global — and particularly Indian — media. ‘The interview,’ Sinclair added, ‘was mostly about finding out what she wanted and persuading her to join us.’ Pepsi’s then CEO Wayne Calloway told Business Week that he wooed Nooyi, who also had an offer from GE, by saying, ‘Jack Welch is the best CEO I know, and GE is probably the finest company. But I have a need for someone like you, and I would make PepsiCo a special place for you.’

In 2001, Nooyi became Pepsi’s chief financial officer. And soon after, the buzz began again — that she was being groomed for the top spot.

Even as she has lived up to the buzz about her, Nooyi has remained

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symbolic of all that is exemplary about the Indian-American community. She cites her family as her biggest source of strength. She has remained rooted to her tradition even as her career takes flight.

Reportedly, her Connecticut home resonates with Carnatic music 18 hours a day. ‘Always pick the right husband,’ she quipped to an interviewer about her husband Raj, a businessman, ‘I have a fantastically supportive husband.’ Nooyi is a loving mother to her daughters Tara and Preetha. She and her husband do not like to leave the children alone, even though both travel most of the time. ‘I made those choices [of being a businesswoman and a mother],’ she said at a university CEO question and answer series. ‘So I am not going to sit here and say, “I am a mother. I need balance.” I’ve got to create balance.’

And part of that balance, Nooyi went on to elaborate, was having systems. Like when Tara wanted to play Nintendo, she would call the office receptionist and ask if she could. The receptionist would know the drill, and ask the little girl if she had done her homework and had her snack.

If the answers were in the affirmative, Tara would get permission for half an hour of games.

Nooyi is a straight-talking woman, like when she says, ‘The fact is if you are a woman, and especially a person of color, there are two strikes against you. Immigrant, person of color, and woman — three strikes against you.’

With everything she has done throughout her life, Indra Nooyi has spoken out and held on to what she believes in. As the Indian government’s statement on awarding her the Padma Bhushan — one of the country’s highest civilian honors — this Republic Day put it aptly, ‘Indra Nooyi is a perfect example of an overseas Indian who has achieved tremendous success in industry and can be a role-model for Indian women.’

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Back in the day...

The 1971-1974 batch of chemistry students at the Madras Christian College, Chennai. Indra Nooyi is the girl in the black sari, center

hirty-five years ago, a group of young men and a woman ran from their college to the railway station to catch a train to the city. They then got on several buses. Their aim was to coax business houses into sponsoring their department magazine. One of those young men is currently the principal of that institution, Madras Christian College. The only girl in the group was gutsy Indra Krishnamurthy, now known worldwide as Indra Nooyi, CEO, PepsiCo Ltd. Bubbly, confident, enthusiastic, easy to get along with, a born leader, one who excelled in music, dramatics and languages, who never left a job halfway, and often talked nineteen to the dozen — this is how a classmate describes her. MCC Principal Dr V J Philip and Indra joined college at the same time, in 1971. He was a postgraduate student while she was in her first graduate year. By the time she got to her final year Bachelor of Science in chemistry, he had completed his masters and joined the college as a lecturer. “So,” he smiles, “I was both her classmate and professor!”

About the running around to collect money for the department magazine, Dr Philip remembers, “It was the early seventies and she was the only girl ready to help us. Unlike other girls, she used to run with us to catch buses and trains. We would run from one company to another.

She was good at leading a group and played a very important role in

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PHOTO COURTESY: MADRAS CHRISTIAN COLLEGE

Classmates in Chennai turn back the clock in conversations with Shobha Warrier

organizing events. I could see her leadership qualities even then.

Nobody else would take the initiative of going to the city to get advertisements.”

He candidly admits she wasn’t an extraordinarily brilliant student of chemistry. “Her interests didn’t lie in the subject; there were many students better than she. But, she stood out in class because of her allround personality. She was excellent in cultural activities like singing, strumming a guitar or leading a band. She had her own music group; she played guitar and participated in dramatics. There was nothing she hadn’t done in college.”

Dr R Wilfred Sugumar, head of the department of chemistry at MCC, was Indra’s classmate from 1971-1974. He remembers her as someone who mingled with everyone, irrespective of social class. “She came from a privileged family. Her father worked in a bank, and her grandfather was a retired judge, but she never discriminated against anyone. She was down-to-earth and friendly.” He also remembers how she used to sing old Hindi songs on stage and also act in plays. “She had a drama group that went to north India for a competition and came back with a prize. She was that kind of person; she never accepted defeat.”

Though Dr Sugumar always got more marks than Indra, it was she who everybody in college knew. Other than her lively personality, he also

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M4 remembers the way she used to ‘exploit his shy nature and bully him.’ “I used to be next to her in the lab, and we were supposed to do experiments together. Coming from a small place, I was very shy and felt embarrassed standing next to a girl. She knew my discomfort and used to bully and tease me a lot. She played a lot of pranks on me.”

Neither Dr Philip nor Dr Sugumar imagined the girl who studied with them would reach such heights, although their college produced such eminent men as Dr S Radhakrishnan, T T Krishnamachari, K P S Menon, Dr Raja Ramanna and T N Seshan.

We knew she would fly high, they say, but not to such heights!

Even after leaving MCC, Nooyi stayed in touch with her friends. When Dr Philip became principal, he e-mailed her and she responded immediately, congratulating him. After she took over as CEO of PepsiCo, Dr Philip was in America and met his old classmate and student at her office.

“It was an amazing experience!” he says. “I don’t think I have been in such a plush place before. She was very warm and friendly. I told her she looked more or less

PHOTOGRAPHS: SREERAM SELVARAJ

Dr R Wilfred Sugumar, above, head of the department of chemistry, MCC; right, Principal Dr V J Philip

the same.” They both laughed about the early days of chasing buses and begging multinational companies for money. He told her that, unlike her time when girl students constituted just 10 percent at MCC, they now comprised 45 percent. “I thought she would be happy,” he says, “but she asked, why just 45 percent? Why not 50 percent? We must have 50 percent.”

It was a proud moment for MCC when the government announced the Padma Awards this Republic Day, says Dr Philip. Three former students won — Dr E C G Sudarshan was awarded a Padma Vibhushan for science and engineering and Dr Raja Chelliah for public affairs, while Indra Nooyi was awarded a Padma Bhushan for her contribution to trade and industry.

When Nooyi was in Chennai, December 2006, the college was closed for Christmas, so Dr Philip couldn’t arrange for her to meet the students. “I have requested her to give a motivational talk and she has agreed,” he says. “Imagine a person who has reached such heights talking to 4,000 students. It could change their lives!”

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From the Editors While honoring her as the fourth most powerful businesswoman in the world, Forbes magazine pointed out that only an extraordinarily gifted person could handle the office of president, or CFO, at a company with sales of over $33 billion.

Indra Krishnamurthy Nooyi, Forbes pointed out, handled both since 2001. And that was merely a halfway house — in October 2006, she became Pepsi’s chief executive officer.

Enough said? Not nearly: in May 2007, a mere 13 years after joining the company as its chief strategist, Nooyi will take over the corner office as chairman of PepsiCo. Her rise has been so dramatic, so startlingly swift, that rankings have become outdated even before they were published. Fortune magazine, thus, ranked her the most powerful businesswoman in the world for the year 2006 — and this was before she was named chairman of the company.

Her achievements alone would suffice to make her the shoo-in favorite as the community’s choice for India Abroad Person of the Year 2006 — yet, there is much more to her than her professional accomplishments.

Those who speak of Indra Nooyi suggest that she shattered the glass ceiling, and showed that women could match, even exceed, men at the dizziest heights of corporate America. Indra Nooyi has proved that, yes, but so have other women who have attained the highest peaks of business success.

Nooyi resonates with the Indian-American community for two other reasons that are not easily quantifiable. Firstly, she has proved that it is possible to be a daughter, wife and devoted mother — and yet find the time and space for high achievement. That plays right into the community’s cultural ethos, that values a woman as homemaker, while increasingly recognizing that she can be much more, do much more in the larger world outside.

Secondly, and equally importantly, she has proved through personal example that you do not need to hide who you are, pretend to be something you are not, in order to be successful. Indra Nooyi is, first, a grateful daughter, unabashedly eloquent in reiterating how her parents, particularly her mother, instilled in her the virtues she holds most dear, the values that have helped shape her into the achiever she is. She is, next, a wife and mother, clear in her mind that the needs of husband Raj and her two daughters are as important to her as are the needs of the larger family of Pepsi employees whose fates and fortunes she oversees.

Indra Nooyi is American in the energy, enterprise and innovation she brings to her professional life; yet, she manages this without sacrificing the Indian-ness that is an essential ingredient in her personality. The story of how the young Indra wore saris to her early job interviews is already the stuff of legend; an image of Ganesha has pride of place on her work table, and visitors are as apt to be drawn into a discussion of the elephant-headed god’s place in Hindu iconography as into discussing the best practices of business.

For a community caught between two positions — to stay true to your heritage, or to assimilate, to merge, with the culture of the adopted land — Indra Nooyi is the perfect example; her life, her achievements, indicating that the highest of accomplishment is possible without sacrificing who, and what, you are.

It is with pride that the community names her Person of the Year 2006, and with pleasure that India Abroad validates that popular choice.

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A reason to celebrate

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Raj L Gupta, Chairman, Rohm and Haas, hails Indra Nooyi’s rise to the top

ndra’s selection to lead PepsiCo is a cause for celebration not only for Indian Americans, but for all communities. There are many reasons for this. She is an Indian woman who immigrated to the United States, and who has been chosen to shape the future of one of the largest branded companies in the world. Her achievements along the way have been well chronicled by a series of awards and recognition from a number of premier sources: Fortune magazine recently named her the Most Influential Woman in Corporate America; she is the recipient of the Padma Bhushan Award by the President of India, and she has been singled out as one of the top ten most influential Asians. The list goes on.

This tribute by the leading weekly for the Indian Diaspora in North America, India Abroad, as Person of the Year, is both exquisitely timed and well deserved.

Being named chief executive officer of a mega-sized, global company is a huge accomplishment anywhere in the world. The fact that Indra is also an immigrant South Asian woman is noteworthy. The fact that she has been chosen because she is the best person for the job, regardless of gender or ethnicity, is the greatest accomplishment of all. Her success, therefore, is reason for people from all walks of life and all ethnic groups, to take pride in her accomplishments — not just IndianAmericans.

Let me explain: since 1999, I have had the honor of serving as chairman and chief executive officer of Rohm and Haas Company, an $8 billion global specialty chemicals and materials firm. I have served on the boards of three public companies: Airgas, Technitrol and Unisys, and am currently a director of Tyco International and the Vanguard Group.

I cannot help but view Indra through the prism of the profound obliga-

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tions on the shoulders of all boards of directors during these tumultuous times.

The last decade has witnessed a sea change in the global business environment, largely driven by globalization and geopolitical uncertainties. These external challenges, combined with high profile cases of corporate misconduct (accounting irregularities, excessive executive compensation, back dating stock options), have tarnished the public trust, and brought forth a dramatic escalation in the oversight of publiclyowned enterprises. Quite rightly, all stakeholders (investors, the general public, business and general media, government regulators, employees and customers) have raised the bar of expected performance.

Boards today are held to account as never before and their expectations of a chief executive have been raised even further.

As a consequence, the selection criteria for a chief executive are manifestly more stringent and broad, not only in the US but around the world. Gone are the days of an imperial CEO who could stack boards with friends and influence compensation. This was always wrong.

Today, boards are increasingly independent and genuinely focused on their single most important responsibility — looking after the long-term interest of shareholders. The four most important aspects for them to deliver on this responsibility are: Selection of the CEO, ensuring a credible strategic plan for the company, ethical behavior and ensuring comprehensive tracking of all aspects of compliance.

Every board today has CEO succession as its highest priority. I cannot be sure what specific factors PepsiCo sought to fill during its deliberations, but generally speaking, boards seek a candidate who demonstrates the highest level of integrity, knowledge of the industry (and the culture of the firm), a record of superior achievement over a long period of time under different circumstances, the ability to build strong teams, and an appetite for high performance. Well-known and high profile companies like PepsiCo surely also require a chief executive who will lead from the front of the enterprise, accept the responsibilities that go with the public spotlight, and possess the presence and communications skills to excite the passions and support of all of its business partners. Indra clearly met all of these criteria.

US public company boards are leading the way in selecting the best candidate they can find as their CEOs, either inside or outside the organization, irrespective of ethnicity, geographic origin or skin color.

This reflects the US focus on merit as the prime differentiator among aspirants. Among Fortune 500 companies, you will find African Americans leading major companies like Time, American Express and Merrill Lynch. You can find women leading successful and large companies like Pepsi, ADM, Xerox, Avon, Sara Lee, Kraft, E-Bay and others.

Asian men are at the forefront of Schering-Plough, Hartford Insurance, Quest Diagnostics, Sigma-Aldrich, Rohm and Haas, and more.

Of course, there is still a way to go to achieve real diversity among CEOs of major companies. Today, approximately 5 percent, or 25 of these positions, are occupied by women (both Americans and Asian), African-American, Asian and a few Latin men. Progress has been tangible, but corporate leadership in America does not yet reflect the demographics of its population.

The very good news is that just below the very top are an enormous number of senior positions occupied by a diverse slate of incumbents.

We hope they will earn their way to the very top. Those who do will demonstrate that extra spark, talent, resilience and tenacity are essential to overcome any final barriers.

Indra Nooyi has scored many firsts through her performance, perseverance and leadership skills. Her greatest achievement will be the inspiration she provides to others who have the passion and the hope of rising to the top of corporate America. I am thrilled to celebrate Indra Nooyi’s success and sincerely hope this celebration is shared equally not only by Indian Americans, or Asian Americans, but by all. We extend our congratulations and very best wishes for a long and highly successful tenure as the chief of Pepsi.

Raj L Gupta is Chairman, President and CEO, Rohm and Haas Company, a Fortune 500 company

2006

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PUBLISHER’s AWARD FOR EXCELLENCE

On Top of the World Astronaut Sunita Williams is clearly not afraid of heights. As Suman Guha Mozumder points out, she has been scaling them for years

COURTESY: NASA

Ensign in the United States Navy from the US Naval Academy in May 1987 after she completed her BS in Physical Science from the Academy the same year. It also says she has logged over 2,770 flight hours in more than 30 different aircraft and flew naval helicopters during the 1991 Gulf War. And yet, these details somehow fail to portray the multi-faceted personality that Suni is. For example, the resumé does not mention that Suni dared to swim a 12mile stretch of water from the Boston Lighthouse to the Boston Aquarium when she was just 11. “She was determined to swim in the freezing cold water along with other participants who were much older,” her father, who was in a boat along with Coast Guards alongside her, recalls. Ultimately, she would not make the full 27mile stretch. “The water was so cold that I decided to take her out after 12 miles, but she was determined to finish,” he adds.

Bonnie Pandya recalls how once, on a bright spring day, when mother and daughter were outside their home in Needham, Suni, then a high school student, got excited by the beautiful weather and said she wanted to take part in the famous Boston Marathon, which was to start in a few hours from Hopkinton. The place was a 45-minute drive from where the family lived. The mother tried to reason with her, but Suni wouldn’t listen. “I told her we were not prepared and that she hadn’t done this before, but she said she wanted to try. So, we drove off to the staring point just as the gun was going off.”

Suni just got into the crowd. Her mom told her to call from a public telephone booth if she couldn’t make it to the finish line, so she could pick her up. She gave her ten cents to make the call and asked her to put the coin in her tennis shoe. After a while, apparently, Suni found it difficult to run with the shoes and took them off. “She made it without shoes, running the full 26 miles, half of the stretch barefoot,” her mother says. Such grit has Sunita Williams in full astronaut regalia, before taking off always been the staple of Suni’s character.

In her early 20s, she applied to test pilot school, and spoke of her ambition to become an astronaut to her lmost everybody who has known NASA astronaut Sunita commanding officer, who was in charge of her evaluation. Suni recalls Williams nee Pandya — currently on board the International that he laughed the minute he heard about it because she was a heliSpace Station, 250 miles above the rest of us — agrees on one copter pilot. The officer told her point blank that she was never going to thing about her: even as a child, she had the makings of someone who be an astronaut, and that the very thought was crazy. “I then applied to test pilot school, which is where a lot of pilot astronauts come from. would go places.

Those qualities often manifested in many ordinary and not-so-ordi- While we were at the school, we came down to Johnson Space Center for nary things that Sunita — or Suni, as she is called by family members, a tour, just to get an idea of the kind of testing being done. There, somefriends and colleagues — used to do as a child in Needham, one who went to the moon on the Apollo program twice was telling us Massachusetts, where she grew up before the family moved to about his adventures. A little voice in my brain kept telling me that the only person telling me I couldn’t be an astronaut was me. If I wanted to Falmouth, some 70 miles away, in 1995.

Not that anybody even remotely guessed she would one day be an do it, I just had to figure it out. So, I filled out the application and proastronaut, living in a celestial home surrounded by nothing but silence ceeded to get my masters degree. I realized it was necessary. I did my and the blue firmament. “I didn’t imagine she would be an astronaut, best and, on the whole, it worked out,” Suni recalled in an interview.

This tendency to challenge herself, whether in terms of becoming a but I was certainly convinced, even when she was a child, that she would be something some day,” her mother Bonnie Pandya says. No different jet pilot, swimming in cold water, taking part barefoot in a marathon is the opinion of Donald Roman, who taught Suni when she was in fifth or even mastering Shakespeare as part of her advanced literature grade. “You can tell very quickly, with kids, who is going to go to the top, course in high school, has cropped up in almost everything Suni has who has a combination of intelligence, sparkle and just general overall done in her life.

“Suni likes challenges and, whenever she has put her mind to somepositive spirit. Suni had all those characteristics and I knew she was thing, she has achieved her goal. She is determined and hardworking!” going to do something special,” he says.

By all accounts, Suni, who was born in Ohio, September 19, 1965, the says elder sister Dina Pandya, a web developer. But that, perhaps, was youngest of three children to Deepak and Bonnie Pandya, showed a precisely the reason her parents or teachers had no inkling, during her combination of grit and gumption, intelligence, interpersonal skills and childhood, about her future career — because she used to put her mind leadership qualities as a child, all of which have stayed with her. Her into so many different things. Take, for example, her love for swimming official biography mentions that she received her commission as an or running. Her teacher Angela DiNapoli says she imagined Suni would

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2006

PUBLISHER’s AWARD FOR EXCELLENCE 1987. From that point on, her career moved along an expected path.

After a six-month temporary assignment at the Naval Coastal System Command, she received her designation as a Basic Diving Officer and then reported to Naval Aviation Training Command.

Suni was designated a Naval Aviator, July 1989. She reported to Helicopter Combat Support Squadron 3 for initial training. The training over, she was assigned to Helicopter Combat Support Squadron 8 in Norfolk, Virginia, and made overseas deployments to the Mediterranean, the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf in support of Desert Shield and Operation Provide Comfort. September 1992, she was the Officer-in-Charge of a detachment sent to Miami, Florida for Hurricane Andrew relief operations on board the USS Sylvania. She was selected for the US Naval Test Pilot School and began the course, January 1993.

After graduation, she was assigned to the Rotary Wing Aircraft Test Directorate as an H-46 Project Officer, and V-22 Chase Pilot. In 1995, Suni went back to the Naval Test Pilot School as an instructor in the Rotary Wing Department and the school’s Safety Officer. From there, she was assigned to the USS Saipan, Norfolk, Virginia, as Aircraft Handler and Assistant Air Boss. She was deployed on board the USS Saipan when she was selected for the astronaut program by NASA in June 1998 and began astronaut training, August 1998.

“I think my life is a little bit more of a happenstance,” Suni once told this correspondent, alluding to her career as an astronaut. “I have told children before not to be afraid to fail because, if you do, you learn something and it is better for you. Not that my life was full of failure, but it was full of things I potentially did not always want. But, when you do your best at something, somehow it always seems to work out. If you do your best and enjoy what you do, you will do it well.”

By her own admission, she grew up in an era when space was a hot topic; to say one wanted to be an astronaut was cool. But she never really thought it would become a reality until she was part of a fleet squadron in the military.

Despite her preeminence, Suni has always remained very modest about her achievements. Her mom says that, whenever they go out together and she tries to introduce Suni as her astronaut daughter, Suni asks her not to, saying she wants people to know her for what she is as a human being, not an astronaut.

Suni says she is humbled when she thinks of her parents, both of whom come from struggling families. Her grandfather died, she says, when her father was 2, and her grandmother when he was just 11. “My father and his two siblings struggled for survival. All of them had to do

Williams at home, baking a cake and eating it too

Sunita Williams in a playful mood

M10 become captain of the US Olympics team or some such thing. “She

had great leadership qualities and lots of talent in many fields,” says DiNapoli.

Her mother thought Suni would become a veterinarian, thanks to her love for animals. A skilled horsewoman, she even wanted her parents to buy her one. “Of course, we didn’t have space for a stable and had to dissuade her,” her mother recalls. But her love for animals remains steadfast. In an interview, Suni said that, as a child, she thought she wanted to be a veterinarian. “My father is a doctor and I had a huge love for animals,” she said. She has a little Jack Russell Terrier called Gorby, named after former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev.

Suni’s veterinarian ambition took a back seat after her graduation from high school in 1983. Her brother Jay Pandya, who went to the US Naval Academy, felt she could do well there. The Academy, which was previously an all-boys college, had just begun accepting girls then. “Jay told Suni that, if other women could do it from there, she certainly could,” says Bonnie Pandya. “I think her brother, with whom she got along fabulously, was an inspiration for her.”

Suni says her brother — who is now in the Navy Reserves and practices nuclear medicine — told her the Academy would provide her with a lot of opportunities. “He told me it was a great school for leadership and understanding how a team works. Although I didn’t really understand at that age, I gave it a nod. The hardest thing was I had to cut my long hair. But, through sheer determination, I did fine there.”

She received her commission as an Ensign in the US Navy in May

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Bonnie and Deepak Pandya with their three children: Sunita, Jay and Dina

M12 well to get scholarships for higher studies. They had no money. This

work ethic, and how they managed to become successful, inspired me.

My mom is not a college graduate. Her parents, my great grandparents, came from what is now Slovenia at the turn of the last century, with nothing. My mother didn’t have the opportunity to go to college,” says Suni. “I think my going to college was just a given in my household. But when I listen to those stories, I feel my accomplishment pales in comparison to what my parents did at that time. They are pretty awesome. They are extremely hardworking and pious people with great work ethics and I am very blessed and lucky to have grown up in such a great household.”

It is perhaps thanks to their influence that Suni has grown up to be a spiritually oriented person with a strong sense of right and wrong.

Although raised a Christian, Suni’s father used to take her to a lot of meetings with visiting Indian swamis and sadhus in Boston and the MIT area to get her acquainted with different religious thoughts. “Some of them stayed at our house several times,” says Bonnie Pandya. “We never insisted on our children doing one thing in exclusion of the other.

We left it to them to figure out what religion truly is. That is how they picked it up and learned, and they are happy about it.”

Little wonder, then, that when Suni went to space in December 2006 for her six-month celestial sojourn, she carried with her an image of Lord Ganesh, an English translation of the Bhagavad Gita — both given to her by her father — and a St Christopher medal her grandmother had given Bonnie’s cousin, who mailed it to her when he found out Suni was going to space. “He told her that grandma would love it if she were to take the medal. He said, ‘When you are up there, you will be closer to her,’” says Bonnie Pandya, her eyes glistening with tears.

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On the face of it, India Abroad’s pick of astronaut Sunita Williams, as recipient of the Publisher’s Special Award for Excellence, needs no explanation.

The 42-year-old resident of Needham, Massachusetts has had an exemplary career, channeling her degree in physical science and masters in Engineering Management into a stint with the United States Armed Forces. During her relatively brief stint with the Navy, she won the Commendation Medal (twice); the Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medal; and the Humanitarian Service Medal, among other honors.

In June 1988, she was selected by NASA for astronaut training; she has since worked with the Russian Space Agency on the International Space Station, and played a key backup role in the first international crew sent to the ISS. On December 10, 2006, she took her place in the space shuttle Discovery, as part of the Space Shuttle mission STS-116. Eight days later, she took her first space walk; from that point on, the records began tumbling.

She has made an unprecedented three space walks in the space of nine days. She has logged 29 hours 17 minutes in the course of four space walks — the most by any woman astronaut. By the end of her tour of duty, she will have logged the most hours in space by any NASA astronaut, ever (She had, earlier, stayed underwater for nine days in the Aquarius habitat).

Her accomplishments are unprecedented, and deserving of the many honors that have come her way. Yet there is, over and above these quantifiable achievements, one other reason why India Abroad picks her for the Publisher’s Special Award for Excellence 2006.

The Indian-American community in the United States can be very broadly classed into two types: those who have clung fiercely to the traditions, culture and iconography of the mother country, and those who have moved away from those and embraced the culture and values of their adopted land.

There is never a right or wrong to these things; there is definitely no intent, on the part of India Abroad, to judge either of these alternatives as right, and the other as wrong. Which brings us to Sunita Williams: a young woman who opted, early on, to don uniform in defense of her adopted land. A young woman who chose to marry Michael J Williams, a native of her adopted land. A young woman who chose to dedicate herself to helping push back the frontiers of knowledge, with her work in outer space. And, finally, a woman who, when she stepped abroad Discovery that day three months ago, carried with her a copy of the Bhagavad Gita, the repository of the ancient wisdom of her motherland; an idol of Ganesha, that most beloved member of the Hindu pantheon; and a plateful of Samosas, the typically Indian fast food that, for her, was another thread linking her heritage with her present.

Her accomplishments make her a role model for our young to follow; her ability to balance the old and the new, to be the allAmerican achiever while yet retaining the values and heritage she inherited from her parents Bonnie and Deepak Pandya — for this, we honor her.

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Bridge over troubled water Aziz Haniffa on why Swadesh Chatterjee’s untiring efforts make him the perfect recipient of the first India Abroad Community Leader Award 2006

wadesh Chatterjee, first recipient of the India Abroad Community Leader Award 2006, has had political activism flowing in his veins since adolescence. Those were the years he would follow his father, Hari Sadhan Chatterjee, in the small town of Sonamukhi in the Bankura district of West Bengal, where he was born. The two would campaign for the election and re-election of the older Chatterjee, an erstwhile freedom-fighter who was the town’s mayor and also the Congress party’s point man.

“I would go door to door, and also to all polling booths, both for his mayoral run and on behalf of Congress candidates,” he recalls, speaking proudly of how his father raised funds to build the small town’s first college.

Thus, it was only natural that this activism would start manifesting itself in his adopted country after this ‘Midnight’s Child’ — born in 1947 and named Swadesh by his father to celebrate the dawn of a new India — immigrated to the United States in 1978. He arrived with his physician wife Manjusri at Raleigh, North Carolina. It was part of the Deep South, where right-wing conservative Republican Senator Jesse Helms held forth — a quintessential Cold War warrior if ever there was one — with all the attendant anti-India positions, since he perceived India as a surrogate of the former Soviet Union.

Chatterjee’s first few years passed by like they do for all immigrants — settling in, securing a job for oneself and an education in the US that could be marketed, while his wife who was a gynecologist and obstetrician had to change her specialty to psychiatry to get all licenses necessary to practice. Swadesh — who already had two bachelors’ degrees, one from the University of Calcutta in physics and another from Jadavpur University in electronic engineering — began attending night school at North Carolina State University for his MBA while working

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In the driver’s seat: Swadesh Chatterjee, left, with US Congressman Bobby Jindal

days to take care of his family, which by then included his young daughter Sohini.

But the political bug soon kicked in, and he gave vent to it the only way he knew how, by founding the North Carolina Bengali Association. While its intention was ostensibly to promote Indian culture, he also wanted to create an Indian presence in the state.

While he was certainly not averse to culture, this political animal was fully aware that it was political involvement that would lead to political empowerment. He found an outlet in the North Carolina chapter of the Indian-American Forum for Political Education — the first Indian-American political organization started by Dr Joy Cherian, the first Indian American to hold a sub-cabinet rank position in the US government when he served as a commissioner of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in the Reagan administration — formed to boost the political participation of the Indian-American community and forge closer ties between the US and India.

Chatterjee, now a citizen of the United States, took the comatose chapter of the IAFPE, with its 20 members, to an organization with over 450 members and made it the most powerful chapter of the national body that would soon propel him to its presidency. In taking over as national president of IAFPE in 1998, his almost obsessive priority became to turn around Helms, then chairman of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee, from his vehemently anti-India stance to one of more understanding of India, its people and also an appreciation of the contributions of the Indian-American community.

After much persuasion, he convinced Helms to be the chief guest and keynote speaker at the IAFPE convention in Raleigh, and even went to the extent of chartering a plane to fly him in from Washington. And, win him over at the convention he did, with a mix of Indian culture, Bengali hospitality and a discussion and interactive session between Helms and the many Indian Americans present where they bantered with the lawmaker, often called a racist and bigot in addition to his rabidly Cold War mentality, telling him that he was as misunderstood as he misunderstood India.

This was a great victory, because much of the Indian-American community had virtually written off Helms as far too anti-India to ever be understanding of it, let alone be sympathetic to President Clinton’s efforts to forge a strategic partnership with that country.

The coup accomplished, Chatterjee prepared for the annual Congressional reception hosted by the IAFPE on Capitol Hill. More than a hundred Senators and Congressmen had confirmed their presence.

Helms too had promised to grace the occasion. But that very evening came the news that India had conducted a nuclear test in Rajasthan and all hell broke loose. Not more than four lawmakers attended the IAFPE reception and they too came and left as surreptitiously as they could for fear of being perceived as condoning the test.

The closest friends of India, who were aghast, went public with their condemnation and Helms declared that India had ‘not only shot itself in

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for his role in improving Indo-US relations.

It was no coincidence that this was about the time some of the sanctions against India were lifted while the new Bush administration was redoubling efforts to forge a belated strategic partnership with the country. In accepting the accolade, Chatterjee said, ‘I am humbled by this great honor and acknowledge that it is not me who has been recognized, but the whole Indian-American community.’

But if one assumed he was going to rest on his laurels or ride away into the sunset, one couldn’t have been more wrong. He was gearing up for his next challenge. It came early 2006 when President Bush returned from his reciprocal trip to India in March and began trying to facilitate the US-India civilian nuclear agreement he and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had agreed upon a year earlier. But the legislation was going nowhere. Even the Republican chairs of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Richard Lugar, and of the House International Relations Committee Henry Hyde, had qualms about this effort to change a 50year-old law to accommodate India and provide it with nuclear reactors and technology — a country that was not a signatory to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

If the Republicans were lukewarm to the effort — considering Lugar was one of Congress’s fiercest nonproliferation advo Swadesh Chatterjee, center, with US Congressman Gary Ackerman, left, and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh cates — nonproliferation was to the Democrats an article of faith. Hence, the legislation that was the first step to ulti M14 the foot, but shot itself in the head,’ and vowed never, ever to lift the mately consummate the deal was in limbo.

That is when Chatterjee swung into action once again, serving as the punitive sanctions imposed on it as long as he was chairman of the catalyst from outside and putting together a group of Indian-American Foreign Relations Committee.

Chatterjee, the political activist, was down but not out, and took upon activists and high-tech entrepreneurs under the banner of the US-India himself this dent in US-India relations as a challenge to resurrect the Friendship Council, and also roping in several specialty community relationship that was then in the doldrums, to say the least, with even organizations with considerable clout and influence like the Association the Congressional Caucus on India and Indian-Americans in jeopardy of of American Physicians of Indian Origin and the Asian American Hotel disintegrating. He started working on Helms, trying to explain to the Owners Association.

The group worked quietly but effectively behind the scenes to garner Senator the rationale for India’s tests — that the country was living in a hostile neighborhood ringed by China and Pakistan, asking how he support for the passage of the legislation, overwhelmingly in both the would feel if Canada and Mexico had nuclear weapons and the US did- House and Senate, then once again to bring the legislation to a vote durn’t, and whether it wouldn’t be prudent for the US to develop one for its ing a lame-duck session when all the pundits believed it would never happen with all the other pressing legislation the Senate had to deal own security and deterrence from nuclear blackmail.

Helms began to listen, not entirely convinced, but amenable to try and with. Before last year was out, it went to the President’s desk for his sigcomprehend India’s rationale. Chatterjee, sensing that the time was nature.

The concerted effort of the community, which for the first time came ripe, brought then External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh to meet with Helms, along with then Ambassador Naresh Chandra. Singh was also together as it never had before, also revealed that the community could, meeting with Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott and a strategic more than anything else, put not just partisanship aside, but leave egos dialogue was beginning. President Clinton, nearing the end of his sec- and other hang-ups at the doorstep and work for the greater cause. And ond term, was also itching to go to India and the ice was slowly but sure- the man who spearheaded this community movement with his indefatily melting. There were murmurs that the sanctions could be lifted, albeit gable activism and energy was Swadesh Chatterjee.

A man who, right from the day he landed in the United States, gradually.

Professionally, Chatterjee, who had been working for Brandt believed that America and India had a future together and toiled to Instruments, had worked his way up through the ranks, eventually make it happen. A futurist whose efforts in initially promoting the becoming executive vice president and buying the company in 1990, Indian-American Forum for Political Education and transforming the then selling it two years later to Control Equipment, Inc. which later likes of Jesse Helms to become cheerleaders for India from their past of sold out to Onix Systems Inc, a subsidiary of the Thermo Electron India-baiters, boosted the community’s participation in mainstream Corporation in 1998. All of these companies continued to retain politics and empowered them as never before.

No small wonder then that Under Secretary of State for Political Chatterjee as CEO. He used some of the proceeds of the sale to send his daughter to the prestigious boarding school Philips Academy in Affairs, R Nicholas Burns, the chief US negotiator of the US-India civilAndover, Massachusetts, something he is proud of to this day on ian nuclear deal was so buoyed by the community’s zeal at a Congressional reception in the Senate Russell Building, organized by account of the premium he places on education.

Chatterjee the political activist was now on a roll since a relationship Chatterjee, said, ‘This has been your coming out party in our country in one could never imagine would recover so quickly was on the mend. He many ways. Your impact has been decisive in this whole struggle to see was among several Indian-Americans who traveled to India with our way towards a civil nuclear deal.’ More recently, Burns told another President Clinton, March 2000, to make certain that New Delhi and reception celebrating the enactment of the legislation: ‘Swadesh, you Washington could move together. He was equally involved in working are an amazing man; thanks for keeping us all directed on this goal.’

Burns was elated when informed that Chatterjee was being honored assiduously to make then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s visit to the US, September 2000, a resounding success. Once again, he was with India Abroad’s first Community Leader Award 2006. He said, “For over 20 years, Swadesh has devoted himself to establishing the political instrumental in arranging a meeting between Helms and Vajpayee.

In 2001, he was awarded a Padma Bhushan by the Indian government voice of the Indian-American community in the United States. He has

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Chatterjee with Senator Joseph Biden, left, and former Vice President Al Gore, below

M16 worked tirelessly to improve US-India relations and has become one of

the most effective supporters of the US-India civilian nuclear initiative.

His boundless energy and enthusiasm are an example to us all.”

Kudos came in fast and furious from others too, when news of the honor spread. Ron Somers, president of the US-India Business Council spoke of how “in the crunch, when we needed access in Capitol Hill to make key points in favor of this initiative, Swadesh would find us a way to gain access. When he didn’t know the person or have access personally, he would know whom to call to find out. He was an unmatched resource for the entire effort. For him, it was apparent to everyone on the outside, that he had taken on this duty to achieve the passage of this civilian nuclear initiative as a personal passion. Hats off to him that we succeeded. A large part of the credit goes to Swadesh Chatterjee.”

He added that, thanks to Chatterjee, “one of the more gratifying aspects about the US-India civilian nuclear initiative was the way — for the first time — the Indian-American community united with US industry to form a common voice in support of a deeper US-India strategic partnership. This formed a historic, potent lobbying force that bodes auspiciously well for a long, bright future for Indo-US relations.”

Former Assistant Secretary of Commerce Ray Vickery, a driving force behind the US Chamber of Commerce’s Coalition for Partnership with India, spoke of Chatterjee as a man of ‘supreme dedication.’ He said, “For the good of US-India relations, he was always there. Swadesh understands coalition politics. He worked tirelessly with the Coalition for Partnership with India to bring Indian-Americans together with the US-India Business Council and national security experts.” Vickery

recalled how, even during the darkest times, “when it looked as if the legislation would never get to the floor, Swadesh was always doing his best and was true to the saying, ‘We cannot guarantee victory, we can only deserve it’ — and deserve it he did.”

“Swadesh gave new meaning to pro bono publico. What he did, he did for the public good without any compensation; in fact, much of it at his own expense.” Vickery spoke of how, “in some 35 years of participating in politics, Swadesh shows more common sense and good judgment about how to deal with the vagaries of the Congressional system than any other person I have known.”

Venture capitalist P C Chatterjee, one of the early entrepreneurs Swadesh tapped to join in the effort to push through the deal in Congress, said, “Swadesh really does make the Indian-American community proud. He has, for the first time, been able to get the whole community organized and mobilized in such a united fashion and, more importantly, made it effective in achieving a goal that is good for the country we are in as well as our country of birth.”

P C Chatterjee also mentioned that, as far as he could remember, no one in the community had been able to bring all of the disparate groups together — from physicians to people in technology, hoteliers to industrialists — which spoke of his organizing skills and ability to get along with people.

Armeane Choksi, another protagonist in the US-India Friendship Council and one of Swadesh’s early backers, said, “Success has many fathers, failure none. You will find many Indian Americans taking credit for the success of this agreement. But having been deeply involved in the process from the very beginning, I can tell you unambiguously that Swadesh Chatterjee has gone out of his way to bring the diverse and fragmented Indian-Americans together. He took on the mantle of leadership after we asked him to and, since then, has tirelessly organized the community from all parts of the US, and campaigned within it to raise large sums to finance advertising in newspapers, receptions and other events designed to put this deal front and center of various US Senators and Congressmen.”

“He approached the political dimensions of shepherding his agreement through the House and Senate in a very strategic manner, and continued to maintain momentum. He has consistently encouraged and cajoled Indian Americans from different parts of the country to actively approach, meet, write letters and convince their respective Senators and Congresssmen to support this deal. He also successfully demonstrated to and convinced these lawmakers that this was one issue on which all Indian-Americans were united,” Choksi said.

He doubts anybody else could have accomplished as much or “could have kept a very fragmented and ego-centric Indian-American community together, as he did. I could go on and on, but I am sure you get the message loud and clear that Swadesh Chatterjee has demonstrated

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From the Editors

KIRAN JAGGA

Chatterjee with then Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, left, and Republican Senator Jesse Helms

Communities need leaders; the need becomes more pronounced as the community grows — in number, in wealth, prestige and influence.

These leaders need to be visionaries; people who can tap into the community’s strengths, who can harness the community’s abilities to best effect, who can shape its course and give it direction and purpose.

It is to recognize the need of the Indian-American community for such leaders that India Abroad institutes, this year, the annual Community Leader of the Year Award.

And it is with great pleasure that we present the first in the series to businessman, entrepreneur and activist Swadesh Chatterjee, of North Carolina.

His accomplishments are familiar to the community: it was during his tenure as president of the Indian American Forum for Political Education, for instance, that the community’s clout in Washington DC grew to the point where the Congressional Caucus on India and IndianAmericans grew into the second largest caucus on the Hill. For his efforts, the government of India awarded him the Padma Bhushan in 2001.

It was when the United States Congress took up for hearing the US-India Civilian Nuclear Co-operation Bill, though, that Swadesh came into his own.

He realized, early on, that the bill would face much opposition; that its passage was by no means certain unless the majority of lawmakers were given a push in the right direction.

Reasoning thus, he took it upon himself to provide that push, by bringing fellow community leaders together under a common umbrella, with the stated intention of proselytizing for the deal.

The story of what he accomplished, and how, has been narrated in detail in these pages.

It is not, however, only for this accomplishment that India Abroad picks Swadesh Chatterjee for the inaugural honor. In earlier interviews with this paper, he has consistently maintained that it was by no means a solo effort, that he was not some lone warrior battling on behalf of his community and his mother country. In these interviews, he has taken great pains to enumerate the names of every single community leader who gave generously of time, energies, money and influence to help push the nuclear deal through Congress, and the Senate.

The over-arching achievement for which we honor him with the Community Leader of the Year Award is this: in bringing dozens of top community leaders together, in getting them to put aside their partisan differences and work together for a common cause, Swadesh Chatterjee not only gave the community a new template for tomorrow, he also taught an important lesson: in unity, lies our strength.

M18 untiring and selfless leadership on an issue that will probably be a defin-

ing historical event in US-India relations, and will likely be the defining foreign policy issue of the Bush Presidency and prime ministership of Manmohan Singh.’

Ranvir Trehan, another strong supporter of Chatterjee’s effort, expressed similar sentiments. “He assembled some of the most successful Indian Americans to work with him, but it was always his tireless efforts and will to go on even when the going was uncertain.”

When asked what makes him click, Swadesh Chatterjee is firm in his belief. “It is only Indian Americans who can clearly see the common ground that exists between our two democracies, because we live it every day. I have always believed that we bring a unique perspective to the US-India relationship. I firmly believe that we are and should forever be the bridge between our two nations, and that when issues like this deal come along that can forge our partnership even closer, it is our moral obligation and responsibility to make sure it is strengthened and reinforced.”

According to Chatterjee, “It is imperative that we make sure our two beloved nations avoid any misunderstandings or misperceptions — and even if they do, be able to withstand such situations — and instead stay focused on the larger picture of where we can go together.”

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India Abroad March 30, 2007

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Man of Character

Salman Rushdie at his hotel at the colonial seaside town of Parati, Rio de Janeiro, July 8, 2005

hen you want to learn whether or not you’ve made a difference to people who read literature, all you need to do is take a trip down Mumbai’s busy crossroads. Wait a while as the traffic lights turn red, and look for young children weaving their way through the parked vehicles, balancing little piles of books in their hands as they rush to the faces in open car windows. If what you have written features among the photocopied, pirated titles they hawk, pat yourself on the back and walk away satisfied.

Ahmed Salman Rushdie could have, by that yardstick, patted himself a great many times over the past two decades. His novels continue to be part of those little piles. They continue to foster debate in and outside classrooms worldwide. They continue to hog large portions of bookshelves, at stores and libraries and homes. And, perhaps most importantly, they continue to encourage younger generations of writers to reach for their keyboards or writing pads in an attempt to up the ante.

For over a quarter of a century now, Salman Rushdie has continued to serve at what keepers of the canon refer to as the high altar of literature.

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Lindsay Pereira on why Salman Rushdie deserves the first India Abroad Lifetime Achievement Award 2006

Irrespective of the success he has enjoyed during that time, he deserves an award for that service alone.

Born in Mumbai around two months before India attained independence in 1947, Rushdie’s stories have forever been tied to the country of his birth. The city he lived in until he turned 14 (before moving to Pakistan and, subsequently, England) first occupied center-stage in his work in 1981 — when Midnight’s Children was published — and continued to make an appearance in the years that followed, from Shame (1983) to The Satanic Verses (1988) to The Moor’s Last Sigh (1995).

India continued to play her part too, be it in collections of essays such as Imaginary Homelands (1992) and Step Across This Line (2002), or novels such as The Ground Beneath Her Feet (1999) and his latest work, the much-applauded Shalimar the Clown (2005).

These days, Rushdie is doing publicly what he has long done in private — mentoring young writers. He is currently a professor at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, where, for the next five years as distinguished writer in residence, he will teach weekly literature seminars for

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Clockwise: Rushdie with wife Padma Lakshmi at the Lincoln Center, New York, September 25, 2006 Autographing copies of his books at a bookshop in Kolkata, December 9, 2004

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With Nobel Prizewinning novelist Nadine Gordimer during a press conference, November 30, 2004

addition to their faculty. Which is why it also opted to buy his papers — almost 100 boxes of personal material including computers with his e-mails, pages of typescript for The Satanic Verses and a great deal more.

Over the last twenty years, then, Rushdie has slowly moved from freelance advertisement copywriter to successful novelist; from international writer to world treasure.

He has, along the way, picked up everything from the Booker Prize for Fiction (for Midnight’s Children) and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, to an Arts Council Writers’ Award, Whitbread Novel Award, Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger (for Shame), Writers’ Guild Award (for 1990’s Haroun and the Sea of Stories) and, for good measure, the Booker of Bookers (again, for Midnight’s Children). And then there are those eight honorary doctorates laid at his feet by universities from around the world.

Like all things, with the good has come the bad. Sadly, the reason for Rushdie’s overwhelming celebrity is a book that has overshadowed his finest work. He could not have known, when writing about Gibreel Farishta and Saladin Chamcha — two Indian actors falling to earth from an exploding Air-India jumbo jet — that his life would change so drastically. With the publication of The Satanic Verses came death threats and calls for his assassination. The book led to him spending many years underground.

That episode still eclipses much of what makes Rushdie a powerful figure in world literature. There is Grimus (1975), his exercise in science fiction that draws on a twelfth-century Sufi poem; there is, of course, the hypnotic Midnight’s Children, with its star Saleem Sinai and a thousand others born on the eve of India’s independence; there is Shame, a powerful indictment of Pakistan’s Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and Zia-ul Haq; Haroun and the Sea of Stories — an allegory that continues to delight children and frighten adults; The Moor’s Last Sigh’s (1995) exposure of right-wing Hindu fundamentalists; The Jaguar Smile’s (1987) exploration of the outcome of the Sandinista National Liberation Front in Nicaragua; and the prolonged cry of pain for all that Kashmir has lost, in Shalimar the Clown.

Taken in its entirety, this is a strange, wildly exciting blur of traditional storytelling and fantasy. It is a body of work that has led to the creation of new genres, and new means of definition. Before Rushdie arrived, for instance, academics simply didn’t know what a ‘historiographic metanarrative’ was.

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M20 graduate students. Emory has no doubts about this valuable

There have been other controversies too. Like his public support in 2006 of comments made by the British leader in the House of Commons, Jack Straw, criticizing the wearing of the veil. The fatwa against Rushdie continues to stand — it was reaffirmed in 2005 by Iran and requests for its withdrawal have been denied — while he simply continues to hold forth as a powerful advocate of free speech, be it in his past role as president of the PEN American Center or current one as supporter of the British Humanist Association.

For Rushdie, this has been a lifetime of speaking out; of taking on those trying to silence voices of dissent. He continues to make his presence felt, as a powerful influence on the literature of our time, and also as an Indian abroad. Over the years, irrespective of whether he continues to write or not, Rushdie can only gain in stature. His work will attract generations of admirers, and continue to inspire new writers.

Above all other achievements though, he deserves recognition for what the Russian playwright and writer Anton Pavlovich Chekhov once wrote in one of his letters: ‘A writer is not a confectioner, a cosmetic dealer, or an entertainer. He is a man who has signed a contract with his conscience and his sense of duty.’

Salman Rushdie is that man.

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What is it about Salman Rushdie that gets people so excited? Arthur J Pais tries to find out

The writer followed by a group of schoolchildren on the streets of Parati, Rio de Janeiro, July 8, 2005

s Salman Rushdie was teaching a course on history and literature at Emory University in Atlanta the other month, he looked out of the classroom and saw a group of young men playing cricket.

There he was, teaching over 100 students aspects of Mughal history and literature, with his mind occasionally thinking of the novel he is writing set against the background of the Mughal reign. “It was all very surreal,” Rushdie, now Distinguished Writer in Residence at Emory, says with a chuckle.

Rushdie clearly enjoyed the half dozen lectures he gave at Emory as part of his five-year contract. ‘I am looking forward to going back next year,’ he tells a reporter, who says he would like to sit in at one of his classes. There are many brilliant writers who make lousy lecturers, the reporter adds. ‘But you are a born storyteller. If you had lived in an age where there were no books, you would have become a legend by sheer storytelling.’

Rushdie has lectured widely on literature, the cinema of Raj Kapoor and Mehboob Khan, and the curtailing of freedom in America after 9/11.

But, this time, he was teaching as Professor Rushdie, not giving a speech or two. Some Emory students who flocked to his class may have done so because he is a celebrity. For instance, Stephanie Berger, 20, a junior in

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English and history, told reporters: ‘It is important that we have professors who are recognizable. It brings a different sense of the world rather than just on the local level.’

It is also possible there were aspiring writers taking the course knowing that a blurb from Rushdie could launch a career. Kiran Desai’s debut novel, 1999’s Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard owes quite a bit of its popularity to Rushdie welcoming her as a new voice. And Suketu Mehta’s Maximum City, which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in the non-fiction category, also benefited from one such blurb.

It is not just new writers who seek Rushdie’s blessings. At the IndoAmerican Arts Council, founder Aroon Shivadasani always checks out the writer’s schedule. “If there is an event that is not drawing enough people,” she confesses, “I have to add Salman’s name and we have a sold out event in no time.” Deepa Mehta’s Water, which was unveiled at an IAAC film festival, benefited by Rushdie calling it a moving and urgent film. Before the mainstream reviews were out, Rushdie’s comments were widely used to promote it.

Many students at Emory may have known of Rushdie’s reputation as a writer, and some surely knew of his tenure as president of PEN American Center and his championship of writers oppressed by their

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Rushdie arrives to read from Shalimar the Clown at the Literarisches Colloquem in Berlin, Germany, January 20, 2006

M22 governments. ‘Rushdie is not only one of the foremost writers of our generation,’ Emory President James Wagner has said, ‘he is also a champion of human rights and freedom.’

Rushdie can speak on human rights and freedom of expression at any time, given his own struggle to save his body and sanity as he went underground and away from the fatwa Iran imposed on him following his novel The Satanic Verses. PEN has long been visible in defending writers abroad, and it defended Rushdie with great determination. The writer has said that, when he took up the post of president of PEN, he was, in a way, repaying his debt to the organization.

He led several campaigns from that post. One was to defend his friend, the Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk, who was charged of ‘insulting Turkishness’ in his books and for saying that Turkey should acknowledge the massacre of one million Armenians in the early decades of the 20th century.

Rushdie, who initially supported the invasion of Iraq, turned against Bush and his foreign and domestic policies a few months after the invasion. He led the PEN campaign against the Patriot Act and concomitant abuse of civil rights of thousands of Americans.

Many students at Emory may have echoed the thoughts of Deepika Bahri, associate professor and director of Emory’s South Asian Studies Program who, while welcoming Rushdie, declared: ‘Salman Rushdie is the greatest storyteller of our time. He is the author of nine novels, one collection of short stories and five works of non-fiction. But this is a somewhat dry, if formidable, calculus of why he matters as a writer. If we are lucky in our writers we will find those stories that reinvent a world made cynical by injustice and suffering, that urge us to test the limits of our imagination, that teach us to look for false notes in our reality and for truth in the best of our fictions, and show us that other, better worlds have always been possible — that our history has been one of missed appointments with these possibilities. These are the worlds of Salman Rushdie’s fictions which invite us to imagine homelands, step across this line, and — finding a lesser world — to invent a better one.’

Rushdie is continually asked why he chose Emory. ‘Because they asked me and nobody else ever had,’ he said at a news conference.

‘The opportunity this offered was to go into much greater depth with a subject and with a group of people — both students and faculty.’

The university, one of the best in the South, is also purchasing his archives, including pages of unpublished short stories and handdrawn journals. Emory’s library is already home to archives from British poet laureate Ted Hughes and Nobel Prize-winning poet Seamus Heaney. ‘There is an attempt to build an extraordinary library here,’ Rushdie said. ‘The idea of becoming a part of developing that archive into another direction, which is prose, became very attractive to me.’

He clearly has new worlds to conquer.

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From the Editors There are achievements that are quantifiable in the space of a given 12month period, though they may, by their nature, reach back into the past and forward into the future. And then there are achievements that span a lifetime — a river of achievement, if you will, flowing quietly along as a vital undercurrent of our collective lives.

The first kind is the heartbeat of our community, our world; the second, the perennial lifeblood that sustains, nourishes, facilitates all that we are and do on a daily basis.

India Abroad has, since the inception of the annual awards, honored the first variety — spectacular achievement in the course of a given year. This year, we institute an annual award for the second — sustained achievement over a lifetime.

To introduce Salman Rushdie, recipient of the first-ever India Abroad Lifetime Achievement Award, is an exercise in the superfluous. They said of the legendary Ray Charles that you do not produce him; you just get out of his way. So it is with Rushdie — you do not introduce him, you get out of his way and let him shape the words, and his world, as he will.

He has been doing just that, ever since he burst on the literary scene with his first novel, Grimus, in 1975. He has to his credit 15 works of fiction and non-fiction; his mantelpiece overflows with the honors and awards his work has won over the years; his name has, in the course of a 32-year-long career of sustained excellence, become one to reckon with.

If that was all there was, Salman Rushdie would be just yet another author, albeit one of incandescent talent. In choosing to honor him today, India Abroad picks a lesser-known aspect of his accomplishments, his career.

If this aspect could be epitomized in one book, it would be the seminal Midnight’s Children (1981) — a work that was considered so significant that it not only won the Booker Prize in the year of its publication, but was subsequently awarded the Booker of Bookers, as the best Booker-winning novel in the first 25 years of the premier award’s existence.

That book did more than establish Rushdie in the foremost pantheon of contemporary authors; it helped shape the course that Indian writing in English would follow, over the next two decades.

Rushdie has been celebrated for his writing; he has been feted, and attacked, for his controversy-generating stands on the issues of the day. What is less well known is that he has, over the years, mentored and influenced an entire generation of young Indian writers, thus helping to reshape Indian literature in English in the post-colonial era.

And he has done this with an admirable absence of fuss and fanfare. His works, his ideas, have acquired lasting fame; through the writers he has mentored and influenced, he has ensured that his influence, like a river, flows through his successors — sustaining, nourishing, affirming.

The Spelling Bee Champs

Indo-US Relationship

India Abroad Person of the Year 2005

PARESH GANDHI

Bobby Jindal

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The choices we make A note on the India Abroad awards of 2005, and the reasons behind the choices

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ometimes, the choices confronting you are clear; what makes you pause for thought is the process of arriving at your choice.

Picking the India Abroad awardees for 2005 — specifically, picking one particular award — is a case in point.

In August, we invited the community to nominate the Person of the Year, through extensive advertising in India Abroad, and online through the Rediff India Abroad web site (www.us.rediff.com).

By the time nominations closed end-October, we were — as we have been in years past — flooded with entries; once duplication was filtered out, we found over 700 choices confronting us.

As we scrutinized the nominations, as we scanned the plethora of talented people in all walks of life — nominations ranged from politics and business to science and sports, from arts and literature to community activism and mainstream achievement — one point was blindingly obvious. The Indian- American community, famed as the ‘model minority,’ had this year, as in years past, lived up to its own hyper-achieving reputation.

To pick the first among equals, when the choices before you are so vast and so varied, is never an easy task. In 2003 and 2004, the editorial board has sat in, in a purely advisory capacity, as a jury drawn from the community struggled with the task. Each year, the jury made a wise, informed choice; yet on each occasion, the jury members told us they were so spoilt for choice, they wished they could hand out more than just the one award; recognize more than just the one achiever.

Frankly — because even as we celebrated the honored one, we felt deeply for those who had missed out — so did we. And thus was born the Publisher’s Award for Excellence last year, as an addition to the original Person of the Year Award.

Traditionally, once the nominations are closed, and are tabulated, the editorial board hands over the decision-making process to a selected jury.

This year, however, during the scrutiny process we realized that we could not empanel a jury fitted to the task ahead. And from that realization stemmed the decision to take into our own hands the final selection; to hand over the task of picking the winner to the India Abroad editorial board.

Why? We will get to that in a moment; but first, a look at the whys and wherefores of two of our choices this year:

Person of the Year Award 2005 Last November, as the jury settled down in the Lexington Suite of the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York to deliberate its choice, Piyush ‘Bobby’ Jindal was on the cusp of making history.

His campaign for a Congressional seat from the 1st District of Louisiana had just ended; the elections were awaited. Political pundits everywhere said Jindal was a shoo-in; that his victory was a foregone conclusion.

The win, when it came, would create history; Jindal would be only the second Indian American ever to be elected to Congress, and the first in 50 years.

The significance of such an achievement did not need elaboration; the jury was well aware of it. Yet, they faced one hurdle they found insurmountable — the axiom that there is no such thing in politics as a sure thing.

If Bobby wins, it will be a landmark achievement — but Bobby hasn’t won yet, and our brief is to recognize actual, not putative, achievement: thus reasoned the jury while deliberating on his candidature.

Jindal won — and thus created history. But that was last year.

In January, almost immediately after taking oath of office, he showed his political savvy by pitching for, and winning unanimously, election to the post of president of the Freshman Republican Class; a fact that gave him a seat at the top table of GOP movers and shakers.

In the months that followed, Jindal continually made news — by being nominated to serve on important House committees; by taking to the floor of the House to argue, with characteristic precision, the case for various items of legislation he was either sponsoring, or backing.

And then, in August, came Hurricane Katrina — a Category 4 storm that devastated large swathes of the Gulf Coast, reserving the brunt of its brutality for New Orleans and particularly, the 1st District that was Jindal’s home constituency in Louisiana.

A stunned state reeled under the storm’s fury; the federal administration, swamped by a disaster it had not imagined, much less planned for, went AWOL; the state leadership seemed singularly visionless; the people, helpless.

Into that leadership vacuum stepped Jindal. Pausing only to evacuate his wife and children, the Congressman quickly moved to the head of relief efforts, marshalling his team to provide immediate succor to those who needed it the most.

More significantly, he became the emphatic voice of a New Orleans crying for national attention; his denunciations of FEMA’s lethargy led to the exit of its chief Michael Brown. Soon, Jindal became the public face of a drowning city, the voice that resonated in newspaper columns and on television talk shows,

telling the nation at large of the problems his home state faced, suggesting solutions, asking — demanding — aid.

In one sentence that was picked up by an array of media outlets, he articulated the philosophy that guides New Orleans today: ‘It is rarely, if ever, that a city is given a chance to start afresh, to rebuild from the bottom up, to recreate itself. We in New Orleans have been given that chance now; future generations will watch how we go about the job, and judge us on what we do now.’

To be able to lead in times of trouble and tragedy is a rare gift; Jindal demonstrated it this year. And this, coupled with his other accomplishments, prompted his choice as India Abroad Person of the Year 2005.

Publisher’s Special Award 2005 Scan the pages of any issue of India Abroad, and you are assured of one thing: Somewhere in those pages, there will be a story of an IndianAmerican boy or girl who has been honored for high academic achievement.

The Rhodes Scholarships, Marshalls, the Presidential Scholarships, Siemens Westinghouse — community kids have won them all this year, continuing a tradition of extraordinary excellence.

Every one of those winners has made it to our pages; as we put those stories together we have delighted in the achievements of these gifted young men and women, in whom we see the community’s future.

Nowhere was this dominance as clearly visible as in this year’s edition of the Scripps National Spelling Bee. Indian-American kids have won the top prize in four of the last six years, and taken second spot once. A tough act to top, you would have thought — but then, on June 2 this year, four gifted youngsters took the top four slots in a competition that over a million of the nation’s most gifted school children participate in.

It was a stunning sweep, so complete in its dominance that it defies accolades, even. To pick those four youngsters as joint recipients of the Publisher’s Special Award for Excellence is not to demote the achievements of their peers in other fields; we pick them not merely for their own achievement, but as exemplars of a supremely gifted younger generation that makes the community proud.

Event of the Year 2005 When picking a nominee for an award of this nature, that seeks to showcase the community’s achievements, you ask yourself — who dominated the public consciousness more than his peers, during the period under review? The answer to that question almost invariably throws up the name of the winner.

This year, we asked ourselves that question, and came up with an answer that made us pause for reflection. Much though individual members of the community achieved, we realized that it was not one person, but one event, that dominated the public discourse for much of this year, and bids fair to dominate the national, even international, consciousness in the years to come.

That focal point of that event was the signing, July 18, of a Joint Statement

by President George W Bush and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

A day prior to the summit, the consensus of opinion among the assembled media was that there would be much ceremony, but little else.

A day later, the two leaders released their joint statement. And as you read through the document — detailing as it did a breathtaking array of agreements in fields as diverse as nuclear cooperation, medicine, agricultural research, the war on terror and the equally urgent war on HIV/AIDs, defense, technology and much else — you realized that the document signaled the start of an epoch.

Relations between India and the United States had, in two strokes of the pen, been taken beyond the realm of the rhetorical and converted into a cornerstone of the foreign policy of the two nations. And it is stating the obvious to point out that this coming together of two great world powers — one at the acme of development, the other racing up the developmental ladder at warp speed — has implications not just for the people of the two countries, but even for the world at large.

The dramatic improvement in Indo-US relations was clearly the single most significant event of 2005; equally clearly, it was not possible to put together a jury drawn from the Indian-American community to reflect on the nature of this event, given that the repercussions of the meeting of Prime Minister Singh and President Bush had resonations not only here in the United States, but also in India and, indeed, beyond the boundaries of the two nations.

From that thought stemmed the decision to entrust the job of adjudicating on the implications of this event to the India Abroad editorial board; their informed decision that, given its far-reaching implications, the transformed Indo-US relationship this year merits recognition as the Event of the Year 2005.

Congratulations to all the winners; you truly make us proud.

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His resume reads like an over-achiever’s pipe dream – and for Piyush ‘Bobby’ Jindal, it is just the beginning. Managing Editor Aziz Haniffa profiles India Abroad’s Person of the Year 2005

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f some, they say he is a hyper-achiever. When it comes to Piyush ‘Bobby’ Jindal, they merely point to his milelong resumé, accumulated before he had even turned 30, and leave it at that. Adjectives are eschewed, as being superficial.

A quick recap: after graduating from Brown University with a — wouldn’t you have guessed it? — 4.0 grade point average, and Oxford University, which he attended as a Rhodes Scholar after turning down admissions to medical and law schools at Harvard and Yale, Jindal was ensconced as consultant at McKinsey, working on health policy at a salary of nearly $200,000.

That was when he heard the call — specifically, the call of Louisiana Governor Mike Foster who, impressed by a paper he had written on the failed Louisiana health department, asked him to try his hand at addressing the problems in his home state.

Jindal was then 24; he had graduated from Oxford University just two years ago. Most would have been honored by the invitation; Jindal, with characteristic chutzpah, told Governor Foster he would consider the offer only if he were given the Cabinet-level post of Secretary of the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals — a post that would put him in charge of 13,000 employees and a $5 billion budget.

Foster — probably then in a state of shock — said yes.

It took Jindal — whose salary now was a third of what he was earning at McKinsey — just two years to wipe out the gargantuan deficit in Louisiana’s Medicaid system and to turn the health care sector from a $400 million deficit to a $200 million surplus.

With that as springboard, Jindal in 1998 made his first foray into Washington, as Executive Director of the National Bipartisan Commission on the Future of Medicare — a 17-member panel under the chairmanship of the conservative Democratic Senator from Louisiana John Breaux, and Congressman Bill Thomas, California Republican. In this position, he was responsible for the day to day operation of a body that was disbanded after two years, but whose legacy continues to drive the ongoing debate on how to strengthen and improve Medicare.

Jindal then returned to Louisiana, as President of the University of Louisiana System, the 16th largest high education system in the country, overseeing the education of nearly 80,000 students.

In 2001, President George W Bush plucked him out of Louisiana and appointed him assistant secretary for planning and evaluation at the US Department of Health and Human Services, making him the highestranking Indian American government official ever in the history of the community.

Just when you wondered what was left for him to achieve, Jindal at age 31 decided to run

TOUGH CONTEST: Bobby Jindal during his bid for governor of Louisiana

for political office. And typical of the young man who had demanded a Cabinet-level post from Governor Foster, Jindal aimed straight for the top.

Thus, in 2003, he ran for governor of Louisiana in a race that captured the country’s imagination. Here was a brown-skinned immigrant running in the political backyard of Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke; a candidate, what is more, who bucked the prevailing political trend and, faced with a negative campaign by his opponent, the Democratic candidate Kathleen Blanco, refused to descend to that level.

Jindal lost; but in the narrowness of his defeat there was clear indication that he could pick a Congressional, or Senate, seat and be certain of victory. He chose the House of Representatives, contesting for Louisiana’s 1st District. On November 2, 2004, when the results were declared, Bobby Jindal was declared winner with one of the biggest margins in Louisiana Congressional history — over 78 percent.

Those who know Jindal best say he is a natural leader, a front-runner. He proved that assessment right from the moment he was sworn in January 2005. While other freshmen Republicans were still jockeying for office space, he was busy making sure that his pitch, and nomination, for Freshman Class President of the newly elected Republicans was under every office door. His election as president of the Freshman Class was almost a given; that in turn gave him a seat at the GOP big table alongside the likes of House Speaker Dennis Hastert of Illinois.

He had been by then identified as a rising star of the Republican Party; key appointments followed in quick succession to House committees on Homeland Security, Education and Workforce and Resources — all of which positioned him to work on his agenda priorities and serve his constituents.

Jindal, only the second Indian American elected to Congress after Dalip Singh Saund in 1956, was well on the political way.

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n August 29, Hurricane Katrina made a landfall along the Central Gulf Coast near Buras-Triumph, Louisiana, devastating the Gulf Coast and ravaging, with extraordinary ferocity, the 1st District of Louisiana that was his home constituency.

During the early hours of the storm Jindal, flooded out of his home, concentrated on evacuating wife Supriya and his children Selia Elizabeth and Shaan Robert to his parents’ home in Baton Rouge. Once assured his family was safe, he quickly turned his attention to his larger family of constituents.

In the days following the tragedy, he was — at times even more so than Governor Kathleen Blanco or New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin — the go-to guy for the local and national media. The Wall Street Journal invited him to write opeds; no edition of The New York Times or the Washington Post carried a Katrina relief story that did not quote him. He was on Larry King, Wolf Blitzer, Fox, MSNBC, and other major

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outlets repeatedly, talking of the devastation, appealing for help, presenting to the world at large the public face of his embattled state.

He attracted notice not merely because he was in the forefront of relief efforts, but more because he alone among area politicians criticized the tardiness of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. He quickly became the fulcrum of protests, which soon became so vigorous that the Bush administration was forced to jettison FEMA chief Michael Brown.

What was remarkable about his critical voice was that he is a conservative Republican, a President Bush loyalist, who could have done the politically correct thing and stood by the federal bureaucracy. Jindal, however, did his constituents proud by risking his political capital and taking on the administration, and forcing it to take note, to take action.

In so doing, the young Indian-American Congressman transcended the boundaries of his own community, and became the voice of the mainstream.

Jindal camped in New Orleans, traveling to Washington only when it became necessary to gather political support, and votes, for his own legislation and other bills that sought to help fund the recovery efforts. The rest of the time, Jindal raced across Louisiana, meeting with community leaders, veterans groups, hospital representatives and business groups, including chambers of commerce, seeking ways to help improve the dire situation.

A constituent, writing on the Louisiana Libertarian blog, had this to say: ‘I believe Congressman Jindal, who is my Congressman, has conducted himself as a statesman throughout this whole ordeal. He has not taken the opportunity to take partisan cheap shots, unlike other Louisiana politicians of both parties. He was one of the very few Congressmen to actually secure money for flood control, whereas the rest of the delegation did nothing but complain about it.’

“The easy thing to do,” Jindal told India Abroad, “is to say that as a Republican member, I am going to always support the [Bush] administration. The easy thing to do as a Republican will be to always criticize the state [with its Democratic governor and a Democratic mayor in New Orleans]. But I don’t think it’s fair. My job is to represent my constituents, and this is more important than who is Governor, it is more important than what party benefits, and who is the President.”

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indal made no secret of his priorities. “I am so passionate about trying to build a better state for my kids, and that’s what attracted me in part into politics in the first place — it was

“It’s a historic time for Louisiana in that a few years from now, the die will be cast.

We would have decided one way or the other what kind of region we are going to build.”

HELPING HANDS: An Indian team puts together food packets as part of the relief work in New Orleans

to try to create a better quality of life for my children and other people’s children. I understand that the next several days, weeks, months, are going to be so critical to my state’s future. I don’t care who gets credit.

“I don’t care if this is President Bush’s or Governor Blanco’s responsibility or credit.

That doesn’t matter because at the end of the day, we are only going to get one chance to rebuild — and we have to get it done right.”

His goal, he says, is to try and get the state and federal governments to work better together for the good of Louisiana. “I don’t mean to be 100 percent critical. You do see some signs of progress, but I am still frustrated,” Jindal said.

“Specifically, I still don’t think SBA [Small Business Administration] is processing loan applications quickly enough… I’d like to see FEMA move more consistently and aggressively with housing, even though you’ve seen some progress…There is still so much more that could be done that’s not being done at the federal and state levels.

“My case managers, my workers, we are trying to help people on an individual basis and literally helping thousands of people reunite with loved ones, helping them navigate through the paperwork, getting them help they need for insurance purposes, to rebuild their homes, help employers get housing for their employees. So at the very local level, at the grass-roots level, you’ve got that individual case management work.”

Discussing how his team was helping to get private resources into the devastated region, Jindal acknowledges how the Indian-American community, particularly in the Gulf Coast, had risen to the occasion.

Motel owners, he points out, had kept their doors open even in the face of flooding to house and feed the homeless; Indian-American physicians had worked themselves to exhaustion and beyond to treat the injured and the sick, refusing to leave their posts even when their own lives were under threat. The larger Indian-American community outside Louisiana, Jindal acknowledges with gratitude, played its part, providing volunteers, food, clothing and focused aid.

In between his work on the ground, Jindal has been spending time in Washington, “working on legislation to make sure that we do get the help that we need — school legislation, off-shore oil revenues, help to repair the levees, and we’ve also done legislation to help with the health care system.”

It is, he says, a daunting task; there is the very real danger that the thousands of people who have evacuated to other states and cities may

not return, thus radically altering the demographics of his constituency among others.

The challenge is to give the people a reason to come back, Jindal says. “If we make the right decisions, they will return. The decisions that get made in the short-term are incredibly important, because if we make the wrong decisions, I think our children will be living with the consequences of those decisions.

“It’s a historic time. It’s a historic time for Louisiana in that a few years from now, the die will be cast. We would have decided one way or the other what kind of region we are going to build. It is not often that you get a chance to rebuild an entire city — and people across the country, across the world, are watching us right now, to see what we make of that opportunity. It is now up to us to make the most of a chance that only comes very rarely.”

But in a short period of time, as you know, there will be another crisis, another challenge, and America will be focused somewhere else.”

Has his leadership role made him more universally accepted within his community, many members of which had been turned off by his anti-abortion stance, his early conversion to Christianity from Hinduism, and the fact that he is seen as belonging to the conservative cabal of the Republican Party with its close alignment with the Christian Coalition and the heartland evangelicals?

“The reality is that you find Indian Americans on both sides of any debate, and that is a healthy thing,” he says. “I think where we need to be careful as a community is to try to avoid pigeon-holing everybody into one view, because we are healthier as a community when we celebrate that diversity, when we say there are Indians Americans that probably won’t vote for Bobby Jindal and that’s okay, too.

“I don’t think that should be a negative thing.

That’s a healthy thing. I think what we need to resist is this idea of any group trying to say that we know best what Indian Americans should believe in; the danger is in trying to force the community into one mould, one mindset.”

He argues that such dogmatic intolerance would be the very anti-thesis of the very character of the Indian-American community and of India itself. “One of the great things about the Indian-American community and India itself is the diversity. One of the things that sets us apart as a community is the fact that there is such great diversity — in dress, language, religious beliefs and political beliefs, and I think that’s great. I wouldn’t expect everyone in the community to agree with my views, just like I wouldn’t expect everybody to

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MARCHING TO THE SAME BEAT: Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and President Bush inspect a guard of honor in Washington, DC

Event of the year, or direction for the decade?

Managing Editor Aziz Haniffa examines the contours and consequences of the new relationship between India and the United States o say that US-India relations have grown exponentially in recent years is to state the blindingly obvious; to suggest that this year saw the relationship being taken to previously undreamt of levels is merely to sum up recent events.

The transformation in relations between the two nations had its beginnings in March 2000, when President Bill Clinton — then nearing the end of his second term in office — made a landmark visit to India.

To use a metaphor beloved of American football, Clinton punted the ball deep into the end zone; his successor President George W Bush not only made a superb catch, but has since run with it, keeping the ball in play in keeping with his central conviction that ‘relations with India will be central to the future success of American foreign policy in South Asia and around the world.’

‘Landmark’ is a word frequently used to describe the gains of the summit meeting between Bush and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in July; ‘inevitable’ would perhaps be equally apt.

Bush put this historical inevitability best: ‘After years of estrangement, India and the United States together surrendered to reality.

They recognized an unavoidable fact — they are destined to have a qualitatively different and better relationship than that in the past.’

Glowing statements invariably accompany summits; what elevated the July meeting between Bush and Singh beyond the realm of

T

cliché was the July 18 Joint Statement signed by the two leaders, which set out a common vision, a shared sense of where, and how, they wanted the relationship to grow.

Thus, the two leaders not only declared their resolve to ‘transform the relationship between their countries and establish a global partnership,’ but set out agreements in a variety of sectors including, significantly, civilian nuclear cooperation.

The joint statement was, summed up in a word, startling. Those of us in the media covering the prime minister’s visit had tapped into various sources in the administration, and even among members of the diplomatic corps that accompanied the prime minister.

And till almost the 11th hour, none had the sense that the summit would yield anything of earthshaking significance.

As late as the evening, Indian Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran suggested it would be shortsighted to expect too much from the summit.

When leaders meet, he told us, they do not get into the details; their job is merely to focus on the relationship and indicate its importance to either side. Once that is done, Saran said, it would be up to the diplomats on either side to translate that broad vision into concrete agreements.

Thus, when the joint statement was released the next afternoon, eyebrows went up; veteran members of the media told each other that they could not recall so substantive, so sweep-

ing a statement emerging out of a summit meeting in recent memory.

It was thus a landmark in the real sense of the word — and for this, says US Ambassador to India David Mulford, full credit should go to President Bush who made it a priority. The President’s closest aides have, since, said that it went beyond being a priority; it was, they said, an obsession with the President that his meeting with the prime minister be not merely symbolic, but substantive; that this substance be limned in an agreement almost revolutionary in its content.

The message of July 18 was clear and unambiguous — Indo-US relationships had finally moved beyond rhetorical obeisance to ‘shared democratic ideals,’ and entered the realm of practical politics.

And the message found many takers — even some very surprising ones, with some very surprising results. For close on two decades, Congressman Dan Burton (Indiana Republican) had made a career out of baiting India on the issues of Kashmir and Punjab. He had during this period introduced innumerable resolutions on the floor of the House demanding that the US cut off all aid, all economic ties, with India over these issues.

Burton led a high-powered Congressional delegation to India, which, he told India Abroad in a recent, exclusive interview, has

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Page 7 become “a very good friend, a better friend than they’ve ever been.” In fact, so complete is the conversion that while characterizing Dr Singh as “the right man for the right job at the right time”, Burton promised that he would support the US-India nuclear deal.

Thus, when the editorial board of India Abroad decided to recognize the transformed US-India relationships as the Event of The Year 2005, it was greeted with ringing endorsements from leading South Asia policy analysts and experts ranging from former Assistant Secretary of State for South Asian Affairs Karl F Inderfurth to strategic affairs expert Ashley Tellis, from former US Ambassador to India Robert Blackwill to former ambassador and South Asia expert Teresita Schaffer.

Former Central Intelligence Agency historian and current head of the Asia Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars Robert Hathaway put it best when he said, “Historians one day may look back at the year 2005 and conclude that this was the year when the long-deferred promise of IndoAmerican relations finally became a reality.

“So it is entirely fitting for India Abroad, the newspaper of record for the Indian-American community and for US-India relations, to designate this important bilateral partnership as 2005’s Event of the Year.”

Hathaway, again, underlined a significant — and contrasting — aspect of the recent spurt in Indo-US relations. “At a time when anti-American sentiment is running high even among long-time US friends, it is notable that polling suggests that feelings of friendship and admiration for the United States are rising in India.

“By the same token, as they look abroad at a world increasingly skeptical of US intentions, Americans have found considerable comfort in discovering a like-minded people in India.

Indians, Americans, and Indian Americans speak the same language, not merely in a literal sense but equally importantly, in the sense that concepts of ‘family,’ ‘liberty,’ ’freedom’ and ‘personal responsibility’ easily cross national boundaries.”

Hathaway, drawing on his years of experience in the intelligence community, argues that President Bush and Prime Minister Singh “during the latter’s historic visit to Washington last July, have established new frontiers for collaborative partnership,” and predicts that when President Bush visits India early next year, “these bonds of partnership will be cemented yet more tightly. And, in a dangerous world, these ties are more precious than missiles or armies or gold bullion.”

Schaffer, reviewing the bilateral relationship between the two nations, points out that it has been in construction for over a decade, and “If all goes well, 2005 will be

It was an obsession with President Bush that his meeting with the prime minister be not merely symbolic

SOARING ASPIRATIONS: Indian and American pilots at a joint air force exercise in India

looked on as the year it passed the point of no return, and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit to Washington in July will be the moment it happened.

“You can date the beginning of the new look in India-US ties to as early as 1985 — Rajiv Gandhi’s visit to Washington, when the first seeds of today’s cooperation in science and technology were planted — or as late as 2002, when India decided to escort US cargo through the Straits of Malacca. To me, the most important turning point was 1991, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, the end of the Cold War, and the beginning of India’s economic reform.”

Experts say bilateral relationships are of two kinds — the one, in which governments are engaged, but which leave the respective peoples largely uninvolved; and the other, wherein the engagement at governmental level is reflected in economy-to-economy and peopleto-people interaction. The consensus is that when the engagement becomes more broadbased, the relationship gains real strength.

Underlining this point, Schaffer says, “Some of the most important transformations in USIndia relations had very little to do with the government. Two-way trade has nearly tripled in the past 15 years. India now tops the countries that send university students to study in the United States, with 80,000; and the size, prosperity, and prominence of the IndianAmerican community continue to increase.

“The business news brings daily reminders of the dynamism of Indian enterprise, not just in information technology, but also in pharmaceuticals, telecommunications, auto parts, and many other fields.

“The pace of travel by senior and mid-level

officials between Washington and Delhi is astonishing, and is finally creating habits of bilateral consultation in both cities. And of course, the proposed understanding on civil nuclear cooperation, once implemented, will be the capstone of this structure, removing the ban on cooperation in nuclear and dual-use technologies.”

Ashley Tellis, widely viewed as one of the core group of people who planted the seeds of such cooperation while serving as special advisor to Robert Blackwill during the latter’s term as ambassador in New Delhi, and later while forming part of Blackwill’s core group in the National Security Council, concurs.

“2005,” says Tellis, now a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, “is a critical landmark in US-India relations because it saw the deal on civil nuclear cooperation, which if implemented as intended, will mark the end of what former Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh once famously called ‘nuclear apartheid’ against India.”

Tellis says, “Ambassador Blackwill was indispensable to the process that brought this agreement about for three reasons: he defined the substantive content of how US-Indian relations ought to be transformed; he worked tirelessly to convince the Indian government about the sincerity of American intentions; and, he took on, at the risk of alienating many within the US government, the entrenched bureaucratic interests that were opposed to expanded strategic cooperation with India.”

“I did what felt logical and right to do,” says Blackwill. “If you think of a matrix, and across the top of the matrix are American vital interests, and down the side of the matrix are 40 of

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Page 8 the most important countries in the world, first of course, preoccupying us all is the global war on terrorism and Islamic extremism.

Next are weapons of mass destruction, and the American worry that they might find themselves in the hands of terrorists.

“The third, is energy security; fourth, the rise of Chinese power — and I say this not being critical about China, but in the sense that we all have a vital interest in trying to manage the rise of Chinese power with its friends and allies, in a way that produces a benign China in the international system in the next half century. And the fifth is the organization of the international economy.

“India not only shares these concerns, but shares each one of these in a way that no other country in the world does with such intensity.

“So this is a very, very long-term stable foundation for US-India relations, which transcends individual policymakers and individual governments in either place.”

Professor Sumit Ganguly, who will soon head the National Intelligence Council’s South Asia division, and Walter Andersen, who draws on nearly 25 years of State Department expertise, including as head of the South Asia bureau of the Office of Intelligence and Research, before he joined academia, are part of the consensus.

“Yes, this has been an extraordinary year for Indo-US relations, even though the Indo-US civilian nuclear accord is under attack from predictable quarters in both countries,” says Ganguly. “But the mere fact that the two sides could even conceive of such a bold move represents considerable progress.”

Andersen says the joint statement “made India something very like a close ally of the US. That document in itself represents a turning point, though relations had been moving

“This is a very, very long-term stable foundation for US-India relations, which transcends individual policymakers” — Robert Blackwill in that direction from the time of President Clinton’s hugely successful visit to India.

“The joint statement is significant because it opened the doors to high technology that had been denied for a number of reasons, but further, it also demonstrated that the US does not consider India’s nuclear weapons a threat to it — or indeed a threat to nonproliferation. In fact, it could be argued that a nuclear India is in our interest as it underscores the strength of India in the Asian balance of power.”

Policymakers and analysts of every persuasion thus sing hosannas to the new relationship; yet the most significant testimonial perhaps comes from the administration’s own point man, and Under Secretary of State, Nicholas Burns. Testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Burns set out the case for nuclear cooperation and enhanced ties with India across all sectors thus: ‘It is going to take some time before we develop the kind of strategic partnership with India than we have with, say, Australia or the

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“The deal on civil nuclear cooperation, which, if implemented, will mark the end of what former Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh once famously called ‘nuclear apartheid’ against India.”

— Ashley Tellis United Kingdom or France or Germany. But India increasingly sees its role in the world as a global country, and we find that on the issues that are important to us — the transnational problems, whether they be global climate change or trafficking in women and children or terrorism or WMD, international crime, democracy promotion — we tend to think alike with the Indians and we tend to adopt the same strategies and positions on those transnational problems.

‘Second, both of us are Asia Pacific powers; both of us have stake in the stability of Asia in the next 25 to 50 years; both of us are democratic; both of us want to see democratic countries protected and we want to see a regional architecture in APEC, in the ASEAN regional forum developed that would solidify security and peace in Asia. India is part of the strategic balance in Asia.

‘One of the great changes I’ve seen since I’ve come back to Washington is the new emphasis on South Asia. The American national interest and stability in Afghanistan, a stable, productive relationship with Pakistan, to see Pakistan and India reduce their problems and see in Nepal, Burma and Bangladesh, hopefully the growth of democracy.

‘India is fundamental to all of those issues that are central to the United States. India is in a position to have some influence on Iran to dissuade it from seeking to become a nuclear power. So, for all those reasons, we think there is the beginning of a strategic partnership.

‘I don’t want to oversell this and equate it to what we’ve got with our NATO allies, but I would say this as a career diplomat, that there is the possibility that in five or 10 or 15 years, we might count India among the four or five most important countries to the United States in the world.’

Burns is the administration’s spearhead to sell the nuclear deal to Congress — and as with the broader question of the need for close ties between the two countries, the senior diplomat clearly believes in his brief.

‘The civil nuclear initiative is a big part of this [relationship], both psychologically in separating ourselves from the past 50 years and also in terms of responding to both of our interests in nonproliferation.’

Tellis — who was among the experts called to testify before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee — endorses that sentiment. “Implementing the agreement is vital for the continued transformation of this relationship.”

An argument advanced by some sectors is that there is no need to link bilateral relations with the nuclear deal; that the former can grow on the bedrock of shared interests even if the latter were to fall through the cracks in Congress. Tellis vehemently disagrees.

“We have a record of over 20 years of US diplomacy to support this conclusion: the United States cannot have a transformed relationship with India that treats New Delhi as a

partner on one hand while it continues to remain a target of the US-led global nonproliferation regime on the other.”

It is all moot, says Blackwill; the deal just will not fall through. “There is no way “the United States can authentically call its relationship with India as being based on India as a rising great power, and yet keep the constraints and sanctions against India’s civil nuclear facilities.”

Blackwill admits that there is resistance to the nuclear deal; that the resistance, in fact, threatens to dilute the newfound bonhomie.

“Democracies when they launch new policy initiatives almost never explain themselves very well at the outset,” Blackwill philosophizes.

“But the merits of that agreement are such that it will eventually succeed, and in terms of US-India relations it must. Because, on the US side, if it were to go down it would deal a very serious blow to our national interests in having an even closer relationship with India. And on the Indian side, it would strengthen dramatically the case of Indian critics and skeptics of this relationship with the United States along the lines of, ‘We told you the Americans wouldn’t deliver; we told you it was all rhetoric; well, now you see it.’”

Sumit Ganguly echoes Blackwill. He suggests that though the nuclear deal seems to be sailing in some rough waters just now, “dexterous bilateral diplomacy and careful logrolling in both countries may see it come to fruition.”

“It may take some time to deal with these criticisms,” says Schaffer, “but because of the importance of the subjects involved, both countries need to take that time, and to gather a real consensus behind implementing the agreement.”

Focusing on the nuclear deal alone, Schaffer however warns, can be counterproductive.

“There is need for a serious discussion of global governance and India’s place in it. The USIndia partnership grows out of a mutual recognition that India’s increasing economic power makes India a global player. The US welcomes this, and India considers the world state to be its natural place.

“But one consequence of playing on the world stage is that India will have to make conspicuous and controversial choices on the major international issues of the day. The recent vote on Iran in the IAEA is one example; there will be others, and they may also involve painful political tradeoffs for India.”

“Also, India and the United States need to figure out what it means to have democratic values as the foundation of our partnership.

We have often talked about our democratic heritage, but do not have a clear common idea of what that meant in specific terms.

“I hope that by the next time India Abroad shines the spotlight on the India-US partnership, it will be able to begin by answering this question.”

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week ago?’” says Deri. “That’s the worst thing about re-runs!”

SAMIR SUDHIR PATEL

Like his favorite word — pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis, supposedly the longest word in a dictionary — Samir Sudhir Patel’s determination is colossal.

In June, the 11 year old tied for the second position in the 78th Annual Scripps National Spelling Bee, which has grown since 1925 into a televised event that gives away big prizes amid intense competition.

But for Samir, it is not over yet; it will not be till he reaches the top, he says. “I feel I’ve done well previously; I can’t just give it up,” he says.

In 2003, at age 9, he tied for third place in the nationals; a year later, he slipped to the 27th position. “I got a hard word in the fifth round,” he says. This year, there were no slip ups — Samir went all the way through to a tie for second place with Aliya Deri.

He may have come second in the contest, but his ready wit and manifest energy put him right on top of the popularity charts. ‘Thanks, Mom!’ he yelled after getting ‘filiciform’ right in the sixth round, to laughter and applause from the audience. In another round, confronted with a word, he seemed to taste it on his tongue, and then he said out loud, ‘Yes! If this is the word I think it is, I know it.’

His celebrity status at the Bee has parlayed into time spent with celebrities since then. Last year, The Great American Spelling Bee, a game show on Fox, had him serving as a ‘spell check’ to television stars such as Brett Butler of the TV series Grace Under Fire. He has traveled to England and Australia for various versions of the show; in Australia, he helped out participants such as politician and dancer Pauline Hanson, music guru Molly Meldrum and business commentator David Koch.

Samir is home-schooled in Colleyville, Texas, and swears by it. Studies, he says, have shown that home-schooled children are better behaved and more likely to play with other graders and genders.

Father Sudhir Patel, an engineer with Motorola, says home schooling offers them the advantage of creating the most challenging program by mix-matching various curricula.

The hard work that went into preparing for the Bee will come in handy elsewhere, feels Samir — like the SATs, that he intends to take for practice. Though mom Jyoti is his main teacher (she also coached him for the Bee), he goes out of home to learn swimming, tennis, piano, judo, literature and Spanish.

Currently, Samir is preparing for Mathcounts, a stage-by-stage competition up to the national level that challenges students’ math skills and helps develop self-confidence.

Free time is rare. “The only television I watch is pro-football,” he says.

His hobbies include collecting rocks and currencies; he took acting lessons when he was younger, and that proved a blessing come Bee time, because it helped him avoid stage fright. “During the Bee, I don’t feel much pressure until I get to the microphone,” he says.

He has already begun preparing for next year’s Bee, and admits it does get boring at times. There are five computers at his home, two of which came MARK WILSON/GETTY IMAGES

come from anywhere.

The greatest challenge, Aliya says, is to organize the study process and find the mental and even physical stamina to go the distance. This year, Aliya and Joya spent hours at the local library looking up words from Paideia and the Webster’s dictionary and studying roots and related words. “It can get very, very boring,” says the soft-spoken teen.

To come up trumps requires more than individual effort, she feels; in her case, family support made a tremendous difference. Father, Robert, an engineer/physicist of European heritage, helped her with Latin and French words that he had studied in high school. “I would fall asleep while studying, and he would have to elbow me [to keep her awake],” she says.

Mother Parveen, who is from Bangladesh and who home-schooled Aliya up to grade 8, assisted with words rooted in the Asian culture.

Like the other winners this year, Aliya, who plays the violin and viola and has been learning the piano for nine years (the Pleasanton, California, resident will play in a upcoming

musical, The Gifts of the Magi, put together by the Valley Shakespeare Festival), is a spelling bee veteran.

In 2004, she came 21st in the final; the year before she had won the California State Elementary Spelling Bee. At the Scripps nationals this year, she made it to round 18 where a wrongly spelt ‘trouvaille’ got her eliminated.

Her contestant number at the Bee was 21; that put her next to number 20, Anurag Kashyap, whom she knew from past bees. “For quite a few rounds, we were cheering for each other,” she says.

Aliya is now in her freshman year, and it being high school, the workload is getting more intense. A swimmer, she recently developed a new interest — water polo, in which she now turns out for the high school team.

Her Bee win has made her a well-known face in school. “I think half the people in my grade know me,” she says. At the beginning of the academic year, many of her peers, who had seen her on television, waved and smiled at her as she walked through the hallway.

The Bee, she says, has been re-run on national television several times. “They would say — ‘Wait, weren’t you at the Bee a

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THAT’S MINE! Anurag Kashyap has kept his gold-plated trophy in a cardboard box, lest it get scratched

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Page M12 from his various Spelling Bee wins, and Samir uses them for research and accessing CD-ROM dictionaries.

“There is only one month in the year when I’m not spelling,” he says. “Even tennis will get boring if I have to play it for two-three hours every day for a whole year,” he adds. “But I want to get it done.”

No prizes for guessing what ‘it’ is — come next year, he wants to be up there on the podium, holding the trophy aloft.

RAJIV TARIGOPULA

At age 2, he knew he wanted to be famous.

Mother Sumitra recalls how he would go stand behind the television and ask, ‘Can you see me, mom?’

Sumitra finally did see her son on the box — 11 years later, June 2 this year, when the Scripps National Spelling Bee was telecast live on ESPN. He ranked fourth among 273 participants, reaching Round 14 (the contest ended at Round 19) before a fumble with the word ‘odylic’ got him eliminated.

To be fourth out of 273 participants (that is in the finals — if you reckon up all those who participate in the preliminary rounds, the figure tops the million mark) would be fame

enough for some, but the 13-year-old does not consider it a triumph. “It has just inspired me to try and win,” says the eighthgrader at Robert H Sperreng Middle School in St Louis, Missouri.

This was the third time he reached the finals, having tied for 48th place in 2003 and 16th place last year.

The finals were fun, he says, with participants enjoying a host of activities during ‘Bee Week’ — sightseeing, making new friends and meeting spellers they know from earlier encounters, all against the backdrop of dinners and BBQs. Tarigopula had his first brush with the bee when his sister Sweta, eight years his senior and now in a five-year medical program at the University of Missouri, participated in a local competition. Seeing her with an encyclopedia, he too used to grab a book and ask his mother to teach him, recalls Sumitra, a physician in family medicine who works only weekdays so she can spend her weekends with her family.

Sumitra and dad Choudary Tarigopula, a cardiologist, started taking Rajiv to watch spelling bees conducted at a local arts museum. At 7, he participated in a bee administered by the North South Foundation (a preparatory program that has groomed many IndianAmericans for the Scripps competition) and won the Best Young Speller Award. In 2003,

he won the foundation’s junior vocabulary contest. He has participated in, and won, the bee at his school every year since third grade.

There have no dearth of role models for him.

George Thampy, the 2000 National Spelling Bee champion, comes from his city, St Louis, Missouri. In India, his cousin P Harikrishna is a former World Junior Champion in chess.

Everybody in the family, right up to Sumitra’s grandparents in Guntur, Andhra Pradesh, have been chess players.

Rajiv also enjoys tennis (he has been playing since he was 5) and soccer, and plays the violin and guitar.

Over time, he has developed his own little tricks, which work for him. Thus, he conquers stage fright by concentrating on the word he is being asked to spell; he fixes his eyes on a little speaker just beneath the microphone, so he doesn’t have to look at the audience.

True to his belief that a fourth place is merely a beginning, Rajiv has begun work on towards next year’s contest, putting in a few hours a day into his preparation. Carolyn Andrews’ column on the Scripps website comes in handy, he says.

Mom Sumitra has already had her fill of seeing her talented son on the small screen; Rajiv hopes, though, that the coming year will produce the dream visual — of him holding the trophy aloft.

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The Center uses modern technologies like telemedicine and distance learning to bring medical expertise to fight HIV, tuberculosis and malaria directly to medical providers (doctors, nurses, paramedics, medical and nursing students) in India and many other countries. This training quickly improves the health of the people that are served by their own health care providers.

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www.ccghe.jhmi.edu.

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ritics have charged him with being uncomfortable in his ethnicity; with shying away from his Indian-American heritage. “I have always been comfortable with who I am,” says Jindal. “Part of being Indian American, Italian American, African American or just plain American is that everybody makes choices for themselves.

“This is not a debate that is unique to the Indian-American community — you see this across different communities. My hope is that in the same way that you are beginning to see this in the African-American community — where you have had two secretaries of state in a row [first Colin Powell, and now Condoleezza Rice], you are beginning to see African Americans elected to the US Senate, you’ve already seen African-American governors and mayors — my hope is that within our community, too, it becomes so common and accepted that people aren’t singled out by their ethnicity, but rather they are looked at and judged based on their qualifications, on their experience.”

All of which is why, in the speeches he makes at community functions, in the interactions he has with aspiring politicians from within the community, he repeatedly emphasizes that it is not important whether you are a Republican or a Democrat. “Indian Americans should get involved in both parties.

“The community shouldn’t put all their eggs in one basket. If you don’t happen to like the policies I represent or the things that I stand for, the good news is that there are so many Indian Americans also running for office whose views you may be more in tune with, and whom you can support.”

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Jindal is elated that Indian Americans are running for office in greater numbers at the local as well as the state and federal levels, and “Indian Americans are donating to campaigns in greater numbers, Indian Americans are volunteering for campaigns.

“So I think it’s obvious that they are more visible, and getting more attention in the political arena. My [Congressional] colleagues, almost without exception, tell me ‘Oh! I’ve got a very prominent Indian-American community back home and they are very involved, more so than in years past’.

“Before, it was mainly members in large, urban areas, who were aware of the large Indian-American communities. Now you are finding it much more dispersed, where people even in smaller communities and more rural communities are talking about the Indian Americans [in their constituencies].”

The community, he says, is garnering attention, and influence, disproportionate to its small numerical strength. And the key to that, he says, is increased involvement. “You see Indian Americans getting involved in community groups, in local charities, in local universities. You are seeing Indian Americans branch out, and this is a natural evolution.

“When you look at any immigration group, the first wave has to be focused on securing their economic security, on making sure their children go to schools. It becomes natural that as the community is here longer, and is more successful and more diverse, you are going to see a branching out; you are going to see Indian Americans getting involved in a wider array of professions and also in community issues.”

The result, he says, is a broadbasing of roots within the larger community. Earlier, he points out, ‘India’ was synonymous with curry, or with Bollywood. “Now, it seems as if everyone has gone to an Indian-American physician, or stayed at a hotel owned by an Indian American, or maybe sat in a Rotary Club meeting next to an Indian American, or maybe went to a university and took a class taught by an Indian American.

“So you are seeing that impact become much more diffused in the community. You seeing the community become much more visible, and you are seeing this impact grow.”

It is not merely through politics, through running for office, that the community can

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disagree with my views.”

“Within my own family, we have disagreements,” Jindal says. “Not everybody in my family is Republican [His parents are devout Hindus; his father Amar Jindal is one of the founders of the Hindu Temple in Baton Rouge]. We’ve got Democrats and Republicans in my family and we sit around the family table and we’ll disagree about issues, but that’s normal. We should accept that, and part of being a mature community is our ability to accept those differences.”

FAMILY TIME: Bobby Jindal with his family at Baton Rouge. (From left) Jindal, his mother Raj, father Amar and younger brother Nikesh

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gain visibility, Jindal believes. “There are so many other ways to be involved in a community. For example, when we members of Congress go home, we interact not only with people that are involved in politics, but also with people who are involved in the community. And so, as the Indian-American community has gotten more active across the country, there is great credibility when they go talk to the members of Congress, because they’ve been there already before.

“They’ve been working with them on local issues and so there is a relationship to build on.

I believe that is what is so important, because it is these relationships, this credibility, which is important for the community to achieve.”

The community, he says, has for all the reservations sections of it have expressed, helped him more than he thought possible.

“Clearly, I wasn’t going to win an election as Governor or as Congressman based on IndianAmerican votes or Indian-American financial support. But that doesn’t mean that support wasn’t important to me, that it didn’t mean a lot to me.

“Members of the community were among my earliest, and strongest supporters. And they backed me without expecting to get something in return. You can’t put a tangible measure on that. That doesn’t win an election. People outside Louisiana can’t cast votes, and not everybody can help by volunteering or donating or whatever. But, in a very vital way, that kind of moral support is also very important.”

Bobby, who constantly talks about the sacrifices of the older generation as being catalytic to the success of the second generation, acknowledged that he could empathize with the cynicism sometimes voiced by the younger generation, which believes the elders do not want to let go of community leadership positions, and also believes that the elder generation is, instead of integrating with the mainstream on issues of importance to the nation, allowing itself to get hung up on parochial issues like a Diwali celebration at the White House.

But even here, Jindal goes out of his way to focus on the positives. “That is to my mind another sign of the growing confidence of the community as a whole. I think it’s a natural process — I think it’s only natural, with second generation Indian Americans, that you are going to have a broader set of issues that are going to be important.

“That’s why I keep going back to my comments that it’s a good thing that we are involved in both parties. When I read the letters to the editor in India Abroad and when I read the debates you sometimes run in your pages, I think that’s a great thing — that we are now strong enough as a community to tolerate this kind of debate, to accept and celebrate this kind of debate. I don’t think we should be embarrassed by that, I don’t think we should suppress that.

“We should rather have the confidence to say, let’s air out the different issues and facts and points of view, and if we can come to an agreement, great. Where you get in trouble is when you try to suppress that. When you try to say there is only one right way.

“When you do that, you create dissension; you find that people rebel in a non-productive way — because there is no outlet for them to express what’s important to them.”

On this subject, as on most, Jindal speaks with the passion of conviction — the community, he says, has arrived; it is beginning to find its voice. And it is only a matter of time, he believes, before that voice gains in heft, and strength — and begins to be counted, in the land the community has made its home.

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Marriage of minds Two nations that share values; two peoples that share economic interests – in this, India Abroad Person of the Year 2005 Bobby Jindal tells Managing Editor Aziz Haniffa, lies the key to the strengthening of Indo-US ties

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“The most enduring relationships — the ones that last across regimes, that last across time — are the ones that are built on values.”

— Bobby Jindal

ongressman Bobby Jindal does not sit on the foreign policy committee in the US House of Representatives, nor does he figure in any panel that has even an indirect jurisdictional involvement on India.

But at every opportunity — whether it was shortly after being sworn in, when he led freshman Republican lawmakers for a meeting with President George W Bush at the White House, or as part of the GOP leadership that regularly meets with the President and his team – Jindal has made it a point to refer to the US-India relationship, and impress upon the President how important it is that he visits India and, in fact, institutionalizes such Presidential visits to New Delhi.

This ex officio role has not gone unnoticed in New Delhi. Thus, during the state banquet hosted by President Bush hosted in honor of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh at the White House during the latter’s July visit, Jindal recalls how in his brief interaction with Dr Singh, “The Prime Minister told me how proud he was to see me in Congress. This was my first time meeting him, and I was impressed about how much he knew about me and I was also very impressed by how gracious he was to everybody.”

Jindal also recalled his brief conversation with the President and how “genuinely pleased he seemed at how well his meetings with the prime minister had gone, and he again told me how much he was looking forward to visiting India.”

From such interactions stem Jindal’s view that it was this personal rapport between the two leaders that made 2005 especially significant in terms of the transformed US-India relationship.

Jindal spoke of how, both at the luncheon hosted by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice for the Prime Minister and later at the White House banquet, “it was striking that they both said something very similar to each other. They said, what was unique and special about the relationship was that it was built on shared principles and values.

“So it’s not just a strategic partnership.

There are friendships that America has with countries who don’t share our core values; countries we are friends with because it’s a friendship of convenience. And those are necessary in this world — I mean, we need certain friends because they are critical trading partners; because they are important geographically and also militarily.

“But the more enduring relationships — the ones that last across regimes, that last across time — are the ones that are built on values.”

Jindal pointed to a growing emotional bonding between the two countries, and said “One of the great things that I see now is a recognition in both nations’ capitals, in both countries, among both elected leaderships, across party lines, that the relationship between India and America is not only built on commerce, not one only built on the Indian-American community, not one only built on convenience, but rather on a recognition that because of these shared values, it is the kind of relationship that will last.”

Tracing the major milestones in this transformation, Jindal argued that the end of the Cold War was of special significance. “During the Cold War, the prism that America viewed its international relationships was, you are either for us or against us, vis a vis your relationship with the Soviet Union.

“India at the time was in this no-man’s land, as the leader of the nonaligned nations in a world that was very much aligned, either for or against Communism. The US at the time America was more aligned with Pakistan, thanks to its anti-Soviet, anti-Communist stand. Given that, the US remained by and large friendly with India, but there was clearly less attention paid to the non-aligned countries.”

The second major milestone, says Jindal, was the 9/11 terrorist strikes on the US which he believes led to not just the war on terror, but to the country recapturing some of the idealism with which it used to view foreign affairs.

“Now we have begun to look again at the march of democracy; we look at freedom and human rights. Remember, you have to go back to [then President Ronald] Reagan’s rhetoric against the Soviets, but you also have to go back to almost President (Jimmy) Carter in the 1970s, to remember that kind of rhetoric being applied outside the Cold War, outside of just America-Russia confrontation.

“So, post 9/11, there was a greater appreciation for identifying with countries across the globe that share our values; countries that are pluralistic, democratic, and have a fundamental respect for human rights.

“And once the US began viewing the world through this prism, there was tremendous across-the-board respect for what India has been able to accomplish with such a diverse population.

“It is a cliché now that you have got Muslims, Hindus, Christians, Sikhs at the very highest levels of government and they co-exist peacefully; that India’s diverse communities have for decades handled huge issues within democratic traditions, within the rule of law. There is now a greater willingness to recognize such values, and a growing respect and greater appreciation for India on those grounds.”

The emergence of China has, the Congressman said while detailing the consensus among Republican conservatives, has caused the US to view enhanced relations with India as a strategic counterweight.

Simultaneously, India’s growing economic stature helped broad-base the relationship, which tell then had been confined to the governmental level, by moving it into the economic sphere.

“You look at General Electric’s investments in India, you look at Microsoft, IBM and the hosts of other American companies now doing business in India; you look too at the growing role of Indian Americans, at the rising to prominence of Indian-American entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley, in the hotel industry, in medicine and academics, and you see that clearly, the relationship is no longer just a matter of Washington and New Delhi.”

This broad-basing of bilateral relationships, Jindal argued, strengthens it because the relationship is no longer dependent on the political compulsions of whichever party is in power at a given time, but has developed into an intricate mosaic of interactions at the governmental, economic, and even community levels.

This significant change, he felt, was nowhere limned as clearly as in the two state dinners hosted in recent times for visiting Indian prime ministers.

“When President Clinton hosted [then] Prime Minister [Atal Bihari] Vajpayee [at the White House Pavilion, September 17, 2000], the guest list had more than a fair share of Hollywood celebrities. You looked around and you saw Goldie Hawn, you saw Cindy Crawford, Chevy Chase. It was huge. It was the largest State dinner the White House has ever done.

“When President Bush hosted a state dinner for Prime Minister Singh [July 18], it was a far smaller affair. But what was striking was not the size of the event, but the fact that instead of Hollywood celebrities, the real stars were business leaders.

“You looked around the room and you saw the CEO of General Electric [Jeffrey Immelt] and the head of the Reliance group [Mukesh Ambani], you saw a host of powerful business leaders, and when I spoke to them after the dinner, the sense I got was that during Prime Minister Singh’s visit, as much work was done in the business meetings, the CEO to CEO meetings, as was done during the diplomatic meetings.

“To my mind, that has been the most significant development in Indo-US relationships, this layering of interaction at various levels – governmental, of course, but also economic, community, the entire spectrum – and that, for me, is why this year, progress in Indo-US relationships is easily the standout event in the field of foreign policy.”

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Ten steps to the future Why is the transformed relationship between India and the United States of sufficient significance to warrant it being labeled Event of the Year?

Karl F Inderfurth makes the case

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am struck by just how far the US-India relationship has come in five short years. It has been a remarkable transformation in our relations, starting under President Bill Clinton and accelerating under President George W Bush. Based on my own experience, let me try to connect these dots and, in doing so, call attention to a good example of bipartisanship in US foreign policy.

In advance of President Clinton’s visit to India in March 2000, we were asked by the National Security Council staff to pull together a brief, one-page paper to outline the purpose for the trip and the new agenda we envisioned with India.

It was ambitious, reflecting the President’s often stated desire to see India become a much more important partner for the United States in the years ahead. Here’s what we sent to the White House:

These 10 reasons became our talking points for the president’s highly successful five-day visit. They found their way into his speech before the Indian Parliament, as well as into the statement he signed with Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee entitled ‘India-US Relations: A Vision for the 21st Century.’

Now, fast forward five years later, to July 2005, and to the fact sheet issued by the White House after President Bush and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh concluded their very successful meeting in Washington.

Entitled ‘The United States and India: Strong Global Partners’, the fact sheet lists eight major initiatives laid out by the two leaders, several of which build on the US-India agenda envisioned and begun five years earlier: To ‘Give operational meaning to our shared democratic values,’ there is a US-India Global Democracy Initiative to Aid Developing Democracies.

To ‘maximize our partnership with one of the world’s largest economies’, a new CEO Forum is established as an advisory group comprised top US and Indian CEOs To ‘Join hands in the global campaign against....public health problems’, there is the US-India HIV/AIDs Partnership, and To ‘Help move India toward the global nonproliferation mainstream’, there is a major new agreement by the two countries to develop India’s civilian nuclear energy program and work together with the international community to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons Other important initiatives included in the White House fact sheet dealt with space cooperation, disaster response (building on the successful partnership in responding to the December Indian Ocean tsunami), and promoting a new agricultural alliance.

The first line in the ‘vision statement’ signed in New Delhi in March 2000 reads: ‘At the dawn of a new century, Prime Minister Vaypayee and President Clinton resolve to create a closer and qualitatively new relationship between India and the United States.’

Five years later their successors, Prime Minister Singh and President Bush, continue to build on that foundation.

The initiatives they announced this year underscore their continuing resolve and determination, in the words of their joint statement, ‘to transform the relationship between their countries and establish a global partnership.’

It is therefore not surprising — in fact, highly appropriate — that India Abroad has designated US-India Relations in 2005 as the Event of the Year.

Assuming this upward trajectory in our relations continues for another five years under Republican or Democratic administrations (as I believe it will), then India Abroad might at that point want to consider designating USIndia Relations as the Event of the Decade.

PHOTOGRAPH BY: SONDEEP SHANKAR/ SAAB PRESS

Ten Reasons Why We Need to Engage India Forge better overall ties with an emerging global power — and the world’s largest nation in the making Give operational meaning to our shared democratic values, and interest in strengthening evolving democracies Maximize our partnership with one of the world’s largest

Boost our thriving and mutually helpful links in education, culture and people-to-people exchanges

President Bill Clinton inspects a guard of honour in New Delhi March 2000. President Bush and Prime Minister Singh have built on the foundation laid by Clinton and then Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee

economies — and one of the world’s largest middle classes Help move India toward the global nonproliferation mainstream Enhance our joint efforts on urgent global issues: terrorism, narcotics, rights of women and children Work together to deal with challenges to regional stability Team up to protect the global environment, with clean energy and other initiatives where Indian leadership is essential Join hands in the global campaign against polio, AIDS and other public health problems Upgrade our access to the world-class Indian players in the vital area of information technology

Karl F Inderfurth, professor of International Relations at George Washington University in Washington, DC, was assistant secretary of state for South Asian affairs in the Clinton administration. He, along with then Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott and then Senior Director for Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs at the National Security Council Bruce Reidel, constituted President Clinton’s core team entrusted with the task of turning around the Indo-US relationship, then at its lowest ebb following India’s nuclear tests of May 1998.

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Mohini Bhardwaj Olympics Silver Medalist, Athens 2004 India Abroad Person of the Year 2004

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First among equals Over 120 candidates, representing the cream of the community’s achievers.

An 11-member jury. A heated five-hour debate. And finally — a winner.

Photographs: Paresh Gandhi

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en members of the jury sat around a long table at entirely to the jury, and we are happy to go with your decision."

Waldorf Astoria's Lexington Suite, their combined He was, he said, content to lay out a few broad guidelines. To wit: attention fixed on their chairperson seated at the The awardee had to be an Indian American who lived and head of the table. They were waiting for the answer worked in the American space; to a question that, in their minds, framed what they The award should recognize not a lifetime's body of work, but were gathered there to do, validated the time, effort significant achievement within the year in question; and The award should not be posthumous. and energy they were preparing to spend.

'We are about to pick the India Abroad Person of the Year,' one And with that, Balakrishnan handed over the proceedings to jury member had just said. 'But why? What is this award really jury chairperson Sonal Shah — and the real business of the day about? You won the award last year — tell us what it has meant to began. you, tell us what difference the award has made to your life.'

At the head of the table, India Abroad Person of the Year 2003 Procedural — and, per procedure, chairman of the jury selected to pick her Starting July, India Abroad had invited the community – successor — Sonal Shah paused for a long moment to gather her through its pages, and through the web site rediff.com, which thoughts. "I don't know," she said, "whether I can quantify all that owns the paper – to nominate candidates to be considered for the the award has meant to me. award.

"It gave me, and more importantly the work for which I was Nominations closed October 20. On that date, the India Abroad honored, recognition within the community. It created awareness editorial team collated all nominations, and ended with a master of what we were trying to do. Earlier, we would have to go to par- list of 123 names. The editorial team scrutinized each name, students of prospective volunteers of our Indicorps program, and have ied the accompanying dossiers, and where necessary, sought to explain to them what we were all about. But after I was hon- more information on the achievements of individual candidates. ored, and it was written about in India Abroad, people Through this exhaustive vetting process, the list was whittled approached me — young people who wanted to volunteer, and down, in stages, until the editorial team arrived at a shortlist of 10 parents who wanted us to consider their kids. names that, in its opinion, represented the cream of the crop. This "The name recognition had a snowball effect," Shah said. "I shortlist was handed over to the jury with accompanying dossiers; began getting invitations from around the country to speak — at along with a secondary list of 10 more names — the best of the colleges, community events... And this rest, as it were — and the full masTHE JURY in turn helped us proselytize our terlist of 123 names. work; this increasing name recogni"The shortlist is merely our Sonal Shah tion also helped with our fund-raising attempt to facilitate matters," India Abroad Person of the Year 2003 efforts. So yes, the award impacted Balakrishnan told the jury. "I want Chairperson of the Jury, India Abroad Person of the positively on the work I do." to clarify that you are not bound by Year 2004 Earlier, India Abroad Publisher Ajit it. You are at liberty to consider the Vice President, Goldman Sachs Group, Inc Balakrishnan had started the proceedmaster list, and add names to the Cofounder, Indicorps ings, on the morning of October 30, shortlist if you consider such addi-

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with a short presentation that sought to frame the award, to give it context and texture.

The community, Balakrishnan told the jury, had grown in stature and in size, in achievement and recognition, in affluence and influence. It had carved for itself a niche within the American space; it had gained for itself respect and recognition — and it had done this through dedication and hard work and excellence.

It was, Balakrishnan pointed out, necessary to recognize this growth, to spotlight achievement and accord it high honor. In this recognizing achievers via this annual exercise, he said, the community would over time create for itself a roster of role models to look up to, to learn from, and to emulate.

To achieve this purpose, it was necessary that the community takes on itself the onus of choice — India Abroad and its editorial staff would, Balakrishnan said, be mere facilitators. "We believe the paper belongs to the community, we are merely the trustees," Balakrishnan said, and declared that it was entirely up to the jury to weigh the merits of the candidates and to decide on the eventual winner.

A hands-off policy such as outlined by the publisher seemed to puzzle a few of the jury members. "But surely," one asked, "India Abroad has its own idea of what kind of candidate we should pick?"

"Absolutely not," Balakrishnan asserted. "We have left the decision

tions merited."

Chairperson Sonal Shah suggested to her peers on the jury that the first order of business was to scan Subrata Chakravarty the masterlist, and the shortlist.

Worldwide TOP Editor, Bloomberg News The jury could then, she suggested, add or delete names from the masNisha Desai terlist, and arrive at its own shortDirector, Public Policy, InterAction list for extensive consideration.

The work began in silence, with Anita Gupta each member of the jury studying Vice President, Global Consumer Group Public Affairs, the lists, pens scribbling as Citigroup, New York thoughts occurred. But soon, questions began to crop up in the minds Ann Kalayil of individual jurors.

Executive Director, Wait a minute, said one — before Indian American Democratic Organization we consider these names, what Manager, Networking Services, University of Chicago exactly are the criteria we are setting ourselves? Is achievement the Kaleem Kawaja only criterion? Is individual Former President, Indian Muslims of America achievement alone, in and of itself?

Engineering Manager, Or should the achievement have National Aeronautical and Space Administration's some quantifiable impact on the Goddard Space Flight Center community? Can that achievement stand alone, or should it be marRekha Malhotra ried to a larger involvement with Founder, Basement Bhangra™ the community?

Cofounder, Mutiny Each aspect was intensely debated. Achievement of the highest Debashish Mishra order was a sine qua non, the jury Founder and Vice Chair, South Asian American decided. But then, after some Leaders of Tomorrow debate, they came up with the allimportant codicil — achievement in Parmatma Saran and of itself was not enough; it had Professor and Chairman, Sociology and Anthropology, to impact, in some identifiable Baruch College, fashion, on the community.

City University of New York After all, one juror pointed out, this was an award being given by Purvi Shah the community; it naturally folExecutive Director, Sakhi for South Asian Women lowed that recognition should be accorded to achievement that touched members of the community in some positive, beneficial fashion.

Members of the jury after the October 30 meeting at the Lexington Suite For the publisher and senior editors who were witness to this of the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York. Standing from left, Ravinder Singh part of the debate, the results were fascinating — we were witness Bhalla, Nisha Desai, Dr Ann Kalayil, Professor Parmatma Saran, Kaleem to the creation of the identikit of an achiever and, in the process, Kawaja and Subrata Chakravarty. Seated, from left, Debashish Mishra, the jury was giving weight and heft to the award itself, by raising Rekha Malhotra, Sonal Shah, India Abroad Person of the Year 2003 and chairthe bar so high. person of the jury, Purvi Shah and Anita Gupta.

Ravinder Singh Bhalla Attorney

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Early deliberations Once clarity was achieved on these questions, the jury began considering the masterlist, and the two shortlists — and almost immediately, it became apparent just how much the community had achieved in the calendar year.

The list the jury was considering was interesting in its breadth and scope. Here's a sampling: A legal luminary, who picked up a case no one was willing to touch; a case that exemplified larger questions of racism and prejudice, and fought it successfully to get justice for those who had believed themselves beyond help and hope; A trailblazer who had been elevated to the top post in the concerned department – a department that deals indirectly with issues of religion and thus, requires that its head, like Caesar's wife, be above suspicion of prejudice;

Above: All eyes are riveted on Shah, chairperson of the jury, as she explains at the outset what the honor is really about.

Right: Shah listens to a point raised by a fellow juror.

Bottom: Jurors scrutinize the names, the first order of business.

A sportsperson who ventured into an arena the community had hitherto shied away from, and achieved high honors against the odds; An internationally famed venture capitalist; A politician who even as the jury met was on the verge of achieving even greater distinction; A veteran government official; a breakthrough actor; two brilliant researchers, one of them in a field of healthcare with direct impact on the community; an internationally renowned scientist who, after a lifetime of high achievement, had turned his considerable talents to applying his scientific skills to the benefit of the poor and the disadvantaged; two filmmakers of international repute; the first IndianAmerican president of a leading institution…

The jury had set out to whittle the short list down; to its surprise, it found the list growing, not shrinking.

“Our problem,” one bemused juror told her peers, “is a problem of plenty. There are so many achievers, in so many fields, and each seems deserving of the award.”

It was an unconscious, and fulsome, tribute to a community that prides itself on its achievements. It was also the signal for chairperson Sonal Shah to call for some hard-headedness. “There is no doubt,” she said, “that each name on this list is brilliant, each is worthy — but we can pick only one, so it is time to get practical, to apply the criteria we decided upon, and

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start whittling down the names.”

Pausing for a brief coffee break, the jury then got down to brass tacks. Each name on the list was taken up in turn, each accompanying dossier was carefully scrutinized.

Time and again, the jury called on the India Abroad editors present to provide more information, or additional insight.

“This candidate, her achievement is obvious, but we do not get a sense of involvement with the community — can you shed some light on that?”

“The depth of this person's achievements over a lifetime is extraordinary, but what exactly is it we are considering as his achievement in this calendar year?”

Such were the questions the editors were called on to answer. Slowly, gradually, the jury began voting to strike names off the list — most times, with extreme reluctance. “In any other year,” a juror said while turning thumbs down on a name, “this candi-

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date could have been the winner, but we have such a rich field this year…”

The sticking points It is fascinating to watch a disparate collection of individuals — many of them strangers to one another until the day — attempt to arrive at a collective decision. There is a period of initial diffidence; a reluctance to voice strong opinions in strong terms; an unwillingness to go out on a

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award was evident in the depth in which each candidate was considered, the fierce debates of the pros and cons of individual candidates, and the visible reluctance with which various candidates were finally struck off the list.

Gradually, the list narrowed, as the jury worked around a lunch break. And finally, three names remained on the list — the scientist, the lawyer, the sportsperson.

Various jury members took it upon themselves to make the case for each one of these candidates.

The scientist, said one, has spent a lifetime working on the cutting edge of space exploration; his work powers today's push to Mars and beyond. For this work alone, he is a potential Nobel Laureate. And if this were not enough, this calendar year he has bent his mind, and his considerable skills, to devising a way to make the benefits of technology available to those who can most benefit by it but are least able to afford it. And because of his work, the lives of countless millions will change, for the better.

Consider the lawyer, said another. Her story is tremendous. Fresh out of law school, she stumbled on an instance of palpable injustice. She discovered that an entire community had been victimized, for no fault of theirs. She found that racism and prejudice had disenfranchised an entire community. It was a case no one had been willing touched till then. She took it up; she took it upon herself to make multiple trips to the region; she assembled the case, she argued it, she spearheaded the fight for justice. And she won. Because of her, people who were doomed to spend a lifetime behind bars today walk free – M4 and what is more, she did it on behalf of a community with whom our community has not had much contact; by doing what she did, she helped limb. bridge the two communities, to bring them closBut as discussions progress, that initial reluctance er together. gives way to a certain concentrated determination.

Our community is inspired to achieve, said a Individual jurors arrive at their own mindsets — third juror, because of the inspirational stories thus, one may determine that the most weightage of those who have gone before. So consider the must be given to the nature of the achievement itself, sportsperson. She had no hope, no backing, no another might come to the belief that without a benesupport — all she had, was a fierce belief in herficial impact on the community, achievement is self, and a fiery determination to make the meaningless. And having arrived at these personal grade. Isn't that what we are all about, as a comdeterminations, they then use it to argue — at times munity — self-belief, and determination? She fiercely — for or against particular candidates. did not sit back and cry about her stringent So it was here – and when debates get heated, financial straits, she did not allow it to become sticking points occasionally surface. One such came barriers between her and the goal — and isn't when a politician's name came up for debate. “He has that what our community is about, this ability to not achieved anything – yet!” argued one juror, surmount the odds? She struggled, she fought — pointing to the date of the jury meeting, which was and her struggle, her fight, inspired many, withahead of the November 2 election. “Oh come on,” in the community and outside it, to come forsaid another, “the outcome is obvious.” ward and support her. And in the final analysis, Some said they could not identify with, hence she succeeded — in a sport the community has applaud, his beliefs and values. A member of the jury Top: Kawaja, left, explains a point to fellow jurors during the lunch break. not ventured into till date, she achieved the pinblew the whistle on that argument, and pointed out Above: Saran passionately tries to convince fellow jurors to support one candidate he thought was the fittest contender. nacle; she led her team to a remarkable triumph, that the jury was meant to consider only achieveand became the observed of all observers. ment and impact. “We don't know anything about the personal beliefs and value systems of any of these can- have talked around this table of achievers, and we have Consider that story, consider its arc, from hopelessness to didates, so it is not fair to use those criteria to judge just constantly reminded ourselves and each other of how this belief; from belief to achievement – is that not the kind of candidate or that has broken through a glass ceiling, has story we need to hold up to the community, to look up to, one candidate on that scale of values.”

What if the political beliefs of the candidate was not gone where no member of the community has gone before. to gain strength from, to take heart from, to emulate?

One thing was clear – there wasn't a pinhead of differshared by the majority of the jurors – could the jury, in Yes, it is true that we of the younger generation are breaksuch a case, vote in all conscience, and unanimously at ing through barriers – but I would like you to remember ence between the three finalists. Finally, chairperson Shah that, for him? “Not fair,” argued one juror. “I disagree with that we are able to do what we do only because we stand decided on a way out of the impasse. There are, she pointed out, three candidates. Let us each vote for two, let us his politics, too, but I am here only to consider a person's on the shoulders of those who have gone before us.

“They were the ones who came here, to a hostile environ- mark our first choice, and our second. And when we are achievement and impact, I am not here to pick someone I ment; they struggled and put down roots and thrived and done, let us count the votes, and let us decide. necessarily agree with.”

The underlying idea was obvious – Shah was in effect The debate — the most heated, of the day — was an flourished and every day of their lives, they broke down unsought, unconscious reminder of how deeply divided barriers. And they did all this for us, because of us, their telling the jurors that since each of the three candidates the community is, in matters political. The outcome was children. They did this so we could have the best of educa- was eminently deserving, it was time for the jury – which, that the politician's name remained on the shortlist — at tion, the best of facilities — everything we needed to pur- till then, had exercised its head – to now vote with its sue our own individual dreams. I believe they have made heart. least for the time being.

The jurors scribbled their choices down, folded the slips Another sticking point came when considering the immense sacrifices for our sake, I believe we are what we achievements of a renowned scientist. The older members are because of them, and I think their achievements of paper, and passed it on to their chairperson. Sonal Shah counted the votes, tallied them, checked them once more – on the jury spoke eloquently of a lifetime of amazing deserve to be treated with respect.”

It was an eloquent intervention, and it produced the and then she looked around the table at her peers, who by achievement; some of the younger members seemed somewhat dismissive. And at this point, chairperson Shah obvious outcome — the scientist's name remained on the then had spent the better part of five hours in intense discussion and debate shortlist. saw fit to weigh in with an eloquent interjection.

Mohini Bhardwaj, champion gymnast and Olympic “I think,” she told the jurors, “that what I am seeing is a silver medalist, is the India Abroad Person of the Year certain dismissive attitude towards the achievements of First among equals the older generation, and I do not think that is fair. We That the jury attached tremendous importance to the 2004.

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In a sport where champions are made at 13 and fade by 20, she seemed doomed to go down in gymnastics history as the champion that never was.

Then she fought back. She perfected her act and was named captain of the US Olympic gymnastics team. In Athens, she used every bit of skill, experience, and the deep, driving desire born of eight years in the wilderness to pull a young, inexperienced team through to an unlikely result.

Ladies and gentlemen, the incredible Mohini Bhardwaj, India Abroad Person of the Year 2004!

Reportage: Arun Venugopal

DONALD MIRALLE/GETTY IMAGES

comeback star

HERE ARE are many reason City, but gymnastics has neve On a recent Saturday night casinos, lounge acts and lap Strip, several hundred childre of their minivans and SUV Nevada's Thomas & Mack glimpse of their favorite Olym The arena goes dark except of the floor, and a heavy beat comes on, lettin been wondering, that this isn't going to be you by one, each of the shadowed figures standing into it, and the evening's MC, former gymna their names.

Courtney Kupets. Annia Hatch. Terin Hum Jason Gatson, Raj Bhavsar, Brett McClure.

When Mohini Bhardwaj's name is announce onto the floor, the applause grows noticeably up in the stands roaring their approval. Only announced, draws a larger response, and that just a couple of months after winning the allPatterson may be the most popular gymnast celebrated, successor to Mary Lou Retton, w teammate Paul Hamm, who won the men's gol ly ascended to the pantheon.

But something unusual happened this ye women's team, billed as one of the best in hi format and more importantly, a Romanian te incapable of making mistakes.

Some of the young American women stum team found itself out of the lockstep rhythm th ble coming into Athens. Into this opening Bhardwaj, 25, who along with the Cuban-born woman in 40 years to compete in Olympic gym On a personal level, Bhardwaj was solid, nar medal contention but coming through in the performances and ensure that the team won a on the sidelines that Bhardwaj secured her le hyped teammates started despairing over mis morale.

It was an unexpected turn of events, one tha

ns why Las Vegas is called Sin er been one of them. t, however, just a mile from the p dances that unfold along the en and their parents stream out Vs and into the University of arena, preparing to catch a mpic gymnast. for a patch of light at the center ng you know, just in case you'd ur typical gymnastics event. One g just outside the lit area enters ast John Macready, announces

mphrey. And on the men's side,

ed, and the tiny gymnast struts louder, with parts of the crowd y Carly Patterson, the last name t's understandable — at age 18, -around Gold Medal at Athens, in America; the natural, if less who won gold in 1984. Like her ld medal, Patterson immediate-

ear at the Olympics. The US istory, came up against a tough am that all of a sudden seemed

mbled at crucial points, and the hat had made it appear invincistepped team captain Mohini n Hatch was the oldest American mnastics. rowly missing out on individual clutch to deliver several strong a silver medal. However, it was gend. When her younger, more ssteps, Bhardwaj helped restore

at NBC's cameras and commen-

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Mohini Bhardwaj (far right) with her team at Athens receiving the silver medal on August 17. From left to right, Courtney Kupets, Annia Hatch, Terin Humphrey, Carly Patterson and Courtney McCool

tators zeroed in on — even calling her America's Sweetheart at times — and by the time Patterson, Bhardwaj and teammates stood to acknowledge their team medal, their heads draped with olive wreaths, a new narrative had been written.

According to this revamped story, gymnastics was no longer the exclusive province of the young and the golden — boys and particularly girls who perform agile, fantastical feats and who seem to be on the whole, unsullied.

While practically every sport in America has its dark side — blockbuster athletes who make outrageous incomes while performing spectacular transgressions on the side — gymnastics has largely avoided that pattern.

The worst that could be — and often was — said of American gymnasts was that they bore little resemblance to reality, that the sport's obsession with youth was unnatural and crowded out what was most grand about sport in general — its ability to move audiences long after the show was over.

That is, until this year.

EVERAL DAYS after their Las Vegas show, the gymnasts are in San Antonio, at the SBC Arena. Their national tour, known as the TJ Maxx Tour of Gymnastics Champions, is billed as a combination of physical prowess and Cirque du Soleil style exhibitionism.

It's an annual event, but this being an Olympic year, it is something of a victory lap for the young men and women on the team who are still basking in the post-Athens glow. Although the tour is a tiring, time-consuming affair — involving 40 cities and lots of road travel — the gymnasts are generally laid back and tend to horse around in the warm-up sessions before each show, walking around on their hands, doing successive back flips, swinging from uneven bars and displaying, without effort, the genius of their limbs.

Mohini has been asked to participate in a pre-game panel. About a hundred children and their parents are set to filter into a section of the stands, where they'll be able to ask questions of their favorite gymnasts.

At the last minute, though, she decides against it so she can be interviewed for this article. It's been nearly impossible to track her down; her busy touring schedule — 32 cities in a little over a month -- has meant that she's often traveling between cities or practicing for her next show. But from conversations with her associates, it's fairly clear that Mohini doesn't really enjoy receiving media attention. It was only after she returned from Athens that it became clear to her how popular she was.

"I had no idea they showed me in so much detail," she says of NBC and its Olympic coverage. "You're in a bubble. You come back and you get all this

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attention and it's kind of awkward, just being recognized in the store or walking down the street. I like the fact that I had a little time to be recognized and then could go back to being a normal person again."

We had moved out of the main arena and into a quiet, windowless back room, one normally used by the San Antonio Spurs for post-game press conferences. Mohini has long hair and broad shoulders, and her features are of the kind that has fans waxing poetic online and her coaches and handlers dreaming up endorsements for lucrative brands.

And although she's only 4 foot 10, she comes off as taller — in part because she moves and speaks with such self-assurance.

There are also a few tattoos on her body — most recently one on her left wrist, of the Olympic rings.

"I got it done in St Louis," she says, "We had a day off and me and one of the guys went and did it. Pretty much everyone who's gone to the Olympics has one."

But it's not her appearance or her recent success which have been most influential, which have caused others, even people much older than herself, to change their careers or to return to school at an advanced age.

For true gymnastics fans — and there are many — Mohini is a survivor. She is the one who displayed phenomenal talent at an early age, competing with girls much older than herself before trying, and repeatedly failing, to go all the way. Her story is well known, as are the forces that long conspired against her success.

"For a lot of the older fans, Mohini has always been a fan favorite," says Chris Korotky, editor of Inside Gymnastics magazine. "She was a rising star, and at the 1995 National Championships, she placed in the Top 15 in the allarounds, and that's always the watch group for possible contenders for the Olympics the next year. She was very much on the radar screen."

She didn't stay on that screen, though.

Even before the Olympic Trials of 1996, Mohini had started living on her own terms, and for much of her teenage years, on her own. When she was 13, she moved out of her parents’ house in Cincinnati, to Florida, where she trained under and temporarily lived with ace coach Rita Brown. At the age of 16, Brown sent her to Houston, where she trained under Alexander Alexandrov, former head coach of the Soviet gymnastics school, and started staying in her own apartment. The freedom was a little more than she could handle, and she started having parties. She drank frequently, and smoked a lot.

By her senior year of high school, Mohini had a bit of a reputation, but she was so gifted an athlete, and her grades continued to be so good, that she was able to get by, making the national team for the sixth year in a row and finishing third at the US Championships. But her run ended at the 1996 Olympic Trials, when she placed just 10th.

"In her own mind, I don't think Mohini thought she could make the team," says Rita Brown. "She had the talent, she had the skills, but I don't think she had the belief in herself. She wasn't confident. And her self image was 'I'm good, I'm great, and I made it here.' I think that's what her final goal was. At that point in time, I'd already coached three athletes to the Olympics, and you can see in their eyes, before they compete, the desire to be on that team. I just didn't see that desire in the eyes that I saw this time [at the 2004 Olympic Trials] in California."

That could've put an end to her Olympic aspirations, but instead it merely put them on hold. Although somewhat burned out from 1996, Mohini joined UCLA, whose gymnastics program is led by head coach Valerie Kondos Field.

Field confronted Mohini about her reputation as a partier, which Mohini readily admitted to, but nothing changed in her freshman year.

Mohini gained 10 pounds (she's 92 pounds now) and often stayed out all night. Finally, when she lied in order to avoid an end-of-semester practice — she was too hungover from the night before — Field found out and threatened to kick her off the team if she didn't change her ways.

From that point on, everything changed. She set multiple records at UCLA while leading the Bruins to successive National Collegiate Athletic Association titles. She also received a Honda Award for athletic and academic distinction. And although the transition from elite, or international level, gymnastics to the collegiate level is considered a dropoff for many gymnasts, Mohini didn't treat it that way.

"You'll find a lot of people water down their routines once they transfer from elite to NCAA, but Mohini was one of those gymnasts who continued to train and perform at a high level," says Korotky. "She performed a Yurchenko Double Full in college, which is one of the most difficult moves being performed, even today, and it's the same vault she performed at this year's Olympics. Mohini continued to go above and beyond what was called for, which is one of the reasons she had a big following during her career."

Although she had opted out of competing for the 2000 Olympics, she decided, in 2001, that she'd give Athens a shot. For someone in the NCAA it's not a small decision, as the formats and levels of intensity are completely different.

But in 2002, at her first serious competition, she fell and dislocated her elbow.

The injury proved serious. Soon after that, she announced her retirement.

"I worked at a bar for a while, delivered pizzas," says Mohini. "Not really happy. Kind of bored. It felt good to make a little money, but hanging out isn't as much fun as it seems. I didn't feel I was accomplishing something every

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In the year that followed Vanita Gupta’s success in having the Texas legislature to pass a law that brought about the release of her African-American clients from jail, she has been honored with awards and feted for her crusade

Sworn to justice Vanita Gupta, who won the release of 46 wrongly-accused African Americans in Tulia, Texas, is the first winner of the India Abroad Publisher’s Special Award for Outstanding Achievement

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ometime in the late 1970s, a child aged five was with her family in a restaurant Britain when a group of skinheads walked in.

Shortly thereafter, the taunts began — 'Go home Pakis!', the group yelled at the peacefully dining family. When the slurs were ignored, other ethnic slurs followed; the group began throwing French fries and other edibles at the family.

Finally, in disgust, the parents, grandmother and child left the restaurant. The child was too young, then, to take in the implications of what she had seen, and heard, and experienced.

Years passed. The child — Vanita Gupta — grew up, and went to law school in Yale. Among her mentors during that period was NYU School of Law Professor Randy Hertz, a lawyer with a passion for juvenile justice and criminal justice issues.

She also did two clinics, one with the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund focusing on defending indigents on death row, and another with the Juvenile Rights Division of the Legal Aid Society, where she worked with children charged with crimes.

The experiences shaped her, and taught her two important lessons — one, that there was much that was wrong with the criminal justice system in the US and two, that someone had to do something about it.

Rather than parlay her law degree into employment with a top firm, she applied for and obtained a Soros Justice Fellowship, which after her graduation permitted her to work with the LDF. And then she chanced on a documentary by the William Kunstler Fund, about a 1999 drug bust in the sleepy town of Tulia, in Swisher County, Texas. What she saw — and later described as unbelievable — meshed with that childhood experience in Britain; racism, she realized, was one of the greatest problems besetting the criminal justice system in the US. Gupta, then 28, and at the time just months out of law

school, decided to travel down to Tulia to research the case. July 23, 1999, the Tulia police had arrested 46 Blacks — roughly 10 percent of the African American population of 5,117-strong Tulia — on a drug bust.

A white jury, relying on the unsupported word of white police officer Tom Coleman who claimed to have carried out a single-handed, two-year sting operation, found the defendants guilty of drug dealing. The lives of those 46 defendants seemed, at the time, effectively over.

Gupta met local civil rights attorney Jeff Blackburn, who had represented some of the defendants; she also met with families of other defendants, and began copying all relevant documents. During a stay of five days, she accumulated so much by way of documentation that she had to go to the local Walmart to buy a suitcase to carry it all back to New York.

She then spent a month immersing herself in all aspects of the case, reviewing the information, examining the evidence, and growing progressively concerned. "It was shocking," Gupta told India Abroad in an earlier interview, "to see that something like this could happen in 1999."

Time, she realized, was running out — petitions had to be filed, ahead of a rapidly approaching deadline, to protect the right of the defendants to appeal to federal court.

Realizing that this was too big to risk a lone crusade, she recruited a team of over 30 attorneys from various high profile legal firms to help fight the case — and if there was any incongruity in a freshman law grad building, and directing, a team of high profile lawyers, Gupta was unaware of it.

She admits she was inexperienced — but what went in her favor was that as a result of her initial fact finding trip to Tulia, she became so completely immersed in the facts of the case, and so conversant with the relevant legal arguments, that the other lawyers on the team, all more experienced than herself, had to depend on her for important information and inputs.

"Basically," Gupta told India Abroad, "the whole case had been built around the testimony of this one police officer [Coleman] who had been suspended from work and who had been rejected by at least three law enforcement

agencies before he got this one [in Tulia]."

As Gupta spearheaded the defense, the Tulia case rapidly gained national momentum as circumstances of the drug deals and the manner of gathering of evidence came out in the open. In one instance, Coleman claimed that during his sting operation, he had taken notes on his leg — the reason given in court for his not being able to produce those notes as evidence.

"In effect, it was the defendant's word against his, and the demographics of Tulia are such that you could get away with a jury that didn't have any representation from the African-American community," Gupta recalled.

Gupta's involvement with the South went back to law school at Yale, where she worked on death penalties cases through the LDF. "To me, the criminal justice system presents the most urgent civil rights issues and concerns in the country today, and Tulia represented all that is wrong with that system today," she said. "It is replete with racial bias, and is often a corrupted system with too many people going to prison for something they haven't done or due to bad policy."

She was not alone in feeling that way; she was, however, almost unique in feeling a fierce determination to fight the system, to bring justice where none existed.

"For me, the case was an acknowledgement that the system is not working, and it gives us hope about the work that we do and in even these hard times, a struggle in necessary because you can make a huge difference."

The fight was not easy, but it helped, she says, that her family — mother Kamla, and father Raj L Gupta, chairman and CEO, Rohm and Haas — was supportive. Initially, Gupta recalls, her parents were a bit worried about her going alone to Tulia, especially in the immediate aftermath of 9/11.

"They were a little concerned, me being a South Asian woman and going to a place like that — but once I got there, the defendants' families just opened their homes and brought out everything to help. And there were a few white residents also who were very distressed at what had happened, and who helped me."

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M8 Gupta confesses that she felt some initial apprehension — especially about going to Tulia as a young, inexperienced attorney and a person of color. "But that feeling quickly evaporated once I got there," she recalled. "The need for assistance was too great to let appearances and age come in the way."

For the families of the 46 defendants, Gupta represented hope — for most, the only hope, since their family members in jail did not even have legal representation.

Gupta, for her part, realized that many of the cases had been botched because the defense lawyers didn't push the

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Coleman wasn't a credible witness. Four years after they were wrongfully confined, the 46 defendants walked out of Tulia jail, free — and found Vanita Gupta waiting outside, to welcome them.

In May 2004, she negotiated the settlement of a suit against municipal signatories of the task force, winning $5 million in the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals for those unlawfully arrested It was a fairy-tale, the kind of story Hollywood's scriptwriters dream up. In fact, the Vanita Gupta story is likely to end up on the silver screen — Variety, the highly respected trade magazine, reports that Academy Awardwinner Halle Berry (Monster's Ball) is being considered to play Vanita Gupta in a film to be produced by Mike Tollin and Brian Robbins.

The film, it is reported, will be titled Tulia, and will be scripted by Karen Croner, whose credits include One True Thing.

Justice had been served — and Gupta woke up and found herself famous.

Awards and accolades followed in short order — earlier this year, Reebok named her as one of four winners of its prestigious Human Rights award.

To her mind, a greater reward came her way in May of last year, when she got married. She is reluctant to discuss her husband, or even Above: In March Gupta won the Reebok 2004 Human Rights Award. Reebok honors young activists from Africa, Asia, South America and North America for work that sends a message on human rights and justice. She shared the stage at the Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Center, New York with Nader Nadery (Afghanistan), Yinka Jegede-Ekpe (Nigeria) and Joênia Batista de Carvalho (Brazil) Left: Gupta spent many days in Tulia with the defendants piecing together evidence for a case that won justice for nearly 10 percent of the Texas town’s African-American population

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to name him — he is, she says, another passionate lawyer; that is all this intensely private person will say about the man who waited patiently while his fiancée made innumerable trips to a small Texas town to fight her battle.

Gupta realizes that her work had just begun.

Tulia, she says, is merely the tip of a very large iceberg. "I could probably work all my life representing such people," she says, "but the real need is for systemic reform, to ensure that more Tulias do not happen."

The Indian-American community did not quite know what to make of it all. Gupta recalls how, when her story hit the headlines, she kept getting asked why she, as a South Asian woman, was working on African-American issues.

"I feel that my identity as a South Asian is closely linked to my identity as a person of color," Gupta told India Abroad. "I don't draw distinctions between ethnic communities — prejudice against one community is prejudice against all of us, and we have a duty to take on issues that affect all communities of color.

"I believe issues between different communities remain the same. Take the example of racial profiling, which used to be an African American issue.

After 9/11, it has encompassed South Asians and Arab Americans — in a different context, but resulting in the mass targeting and constitutional violations of communities based on color."

For Gupta, there is no difference between the skinheads who had taunted her family while she was yet a child, and the police officers of Tulia who had targeted an entire community. Both, to her way of thinking, spelt injustice — the very thing she had spent years in law school learning to combat.

envelope enough; they weren't prepared to fight the system hard enough.

"Texas doesn't have a state public defender system, so when a defendant can't afford a lawyer, the judge in a small town appoints one from a list he has. In effect, these lawyers' depend on the judge for their bread and butter," she points out.

Gupta also began to suspect that manufactured evidence of drug use and sale had been introduced into the case, perhaps by Coleman himself. "The only link between the physical evidence and the defendants was just his testimony."

Gupta, at the head of her team of lawyers, fought the case. Coleman was forced to admit, under oath, that he had perjured himself on at least four prior occasions; he openly admitted to using the word 'nigger' to stigmatize African Americans, and claimed that he did not think it was a term indicative of racial bias.

"It was the most disgusting testimony I hope I never have to hear again," Gupta later recalled. "What made it worse in this case was prosecutorial misconduct, because they suppressed material on this one officer on whose evidence all the convictions were made. That's a huge amount of evidence."

In the end, it turned out to be a key factor. Judge Ron Chapman overturned all convictions on the basis that

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n award — if instituted for the right reasons — has a dynamic, a life, a potential for organic growth. As publisher of India Abroad, I am in the process of finding out.

Two years ago — shortly after rediff.com acquired India Abroad — we decided to institute an award; to honor, annually, one member of the community whose achievements, in a certain calendar year would put him or her on a pedestal as first among equals.

The awardee, we hoped, would become a role model for the community — an example to be looked up to, learnt from, emulated. Their achievements would, we believed, raise the bar even higher for a community that has already distinguished itself for its super-achieving abilities.

In the first year of its existence, our editors picked the awardee. Swati Dandekar, the first Indian American woman to be elected to a state legislature (from Iowa) was the perfect choice — the quiet, understated housewife and mother in her early 50s demonstrated that if you engage with the larger community in which you live, that community will in turn honor you with its votes, its trust; it will entrust you with the responsibility of representing its interests, and it will turn a blind eye to your race, your ethnicity, the color of the skin.

Perfect though the choice was, we decided that we needed procedural change.

I have always believed in the Gandhian dictum that businesses are not owned by individuals, but merely held in trust on behalf of the community.

Thus, we saw ourselves as trustees of India Abroad; we saw the community as the paper's real owners. We believed, therefore, that it was the community — and not us — that should decide who it will honor.

In 2003, therefore, we changed the procedure. We invited the community to send in nominations; we empanelled a jury of community leaders and entrusted it with the responsibility of making the choice.

The jury responded brilliantly. It picked Sonal Shah, founder of Indicorps, as India Abroad Person of the Year 2003. Sonal is a young lady with brilliant academic credentials and the potential to write her own ticket in corporate America — yet, she decided that her priority was to the community, and to the country of her origin. She and her siblings Roopal and Anand founded a volunteer program, they funded it with their own money, they put together a corps of dedicated young men and women who would go to India and who would work for the betterment of the poor and the disadvantaged.

The community — through a jury of its peers — had chosen well last year; it did so again this year, when it picked Mohini Bhardwaj (whose story is told elsewhere) as honoree for 2004.

So why do we feel the need to institute, this year, a Publisher's Special Award for Achievement?

Before telling you what this award is about, let me tell you what it is not — it is not a disagreement with the popular verdict. It is not an indication that we at India Abroad are unhappy with the jury's choice.

So then, what is it?

I was a ringside observer of the judging process this year, and what struck me with most force was the fact that the jury, in the final stages of judging, just could not make up its mind between the finalists. The jury argued a compelling case for one candidate — but then found itself confronted by an equally compelling case for the other.

Finally, a choice was made. But later, a member of the jury summed up the feelings of all when she said, 'You know, I am happy with the choice — but I would have been just as happy had the other candidate won it.'

That, in essence, is the reason for our instituting a second award. The Publisher's Award is, simply, recognition that this community's achievements are too vast, too varied, and too immense — even within the short span of a calendar year — to be contained within the framework of one award.

I am honored to recognize Vanita Gupta — whose inspirational story is told on these pages — as the first recipient of what will be an annual institution.

Ajit Balakrishnan

Sonal Shah India Abroad Person of the Year 2003

PARESH GANDHI

FOUNDER, INDICORPS

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A nine-member jury met at the Waldorf Astoria hotel, New York, November 8, to choose the India Abroad Person of the Year 2003. Iowa Congresswoman Swati Dandekar was chairwoman of the jury.

From left to right: Tunku Varadarajan, Varun Nikore, Dr Madhulika S Khandelwal, Kapil Sharma, Swati Dandekar, Dr Krishna Reddy, Mallika Dutt, Swadesh Chatterjee and Anil Kakani

To choose a winner It took four hours of thoughtful debate by a distinguished jury to choose the India Abroad Person of the Year 2003 from 186 Indian-Americans nominated by readers of India Abroad and rediff.com.

PHOTOGRAPHS: PARESH GANDHI n the 32 years since its inception, India Abroad had not felt the need to institutionalize a community award that would honor high achievement.

Why institute an award now?

When a nine-member jury comprising community leaders of distinction — chaired by Swati Dandekar, India Abroad Person of the Year 2002 — convened at 11 am November 8, at the Lexington Suite of the Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York, this was the question foremost in their minds.

Publisher Ajit Balakrishnan addressed the key question first up, when in his opening remarks to the jury, he pointed out that the community had evolved, and India Abroad had evolved with it.

The Indian-American community, Balakrishnan pointed out, had expanded in size, scope, achievement, affluence, and influence; it had achieved presence as a

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recognizable and respected entity within the American space.

It was therefore incumbent on the community — in the person of its leaders, and India Abroad as the newspaper that reaches the largest segment of the community — to recognize that growth; to accord high honor to significant achievement, and in so honoring outstanding members of the community, to create a roster of role models for the community at large to look up to, and to emulate, as its roots drive deeper into the US soil.

“We believe,” Balakrishnan told the jurors, “that we do not own the newspaper; we merely hold it in trust for the community, who are its true owners.”

In the spirit of that trust, the publisher said, he and the editors were turning over the proceedings to the jury, as being representative of the community, to select the

one Indian-American who above all others had in the year gone by done deeds and created a body of work that best advanced the cause of the community at large, and thus become most worthy of emulation.

In his opening address, Balakrishnan was content to lay down broad procedural guidelines; these, he said, were merely suggestions from the newspaper’s editorial board, not hard and fast rules that the jury perforce had to follow.

The guidelines The award was restricted to IndianAmericans who lived and worked in the American space; The award would go to the person with the most significant achievement in the calendar year 2003; it would, by definition, therefore be an award for a finite period, and not for a lifetime’s body of work;

It would not be a posthumous award; The deliberations would be confidential; on the appropriate date, the name of the India Abroad Person of the Year 2003 would be divulged, but not those of other candidates in consideration. This, it was pointed out, was to ensure that there were no negative connotations attached to losing.

The decision of the jury would be final, and binding, on all.

As its first act, the jury accepted the guidelines and promised to keep them in mind. Yet, in the early minutes of the deliberations, a certain sense of unease was detectable among its members.

It was as if they all had a question in their minds; a question that, for reasons of politeness, they did not know how to phrase.

Finally, jury chair Swati Dandekar voiced

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THE JURY Swati Dandekar Iowa Congresswoman, India Abroad Person of the Year 2002 Chairwoman of the Jury Swadesh Chatterjee Former national president, Indian American Forum for Political Education Mallika Dutt Founder, Breakthrough Dr Madhulika S Khandelwal President, Asian American Center, Queens College, New York Anil Kakani Legislative Assistant to Senator Hillary Clinton Varun Nikore President, Indian American Leadership Initiative

the collective question: “Does India Abroad have any name or names it would like to see considered for the honor? Does it have any specific instructions for the jury?”

“The choice is entirely yours,” Balakrishnan said, “and at no stage do you need to consider anything other than the qualifications of the candidates themselves.”

“Do not worry about India Abroad,” he exhorted the jury. “The choice is yours, the rationale behind the choice has to be yours; India Abroad’s role is restricted to facilitating your deliberations and accepting your unanimous choice.”

That cleared the air; the jury promptly got down to business.

tions, they could scan through the shortlist and also the master list, briefly debating the various names.

At the end of the exercise, Dandekar said, the jury could individually list four suggested names; the ballots would then be tallied, three finalists would be picked on the basis of the most votes polled, and the final debate would seek to pick one deserving candidate from amongst this list.

The jury accepted her recommended procedure, after brief discussion.

and distinguished record.

The deliberations began — and the prelunch phase proved to be a fascinating exercise. Initially, debate took a somewhat random turn, revolving around four or five names who, by virtue of stature and achievement, appeared to be top of the mind for many jurors.

And then came a seminal moment. At one point, a juror suggested that if the year just ending were reviewed, one particular individual stood out above all others, by virtue of having given the community a mainstream face, and a recognition wider than within its Deliberations: Phase I The jury’s first task was to narrow down the own confines.

Wait a second, another juror asked — the list to three outstanding individuals, from whom the final winner could be picked. person has individual achievement in Significantly, the jury’s first act, after scruti- spades, but what has he done for the commuProcedural Starting August, India Abroad had invited nizing the shortlist of 12 and the master list nity?

What makes you think someone has to do the community — through its columns, and of 186, was to add two more names to the on rediff.com, which owns India Abroad – to former — one, a filmmaker of international something for the community to be considnominate names to be considered for the reputation; the other, a politician with a long ered for an award, came the riposte. What is wrong with individual achievement of annual award. the highest caliber, does it not raise the Nominations closed October 27; on profile of the community, does it not that date, the India Abroad team collatTHE GUIDELINES create a role model for the community ed the incoming nominations and drew to follow, does it not define goals for the up a master list of 186 names, each com The award was restricted to Indian-Americans community to aspire to, does it not raise plete with a dossier detailing their who lived and worked in the American space; the bar on accomplishment? accomplishments.

The award would go to the person with the Anyways, another juror asked, how do India Abroad editors scrutinized the you define ‘doing something for the nominations, and came up with a shortmost significant achievement in the calendar community’? If a person is always availlist of 12 names. These names, and the year 2003; it would, by definition, therefore be able to speak at community events, has accompanying dossiers, were handed an award for a finite period, and not for a lifehe or she done more for the community over to the jury at the conclusion of time’s body of work; than say someone who has, quietly and Balakrishnan’s short presentation.

It would not be a posthumous award; in his or her own fashion, sought to It was made clear to the jury that the excel? shortlist was merely to facilitate discus The deliberations would be confidential; on the By way of illustration, he brought up sion; it was not binding on the jury to appropriate date, the name of the India Abroad the example of Vijay Singh, the Fijian pick only from within the 12 short-listed Person of the Year 2003 would be divulged, but golfer of Indian origin. The juror said he nominees. The jury, Balakrishnan clarinot those of other candidates in consideration. knew of young members of the commufied, was welcome to trawl through the This, it was pointed out, was to ensure that there nity who, following Singh’s success, had full list of 186, and add names to the been driven to excel at golf. Does not short list if required. were no negative connotations attached to lossuch achievement contribute to his comOnce this had been clarified, ing. munity in a quantifiable way, the juror Dandekar suggested to her peers on the The decision of the jury would be final, and jury that as phase one of the delibera M4

binding, on all.

Dr Krishna Reddy President, Indian American Friendship Council Kapil Sharma Vice President, Madison Governmental Affairs, Washington, DC Tunku Varadarajan Editorial Features Editor, The Wall Street Journal

Bottom, right: Mallika Dutt (center) makes a point. Dr Krishna Reddy (left) and Swadesh Chatterjee (right) and Anil Kakani (far right) listen attentively

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M3 asked? At a larger, more subliminal level, does not his achievement, and the concomitant fame and adulation, inspire the aspirations of others?

Without aspiration, does not a community atrophy?

In a trice, the discussion was transformed to heated debate; the jury recast the discussion from ‘who should win the award’ to ‘what qualities/qualifications do you, must you, look for from someone picked as first among equals in this particular year?’

It was a turning point in the deliberations — and as with all such moments, it charged the atmosphere with electricity. It pushed everyone out of the comfort zone of personality-oriented discussion and shifted the focus to an ideal. A norm.

A template, if you will, for personal achievement allied to intense involvement with the community at large.

Deliberations: Phase II Once the jury realized it was necessary to first define ‘achievement,’ lists were pushed aside, and the broader topic was discussed at length.

In turn, each juror took three minutes to outline his or her position on the question — Was outstanding individual achievement sufficient to merit the honor, or did that achievement have to be allied to community interaction and/or involvement?

And if yes, what did such ‘involvement’ consist of, how could it be defined?

Three jurors believed that extraordinary personal achievement was in and of itself sufficient; that by achieving to a very high degree, an individual did contribute to the community at large by providing it with face, recognition, and a role model.

Five other jurors disagreed. Personal achievement, they argued, was well enough, but a community award needed to recognize quantifiable contributions to the community itself, rather than be based on nebulous notions of being inspirational examples.

The chair summed up the deliberations at the end of this phase; it was decided that contributions to the community would receive weightage when selecting the person of the year.

Deliberations: Phase III Once the basis to the award had been refined in the minds of the jury, the members got down to considering the names on the expanded short-list of 14.

Dandekar read out each name on the list; members of the jury discussed their merits,

Top: Jurors take a break from their discussion. From left to right: Varun Nikore chats with Kapil Sharma. Mallika Dutt does likewise with Tunku Varadarajan. Dr Madhulika S Khandelwal (background center) Right: Swadesh Chatterjee (left) and Anil Kakani debate a finer point of the process Bottom: Kapil Sharma (left) puts forth a view on the decision process. Swati Dandekar hears him out

arguing pro and con.

A fascinating aspect of this phase was the insider insights provided by jurors in individual cases. Thus, while discussing a particular name, one or more members of the jury would put their hands up; in their turn, they would state that they personally know the candidate under consideration, and then speak of what they knew of that person, providing insight and information that was not in the public domain.

Once the 14 names had been discussed, Dandekar called on her peers to note down, on individual slips of paper, a short list of three candidates for top honors.

Once the voting slips were in, the various votes were polled; when the results were in, they contained a surprise of stunning proportions.

Much of the heated debate had centered around one individual. During the debate, no one denied that he had, during the year in question, attained a profile that was unprecedented even for a member of a hyper-achieving community — the only question was whether he had, simultaneously, touched the community in a meaningful fashion.

While opinion was divided on this question, it seemed a sure thing that he would make the cut. In the final tally, however, it turned out that the individual had not made the cut of three — yet another reminder that there is no such thing as a sure thing.

Having narrowed down the choice to

three outstanding individuals, the jury then paused, before resuming the final phase of deliberations.

Deliberations: Phase IV The last phase of deliberations was clear cut — by then, the jury had clarified to its own satisfaction the criteria it would consider; it had then applied those criteria to the list of nominees and whittled it down to a very short list of three.

The first name out of the box was that of a scientist, whose multi-page bio had drawn humorous comment from some jury members earlier.

With the mood turning serious, the jurors went through the bio in detail, exclaiming over the range of accomplishments the candidate had put together in a short span of life.

The jurors agreed that the scientist, with national recognition, was a very good candidate. Not only had she reached the acme of individual accomplishment in her field and, in the process, done something con-

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crete to alleviate a disease endemic to the community, she also had a body of social and community work to her credit.

“I think she fulfils all the three criteria — she is well-known, she has given back to the community and is a role model,” one juror said.

“I am excited about her,” another agreed.

“She is a phenomenal candidate.”

“She is a top scientist and is also involved with the community,” a third endorsed.

It appeared that the scientist, who had polled the maximum votes in the preliminary round, was a shoo-in.

The next name to come up for discussion was that of a prominent media personality who had, in the year gone by, made waves

worldwide during an international crisis.

In debating his name, the jurors on the plus side pointed out that he was yet another example of a community member achieving recognition in a non-traditional field; that in doing so, he had helped erase the notion that the community was skilled only in certain fields and not in others.

However, it was argued that while he was indubitably a role model, his contribution to the community — already agreed upon by the jury as an important criterion — was not as clear-cut.

The third name on the short list came up for discussion. One juror at the table who knew the candidate best, and who had observed her work at close range, intro-

Top: Swati Dandekar (left) and Mallika Dutt share notes Left: Varun Nikore (left) and Dr Madhulika S Khandelwal in discussion Bottom: Members of the jury 2003 -- Standing (left to right) Dr Krishna Reddy, Varun Nikore, Kapil Sharma, Tunku Varadarajan, Dr Madhulika S Khandelwal. Sitting (left to right): Swadesh Chatterjee, Swati Dandekar, Mallika Dutt, Anil Kakani

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duced the nominee.

He spoke of how the community had traditionally followed a pattern. The first step, he pointed out, was to arrive in the US in search of personal success; once that was attained over years of hard work and sacrifice, the person would sit back to consider the world at large, and look for ways to contribute, to the community here and to his native land, something of himself.

This candidate, the juror pointed out, had gone against the template. She was young; she had a good educational record; she was at that stage of her life when you would expect her to focus single-mindedly on using her abilities to maximize achievement.

Yet, the juror said, she had turned her back on a career. Instead, she had sought a way to improve the lot of a section of the community; having found it, she had turned her time, her abilities, even her own money, to that task. ”Most people look to give back to the community something they had taken out of it; this candidate is giving to the community, without having got anything for herself,” the juror pointed out.

Jurors sought more insight on the candidate and her accomplishments, calling on National Affairs Editor Aziz Haniffa to contribute insight.

Once they were satisfied that the three finalists had been discussed threadbare, the jury got down to the final vote.

Each juror wrote one name down on a slip of paper; these were collected and collated by jury chair Dandekar.

Dandekar looked down at the tally in front of her, she looked up at the jurors, all of whom awaited the final verdict. She adjusted her glasses, she took a sip of water. And then, having stretched the suspense as far as it could go, she read out the name of the winner.

The jury broke out in spontaneous applause; the words “brilliant choice,” “perfect,” were heard from around the table.

“Sonal Shah is the India Abroad Person of the Year 2003,” Dandekar announced, alluding to the lady who, along with sister Roopal and brother Anand, runs the Indicorps program.

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This month, Sonal Shah leaves the bipartisan Center for Global Development to join the Center for American Progress, a new liberal think tank

Humanity that works Indicorps founder Sonal Shah is an economist who looks at the big picture with an eye for the smallest detail.

ARUN VENUGOPAL meets the India Abroad Person of the Year 2003 PHOTOGRAPHS: PARESH GANDHI

ONAL SHAH IS on the move.

Having tackled the poverty and disease of sub-Saharan Africa, the Asian financial crisis, and the breakdown of Bosnian society, she is steeling herself for that ugliest of beasts: Washington politics.

This month, she leaves the bipartisan Center for Global Development after serving for just under two years, and is set to join the Center for American Progress, the new, liberal think tank on the block. That job begins full-time in January. For now, the 35-year-old economist and founder of Indicorps is splitting her time between the two organizations that dominate her day-

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times: Monday through Wednesdays at CGD, Thursday and Friday at CAP. On this particular day, she is at the office of the Center for Global Development, which overlooks Massachusetts Avenue. It sits next to the Institute for International Economics, its sister institute, and across the street from the Brookings Institution and Council on Foreign Relations, in what amounts to an impressive cluster of Washington, DC think tanks.

Sonal stands in her room, dressed in black pants and blouse, and wrapped in a gray shawl. Books and files lie scattered on the floor or in stacks on chairs. Boxes sit, opened, holding mementoes from her pre-

vious job at the Treasury Department, where she worked for several years.

She joined the CGD when it was formed, and as Director of Operations and Programs, has been responsible for most of the Center’s hiring, and for managing its policy and advocacy programs. The organization conducts research on globalization and its impact on poor people throughout the world, and promotes policies it feels contribute to equitable growth.

Sonal was brought in from the Treasury, where in her six years she dealt with one regional crisis after another. In 1996, in the immediate aftermath of the war in Bosnia, she served as a Treasury Attaché in Sara-

jevo. There, she worked with Secretary of the Treasury Robert Rubin and others to restore the local banking system, establish a new currency, and help balance the demands of various ethnic groups. Later, she became a regular fixture in Southeast Asia, helping bring the financial crisis under control even as riots swept around her. When she left the Treasury, it was as the Director of the Office of African Nations, helping negotiate debt and AIDS for sub-Saharan nations.

It all sounds quite dramatic — visions of American economists parachuting into hyper-inflated territory — but of course, quite often, violence was close at hand, a

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‘We make a life by what we give’ ANIL KAKANI, Senator Hillary Clinton’s legislative assistant who served on the India Abroad Person of the Year 2003 jury, salutes the Indicorps spirit even years ago, Indicorps was an idea. It was an idea to strengthen the Indian community and help build young leaders within it. It was an idea to help Indian-Americans reconnect with their heritage. And it was an idea to encourage and engage Indians in civic responsibility. Today, with an annual operating budget of nearly $100,000, a volunteer and paid staff of two dozen individuals, a group of 20 current and former fellows, and a growing core of support, that idea called Indicorps is indeed full of life.

Imagine for a moment a year in a developing country that begins with a month-long orientation, which includes a tribal trek across rural lands, a self-designed project with slum children, and classroom sessions on language skills, and with business leaders and historians.

Komala Ramachandra from Iowa, for example, spends her days working on water issues and women’s health as part of the Total Village Development project in Manchal Mandal near Hyderabad. Amit Syal of California is strengthening programs at the Poona Blind Men’s Association Technical Training Institute in Pune, Maharashtra. Anjali Desai is working to establish a handicrafts cooperative through the Rural Design School in Ludiya, Kutch. All in all, there

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result of local economic policy run amok.

Nonetheless, you get the impression that for the understated Sonal, drama is built into the job description.

“You’d hear a lot of automatic gunfire,” she says of her time in Bosnia, “but it wasn’t major.”

The phone rings. It’s a former colleague from the Treasury.

“You were back in Sarajevo?” says Sonal, perking up, “Wow, how’s it looking?”

They chat for several minutes, mostly about the elections in Bosnia. There’s a nofrills quality to Sonal — not a smidgen of makeup, for instance — and her office is a relatively spare room that looks out onto the passing traffic of Massachusetts Avenue. Among the few personal touches is a

are eleven Fellows currently who followed the nine that just returned to the US after their yearlong adventure. A few years from now there will be forty, and those forty will be inspiring hundreds of others.

About to enter its third year in existence, Indicorps is not only creating leaders. It is itself an example of leadership. Leaders, of course, come in all shapes and sizes and show their prowess in different ways. Indians have proven themselves leaders in the arts, as painters, musicians, and authors. Indians have been leading job creators as heads of Fortune 500 companies and small businesses across the world. Indians have led as philosophers, researchers and discoverers.

But the leadership in this case is in inspiring others, in leading others, and perhaps most importantly, in giving back.

Winston Churchill once said: ‘We make a living by what we get. We make a life by what we give.’

For 35-year old Sonal Shah, Indicorps is all about giving. Growing up in Houston, Texas, Sonal, joined by her younger siblings Roopal and Anand, experienced the value of community service and giving at a young age. The trio developed programs and encouraged other Indian-Americans to participate in efforts partnering with the March of Dimes, the American Red Cross, the local school district, and professional organizations.

Through a program she created called Impressions, Sonal organized young Indian-Americans to raise and distribute funds through merit- and need-based scholarships.

More recently, through her work at the Center for Global Development in Washington, DC and at the Department of Treasury during the Clinton administration, her accomplishments are both diverse and global. Sonal has worked to fix Indonesia’s financial system, develop a new currency in Bosnia, set up a bank in Kosovo, address HIV/AIDS-related crises in South Africa, and develop an NGO in India.

While Indian-American achievement in the public and non-profit sector is by no means a new or unique phenomenon, it is the type of achievement that should inspire us all. To be sure, for one, the amount of work to be done and progress made in India and other developing countries is vast. But, as importantly, we have a responsibility to give back to the neighborhoods, schools, and towns in the US that we call home today to improve the lives of others less fortunate as well as future generations.

Three years ago, Sonal Shah, joined by Roopal and Anand, pooled their savings, passion, energy, and the support of their parents to breathe life into an idea called Indicorps.

On this day, Sonal is being recognized as India Abroad’s Person of the Year 2003 for her leadership, inspiration and service. The award brings to mind a famous quote by the anthropologist Margaret Mead, ‘Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.’

Whatever meaning each of us might attach to ‘the world,’ we should all be inspired by the work Sonal and her siblings are doing to make it a better place.

framed photo of Sonal and her siblings, Anand and Roopal, taken after a wedding in Houston. All three beam into the camera with very large, very hazel eyes.

TWO YEARS AFTER Sonal was born her father Ramesh moved from Gujarat to New York in 1970, where he worked odd jobs, mostly as a boiler inspector in apart-

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ment complexes, chemical plants, and laundromats. Sonal, Roopal, and their mother Kokila joined him in 1972. Ramesh worked for a couple years as an engineer before shifting the family to Houston.

There, the family became very involved in the Gujarati community, helping establish

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A dreamer, but not the only one

Left: Indicorps cofounder Anand Shah shares a meal with children from the school run by the Gandhi Ashram in Ahmedabad Below: Indicorps Fellow Sandhya Gupta, 23, is on a search for common bonds with people of backgrounds completely different from hers. She works with GIVE Foundation in Surat, Gujarat, evaluating NGOs for better accountability

THR Drea and id But Is it front sever The nizes their other This often ers, b

Even as night falls in America, eleven Indian-American youngsters wake to a new day of self-discovery. In India, Anand Shah keeps the Indicorps dream alive. BIJOY VENUGOPAL reports from Ahmedabad PHOTOGRAPHS: JEWELLA C MIRANDA

Kabir Kumar (left) with Indicorps cofounder Anand Shah. Kabir, who had his sights set on Wall Street, came to India with the first batch of Indicorps Fellows. He stayed on to work with Indicorps as a staff member. ‘I have a one-way ticket and a five-year visa,’ he says when asked about his plans for the future

Indicorps Fellow Anjali Desai joins sc sand pit for them to play in. In the ba

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REE CENTURIES OF waking up to the American m have molded it, shorn it, augmented it, idolized it idealized it. t what about an Indian-American Dream? t myth? Or conjecture? Is it a mere ideal fenced on one t by self-doubt and cynicism, and hope and gritty perrance on the other? e India Abroad Person Of The Year 2003 recogIndian-Americans who walk that extra yard to touch dreams. While others may sleep, they dream. While rs may dream, they let their dreams lead them. is is a story of those who dare to realize a unique and elusive Indian-American vision. They may be dreambut they are not the only ones.

hoolchildren at the Gandhi Ashram, Ahmedabad, in preparing a ckground is the Sabarmati River

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N UNUSUAL GARDEN adjoins the Gandhi Ashram in Ahmedabad, on the banks of the Sabarmati River.

It is not the slender Ashoka trees, rustling with sparrows and lining both sides of the clean-swept walkway, or the flamboyant gulmohar with its finecombed leaves in a corner of the courtyard, which catch your eye. To the right, as you enter the sylvan campus, is an arresting tableau of toilets. Identified by neat black signboards are various chamber pots, commodes, open latrines, soak pits, even a miniature but touchingly thoughtful ‘child lavatory.’

This is the ‘toilet garden’ at the Environmental Sanitation Institute, or Safai Vidyalaya, started in 1963 by social worker Ishwarbhai Jivaram Patel, president of the Gujarat Harijan Sevak Sangh. One of several illustrated charts on its walls depicts an ‘untouchable’ sanitation worker carrying a headload of human fecal waste, with a caption in Hindi that reads: ‘This must stop.’

Moved by the plight of these workers —

’To be Indian as an Indian-American you need to understand India.’ They had to experience India in the flesh, know the raw flavor of its heart, its living color and diversity, all through a unique process of self-discovery Mahatma Gandhi called them Harijans, ‘children of God’ — whose caste-assigned occupation forced them to clean toilets, often with their bare hands, Patel established the Institute to liberate them from centuries of social injustice by training civic workers in low-cost sanitation methods.

The institute is one of Anand Shah’s enduring inspirations at Indicorps, the nonprofit voluntary organization his sisters Sonal, Roopal and he started in 2001, an idea four years in the making.

Unlike Sonal, 35, and Roopal, 34 — with whom he shares striking hazel eyes and a last name that bespeaks their single status, much to mother Kokila’s annoyance — Anand, 26, was born in America. When he finished school in 1995 his father Ramesh Shah, a chemical engineer turned stockbroker in Houston, gave him a ticket to “go see India.”

“I got a three-month train pass and got everywhere and anywhere that I could go,” he recalls from his rented fifth floor apartment in Ahmedabad, which doubles as Indicorps’ India office.

“Part of that was just to see what India was about, because there’s a beauty to it that’s unparalleled anywhere else in the world.”

His sisters made a similar journey in 1991 and returned inspired to start a scholarship program for Indian-American schoolchildren. In Gujarat, Roopal got involved in community service with Ishwarbhai’s son Jayesh Patel and his future wife Anar, daughter of Anandiben Patel, now Gujarat’s

education minister. With them was Viren Joshi, a Chicago engineer who later founded Manav Sadhna — Sanskrit for ‘devotion to humanity’ — a non-governmental organization in Ahmedabad founded on Gandhian tenets. The four traveled to villages in Gujarat where Joshi would play his guitar making up songs in Gujarati about sanitation issues.

Anand cannot forget his first meeting in 1995 with Jayesh, who earnestly showed him around the toilet garden. “I couldn’t understand why this guy was so passionate about toilets!” he recalls. “You don’t understand the depth of the problem until you visit a village and have to go out into the field to use the bathroom. In America, you take these things for granted.”

This and other experiences flung open a window to the light. Back in America, Anand switched from Caltech to Harvard hoping to be a sociologist. “I wanted to do something more socially oriented than engineering,” he says. Unable to relate to Harvard’s “elite” culture he took a break in 1997, after his second year of college, to visit India. For the next year, he studied comparative religion and philosophy at the Tatwajnana Vidyapeeth in Thane, near Mumbai, founded by Pandurang Shastri Athavale, leader of the Swadhyaya social reform movement, who died this October.

“It was a time of transformation,” he says.

Anand, who grew up “listening in Gujarati and speaking in English,” adapted to classes taught in Hindi.

He returned to America, finished his degree and at 22, helped establish the Media and Technology Charter High School in Boston, Massachusetts, where he was director of technology and taught science. “Some of my greatest inspirations were my high school teachers,” he says. “I felt the only way to pay them back was to do the same for somebody else.”

THE SHAHS WERE active on Houston’s community calendar. Ramesh started the Gujarati Samaj, which organized Navratri celebrations.

“Our parents’ generation is also very fragmented,” observes Anand. “My parents are first loyal to being Gujarati. But my generation sees India as a united entity, and we want to relate to something like that.”

Sonal, by now involved with the Center for Global Development, a conservative think tank in Washington, DC, and Roopal, a US attorney in San Diego, resonated with this idea. “We grew up with a community-driven philosophy and I grew up watching all of that,” says Anand. “But I was never old enough to implement anything.”

When he came of age, they figured their dream could not wait much longer. They saw that though their parents’ generation had reluctantly left India seeking opportunity, many of them wanted to give back to their homeland. Living in America also fostered a volunteering spirit. Some sent back money to build schools and hospitals in their villages. But money could not resolve the excruciating cultural conundrum their children faced.

“To be Indian as an Indian-American you need to understand India,” Anand says, observing that the Indian community in America, despite its tremendous professional success, was one of the poorest assimilated in terms of social and political participation. “Organizations started and run by people in my parents’ generation are still bickering about the same things they did then. Fundamentally, there is distrust between the older generation and ours because they think we don’t know enough about India.”

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The shortest way to Ramapir No Tekra, the slum where the NGO Manav Sadhna works, is through a refuse-littered field bisected by a gushing sewer. On Thanksgiving weekend the Fellows visited the slum. Leading the way is Manish Pant, who works in Aurangabad spreading awareness about HIV/AIDS among slum dwellers. For Manish, the experience was vital to understanding how conditions and problems differ from slum to slum

M9 People of his generation, he noted, were torn between conflicting identities. Unlike their peers in the Jewish community these youngsters appeared to lack pride in their Indian identity.

“Most Indian kids in America spend a great part of their lives trying to fit in,” Anand says absently stroking his chin, bristly with a week’s fuzz. “Jewish kids feel so strongly tied to their identity. Why do they learn Hebrew and about Israel? Why are there so many young people involved in leading organizations in America? It’s not like that in the Indian community at all.”

In this problem, the Shah siblings agreed, there existed an opportunity. “We found parents were unwilling to send their kids to India because there was no structured opportunity,” says Anand. “It’s funny in a way, because they let them travel to Russia, South Africa and South America on their own but not to India. We were convinced that if we offered the opportunity many people would be willing to come to India.”

The solution, they reckoned, was that the Indian-American society needed “more leaders for India, not from India.” For that, they had to experience India in the flesh, know the raw flavor of its heart, its living color and diversity, taste its poverty and richness in equal measure, all through a unique process of self-discovery.

The Shahs did their research, learning how programs like the Peace Corps operated. They were already salting away their savings to fund their vision. Now planted in their minds, an idea called Indicorps was fast germinating.

“In 2001, I spent eight months in India building the structure for Indicorps,” says Anand, who is on the organization’s board with Sonal. In the US, Sonal and Roopal held information sessions and got young people interested.

“My parents were in Houston, Sonal was in Washington, Roopal was in San Diego and I was in Boston — we led very different lives doing very different things, but we had very similar ideas,” says Anand. “We had thought of the name and bought the domain name. But it was still a dream.”

father is from Kenya and her mother is from Tanzania — the others were Indian-Americans with various degrees of assimilation.

They were all between 21 and 26, selected from nearly 70 applicants on the strength of personal essays and one-on-one interviews. They each paid their airfare to India. While the NGOs they partnered took care of their stay, Indicorps supported their local commute with a small stipend.

“We believe it is a statement of their commitment to set aside a year of their time and find the money to pay for their ticket to India,” explains Anand.

This August, they completed a year in India, mostly happy with their projects but exhilarated, humbled and enlightened by their Indian experience.

“I was one of those NRIs who came to India and would see turd on the street and be like, it’s dirty, why don’t the KABIR KUMAR WAS no people do something about stranger to India, or so he it?” says Kabir. “Now I underthought. “I had been here 23 stand it’s not so simple. times in 24 years,” he says, his There’s a history behind why face melting into an open smile this country is the way that it that is on call at short notice. is, and there are benefits to Every year, he would visit India things that I thought had no with his mother, staying with value.” relatives in New Delhi. “I could Kabir, whose fellowship say I had one kind of Indian project was about evaluating experience — flying into Delhi, NGOs and creating partnerattending weddings, shopping ships for future Indicorps at Connaught Place and Chandprograms, chose to stay on ni Chowk and bargaining over and work on the staff.

Rs 10,000 saris, and flying The first batch of Indicorps Fellows with cofounders Roopal (extreme left) and “Gandhiji said the best way to back in two weeks.”

Anand Shah (centre, back) visited Dharavi, Mumbai's largest slum, in March.

But it was Wall Street, not From left: Rish Sanghvi, Shezeen Suleman, Radhika Singh, Anjali Sardeshmukh, find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others,” he Connaught Place, which was Kabir Kumar, Bindi Gandhi, Aparna Wilder and Sanjay Bhatt says. “I’m still learning about on Kabir’s radar. May 2001, having just graduated from Brandeis Uni- lowing a guru when he was about 21,” she India, and being with Indicorps allows me versity with a BA in economics and interna- says, laughing. “My mom left India to get to learn more about myself.”

Bindi’s mother, who had once remarked tional politics, with concentrations in inter- away from all that!”

Krishnan Unnikrishnan grew up in the that her daughter wore a ‘made in America’ national business and international studies, he was pursuing an MBA and a career as an small town of Ashland, Kentucky, speaking stamp on her forehead, rang Sonal in investment banker. He had also been Malayalam at home with his parents. “I Washington, overwhelmed to tears. Bindi, involved with Seeds Of Peace, an interna- went to Kerala every other year and spent who did not have an Indian friend until she tional camp that brought together teen- my summers there, four months at a time,” was 19, had written them a letter in agers from conflict areas to foster mutual he says, his high thespian voice rising clear Gujarati, the mother tongue she hardly above the din at a noisy Mumbai café. spoke when she left for India. understanding.

Aparna, who devised micro-credit proWhile studying for his development pro- Krishnan, whose résumé betrays a delibergram, Kabir was required to take a three- ate choice of opposites, graduated from grams for Kurumba tribals and Muslim month internship. He was on several mail- Harvard in history and science. “My women and children in Wayanad, Kerala, ing lists and once received an email about a extracurriculars were in the arts — I was was distraught when her project ran out of funding. But she chokes with emotion, new fellowship program for Indian- always singing, dancing and acting.”

9/11 spurred him to make sense of the speaking in faintly accented Malayalam of Americans called Indicorps. He ignored it.

Until a non-Indian friend recommended it world outside. “The entire world had some strong tribal women who became her role to him. “I read the web site and applied and issues with America, and I wasn’t getting models.

Working in a village where there was no the information,” he says, his elfish eyes got lucky,” he says.

At the University of Pennsylvania where turning serious. “I wanted to understand electricity, she was struck by the economic disparity in the small state. “Moving from she played field hockey and worked for a the reasons for myself.”

Wayanad, where I was eating Kanjhi [rice major in history and sociology of science and environmental studies, Aparna Wilder AUGUST 2001 KABIR, Aparna and gruel] every day, to brightly lit Kochi where was one of eight students in her Malayalam Krishnan found themselves at a month- the children were plumper and women language class. She applied three weeks late long orientation camp in Mumbai for wore so much gold, I wondered how I could for the Indicorps fellowship and by the time Indicorps Fellows, along with six others drive eight hours and be in a totally differshe was selected she was already in they met for the first time — Bindi Gandhi, ent reality.”

Krishnan, whose script for a musical is Thiruvananthapuram to learn her mother Rish Sanghvi, Radhika Singh, Anjali Sardeshmukh, Sanjay Bhatt and Shezeen being considered by DreamWorks, did the tongue.

Her mother, born in Kerala and raised in Suleman. Apart from Shezeen, who was of show of his life when he enabled over 150 Mumbai, met her American father in Indian extraction but raised in Toronto and slum children in Mumbai to plan and stage Pennsylvania. “My father came to India fol- was four generations East African — her a mammoth musical to a sold-out audience.

M11 December 19, 2003

Indicorps Fellows interact with children at the non-formal school in Ramapir No Tekra

One day, as he walked near Mumbai’s Kemps Corner flyover, he heard a voice call out, “Bhaiya!” Before he could turn around he was smothered in hugs by a gaggle of kids, who began to perform the dance steps he had taught them.

In Ludiya, a frontier village of cylindrical bhunga huts in Gujarat’s arid Kutch region, 30 miles from the Pakistan border, Shezeen’s watershed development project with Manav Sadhna bore triumphant fruit, bringing drinking water to a community that had long suffered alternate cycles of devastating flood and drought.

OVER A LONG Thanksgiving weekend, eleven new faces are fast growing familiar with each other. The second batch of Indicorps Fellows — eight young women and three young men — gather for their second retreat at the Gandhi Ashram.

Bimonthly retreats, planned and administered by the Fellows together with Indicorps staff, allow them to break from project schedules and replenish energy and enthusiasm by discussing each other’s projects. Replete with cultural programs, interactions and community service, they deepen the Fellows’ understanding of India.

Indicorps functions via a three-way partnership, first evaluating and identifying NGOs involved in social and community development initiatives. The Fellows are the investment in the projects. “From time to time, our representatives visit Fellows on the field to assess progress and provide moral and logistical support,” says Kabir.

Working closely with partner organizations, they conceive, design and implement projects, adding value and identifying community leaders.

“We are keen to have long alliances with organizations that are inspiring, where Fellows can be inspired for life, where money is not wasted and the impact on

beneficiaries is very large,” says Anand.

Indicorps’ goal is to make the program sustainable so the NGO can eventually leave, confident of handing over every

‘The skills you build are what any job would want. You develop a habit of finding solutions.

Why wouldn’t any employer want that?’

At their second bimonthly retreat at the Safai Vidyalaya attached to the Gandhi Ashram in Ahmedabad, Indicorps Fellows relate individual experiences, discuss problems and replenish energy for a few days before returning to continue with their projects

aspect of management to the community.

Money or funding does not figure in the picture.

“If there’s money involved, the purity of the service relationship is affected,” explains Anand. “Our objective is to add value to the project through human capital and providing leadership.”

AT THE GANDHI ASHRAM, Prarthna Dayal busies about shutting windows and the door to the dormitory. “Or the mosquitoes will have us for dinner,” she smiles. An Indicorps staffer from Delhi, Prarthna trained to be an economist and worked with the Center for Global Development in Washington, DC, where she met Sonal. “I would always talk of going back to India but I worried what I would do there,” she says.

“Sonal asked me if I wanted to work for Indicorps.” She joined in August.

Even as the starlings roosting outside babble in their sleep, the Fellows prepare for a long night. From eight to 10 pm they make presentations about their projects.

Some read from daily journals; others present photo essays, video journals and slide shows.

Thirty seconds to midnight, Manish Pant picks up his guitar and tiptoes toward the curtained partition of the dormitory across which the girls chat, lolling in their beds.

He gently plucks a happy birthday tune on the strings. Nine voices join him in singing.

It is Kalaivani Murugesan’s birthday, her twenty-ninth. The day before belonged to Samina Akbari, 25, and tomorrow Komala Ramachandra will turn 22.

TWO MONTHS INTO his fellowship, Amit Syal sighted the promise he came seeking. Before moving to America from Punjab at age 11, he grew up inspired by his grandfather who was independent despite being blind. He is helping trainees at the Poona Blind Men’s Association Technical Training Institute in Pune to overcome their fear of sighted society.

“In India, blindness is so institutional-

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ized,” observes Amit, 26, who worked for Navsea with the Department of Defense after graduating in mechanical engineering from UC San Diego in 2001. “Blind people rarely join the mainstream, they move from one institution to another.”

He finally felt accepted playing cricket with the trainees using a plastic ball that jingled. “They were way too fast,” he laughs, his bright childlike eyes glinting through his eyeglasses. “They got me out all the time!”

Manish Pant’s languid smile and sleep-tousled hair disguise his idealism and focus. A recent graduate in physiology and neurobiology from the University of Maryland at College Park, he works in three slum areas of Aurangabad, Maharashtra to promote awareness and prevention of HIV/AIDS. “This project couldn’t have been better designed for me,” says the 22 year old, who uses his guitar to dissolve communication barriers.

Samina Akbari and Anjali Desai, 23, work in Ludiya, Kutch, establishing rural design schools for artisan women. While Samina’s fine arts education makes the project a natural extension of her interests, Anjali, a recent graduate in journalism and marketing from the University of Texas, is connecting with her roots, learning about rural life and hopes to be able to empower the women.

Less than two months into working at a total village development project in Manchal Mandal near Hyderabad, Komala Ramachandra had her high moment when she visited family. “When I went up to my grandmother and spoke Telugu, everybody’s jaws just dropped,” laughs the economics and political science graduate from Northwestern University, Iowa.

Kalaivani, who works on the same project, had not visited India in 15 years. Since graduating in anthropology and biology from University of Virginia, this accomplished pianist worked in San Francisco for six years, most recently as a staff editor with a computer-related magazine. While Kalai initially worried she was too old for this program, two months into it she is convinced it is doing her good.

“In some ways, you serve others for a selfish reason: because you feel good about it,” she says. But the experience is also opening her eyes to what she once believed were her parents’ idiosyncrasies. “I always had problems with why my parents behaved in a particular way or said certain things, but now I can relate to where that comes from.”

Meenakshi Nankani’s passport has only one unmarked page. This third-generation Indian’s father, a Sindhi, was raised in Ghana, where he met her mother. Living mostly in Washington, DC, with parents who work for the World Bank, Meenakshi and her twin sister Soneela, who share their February 6 birthday with Bob Marley, lived M12

M12 December 19, 2003

M11 in Brazil for three years. She volunteered in Ghana, and as a child she often visited Pune, where her father had family.

“Growing up, I had difficulties about why I looked different from my cousins,” says Meena, who wants to understand her Indian heritage. An athlete and dancer, she is developing a curriculum for children of migrant laborers in the sugar farms of Theur, Maharashtra.

Roshni Kasad, Shruti Patel and Sandhya Gupta work in various parts of Gujarat.

Roshni, who is also a Worldteach Fellow, pilots a hands-on science project with the state education department for rural schoolchildren. Shruti, a New Jersey native who speaks fluent Gujarati, assists a mobile

school in shoveling sand from a nearby mound into iron tokras.

Someone hands a trilling cell phone to Manish. As he talks, a smile warms his face.

He passes it to Amit.

“Hey Sonal!” says Amit. It is Friday evening in Washington, DC, and Indicorps’ senior founder is eager to catch up with the Fellows. As the phone passes from ear to ear, each one remains engrossed in conversation for several minutes.

“Sonal likes to know what’s going on,” says Ami Desai, an Indicorps staff member who was born and raised in America. “She always talks to the Fellows about their projects.”

The staff members join the Fellows in shoveling sand all over the play area. They

Indicorps cofounder Anand Shah with staff members Milind Thatte (center) and Kabir Kumar.

Milind has worked with two batches of Fellows

‘If we can provide opportunities for 100 people a year, in 20 years that’s 2,000 potential leaders’ education project in Rajkot to inspire interest in education. Sandhya works with a foundation that helps NGOs raise funds and manage relationships for better accountability. “I’m not postponing a career, I’m discovering it,” says the history graduate from Middlebury College.

Gaurav Parnami, who assists Manav Sadhna at a non-formal school in Ramapir No Tekra, Ahmedabad’s largest slum, teaching slum children English and improving their life, felt the first signs of change. “Every day I would ask this boy about his ambition, and he would say he wanted to be a cobbler,” recalls Gaurav, 28, who was born in Kurukshetra, Haryana, and raised in California and Arizona. “The eighth time, he said he wants to open a shoe store.”

SATURDAY MORNING, before sunup, the earliest risers practice an hour of Tai Chi. The rest of the morning is for hard work. Freshly showered, the Fellows catch a hurried breakfast of toast, tea and fruit, then rush to the Gandhi Ashram grounds to clear pebbles from a sandpit near Hriday Kunj, the house where Gandhi lived before leaving the Ashram in 1930.

The grounds are shaded with neem trees alive with frisky squirrels and gossiping parakeets. The shimmering Sabarmati makes for a breathtaking backdrop, as the Fellows join children from the Ashram

take a break for inspiration, seated in a circle on the ground, singing bhajans with the kids.

SOFT-SPOKEN AND mustachioed, Milind Thatte was one of Indicorps’ first employees in India. A journalist with a Marathi newspaper, he was drawn to community service while covering elections in Jharkhand state in eastern India. While working for Friends of Tribals Society, an NGO with an office in Mumbai, he ran into Anand. “I was about to leave and find a job in the media,” says Milind, 28, who designs projects and coordinates retreats. “I liked the concept of Indicorps. When Anand offered me a job, I accepted.”

Staff members get seven days off a year, but they are willing to risk the meager pay for a career that is rewarding in another sense.

Prarthna’s parents feel she should be doing much better for one who graduated in economics from Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon, and took a master’s degree in international relations from Johns Hopkins University.

“The money is not enough to be independent,” says Prarthna, who is in her twenties and lives with relatives in New Delhi. “There are also other pressures about being single,” she adds with a laugh. “But for now, this is what I love to do.”

Lunch after a morning of sweat is most welcome, and nobody resents the chore of doing dishes at the end. At the Gandhi Ashram kitchen, a simple meal of rice, salad and steaming hot Dal Dhokli — “Indian Spaghetti,” Jayesh Patel says with a laugh — is wolfed down quickly. Post lunch, Manish brings out his guitar. Milind keeps the beat on the tabla as the two engage in an impromptu fusion jam.

“How did you like the Dal Dhokli?” asks M13

A night under another sky he easiest way to get to Ramapir No Tekra from Gandhi Ashram is through what Indicorps Fellows Bindi Gandhi and Anjali Sardeshmukh charitably christened the Field of Feces. A murky open sewer gurgles merrily through it, foaming white at a bend on its course. Curious goats, and pigs with striped piglets in tow, poke around heaps of plastic bags, copious refuse and smoking mounds of rags.

In Gujarati, tekra means hill, or more accurately hillock. Ramapir No Tekra in Ahmedabad is Gujarat’s largest slum.

“About 150,000 thousand people live here,” says Jayesh Patel, as he eases his Hyundai Santro into a clearing where the longer route to the slum ends. “This place must be about three or four kilometers in each direction,” estimates Anar, his wife. The couple runs Manav Sadhna, a community service organization attached to Gandhi Ashram.

The slum is a rabbit warren of labyrinthine alleys, its contours broken by towering heaps of baked clay pots and small mountains of paper and rags, symbols of the two principal sources of livelihood here. Gullies of waste water snake through the cobbled street. The winding path, just wide for a cow, leads past rows of houses — most constructed from mud and tin sheets; the older ones have added a precarious level. The ‘affluent’ area has one-room houses

T

Right: Manish Pant is welcomed by Rakesh, a student of the non-formal school at the slum. Indicorps Fellows spent a night at the slum with selected families Below: Indicorps fellow Kalaivani Murugesan with her host family

of concrete.

“Gaurav bhai!” A wiry young boy scurries up to Gaurav Parnami, an Indicorps Fellow who assists Manav Sadhna in Ramapir No Tekra. He leads ten Indicorps Fellows and five staffers to a courtyard under a staggered clump of neem trees. Here, in three one-room buildings, the NGO runs a non-formal school for slum children.

“Gaurav bhai teaches us English,” says Hitendra. “He tells us not to smoke or chew tobacco.” He and his friend Ashwin are grade eight students at a government school nearby. “But they don’t teach us as well as they do here,” says Ashwin.

Manav Sadhna aims to create leaders from the slum community who can then sustain it. The non-formal school offers free health education to children of rag pickers and potters. Children who attend get lessons in sanitation awareness and spoken English. They also get backpacks, stationery and a daily snack.

The Indicorps Fellows, who undertook a 10-day trek through the tribal villages of Maharashtra, are now here for a taste

M13 December 19, 2003

M12 Amit Tillu, an Indicorps staff member from Mumbai.

“Too good, yaar!” replies Manish, borrowing a phrase from Tillu’s vocabulary.

The orientation has paid off.

Gaurav Parnami, 28, an Indicorps Fellow, works with Manav Sadhna, an NGO attached to the Gandhi Ashram, Ahmedabad. Working in Ramapir No Tekra, Ahmedabad's largest slum, he teaches children (above and below) English and focuses on improving urban slum life, tackling public health concerns and developing a vision for a new community center. Gaurav, who was born in Kurukshetra, Haryana, and raised in Jaipur, has lived in California, New Mexico and Arizona

COURTESY: INDICORPS

of slum life. “The people, language and food habits vary from slum to slum,” explains Kamlesh, a balwadi (preschool) teacher with a thin mustache and a ready smile.

Jayesh, who chanced upon him teaching slum children on a school holiday, wondered which teacher would have 35 kids with him on a day off.

Ami Desai, an Indicorps staffer, interprets as Kamlesh addresses the Fellows in Gujarati. He has been teaching children since he was in grade eight, and for the last five years at Ramapir No Tekra.

The group gasps in unison when he tells them his age.

“Twenty!”

Kamlesh leads the slum children in language lessons told through songs. Inside the schoolhouse, with its mud floors and sheet metal doors, is a clay idol of Ganesh, with arms and legs shaped tellingly like rotund clay pitchers. A softboard displays pictures the children have made — a golden-yellow lion, a bluegreen peacock, and a parakeet crafted from green velvet paper with glittering red chamki for eyes. On the whitewashed mud wall is a mural of a woman wearing an orange sari and a patchwork blouse, carrying a bale of mown grass.

“The children are usually afraid of going to regular school,” says Kamlesh.

“They fear they will be beaten. But they feel safe here.”

As the evening sun lengthens shadows, the children sweep fallen leaves into baskets and pat the loose, drifting dust down with water. They are expecting a visitor — Ahmedabad’s Additional Deputy Commissioner Of Police Keshav Kumar — who has been invited to interact with them.

Gaurav takes the Fellows on a tour of the slum, showing them a new house that Manav Sadhna constructed.

Dusk. A lapwing calls from the nallah.

Against the distant skyline, over the tops of

the behemoth concrete buildings, there are ephemeral starbursts — fireworks, perhaps celebrating a wedding. But over the tekra the air is rank with acrid smoke from cooking stoves and the potters’ kilns. The slightest breeze stirs up the thin, fine dust.

“There’s so much of it in the air, you can feel it in your teeth,” grimaces Manish Pant.

Throats begin to itch. Tissues are produced. Noses are mopped. For those used to the comfort of a hot shower, there is no better time to crave one.

But tonight, the Fellows will spend the night here in the slum, as houseguests of children who attend the non-formal school.

There is an expectant silence as Gaurav reads out names of children who will take a Fellow in for the night.

“Ashwin!” Shruti Patel whoops when she learns she will stay with a friend she has made over the Thanksgiving weekend.

“The house you are going to stay in has no electricity, no bathroom and seven members,” Gaurav informs Manish. But all his apprehensions melt away when Rakesh, his host for the night, welcomes him at the door with aarti and a tika.

“There was no toilet in my house,” Meenakshi Nankani said the next morning.

“There was one next door, but it had no door. The women stood guard for me.”

Kalaimani Murugesan’s Gujarati improved overnight. “Maro naam Kalai che [My name is Kalai],” she said proudly to Shruti who nodded, impressed.

Amit Syal spent the night with Jignesh, a boy of about twelve. All evening he noticed Jignesh spitting on the ground. That night Amit drew him aside and admonished him gently. “You can spread disease this way,” he told him in Hindi. “Would you like to do that?” Jignesh said nothing.

“He actually changed,” Amit observed in the morning. “I saw him cover up his spittle with soil.”

— Bijoy Venugopal

ONE OF THE most inspiring moments this last year, says Anand, was when the President of India visited them in Ahmedabad. “I had written a letter to President A P J Abdul Kalam asking if the Fellows could meet him at Rashtrapati Bhavan [the presidential palace in New Delhi] but he asked if he could visit the Fellows instead,” recalls Anand.

Everything from experiences and processes to insights are rigorously documented, and Anand has a soft spot for nifty gadgets. “I put a year’s savings into this video camera,” he says, adding they have learned many new things in the past year.

“As India develops as an economic power, people forget to see opportunity in places other than just information technology,” he observes. If people feel taking a year off can hurt their career, Anand argues, “The skills you build here are what any job or business would want. You develop a habit of finding solutions. Why wouldn’t any employer want that?”

“There are also little things we learned,” Kabir chimes in with a conspiring laugh.

“Last year, Sanjay Bhatt came with two 30kg suitcases and hauled them around for two weeks until he found a place to settle in. This year, our travel advisory is simple: don’t bring anything, you get everything in India.”

Apart from chills and fevers and the occasional diarrhea, there have been no major safety concerns. “There is a list of things we tell the Fellows to do and not to do,” says Ami. “If they blend in and follow societal norms, they will be safe.”

The rest is essential to the experience.

Kalai feels sexual harassment and teasing are universal issues that “could happen to anyone anywhere in the world.”

“Like, who hasn’t been groped on a bus?” asks Aparna.

THERE WERE TIMES Anand doubted the practicability of this lofty vision. But he has always been pleasantly reassured.

“The lesson I have learned is that people are willing to give as much time and as much energy as they have if they believe

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their contribution is worth something,” he says. “It’s a dream, an almost romantic idea: ‘I want to be able to give my time and skills in a creative manner where I get to think about the project, apply my mind and make it successful and learn about myself.’ If you can offer that realistically, people are willing to give their time any day of the week.”

His parents, who never stopped them but initially worried what their children were doing with their lives, are now a lot more understanding.

“It’s also been relatively easy to remain non-political,” he says. “When NGOs ask us to help we’re willing as long as we fit within the rules. If it’s about having to use influence and make connections we stay out of it. We would rather fold and shut our doors than compromise our philosophy.”

“A lot of people mistake our program to be about bringing volunteers to India,” adds Kabir. “What we’re really after is to build leaders.”

There are other programs on Indicorps’ anvil, like the Senior Corps fellowship for retired NRIs in the US and Canada, or the domestic fellowship for motivated youngsters in India. A short-term volunteer program, for those who cannot spare a year, is already in place. In the future, Anand hopes to extend the fellowship program to the Indian Diaspora in other countries.

“If we are able to provide opportunities for a hundred people a year, in twenty years that’s 2,000 potential leaders,” says Anand. “They are not leaders because they took exams to become bureaucrats or because their fathers were politicians.

They are leaders because they were here.”

AT TWILIGHT THE Gandhi Ashram reverberates with the sound of drums.

Children from the Ashram, licking ice kulfis, set the beat for a garba dance in the moonlit courtyard. As the Fellows weave in and out of the widening circle more children join the dance, as if beckoned by the drums, their cheers and pattering feet competing with the music.

“Seventy years ago, Mahatma Gandhi picked up salt and a whole nation followed him,” Anand says, illustrating the power of one.

Perhaps Gandhi said it best: ‘You must be the change you wish to see in the world.’

M14 December 19, 2003

Humanity that works

COURTESY: SHAH FAMILY

tive outlook on anything.”

Then, in 1998, her brother Anand took a year off from Harvard to study at a philosophical school run by Athavale’s followers, in Thane, outside Mumbai. Anand was one of 10 students from America who participated in the program. He realized along the way that there were many other Indian-Americans his age who were interested in spending structured time in India, working with organizations that had clearly defined agendas.

His ideas excited Sonal and Roopal. This seemed to be an inspired, workable plan, along the lines of the Peace Corps. With his sisters’ financial help, Anand stayed on in India, personally researching dozens of non-profits and NGOs, winnowing out the less relevant or productive ones. Meanwhile, Sonal and Roopal sought out funding in the US, structured a program, and drafted a 12-page application. Sonal’s contacts throughout the development sector were crucial — they helped the trio create a cutting-edge program and brought in the manpower that often eludes well-intentioned startups.

Sixty people competed for the first 10 Indicorps fellowships. Anand returned to the States in time to help some of the on-site interviews that the siblings conducted all over the country.

In May of 2002, the first batch of Fellows had been selected. By September, they were on the ground in India, and Indicorps was underway.

The siblings — Sonal (left), Anand and Roopal Shah — work in tandem, translating the idea of Indicorps into reality and creating a cutting-edge program for IndianAmerican youth to experience life in the India’s heartland

M7 the Gujarati Samaj and annual religious events like the Navratri celebrations. It was, says Ramesh, the family’s way of recreating India.

“The one basic part which affected all of our lives was Swami Vivekananda’s readings,” says Ramesh. “When I came here, it was tough, so that reading helped us a lot. That made our love for India — doing something for India — stronger.

Even if we didn’t go, it was there.”

The family was influenced by Indian social reformer Pandurang Athavale who founded the Swadhyaya movement in the 1950s. Athavale was a deeply spiritual man who would quote from the Gita as well as Kant and Marx. He frequently visited villages wracked by alcoholism or crime, giving discourses and encouraging volunteers to build homes and teach locals advanced farming and fishing techniques. He died this October, on Diwali, but not before his movement had brought several million people under the tent, including the Shahs.

Sonal and her siblings all connected to Athavale’s teachings, particularly to the notion that one can transform oneself through social work.

The first impulses of what would later turn into Indicorps came in 1988. That summer, after her sophomore year at the University of Chicago, Sonal, her mother, and siblings bought threemonth rail passes and participated in rural development projects around India. They stayed in Uttar Pradesh, Kolkata and the tribal region that is now called Jharkhand, before traveling south to Madras [now Chennai], Pondicherry, Kanyakumari, and Dharwad, in Karnataka. Along the way, they formed friendships with local activists, including some who had left America or urban India in order to work in the villages. The experience left a major impact on the 20-year-old Sonal who eventually wrote her senior economics thesis on the development work she’d observed in Uttar Pradesh.

In 1990, Sonal graduated and spent a year wandering through rural India, Kenya, Uganda and Mozambique. She would land up in one small town after another, looking for work and seeking out shelter wherever possible — the home of

The first impulses of what would become Indicorps came in 1988. Sonal, her mother and siblings participated in rural development projects around India some distant acquaintance or someone she’d just met — even occasionally crashing out at a local train station.

“My relatives in India thought I was a nutcase,” she recalls, with a laugh “but my parents were supportive.”

Sonal received a Masters degree at Duke before returning to work in Houston, for Anderson Consulting. During this period, she started taking a leadership role involving other young IndianAmericans in social projects. One of her favorites was called Impressions, a scholarship initiative she directed that drew solely upon IndianAmerican youth efforts in the Houston area.

However, she increasingly realized that there was a need for something that took IndianAmericans to India. She and Roopal were admirers of Teach for America — the Clinton-era initiative that took college graduates to inner-city schools — and came up with Teach for India.

The program never took off. The Shahs had trouble finding funding, and they came to the conclusion it would be beset by problems, not least of which was the language barrier that Indian-Americans would confront in rural Indian schools.

However, this didn’t deter Sonal for long, and for the most part she thinks that all challenges work out for the best.

“If one program didn’t work well, it led to an opportunity to do another program,” she says.

“The setbacks we faced only opened other doors for us. But then again, I don’t really have a nega-

ON THE SURFACE, the notion of doing social work in India is not new, and Sonal is the first to admit as much. There are thousands of non-profits and NGOs in India, performing a wide variety of services. However, Indicorps may be the first program to directly solicit the services of young Indians living in North America, and that too after a competitive selection process.

For those who do apply to Indicorps, the organization acts as mediator between the individual and the seemingly chaotic social sector of India.

Sonal, with her impressive background in the American development sector, lends cachet to the handful of programs that Indicorps chooses to partner with.

One of these is an agricultural water management project in Ludiya, in the Gujarati region of Kutch.

“It’s dry land,” she says. “Water runs off into the gutters. It has to be absorbed. So you put in large plants, you put in certain types of trees so the water is caught.”

Rather than merely send in volunteers to perform the work, Indicorps Fellow Shezeen Suleman and the host organization, known as Manav Sadhna, helped train locals how to manage the program themselves.

“If they don’t participate in it, it doesn’t matter,” says Sonal. “Maintenance is the issue.”

Shezeen, a fourth generation East African whose family still speaks Gujarati, initiated what is known in development circles as an open contract process. This means that all bids for contracts are known to the public, whereas the standard practice in India has always been to keep it secretive.

“It had never been done,” says Sonal. “But the community knows now what they should be getting with their money. Not half a well, not a quarter of a well, the whole well. The contractors weren’t too happy about it.”

But the idea caught fire in the region, and before long, other villages were seeing it as a solution to their mismanaged development works.

“People were coming to Shezeen and saying ‘Can you help us do this?’” says Sonal. “It’s a pretty simple concept, but they didn’t know about it.

It’s a process that gets passed on.”

Another Fellow, Radhika Singh, worked elsewhere in Ludiya, on a handicraft cooperative, while Krishnan Unnikrishnan has been producing a musical with 1,400 street children in Mumbai. One of the most ambitious projects,

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‘We are so happy they chose a goal other than to make money’

COURTESY: SONAL SHAH

Sonal Shah’s family has been involved in community affairs since she was a child, ARUN VENUGOPAL discovers in Houston

Sonal Shah at a slum in Jakarta, Indonesia, where she visited while working on the Asian financial crisis at the Department of Treasury

M14 perhaps, is a collaboration with Ekal Vidyalaya and the Friends of Tribals Society. The plan is to build, over the course of time, 100,000 schools in tribal areas.

While many of these projects, and for that matter, all development works, interact with sensitive constituencies, Indicorps has so far avoided any political controversy. For Sonal, it is vital the group avoids taking sides, whether it comes to religious politics or the communalism in Gujarat, where much of Indicorps’ work takes place.

“I’m not interested in the ideology,” she says. “We don’t really want to get in that. A lot of things happen for ideological reasons.”

The risk, she suggests, is that her young American or Canadian Fellows will charge in with grand ideas of the problems that plague a village when often the truth is complex or mundane or both.

“The politics aren’t usually about religion. It’s usually about land or something like that. Religion is used to create a greater disparity. In local communities, a lot of the disputes are usually over things that are more tangible, and it’s important to understand that.”

She does, however, require that Indicorps Fellows be as informed as possible. To that end, she has prepared an Indicorps reader, which she is in the process of revising.

As it currently stands, the Indicorps reader is a solid bit of reading — three thick, photocopied volumes and just under a thousand pages of articles, novel excerpts, and chapters from historical texts.

The reader is ideologically diverse and includes the works of Amartya Sen, V S Naipaul, Salman Rushdie, Nehru, Mark Tully, and Shashi Tharoor, as well as Sunil Khilnani, Konrad Elst, Robert Kaplan, and Jeffrey Sachs. Asghar Ali Engineer is included, as is the pro-Hindutva French journalist Francois Gautier’s Arise Again, O India and The Symbol of Ayodhya.

Rather than ignore any segment of the political continuum, Sonal has embraced all of them, and encourages her Fellows to make their own, informed decisions.

“When I was in college, I took a history course, and my professor came in and he had this huge fight with his assistant.”

The students, not knowing that they had witnessed a mock fight, were told to record what they had seen.

“There were 35 students in the class and they gave 35 different perspectives on what had happened. So it’s the truth, but it’s somebody’s truth.”

IN A FEW YEARS, Sonal says, she hopes Indicorps can sponsor 30 or 40 Fellows per year. The organization is currently establishing a Senior Corps, which will allow older Fellows the chance to customize their own development projects. Indicorps is also working with other communities — Iranian-Americans, Turkish-Americans, Bolivian-Americans — who are interested in setting up their own organizations.

Just as important is that the Fellows are adequately supported when they return, through a well-established network and frequent opportunities to

assume leadership positions.

“If the individuals are stronger then the work will be stronger.”

What that work may be, she doesn’t specify. She knows very well that many of her Fellows won’t go on to careers in development. She seems confident, though, that the process will eventually lead to a richer Diaspora, one with a stronger connection to India and its hidden resources. Indicorps was never really about turning India around — she knows better than to overreach — but she does think the development community as a whole needs to do a better job of quantifying the effects of its work in India.

“When you spend money on education, what happens? When the government spends three percent on education, then five percent, that’s a success.

But what does it mean?”

Sonal shifts back out of global development mode. Although much of her professional life has entailed looking at the big picture — debt relief, $800 million packages and whatnot — she seems to have concluded that ultimately, a few moments of contact can be the quickest route to progress.

“Half the time if you go to the slums it’s more important if you sit down and have some tea, than if you give them something,” she says. “It goes a long way.”

And then there are the villages in rural Gujarat and Maharashtra, where the locals make do with less, so that Indicorps Fellows can live more comfortably. “They would eat twice a day to feed us three times a day,” says Sonal.

“It was amazing. And you go, ‘This is true India.’ There’s something about humanity that — that works.”

Co- sponsored by:

t’s a wet Sunday morning and Sonal Shah is at the Park Plaza Hospital in Houston. Her mother Kokila is reclining on a bed, recovering from knee surgery four days earlier.

Sonal is quite clearly happy to be back with her family, and passes the time teasing her mother and chatting with friends. For a moment, however, she goes into concerned-oldest-child mode, giving her mother a stern primer on taking care of herself at home.

“The shots are the most important, okay, Ma? The blood thinners. We put the bed in the living room.

Move the carpet so you don’t slip or trip. And you sleep for two hours every day.

“And turn off the phone.”

The hospital room, over the course of the day, appears to play host to a large percentage of the Gujarati community in Houston, including many supporters of Indicorps. A steady stream of people drop by, some for a few minutes, others for much longer. The activity has been so great that the hospital has decided to move Kokila to her own room later, and away from the elderly Mrs Jackson, who lies quietly on the other side of the curtain.

“We’re very social,” says an apologetic Kokila.

Sonal’s younger sister Roopal flits around the room, tidying up. Roopal has returned after ten months in India, where she has been helping their brother Anand run Indicorps. She is regularly mistaken for her big sister, and the two look a lot alike — they both wear short-sleeved tops, made by women in the slums of Ahmedabad. But Roopal has a sharper bone structure to Sonal’s softer features, and where Roopal is contained at times, Sonal makes large, sweeping gestures to emphasize a point.

Like her brother Anand, a Harvard-educated teacher by profession, Roopal put her career in law on hold for the sake of Indicorps. It was their way of nurturing and fulfilling an idea sown by their big sister in the 1990s: that young Indian-Americans could transform themselves through social work in India.

The near miracle that three siblings pursued distinct professional paths before converging in social work has not been lost on their mother.

“When they were young, they were always helping,” says Kokila, from her bed. “We are so happy that they chose a goal other than to make money. We were hoping they’d do something better in the world.”

Of course, early on, there was the occasional concern. How, for instance, was her single daughter,

I

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ARUN VENUGOPAL

December 19, 2003

Roopal (center) and Sonal Shah (right) with their mother Kokila at Park Plaza Hospital, Houston. Kokila Shah underwent knee surgery

‘We are so happy they chose a goal other than to make money’ always on the go, supposed to land a husband?

“When we went to India in 2000, we’d get asked that all the time,” says Sonal with a laugh.

But Kokila and Ramesh, for all their traditionalism, realized Sonal was best left to her own devices.

“If she can find a same-thinking partner, it’s better,” says Kokila. “I’m just worried about their health. They’re so busy. I tell them, ‘Take care of yourself. Don’t just work all day.’”

Maternal concern aside, there is more than a little irony here. The elder Shahs, after all, are notoriously busy people, ever active in the Houston community. Ramesh Shah even fasted for a year in order to raise funds for the Gujarati Samaj’s Gandhi Center, in 1991 — he was insistent that no loans be taken, and his diligence paid off.

The family has also been involved in the Vishwa Hindu Parishad of North America, the Overseas BJP, Ekal Vidyalaya, and Swadhyaya, as well as the centennial of Swami Vivekananda’s US visit, which was celebrated in 1992. For years, they have also taken part in the India Culture Center, and in 1997 helped organize the festivities for India’s 50th Independence Day. And then there were the frequent houseguests: Indian politicians and spiritual leaders who were always passing through Houston, either to address the local community or because they needed care at the Texas Medical Center.

Among these was India’s current Vice President, Bhairon Singh Shekhawat, who was the chief minister of Rajasthan when he stayed with the Shahs in the late 1970s.

“They were very simple,” said Ramesh Shah, a former engineer who’s now vice president of investment at Morgan Stanley. “That molded [the children’s] lives. They saw how undemanding these people were.”

Paradoxically, perhaps, none of the Shah children lead what can be called insular or stereotypically conservative lives. All were active on their high school tennis or basketball or speech teams. All three went away for their higher studies, and for all their religious activities, neither Sonal

COURTESY: SHAH FAMILY

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The Shah clan: Anand (standing, far left), Kokila (standing, center in a purple kurta), Sonal (sitting, third from right), Roopal (sitting, third from left) and Ramesh (sitting, far right). Seated center is Ramesh’s mother, who died two years ago

nor Roopal ever quite took to ritual or temple visits.

“There’s more interest in the cultural part of the religious occasions,” says Ramesh.

He pointed out that Roopal is an avid surfer — something she picked up in Hawaii and continued when she lived in San Diego. Sonal steps away from work a couple times a week to go jogging, and plays volleyball regularly.

The siblings do apparently argue now and then, but they manage to make Indicorps work by bringing respective skills to the table. Anand is the techie, and like Sonal, is extremely extroverted. Roopal, says her mother, “is more of a one on one person,” who acts as a spiritual backbone for the other two.

Back in the hospital room, food is passed out. Plates of roti and potato sabzi and raita, prepared by Sonal’s grandmother at home.

The room is momentarily empty before more family friends drop by, a middle-aged couple and an elderly Gujarati lady in a purple sari.

“Khem cho, bhao? [What’s up?]” asks Sonal.

“Khem cho, bhao? Beso, beso, [What’s up? Sit, sit]” says Roopal, offering her a seat.

“Uncle, you need to start walking with Dad,” Sonal says to a man named Praduman. “When you stop walking, he stops walking.”

“Uncle has an apartment in Amdavad [Ahmedabad] that’s our base,” explains Roopal, referring to the man named Praduman.

“A lot of [Indicorps’ success] is thanks to family friends,” says Sonal, “people that offered printing services, offered to set up our web site. Honestly, the concept of family really came together. Really, we couldn’t have done it without all of them.”

“They have been great family friends. These are some of the friends we first knew in Houston. My parents started the Gujarati Samaj when we first came. We used to do garba — there were 50 families then — now, they get 15,000 people. I go to the bleachers just to watch them.”

A woman wearing blue scrubs comes in.

“Tanya’s here,” Roopal announces.

Tanya eases a walker up to the bed and helps Kokila down. The two slowly head for the doorway.

“I’ll be back,” says Kokila.

“Alright,” says Sonal, smiling as her mother shuffles away. “She’s actually pretty good for a person with a bum knee.”

Sonal talks about the influence her parents and their community involvement had on the three siblings, early on. Indicorps ultimately came about because she realized that many Indian-American kids were conflicted about their place in American society — the eternal theme of the bicultural struggle — and that doing something constructive in India could give them some perspective. It helps, Sonal notes, that her parents urged them to be involved rather than sit back and complain.

“Being a part of the Indian community was a very important enabler for us, because it helped us understand our identity,” she says. “We used this pride in our identity and community to also work with the broader American community.”

Kokila and Tanya return, and Kokila climbs back into bed, where her leg is fitted into a brace-like contraption.

“It moves your foot up to an angle,” explains Sonal. “The first day it was 30 degrees, then it was 40 degrees, then it was 50.

Roopal positions a pillow behind her mother’s back.

“Try that,” she offers.

Tanya continues increasing the angle on Kokila’s leg and although Kokila says she’s fine, beads of sweat appear on her forehead and she’s clearly breathing heavily. The sisters joke about their mother’s notoriously high pain tolerance, the flip side of her tendency to think that there are others, elsewhere, with far bigger problems than her own.

“She didn’t want to take any painkillers after the operation,” says Sonal, laughing, “but she was not in good shape after the epidural wore off.”

Another couple comes in, and Sonal and Roopal appear to pick up on an ongoing conversation. They want the woman, a gynecologist also named Kokila, to bring her medical skills to Ahmedabad.

“We’ve got something for you,” says Sonal. “Whenever you’re ready.”

Kokila is interested, but wary.

“I don’t want to go into too much crowd,” she says, then turning to Sonal and Roopal’s mother, adds, “How do these kids who’ve grown up in America adjust to India?”

“It wasn’t a problem — India’s changed a lot,” says Roopal, “and you focus on what you’re doing.”

“Come, come,” says Sonal, sensing victory. “If you just spend a day with us, it’ll be worth your time.”

The two sisters play tag team, finishing each other’s sentences, taking quick-burst turns at bringing people into the fold.

“If you come to Amdavad, Anand is there, so it’s easy for us. Call them,” says Roopal, handing out an Indicorps card.

“Come, it’s really worthwhile,” says Sonal.

Kokila’s defenses appear to have withered, and just like that, Sonal and her sister appear to have themselves another Indicorps recruit.

Director, India Abroad Person of the Year 2003 Event: Anjali S Maniam Trophy Design: Lynette Menezes, Dominic Xavier, Uttam Ghosh Special Issue Design: Dominic Xavier, Lynette Menezes, Sanjay Sawant, Uttam Ghosh Photographs: Jewella C Miranda, Paresh Gandhi