by Keertana Sastry – University of Missouri Graduate   For those of you waiting to find a TV show that accurately portrays South Asian life in a big city, there’s finally one coming up the woodwork. Recently, I had the pleasure of talking to Hiral Shah, the producer of a hopeful new series...

by Keertana Sastry and Sheela Lal Let’s face it, Indian movies are… not all gems. The songs, the lame dances, the cheese, OH the cheese! That’s what we all grew up to love. But the films on this list have a healthy balance of cheese and maturity that would make anyone take India’s movie industry...

By Priya Mukhopadhyay – Stony Brook University “Mom, Dad, you don’t get it!” I’m sure we’ve all heard this phrase leave our mouths or even had to bite our tongues when wanting to say it numerous times.  Growing up in a South Asian household while going to school in a Western environment...

by Shritin Patel – Houston Baptist University I can still remember the feeling of embarrassment and contempt I felt at my culture when my 5th grade teacher refused to take any of the food I made because she thought I had a disease that afflicted my hands. That “disease” was my henna. Growing...

by Shivangi Ramachandran – University of Oregon I am super patriotic for someone who claims to care about absolutely nothing. I wasn’t always this way though. While I was growing up, I was mostly oblivious to the surroundings I was growing up in. Like every other child, I considered my bhutta-eating,...

by Kriti Garg – San Fransisco, CA Like many children born and brought up in the U.S. these days, I grew up exposed to two cultures and two languages.  American was my home, and India held my heritage.  My family shopped at Trader Joe’s and New India Bazaar, we watched “The Parent...

by Komal Thakkar – George Washington University When my parents used to tell my brother and me that we would be attending a pooja later that night, we would groan with disappointment and the protests would begin. “We just went to one last weekend, and we don’t even understand what’s going...

by Neethi Srinivasan – University of Michigan Pageants – it’s one of my many guilty pleasures. Though the word alone makes my skin crawl with images of taffeta and tiaras, pageants are one of those social train wrecks that I can’t take my eyes off. Like any good reality show, they have...

by Sneha Goud In the 1980s, The Cosby Show was the most diverse show on television.  In the 90′s, two of NBC’s hit Thursday night comedies, Friends and Seinfeld, were criticized for their whitewashed view of New York.  But it definitely is not the 90s anymore and Zee TV isn’t the only...

by Musleha Munir No, I don’t mean shop online or peruse the Home Shopping Network, I mean shop in your own closet! Or your mother’s, sister’s or even brother’s! We all know the current economic situation facing us, the headlines don’t let us forget about the increasing rate...