OUR COVER STORY
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Off the Beaten Path: Chamba: A city of temples and peace
May 2012 -
Up north in Chamba, Himachal Pradesh, where the air is cool and wet, and mornings are miraculous with cloud-topped mountains, sits a town where tribal communities join Hindu, Muslim, Christian, and Sikh populations in the same parade.
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Weapons of Comic Construction
April 2012 -
Three men went on a mission to India this past January, to spread the message of peace and harmony through comedy. Stand-up comedians Rajiv Satyal, Hari Kondabolu, and Azhar Usman stopped at seven cities around India as a part of a tour titled Make Chai Not War, promoted by the U.S. Department of State.
Conceived in 2007, Make Chai Not War was the brainchild of Satyal and Usman, who are Hindu and Muslim, respectively.
In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Satyal said, “Make Chai Not War is a call-back to the hippie motto of ‘Make Love, Not War’. Chai is a tea that both Hindus and Muslims drink. So if we can enjoy the same thing, be it a hot drink or a laugh, surely we can bridge any other issues we may have. That is the theme of the show—bringing Hindus and Muslims (and inherently all other religions) together through humor.”
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Restless, Not Rootless: Pico Iyer Talks to Khabar
March 2012 -
Pico Iyer is a traveler, writer, seeker, a ‘global soul.’ In an interview, he talks about being an outsider, authors Graham Greene and R. K. Narayan, the Dalai Lama, living in Japan, his Indian roots, travel writing, the Internet, and the joys of a quiet life.
Several times a year, Iyer retreats to a Benedictine hermitage in California for brief stints of simple living, silence and serious reading. And for the rest of the time, when not taking off to distant corners of the globe, he lives in rural Japan with his wife in a two-room apartment or in Santa Monica, where his mother resides. Iyer is not a fan of social media and he doesn’t own a cellphone. But Iyer has certainly joined the pantheon of distinguished contemporary travel writers.
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Raising a Confident Youngster
February 2012 -
The pressures and pleasures of growing up tend to be similar across cultures—but for Indian-American youngsters, often there’s the added stress of being different from their mainstream peers. Why, despite such challenges, do so many from the second and third generations do so well? Khabar spoke to five achievers, each of whom gave clues on what helped them. One set of parents also gave their outline of eight tips that worked for them in their parenting.
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Exporting Entertainment
January 2012 -
Exporting Entertainment…and importing it: the rising exchange of influences between India and the world in cinema, music, and pop culture.
Is India a kind of invisible, powerful magic vapor, something in the air, which seeps into everything? Look around and you will find that around the world, desi vibes can be found in almost every aspect of global pop culture, as East and West merge in the world of entertainment.
Why this fascination with Indian pop culture? And why now?
The future of Hollywood and Bollywood should be very entertaining to watch – with many deals and collaborations on the way. So keep watching folks – the show has only just begun!
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In Search of India
December 2011 -
Is India rising or stalling? Racing or crawling? If you want to know where the hype ends and where the story begins, skip the media sound bites and turn to authors like Patrick French and Siddhartha Deb. The devil is in the details—and when it comes to understanding India, the real news is the nuance their books bring to an exploration of a country that’s, in many ways, changing fast. Both French and
Deb spoke to Khabar in separate interviews.
Also included are a dozen selected quotes from Patrick French’s book, India: A Portrait (Knopf, 2011).
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Young and Spiritual
November 2011 -
When many of us moved to the “material” West from the “spiritual” East, we were not focusing on spiritual aspirations. Today many in the following generations are giving up lucrative careers in search of inner fulfillment through spiritual pursuits.
Khabar interviews a number of young individuals and couples who have turned to a spiritual life, as well as a family whose son is on his way to becoming a swami in the BAPS Swaminarayan organization--where he will live a Spartan life, giving up even the smallest of luxuries, breaking all ties with past lives and completely dedicating himself to the faith and the organization.
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Rural India through American Eyes
October 2011 -
Magical images and perceptive insights come about when a group
of Americans are transported to Himachal Pradesh and Orissa in a
photography expedition where they, along with local school children,
chronicle the region and its culture and people. Previous workshops by the IPP involved local children only (“Worth a Thousand Words,” Khabar, September 2010). This year, Bhaskar included Americans for crosscultural education.
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From Murder to Meditation
September 2011 -
Many of the inmates in one of Alabama’s toughest prisons are in for heinous crimes such as murder. Thanks to a revolutionary rehabilitation program, highlighted by a rigorous 10-day meditation retreat based on the teachings of the Buddha, these distressed souls are finding a way out — while never leaving the walls that imprison them.
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Brain Man: A Conversation with Dr. V. S. Ramachandran
August 2011 -
Ramachandran’s work on agnosia, phantom limbs, synesthesia, mirror neurons, autism, language evolution, aphasia, etc. makes him a star in his field, and he has a large following among lay enthusiasts. Having co-authored the best-seller PHANTOMS IN THE BRAIN and authored A BRIEF TOUR OF HUMAN CONSCIOUSNESS, he came out earlier this year with THE TELL-TALE BRAIN: A NEUROSCIENTIST’S QUEST FOR WHAT MAKES US HUMAN.
An episode of the TV show, House, illustrated how Ramachandran’s famed mirror visual feedback (MVF) method helps real-life amputees in pain.
