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God, We Hope Mamta Screws Tata Nano

 Auto  1 Response »
Sep 032008
 
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As strong supporters of public transportation and the little man against the big corporations, we can’t help but wish that Mamta Banerjee screws or at least seriously delays the Tata Nano project in Singur (West Bengal) so that costs escalate and the car becomes unaffordable.

We fear that cars like Nano will distract from necessary attention to improving public transportation, exacerbate the pollution and increase gas prices.


Cheap Car or Costly Curse?

More pollution and higher gas prices will have a disproportionate negative Continue reading »

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 Posted by at 11:56 am

Abu Dhabi to Invest $1b in Bollywood, Hollywood Movies

 Bollywood, Hollywood, Tamil Movies  10 Responses »
Sep 032008
 
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Abu Dhabi Media Company plans to invest $1 billion in Bollywood, Hollywood and other movies, according to the Financial Times.

As part of the new initiative, Abu Dhabi Media Company has formed a new company called imagenation abu dhabi to develop, finance and produce content for both the global and Arabic language markets.

The plan is to invest more than $1 billion over the next five years in full length Continue reading »

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 Posted by at 10:07 am

Dell to Join Netbook Parade

 IT Industry  No Responses »
Sep 032008
 
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Dell is hopping on to the Netbook bandwagon, according to the Wall Street Journal (subscription required).

Netbooks are cheaper, no-frills versions of notebook computers with smaller screens and are ideally suited for web surfing.

Although the margins on the Netbooks are lower compared to notebooks, Continue reading »

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 Posted by at 9:40 am

Many Faces of American Ganesh

 General, Religion  2 Responses »
Sep 022008
 
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Today i.e. September 3, 2008, Indians across the world celebrate Ganesh Chaturthi in honor of the birthday of Lord Ganesh (the son of Shiva and Parvati and a favorite God for millions of Hindus).

Does anyone now how old Ganesh is?

In several states of India, Ganesh Chaturthi is celebrated for several days and at the end of the festivities the idol of Ganesh is immersed in the river or sea.

Across the U.S., Ganesh is a prominent fixture at most Hindu Temples.

During our travels over the last several years, we’ve had the occasion to view Lord Ganesh in varied forms in the U.S.

In the festival spirit of Ganesh Chaturthi, SearchIndia.com presents the many faces of American Ganesh.

We start first with Ganesh at the Columbus (Ohio) Temple.


Ganesh @ Columbus (Ohio)

On the East Coast, at the Divya Dham Temple (below) we found this lovely Ganesh during a temple darshan with some Gujaratis.


Ganesh @ Divya Dham
Elmhurst, NY

A few hundred miles south in Richmond, we found this entrancing Ganesh at the Hindu Temple in Richmond (Virginia). Notice Ganesh’s vehicle, the mouse, at the bottom.


Ganesh @ Richmond (Virginia)

About hundred miles north in Chantilly (Virginia), we found this Ganesh with large flapping ears at the Rajdhani Mandir (below).


Ganesh @ Chantilly (Virginia)

In the temple town of Pittsburgh, there is a nice Ganesh in the company of his parents Shiv and Parvati at the Hindu-Jain temple.

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Ganesh @ Hindu Jain Temple
Pittsburgh, PA

On the West Coast too, there are plenty of Ganesh devotees (is there any place in the world without Ganesh devotees).

Right near the Mexico border in San Diego, we found this beautiful Ganesh at the Shri Mandir.


Ganesh @ San Diego (California)

Several hundreds miles north of San Diego, we found this charming Ganesh at the Siddhi Vinayak Temple in Sacramento a few years back.


Ganesh @ Sacramento (California)

In Silicon Valley, home to a large Indian population, we found this Dollar Ganesh (below) in San Jose.


Ganesh
Lakshmi Ganapathi Temple
San Jose, CA

Wonder what the Americans would think if they knew that George Washington (on the $1 bills) was adorning Lord Ganesh at the Lakshmi Ganapathi Temple in San Jose, CA.

In the Malibu Hills (outside Los Angeles), we found this Ganesh (below in granite).


Ganesh @ Malibu Temple, L.A.

To see more pictures of your favorite American Hindu Gods, please click here.

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 Posted by at 9:41 pm  Tagged with: , ,

Palace at the Ben – Royal Indian Treat in Philadelphia

 Food, Reviews  No Responses »
Sep 022008
 
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Indian restaurants in the U.S. are like Bollywood movies – they look good from the outside with some fancy names like Maharaja, Bombay Palace or Taj Mahal but once you’re inside they’re such sadistic purveyors of misery that you can’t wait to get out.

Even the so-called prestigious Indian restaurants in the U.S. that we’ve dined in like Bombay Palace, Utsav and Jewel of India in New York City, Bombay Palace in Beverly Hills (Los Angeles) or Tamba in Las Vegas are hopeless impostors distinguished only by lousy food and poor service.

After several years of eating sub-mediocre food at Indian restaurants in the U.S., we’ve conditioned ourselves not to expect much from our desi restaurants.

So when we entered Palace at the Ben on Chestnut St in Philadelphia on a hot Saturday afternoon recently, it was with low expectations.


Palace at the Ben
834 Chestnut St (corner of 9th St)
Philadelphia 19107

The place was deserted. As we entered the spacious restaurant, we saw Continue reading »

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 Posted by at 9:39 pm  Tagged with:

Udupi Green Chili Pickles – O la la la

 Food  1 Response »
Sep 022008
 
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Call it Pickles.

Or call it Achar (Hindi), Urga (Tamil), Upinkai (Kannada) or Uragai (Telugu).

Rich or poor, villager or city slicker, young or old, North Indian or South Indian, these hot accompaniments are a sine qua non of any Indian meal.

They go well with rice (particularly yogurt rice) as well as roti.

And of course as every Indian knows, they come in so many different varieties – mango, lime, ginger, green chili, red chili, gooseberry, mixed vegetable, carrot and so on.

But to discerning gourmands like ourselves, most bottled pickles are a pale imitation of what the family in Andhra Pradesh ships out to us at frequent intervals.

Recently, we stumbled across the Udupi Green Chili pickle at an Indian grocery store in the U.S. Since it was on sale for $1.29, we picked up.


Udupi Green Chili Pickles

Boy, did we hit the jackpot. Continue reading »

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 Posted by at 9:38 pm

Harman, Wipro set up Infotainment Engineering Center

 Digital Media, IT Industry  No Responses »
Sep 022008
 
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Infotainment products vendor Harman International and Indian IT major Wipro are setting up an embedded engineering center in Chennai and Bangalore that will work on audio and infotainment products across automotive, consumer and professional markets.

Services to be delivered from the center include software development and related hardware engineering.

The center is to start with 250 employees.

Wipro said Harman would own all intellectual property developed in the center.

The joint embedded engineering center complements an earlier agreement that outsourced Harman’s global IT infrastructure services to Wipro.

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 Posted by at 11:27 am

Google Joins Browser Wars with Chrome

 Digital Media, General, IT Industry  2 Responses »
Sep 012008
 
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Google is jumping into the browser fray with a new browser called Chrome that’ll take on both Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and the open source Firefox browsers.

The beta or trial version of Chrome, which will also be an open source browser, will debut tomorrow. You can download Chrome here.

This is what Google’s VP of product management Sundar Pichai had to say about Chrome:

Under the hood, we were able to build the foundation of a browser that runs today’s complex web applications much better. By keeping each tab in an isolated “sandbox”, we were able to prevent one tab from crashing another and provide improved protection from rogue sites. We improved speed and responsiveness across the board. We also built a more powerful JavaScript engine, V8, to power the next generation of web applications that aren’t even possible in today’s browsers.

Google said in a blog post that the first version would Continue reading »

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 Posted by at 9:54 pm

New Orleans is Screwed

 America, General  No Responses »
Sep 012008
 
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Ever since we read John Kennedy Toole’s brilliant book The Confederacy of Dunces, we’ve wanted to visit New Orleans.

We finally got to visit New Orleans earlier this year, about two and half years after Hurricane Katrina basically destroyed the city.

As we pulled into the Ninth Ward driven by morbid curiosity to see one of the areas worst hit by Katrina, the scars of the devastation were still very visible.

To our horror, the whole scene reminded us of a third world country we’d left behind. Not America.


A New Orleans neighborhood in early 2008

Once a colorful and vibrant city, New Orleans is an eyesore now. A blight, actually.

Most homes that were destroyed have not been restored and we found very few people in several neighborhoods.

Even at noon, the New Orleans neighborhoods we were driving through were eerily silent. And hundreds if not thousands were still living in temporary trailer homes.

Louisiana (of which New Orleans is a part) is one of the most corrupt Continue reading »

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 Posted by at 12:32 pm

Rabindranath Tagore was a Painter Too – Ugh, Ughh

 Arts  1 Response »
Sep 012008
 
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Did you know that Asia’s first Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore and the author of the Indian National Anthem Jana gana mana… was a painter too.

And a pretty unimpressive one at that.

On Sunday, we had the chance to view some of Tagore’s paintings at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Tagore’s paintings are part of two exhibitions – The Art of Nandalal Bose (ends on Sep. 1) and Multiple Modernities: India 1905-2005 (ends on Dece. 7) – that are now running at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Even to our untrained eyes, it’s clear that Tagore’s paintings are nothing extraordinary. Nothing like the luscious oil-paintings of Raja Ravi Varma.

Some of Tagore’s paintings like Landscape (ink on paper, November 9, 1930) are ugly as hell.

With three trees (two in the foreground, left and right forming a canopy Continue reading »

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 Posted by at 9:10 am
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