Director Deepa Mehta’s latest film is Heaven on Earth. The movie was shot in the suburbs of Toronto, where Mehta makes her home. Heaven on Earth was the opening night film at the Indo-American Arts Council film festival in New York. Just before the film was screened, the director spoke about the theme underlying the film as well as casting Bollywood actress Preity Zinta:
Parag Saxena, the founder of Vedanta Capital, was a Chicago’s Grant Park as Barack Obama gave his historic speech after winning the 2008 US Presidential election. Saxena, who has been with the Obama campaign, believes the talk about outsourcing is “partly rhetoric”. More in this interview:
Author Salman Rushdie is a British citizen, living in New York. Director Deepa Mehta is based in Canada. Neither of them voted in the US Presidential elections, but both were certainly buoyed by Barack Obama’s win:
Midnight’s Children, Salman Rushdie’s second novel (after Grimus) has won all sorts of awards - a Booker, a Booker of Booker, a Best of the Bookers…It has even been adapted for the stage by the Royal Shakespeare Company. But what was missing was a film version of the book. In fact, none of Rushdie’s works have turned into feature films despite many attempts to do so, but now it appears that we may well see the movie version of Midnight’s Children in 2010. The film will be directed by Deepa Mehta, who also directed Water, and will be scripted by her along with Rushdie. The announcement was made during a press conference in New York, during the Indo-American Arts Council’s annual film festival. Names being mentioned to act in the film include Nandita Das, Seema Biswas and Shabana Azmi. Here’s Rushdie on his latest project:
Stand-up comedians everywhere must be busy preparing new routines centred around Barack Obama becoming the next President of the United States. Among them is one of the funniest in the business, Dan Nainan. Nainan is known as the funniest Indian-Japanese-American stand-up in the country already (probably because he’s the only one). He was also at the Democratic National Convention in Denver, performing there. He’s best known for his great impersonations of former President Bill Clinton and the incumbent George W Bush. Now, he’s busy practising new lines about Obama (with some John McCain thrown in); some of which he shared with us:
Manu Narayan first came to prominence playing the lead role in the Broadway show Bombay Dreams. He also appeared in Mike Myers’ recent film, The Love Guru. Narayan has another project brewing - playing with band. Right now, however, he’s excited about an Obama presidency.
Sonal Shah is well known in the Indian-American community for her involvement with the non-profit Indicorps. She was earlier with Goldman Sachs, and is presently with Google.org. Now, Shah, who has been earlier also been with the liberal think-tank Center for American Progress, has been appointed to the Advisory Board of the Obama-Biden Transition team.
There’s prerty much unanimity among analysts of global affairs that either Barack Obama or John McCain would be good for relations with India.
Even from those who had already made their support for Obama fairly clear. Among them were Newsweek International Editor Fareed Zakaria and former United Nations official and author Shashi Tharoor. The evening before the polls, Tharoor described Obama as a JFK-like figure and good for America’s relations with the world. Here’s Tharoor on the Obama-McCain question:
That is, large numbers of Indian-Americans turning out to vote for Obama; at a ratio grater than they voted for John Kerry in 2004 over George W Bush.
Here’s the pre-election day report:
Wasn’t between Barack Obama and John McCain. Indian-Americans on either side of the political divide gathered together recently to talk each other down. The event was organised by India Abroad and the participants included Democrats Toby Chaudhuri, Satish Poondi and Varun Nikore and Republicans Kishan Putta, Vijay Dandapani and Suhail Khan. Here’s a video of the conclusion (for a lot more go here):
