Rohit Bahl, a Bombay designer who has just been commissioned to make a sari for Pamela Anderson, the former Baywatch star, said: "It can be difficult designing for someone like Pamela. My Indian clients tend to be quite conservative and want an outfit which will ensure that they are covered up. Pamela however has a very distinctive look and style and wants something a little more revealing. "I have come up with something which I think is Indian but which isn't going to compromise what she wants to say - its something she has to feel comfortable wearing in London or New York. Indian designers are refining their looks for a Western clientele. At the same time Western women are confident because they know the clothes are not easily copied and what they are commissioning is a genuine one-off."

The trend for authentic Indian designs has spilt over into mainstream fashion too. One specialist London travel agent reported that her firm was increasingly asked to advise clients which tailors and designers in India to use. Henri Tatham of Western and Oriental Travel Agents said: "We recommend the best designer in a particular area they are visiting. I think the reason Indian designers are so popular is primarily because what you buy will always be completely unique. They also take half the time to make the clothes and cost half the price."

Babs Mahil, who designs saris for Cherie Blair, said: "We are experiencing an explosion in demand at the moment. About 40 per cent of our customers are now Western, which would have been unheard of until recently. In the past, people were wearing Indian clothes specifically for travel to India or to attend an Indian event, now they are wearing them for all occasions."

Nima Suchak, a writer at Eastern Eye, said: "People such as Princess Diana and Madonna wore Indian-influenced outfits for specific cultural reasons. Now, for the first time, people are wearing the clothes because they like them. It is a trend that is filtering down to the High Street - Top Shop for instance have just started selling Bindis. I think that says it all." Bindi, Hindi for "drop", is the name given to self-adhesive jewellery or patches usually worn on the forehead.

Abigail Chisman, the editor-in-chief of Vogue.com, said: "At last people are going to the source - for years key designers such as Donna Karan have drawn inspiration from Indian design, while others such as John Galliano and Jean Paul Gaultier have been using Bombay's embroidery houses to help produce their couture collections. Names such as Abu Jani, Abraham Thakor and Ritu Beri are becoming well-known in fashion circles. It's great that they are finally getting the recognition they deserve."

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From India, Many Sounds, All Pulling Inward April 30, 2001, The New York Times, By Ann Powers Flutists - Raghunath Seth and Steve Gorn.

A limb-shaking beat boomed from the windows of the Jivamukti Yoga Center in the East Village Friday night as a hearty American voice sang a Sanskrit chant. The next evening a very different sound wafted from the Synod Hall at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine: a sitar gliding up a scale, as discreet as that singer had been bold.

Both were fresh sounds of the East Indian diaspora. The first was made by the D.J. Sean Dinsmore and a featured vocalist, Bhagavan Das, during a record release party for the group Dum Dum Project. Sampled sitars mixed with breakbeats, moving a stylish crowd of rapturously dancing American yoga devotees.

The second came from Shujat Husain Khan, the young master sitarist from New Delhi, during an all-night performance of Indian classical music sponsored by the World Music Institute and several groups with Chhandayan, a Queens organization that promotes and preserves Indian music, as host. This festival was ecstatic, too, but its hundreds of attendees sat still and hushed during long, subtle improvisations.

Seemingly so different, these shows illuminated the appeal of Indian music in contemporary America. The Dum Dum Project's transformation of the club sound favored by young Indians worldwide was flashy and happily appropriative, a grab bag of references. The Chhandayan concert honored tradition, attracting immigrants and other enthusiasts of the raga, an art passed down by pedigree.

Yet at the core of both was one concern: how personal expression benefits a view focused on communal ideals and universal truths.

Mr. Dinsmore's music reimagines two worlds. Traditional music peppers his mixes alongside the Bollywood film music samples used in bhangra, the club music of young Indians. As an Anglo experimenter in this scene, Mr. Dinsmore distinguishes himself by creating buoyant, diverse sound scapes. During his Jivamukti set, acid jazz mixed with feisty hip-hop and jungle beats. Jason Goodrow made his sitar sound like a jaunty electric guitar. Under the light of a plastic lamp in the shape of a lotus flower, Mr. Dinsmore aimed for a jovially modern version of bliss.

The vocalists fed the open mood. Jivamukti's co-director, Sharon Gannon (performing under the name Tripura Sundari), offered spiritual direction in a velvety alto on "Be Love." The star, though, was Asha Puthli, a fusion pioneer best known for singing on Ornette Coleman's 1971 free jazz masterpiece "Science Fiction." Ms. Puthli displayed the piping soprano that makes Indian female vocalists exotic to Westerners but shifted to a throatier register in a prayer for the health of the earth. Mr. Dinsmore's drum-and-bass rhythms helped create a moment that recalled Yoko Ono's urgency.

In sync with the empathetic rhythms of the tabla player Samir Chatterjee, Mr Khan reached furious peaks, then gracefully shifted into highly contemplative passages. When Ramesh Misra joined in on the sarengi, an ancient bowed instrument, serenity settled in. Dedicating a piece to the guru-disciple bond, Mr. Khan led Mr. Misra into a re-enactment of that relationship, with each phrase answering and gently melding with the one before it. Mr. Khan sang in a liquid voice that further encouraged introversion.

The next set, featuring the bansuri flute master Raghunath Seth with Mr. Chatterjee and the American flutist Steve Gorn, was even more delicate in tone. The strains of the wooden flutes chased one another like fireflies as Mr. Chatterjee used the lightest touch. When the dynamics grew more intense, the utter attentiveness of the musicians kept the tone tranquil and the audience rapt.

The ragas would stretch until morning, but four hours had confirmed the relevance of this tradition. These artists, though dedicated to form, were also innovators. Jazz and other world-music influences were evident even to a drifting listener. The challenge here was the same as on Jivamukti's dance floor, to become immersed in sound that defied time and narrative structure by going deep within. "Radiate love and joy, that is really our only job," Ms. Gannon said. At its sanctified core, this music shed light on that goal.

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Wizards Of Indian Interplay
24 April 2001, Washington Post, By Mark Jenkins

Sunday night at the auditorium of Eleanor Roosevelt High School in Greenbelt, sarod master Amjad Ali Khan dominated the concert, which was a fundraiser for the Association for India's Development, a College Park-based group of Indian emigres that organizes grass-roots projects in the country's impoverished regions. The sarod player's style was frequently staccato, showcasing the sharp, metallic attack the lute-like instrument can produce. In exuberant chatter with Bikram Ghosh's tabla, Khan's sarod sounded almost as percussive as Ghosh's rapid-fire drumming. Only the second of the three pieces emphasized the note-bending possibilities of the sarod's fretless neck.

For the second half of the concert, Khan was joined by his sons, Ayaan Ali Bangash and Amaan Ali Bangash. The three sarod players sometimes played in unison, but more often they and Ghosh performed solos and duets. Many of their exchanges were melodically simple but delivered with a playful swagger that brought grins to both the players and their listeners.

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A Little Bit of Hollywood Starring India 27 April 2001, The New York Times, By Dean E. Murphy and Chester Higgins Jr.       Bollywood fever is sweeping through Indian and other South Asian neighborhoods across the United States. The excitement stems from a televised awards ceremony.

Mr. Chugh sells saris at a clothing shop run by his immigrant Indian family in Jackson Heights, Queens. But every spare moment is dedicated to dreaming about the Hindi- language film industry, Mr. Chugh's answer to homesickness. "This is just a family business here, and I have to do it," he said. "But I am waiting for my break as an actor. I just have to meet the right person with the right connections."

Mr. Chugh, 22, may have an unusually severe case of it, but Bollywood fever is sweeping through Indian and other South Asian neighborhoods in Queens, Long Island, New Jersey and as far away as Texas and California. The excitement stems from a televised awards ceremony to be held tomorrow at the Nassau Coliseum in Uniondale, N.Y., in honor of Bollywood's most beloved screen stars, some of whom will be making the trip from the Indian movie capital, Bombay (which is also known as Mumbai).

The Bollywood Awards are a popularity contest based on tens of thousands of ballots cast by Indians and other South Asians living in the United States. There are other film industry awards in India, but the Uniondale event is meant to bring Bollywood (or Bombay's Hollywood) to the Western Hemisphere in a big way.

High entertainment or not, Bollywood cuts across India's mostly impenetrable barriers of language, caste, religion and region, said Prashanth Lakhihal, the New York bureau chief of The India Post, a California weekly newspaper. And he said Indian films serve as the glue that binds the growing South Asian diaspora in the United States and elsewhere. "There is a sort of unifying feeling that comes through these Bollywood movies," Mr. Lakhihal said. "I feel very good when I come out of the theater. For $8 I can go and see India for three hours."

Not only are the Bollywood Awards a recognition of the industry's commercial appeal beyond the Asian subcontinent, but the event reflects the growing confidence of Indians in the United States about celebrating their culture in ways once considered crass or flashy - or, by some descriptions, too American.

Professor Sumit Ganguly, an Indian-born professor of Asian studies and government at the University of Texas at Austin, said the awards and the accompanying hoopla — as with Hollywood extravaganzas, there will be dancing, singing and other performances throughout the four-hour-plus ceremony — have come to symbolize the remarkable changes in Indian immigration to the United States.

A decade ago, he said, the Bollywood Awards would have been a laughable enterprise because there was virtually no constituency here. But no longer is the typical Indian immigrant a doctor, engineer or scholar who scoffs at popular culture, he said. Now entrepreneurial Indians, from travel agents to motel operators, have made fortunes in the United States and are ready to show off their newly acquired wealth and Americanized tastes.

The Bollywood Group last year was host for its first Bollywood Music Awards, an event Mr. Dandona said was patterned after the Latin Grammys. This year, the company is moving into fashion, presenting a black-tie, invitation-only Bollywood Fashion Awards tonight at the Puck Building in Manhattan. Mr. Dandona says he is also building a Bollywood theme restaurant on West 19th Street in Manhattan and is looking in Queens to erect a studio to produce Bollywood-style films and television shows.

"We are growing by leaps and bounds," said Mr. Dandona, 53, who comes from Bombay, where he worked as a flight operations manager for Air India. "There are in excess of 1 million people from South Asia in the tri-state area of New York. Our plan also is to move into the mainstream, and bring awareness of Bollywood to other Americans."

Among the believers in Bollywood's global commercial appeal is Dheeraj Kapuria, who oversees American operations for Zee Telefilms, a company based in Bombay that broadcasts cable and satellite television channels around the world. For the second year, Zee is sponsoring the Bollywood Awards through one of its Hindi movie channels, Z Gold. Mr. Kapuria said the awards ceremony would be broadcast in 84 countries to a potential audience of 200 million; the company offers five channels in the United States and has about 120,000 subscribers, he said.

Mr. Kapuria said Zee's market research shows that South Asian households in the United States have a median annual income of $45,000, which is substantially higher than that of other big ethnic groups like Hispanics and blacks. With the strong interest in Bollywood among immigrants, and the great American pastime of watching television, Mr. Kapuria predicts Zee's operations will only get bigger.

Even children born in the United States to immigrant parents from South Asia seem to be drawn to Bollywood, if for no other reason than the films are a way to learn Hindi and maintain some familiarity with India. At the University of Texas, Professor Ganguly informally polled his students of South Asian descent and found that an overwhelming majority counted themselves as Bollywood fans.

"These kids are so sophisticated because they have gone to American high schools, yet visited their grandparents in India," the professor said. "They know both worlds."

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