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News Updates - 26
January 2001 Sublime Vegetables for a demanding niche - NY Times Prime time for ethnic TV - Chicago Tribune Shifting views of India - Washington Post Millions find heaven in the water - CNN Sister India - NY Times Sublime Vegetables for a Demanding Niche LOS ANGELES - Some entrepreneurs dream of ruling Wall Street while others imagine themselves as Hollywood moguls or as the next Bill Gates. But for Harbhajan Singh, founder of Samra Produce here, the quest has been to become America's "king of okra." (bhendi) Raised and educated in India's fertile Punjab region, Mr. Singh, 41, came to Southern California in 1985 as a trained agronomist with a master's degree in economics. As a member of the agricultural Jat caste, it was natural for him to think about growing and selling food. He saw California as ideal for growing the kind of Indian specialties - okra, eggplant, bitter melon, beans - that he ate as a child. "In Punjab, you can grow anything," Mr. Singh said. "It's like California." Once he arrived, and with $500 borrowed from his family, Mr. Singh started buying vegetables from wholesalers and selling them to local Indian markets and restaurants from the back of a pickup truck. In the mid-1990's, he opened a 1,400-square-foot stall at the 7th Street Produce Market in downtown Los Angeles and started a small farm in Delano, in the Central Valley. But he found that because of the climate, the region grew only inferior versions of the okra and other produce traditionally used in South Asian kitchens. Mr. Singh said he lost that farm, falling heavily into debt, but he eventually found his ideal spot in a hot, dry farming area near Indio, southeast of Palm Springs. Relying largely on credit from his customers, he slowly built Samra into a substantial business. His 150-acre farm grows okra — a vegetable with a subtle, eggplant-like taste that also makes it popular in Southern dishes like gumbo — as well as chiles, opo squash and daikon radishes. He also buys from other local farmers who produce vegetables suitable for the growing Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi immigrant market. THAT area grows the best okra in the world," Mr. Singh asserted, sitting in his spacious warehouse in the sprawling produce market. As the business has grown, his space has grown to 18,000 square feet. Being the best, he said, has always been his obsession. By producing only the highest-quality produce and delivering it quickly, he could lead a market that was largely ignored by others. "At first, no one would listen to me," said Mr. Singh, who arrives at the market at 5 a.m. daily and usually stays past 4 p.m. "People ignored me. But when I delivered the best quality, they got confidence. Now they see I really am the king of okra." Virtually a one-man operation in the mid-1990's, Mr. Singh's business now employs eight people. Last year, it had sales of more than $10 million, five times the 1998 total. He sells his produce — some of it delivered in a company-owned 18-wheeler — as far away as Vancouver, British Columbia; Toronto; Chicago; the New York region; and London, where there are large Indian populations. His success reflects a broader reality in the nation's produce market. As ethnic populations — and interest in ethnic food — grow across the country, so do the opportunities for entrepreneurs like Mr. Singh, said Richard Meruelo, president of the Alameda Produce Market, which owns the 300,000-square-foot 7th Street market, built in 1919. Immigration from India and elsewhere in South Asia has been rising steadily over the last 40 years; the number of South Asians in the United States and Canada is now estimated at 1.4 million to 6 million, concentrated in several large urban areas. Wholesalers like Anuj Patel, who owns Darpan Vegetables in Maspeth, Queens, say that until they met Mr. Singh, it was difficult to acquire a consistent supply of high-quality okra and other vegetables used in Indian kitchens. "People can tell the difference," said Mr. Patel, an Indian immigrant, who says his business has tripled since two years ago, when he began buying produce from Mr. Singh. "The radishes he grows, the okra, it's like from back home. You have other growers but the quality is not there." Such concern about vegetables may seem a bit unusual to many Americans. But Mira Advani, a leading Indian food critic in Los Angeles, pointed out that many South Asians are vegetarian. Quality takes on a greater significance because produce makes up the bulk of their diet — the base for sauces, stews and soups, she said. "Indians are very picky about their vegetables, their okra and their eggplant," said Ms. Advani, a native of India. "Their okra has to be the best — small and firm. Nothing else will do." Such demands suit Mr.Singh well. Now the self-proclaimed "king of okra" hopes to enlarge his kingdom: he plans to start a farm next year in Mexico and eventually to expand to major supermarkets. "It's basically a tough business, and you win by using your mind and technique," he said, with evident pride. "People don't understand my kind of product. You have to know every detail. Okra and other vegetables are not boring. Okra is not just okra. It is very special." PRIME
TIME FOR ETHNIC TV - LOCAL FOREIGN-LANGUAGE BROADCASTERS TRY
TO KEEP IMMIGRANT GROUPS WATCHING AS SATELLITES PULL IN FEEDS FROM HOMELANDS. For the first time since he arrived from India three decades ago, Harem Buch can watch everything from pivotal cricket matches to dispatches about political tension - all without leaving his couch. Miniature satellite dishes, like the one Buch keeps on his Lisle rooftop, now capture television feeds from around the world, giving immigrants a real-time link with their homelands. Over the past two years, programming options have exploded, creating a veritable United Nations on the TV dial. But local foreign-language broadcasters, operating on community loyalty and shoestring budgets, are fighting to keep immigrants connected to their adopted country too. To stay relevant, these stations are adding shows and strengthening signals. The battle for viewers provides a glimpse into the complex cultural identity of immigrants. Local stations bank on goodwill built as neighbors in the New World; international networks tout nostalgia and ties to the homeland. Like many immigrants, Buch feels the pull from both sides. "A big part of me is here in Chicago but a part will always be in India," said Buch, who subscribed to DISH Network for its Indian stations. It's a far cry from the early days of mass immigration, when newcomers relied on mail from the motherland, or, like Buch, scoured outdated newspapers in the library. "How these satellite networks have changed the immigrant experience is nothing short of revolutionary," said Sreenath Sreenivasan, a Columbia University professor who specializes in technology and ethnic media. Satellite networks also strengthen the idea of bicultural households, where parents and children switch between English and native tongues in the same sentence. The international broadcasters have plunged into the U.S. market aggressively, backed by entertainment superstars and the foreign governments themselves. Local stations, meanwhile, paint their satellite counterparts as impersonal corporations beaming programming through the heavens with little connection to viewers on the ground. Their protests echo those of a neighborhood coffee shop lamenting the Starbucks next door. Take SBC Television, a local broadcast station in Lincolnwood that is a true mom-and-pop operation. Yogesh Shah, the network's president, dispatches cameramen to local festivals. His wife handles the books. His 18-year-old son runs the computers. Shah usually gets about four hours of sleep a night and sometimes bunks in a back room at the studio. Shah said he is proud that community leaders, with a phone call, can disseminate news on his station. To advertisers, he touts his station as a principal television link to the Indian community. He is already preparing coverage of Indian Republic Day parties Friday. "I am not afraid of the big guys. They have a lot of money and a lot of power, but I have been a broadcaster in Chicago for 20 years. I know the audience. I know what they want," Shah said. But the satellite networks can't be dismissed so easily. International broadcasters are riding a wave of popularity in miniature satellite systems that gain 8,000 new subscribers a day. A Federal Communications Commission report, released this month, identified about 13 million subscribing households in 2000, 28 percent higher than in 1999. The satellite networks offer the standard mix of movies, sitcoms, courtroom dramas and soap operas, but with twists faithful to the culture. On the Indian networks, for example, the popular "Shaheen" soap opera follows an Orthodox Muslim woman in a troubled arranged marriage. Their version of MTV's "Total Request Live" features VJ Ishita spinning the top 10 Hindi videos. Analysts say the next year will determine whether satellite providers continue their international expansion or start taking the global networks off their lineups because they aren't profitable enough. "It will be interesting to see how it all pans out, who the winners and losers will be," said Sreenivasan, the Columbia professor. "The ones who definitely will win are immigrant viewers themselves." On Exhibit - Shifting Views Of India "Nothing in India is identifiable. The mere asking of a question causes it to disappear or to merge in something else." - E.M. Forster, "A Passage to India" WHAT
IS -- or was -- India? "Changing Taste" (a mere 20 paintings, it's the smaller of the two shows) can hardly tell a story well, particularly one that spans 300 years, so there is a sense of the haphazard here. Although "Taste" is almost evenly divided between the 1700s and the 1800s it includes work by both Indian and British artists for both native and colonial audiences. What binds the works together then is not, despite the exhibition's title, the evolution of a national aesthetic, but the arbitrary fact that all the pictures were acquired within the last few years. It's the photorealistic works, more than any others, that pull one to the "India Through the Lens" show downstairs, with its suggestion of objective scrutiny of unidealized Indian life. Don't be fooled, though. As curator Vidya Dehejia writes in the accompanying catalogue, "It is as false to state 'The camera never lies' as it is to maintain 'The paintbrush never lies.' " The lens in question, of course, would be that of the camera, but again the title is misleading. No single vision is on view in this collection of 135 mostly sepia-toned black-and-white photos, most by European photographers, but with some handsome images taken lensman Lala Deen Dayal. Rather, it's a kaleidoscope: There's landscape (from Bombay to the Chichai Waterfall), people (from princes to a polo player) and buildings (from a tiny temple to the Taj Mahal). It's like looking at something that you know to be alive but that looks, for all the world, dead.
ALLAHABAD, India -- The Kumbh Mela could only take place in India. In no other country would millions and millions of pilgrims, driven just by faith that the sins of this life and previous lives would be washed away by bathing in the confluence of two rivers at an auspicious time, brave severe hardships, some walking barefooted, to get to bathe. When I came to the last Kumbh Mela twelve years ago, I was struck by the peacefulness and patience of the vast crowds. Once again it's only the pilgrims' discipline, which has prevented stampedes.
Read
more about the Maha Kumbh Mela at:
A group of people with little in common except for being in the same place by accident is a common literary device for demonstrating our common if unobvious humanity. The place can be almost anything: a train, a boat, a desert island, a grand hotel. Peggy Payne sets her group of strangers in the Saraswati Guest House in the holiest of all Hindu cities, Varanasi, India, where the devout go to die. The hotel, the Ganges River flowing beside it, the Maharaja's Palace on the other side and a 400-pound escapee from the American South are ingredients in "Sister India," Ms. Payne's spooky excursion into the lost territory of the soul. What makes the novel work are the piquancy of Ms. Payne's Varanasi and the strength of her main character, the manager of the guest house, an American once called Estelle who goes by the Indian name Natraja. Ms. Payne, a travel writer who spent time in Varanasi to research this novel, captures the wonderment and disgust the average Westerner experiences in Varanasi, where the ashes from the funeral pyres pour into a river whose waters wash away the sins of thousands each day. Meanwhile, Ms. Payne's unblinkered, unsentimental but nonetheless affectionate portrait of India gives her book atmospheric power. "Sister India," despite its weaknesses, is an accomplished work by a writer with a keen sense of the precariousness of our lives and the distances we are prepared to go to escape them. |
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