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indo-canadian
I read a blog post by Ayad Akhtar, and 40 months later I am opening his play. All because of a single blog post, like this one. Here's how it all went down.
Growing up just like every other little girl I sat in awe as I accompanied my parents to family functions and weddings. Fast forward some 15 years or so and now every weekend there are dozens of weddings occurring simultaneously at various temples in the metro-Vancouver area. And each of these weddings symbolizes not the love between a couple -- sure there's that, too -- but rather a price tag.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has arrived in Canada for his three-day visit as he ends his three-nation trip. He met PM Stephen Harper on Wednesday morning and later attended a community reception in Toronto and Vancouver. Around 10,000 people are expected to attend the community reception at Ricoh Coliseum in Toronto. This momentous bilateral trip marks the visit by an Indian Prime Minister to Canada after nearly four decades, Indira Gandhi's visit to Canada in year 1973.
Tonight as I watched the poetry that is The Hundred-Foot Journey, a part of me broke open. As I explained to my aunt and my mom when we came home after the film - sharing such a beautiful story of acceptance of our magnificent Indian culture, in the setting of the often ethnocentrically perceived nation of France, is indicative of the hope and pockets of beauty embedded within profound change and transition.
One day, Shauna Singh Baldwin gave her grandmother a notebook and suggested that she write down her personal stories. What emerged were pages of personal memories of the trauma of partition - and it was the first time Shauna and her family heard about their grandmother's experiences. "I realized that until then, my grandfather had been the person who told my grandmother's stories about Partition," she said.
It makes sense that the Canadian media would cover the IIFA with such fervour. After all, Indians are a proud people who love their culture and Bollywood is an integral part of it. And yet, India has a darker side to its cultural traditions that nobody desires to address.
Blurring the boundaries between Hollywood and Bollywood, Breakaway brings Bollywood flair to Hollywood actors, all while showcasing Toronto and its unique Indo-Canadian population.
Locally, the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas means the emergence of Toronto on the "Indian global circuit." And while the event made some waves in the Indo-Canadian media, everyone knew it was just a warm up for next weekend's IIFAs, the biggest event in the Bollyverse.
