I like to play with words. String them together, thrust them apart. Dissect. Deconstruct. Analyze. Create. As I live, I find myself surrounded by words. I constantly seek to explain … why what is, is. Read more »
LATEST PROJECT: Rishi Kapoor reflects on a Bollywood dynasty
MY PORTFOLIO
Bending Jane Austen
Gurinder Chadha loves to support her desi community, even if it means turning a blind eye to Southall shopkeepers selling pirated DVDs of her movies. “Off and on, (I) go down the shops and buy baingan (eggplant) or whatever with my mum,” she says. “And the shopkeepers are smiling. And the little girls passing by, [...]
Pink Ludoos
Pink Ludoos references the practice of new parents celebrating by offering family, friends and neighbours their thanks soaked in ghee and sugar. Only laddus are usually a warm golden colour (when made traditionally) or a flashy orange colour (when brought from ye local grocery store). So, what’s with the pink colour? Well, Pink Ludoos is [...]
Shave and a haircut, the old-fashioned way
National Post, [11/13/2004] APARITA BHANDARI Special to the National Post It’s 9:30 on a Saturday morning and already the linoleum floor of De Francesca Men’s Hair Stylists is carpeted with hanks of hair. Empty streetcars trundle by, and most of the other shops in the Dundas and Roncesvalles neighbourhood remain shuttered. But the De [...]
Diversity driven
Toronto Star, [11/08/2004] A new initiative has IBM reaching out to Canada’s aboriginal community Is it PR? Tokenism? Or market forces and the tide of history? APARITA BHANDARI SPECIAL TO THE STAR Skip Bird has “a lot of interest in technology.” Since he was 7, when he got his first Nintendo game, Bird [...]
Hot on the trail of a Bollywood star
The Globe and Mail, [09/27/2004] Eager fans stake out downtown hotel for glimpse of actor Shah Rukh Khan APARITA BHANDARI SPECIAL TO THE GLOBE AND MAIL Shah Rukh Khan was relaxing before his show. Inside a downtown Toronto hotel, in the presidential suite, the 38-year-old Bollywood star looked tired. He has been on [...]
South Asia in the suburbs
The Globe and Mail The real Little India is in Malton, where Mississauga becomes a Bombay Bazaar APARITA BHANDARI SPECIAL TO THE GLOBE AND MAIL MALTON, ONT. — An Indian soap called Kittie Party plays on a small TV screen in one corner of the “separate ladies’ section” in the inner part of Bharti [...]
Beware the Boyz
Rishi Rich Project Headlines 4th Masala! Mehndi! Masti! Festival Girl you got exactly what I need, I ain’t gonna lie, With you is where I wanna be, All up in the club, the finest girl I see, I know that you want me to come over to you and ta-alk. I’m just trying keep it [...]
Ali Kazimi’s Continuous Journey into the Canadian Narrative
Filmmaker Ali Kazimi takes on two types of project. Personal stories or projects that pay the bills. But he must believe in both. Continuous Journey, Kazimi’s latest documentary, is a personal project. It screened at the Hot Docs festival, which took place from April 22 to May 1. Besides taking the second place in the [...]
Sufi shrine welcomes all
Toronto Star, [07/03/2004] Burial place of Nizamuddin open to all religions. Village around mausoleum a hub of Sufi culture APARITA BHANDARI SPECIAL TO THE STAR New Delhi, India — It’s a difficult drive to the Nizamuddin basti or village that grew up around the mausoleum of renowned Indian Sufi Nizamuddin Aulia. In A.D. [...]
Share the wealth from tech boom, India told leaders
Toronto Star Voters felt excluded from `Laptop politics.’ Technology policy decisive in election APARITA BHANDARI SPECIAL TO THE STAR Hindsight is always 20-20. Unfortunately, Indian cyber minister Chandrababu Naidu’s Vision 2020 – of his state becoming an information-technology superpower by the year 2020 – didn’t have enough foresight. While the Congress party’s former-economist-turned-politician Manmohan Singh [...]