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I left DC and arrived in India on August 22, 2011 after taking two eight-hour flights back-to-back with a stop in Frankfurt. Once I walked out of airport there was the driver standing outside of Bangalore (Bengaluru) with a sign with my name on it. This was different. In the past I usually have family receive me at the airport or I’m traveling with family to India. The driver was taking me to Anjali and Vishal’s home, friends from DC, who now live in the suburbs of Bangalore. They live in a exclusive suburb called Palm Meadows in Whitefield. I felt like I was in California as each Palm tree is aligned perfectly along the road in front of the houses. This is where a lot of the big-wigs who have high positions with India’s high-tech companies live. It’s a mixed community of ex-pats, Europeans, Americans and more. There’s a club house that has all kinds of facilities, i.e. at least five pools, a couple tennis courts, a spa, a salon, fancy restaurants, a gym and so much more. It feels like it’s a secluded area for people, who live in India, but don’t really want to experience India. They just want to stay in a confined environment and reap the benefits of exclusive housing in great weather. I never thought I would see this kind of a neighborhood in India. You don’t even feel like you’ve left the U.S., if you go for a walk in the morning. People are wearing shorts and are out jogging. The houses have beautiful gardens and lawns with garages. The school buses come to the neighborhood and take the kids to best international schools in Bangalore. Coming to Anjali and Vishal’s home was the right way for me to enter India, so I can slowly make transition into my life here for the next four and half months. I can’t imagine doing this without their support. I know that I had the option to have an unknown driver receive me at the airport and take me to a hotel. But that did not make sense to me, since my safety is my number one concern. I’ve been lucky, I had Anjali and Vishal’s driver receive me at the airport, and I found a place to stay before I arrived. A close friend of my mom has a room I can rent. I haven’t been to India for four and half years (January 2007) and that time I was traveling with my mom. Prior to that was Dec. 2004, and I was traveling with friends working on a documentary. I don’t have any extended family in Bangalore, so I’m really grateful that I could stay with them for a few days and spend my birthday with them on Aug. 24. This was the first time I spent my birthday in India, having dinner at a popular Italian restaurant in the area.Indira S. Somani, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor in the Dept. of Media, Journalism and Film at Howard University, Washington, D.C. Somani studies effects of satellite television on the Indian diaspora, specifically the generation of the Asian Indians who migrated to the U.S. between 1960 and 1972, and their media habits.
She has been published in the Howard Journal of Communication, Journal of Communication Inquiry, International Communication Research Journal, Journal of International and Intercultural Communication, and the Asian Journal of Communication.
For the fall of 2011, Somani was awarded a Fulbright-Nehru Senior Research Fellowship to study the Western influence of Indian programming in India.
Somani is also an award winning independent producer and director of documentaries. Her most recent production, Life on the Ganges (2016), is a 10- minute documentary short about the life of one boatman, who rows tourists along the Ganges River in Varanasi, India, particularly around Dev Diwali when people from all over India travel there to bathe in the Ganges to wash away their sins and purify their souls. The film has been screening in film festivals all over the U.S.
Another production, Crossing Lines (2007), is a personal essay 30-minute documentary about her struggle to stay connected to India after the loss of her father, and about how Asian Indians maintain and preserve their cultural identity. The film has won numerous awards, screened in film festivals nationally and internationally, screened on PBS affiliates, and has also been distributed to more than 100 university libraries in the U.S. through New Day films.
Somani brings 10 years of broadcast journalism experience as a television news producer to the classroom, most notably with CNBC and WJLA-TV, the ABC affiliate in Washington, D.C. She has been a leader of the South Asian Journalists Association (SAJA), where she has also won several “Outstanding” awards on her coverage of South Asians in North America.
Prior to joining Howard University, Somani was an Assistant Professor of Journalism at Washington and Lee University (Lexington, VA) and American University’s School of Communication (Washington, DC). Somani earned her Master’s in Journalism from the Medill School of Journalism, Northwestern University in 1993, and her Ph.D. from the Phillip Merrill College of Journalism, University of Maryland, College Park in May 2008.