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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 Independent Documentary Filmmaker. After a 26-year-career as a television newscast producer and broadcast journalism professor, Somani moved to LA and enrolled in the MFA in Directing/Production, Documentary film program at UCLA. Currently in production is a personal documentary about her role as a caregiver for her Mom who battles depression. The film reveals how much Somani and her mother rely on each other for emotional support. Other films Somani has directed and produced include Life on the Ganges (2017), a 10- minute documentary directed, produced and filmed in Varanasi, India, during Dev Diwali, when people from all over India travel there to bathe in the Ganges River. The film screened in film festivals in the U.S., India and Europe and won Best Short Documentary at the Berlin Independent Film Festival, and the Cannes Short Film Festival. Another film Somani directed, produced and wrote was, Crossing Lines (2007), a 30-minute personal essay documentary about her struggle to stay connected to India after the loss of her father and to maintain and preserve her Indian cultural identity. The film won numerous awards, screened in film festivals nationally and internationally, aired on PBS affiliates through NETA from 2008-2011, and has been used by more than 100 universities as a tool to teach intercultural communication in the classroom. Both films are in distribution through New Day films.
Somani’s doctoral research studied the media habits and effects of satellite television on the Indian diaspora, specifically the generation of the Asian Indians in the Washington, DC metro area, who migrated to the U.S. between 1960 and 1972. She expanded her research to study the media habits, acculturation, and social identity of the same generation in the New York-New Jersey area, San Francisco, Houston and Chicago. For the fall of 2011, Somani was awarded a Fulbright-Nehru Senior Research Fellowship to study the Western influence of Indian programming in India.
While teaching at Howard University’s School of Communications from 2012-2021, Somani’s research shifted to study Black Broadcast Journalists and how race had an impact on their success in the newsroom. She has been published in several academic journals and has also co-authored two book chapters.
Somani’s academic career was preceded by 10 years as a television news producer, most notably with CNBC and WJLA-TV, the ABC affiliate in Washington, D.C. Somani has also been a leader of the South Asian Journalists Association (SAJA), where she has also won several “Outstanding” awards for her coverage of South Asians in North America. Prior to teaching at Howard, Somani taught 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 Philip Merrill College of Journalism, University of Maryland, College Park in 2008. Somani is expected to earn her MFA in Directing/Production from UCLA by Dec. of 2022.