I’m settling into life in India. The traffic in Bangalore is a nightmare, something that is taking me some time to get used to, coming from Lexington, Va. I, obviously, have the benefit of having prior experiences in India, being an Indian-American, who has traveled here for past 40 years. I’m not in total shock when I land in India. However, it’s still been an adjustment. For me, it’s been a challenge getting around, i.e. taking care of my FRRO registration, SIM card, etc. , as I am not fluent in any Indian language. (My parents always spoke English at home., so I never learned an Indian language fluently. However, I probably understand Bengali the most). I am actually renting a room from a close friend of my mother’s, who has been very helpful getting me settled. I take the faculty van to get to the Institute. Thank goodness her place of residence is close to one of the van’s pick-up points. The commute each way is about an hour. I take an auto-rickshaw in the mornings to catch the faculty van. I can’t imagine what it’s like for an American who has never been to India before. Even I’m struggling with the concept of trying to establish a daily routine admist the chaos. For me, India has always been the place to go to see extended family or have a vacation. I feel so lucky that my mom’s close friend lives in Bangalore, otherwise, I don’t know what I would have done. Bangalore has some of the best weather in India, and this is where most of the call centers are located. Therefore it’s become highly congested with the high-tech industry. Most people speak Kannada, which is not even close to Hindi or Bengali. If I even attempt to speak Hindi with my American accent, the price of Auto-rickshaw doubles. I’m definitely living between worlds as I try and fit in to my parent’s homeland.
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.