Friday, my weekend started with a visit to the Atma Darshan Yoga Ashram in Kumaraswamy Layout in Bangalore. I wasn’t sure I wanted to go, because I recently visited an apartment with guests singing bhajans held in my housing complex. After the brief singing, the swami started reading from the Bhagavad Gita, but stopped when his cellphone rang. He didn’t just turn off the phone, he paused to see who called and check the messages on his smart phone before he continued. (I was told this weekend that “only in India” would a swami actually stop to check his messages if his phone rang during his sermon). I was really annoyed with this experience and did not want to attend another spiritual event after that. But the masi I’m staying with agreed to go to the Yoga Ashram with me Friday night, and I knew if I didn’t go I would wonder about it. Plus after I rsvp’d last week, I got a response email that said, “Look forward to meeting you, I’m the tall, female, foreign swami, you won’t miss me :).” It started on time, 6:30pm, but of course we were late and got there at 6:50pm. The event was packed with Bangaloreans. When we arrived the swami was talking in English about the five Kleshas (ignorance, egoism, attachment, aversion, and fear of death), and how stress in our mind is born through the Kleshas. She then moved on to the four types of yoga: Karma yoga: the yoga of selfless action, Bhakti yoga: the yoga of devotion, Jnana yoga: the yoga of knowledge and Raja yoga, the yoga of physical exercise and meditation to control the mind. The bottom line (from this talk with the swami) — stress has to be dealt with through a higher level. One should direct his/her mind to something that will uplift him/her and raise awareness to a higher force. Many of these things I already learned with my own yoga training at the Sivananda Ashram Yoga Ranch in Woodbourne, NY in 2008. However, I must say it’s not always easy to put it into practice if you work full-time. I thought I would be disappointed with this event, but I was pleasantly surprised, especially after my previous spiritual encounter.
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Saturday– Commercial Street – one of Bangalore’s main shopping areas was hustling and bustling with locals and tourists on Saturday. After walking the entire stretch to a get an overview of the shops, I could see that some were so packed it would have been too difficult to even enter. I was told to go to Fab India, Mysore Saree Udyog, among other stores, to shop for saris, salwar kameezes and kurtis (short kurtas). But I ended up buying my own salwar kameez from Soch, a store with more trendy styles, fixed prices, so haggling was involved. However, I did manage to haggle down the price of socks and slippers I bought earlier in the day.Sunday–Anjali and I started the day by going to Garuda mall to watch a Hindi movie called, “Mere Brother ki Dulhan” (translation: “My brother’s bride”) at 10:15am. I have to admit I don’t normally see movies at 10:15 in the morning, but if I had the time in the U.S. I would see movies at all hours. Besides we were not the only people in the theater itching to start their day with mindless entertainment. The film was another Bollywood love story with song and dance, introducing me to Imran Khan, one of Bollywood’s younger actors, newly married, and sources tells me he’s very “down to earth.” The best part about watching this movie was that I actually understood most of the film. You see, I’m used to watching Bollywood movies with English subtitles as I’m not fluent in any Indian language. My parents spoke English at home, since mom is Bengali and dad was Marwardi, English was the only common language between them. Therefore I did not grow up hearing an Indian language at home except English. But I’ve managed to learn small phrases each time I visit India. As a result I could understand this film– good thing it was your basic Bollywood story– nothing to complicated. The film also included Pakistani actor, Ali Zafar, and British-Indian actress, Katrina Kaif, who was in “Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara.” Lunch was at the Thai restaurant, Benjarong, hosted by a woman sitting at the entrance carving flowers out of vegetables. This was my first time eating Thai food in India as well as another opportunity to let go of my fears and try new things.
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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.