While the US-India bilateral trade relations have hit rough terrains in recent times, a love story that blossomed between USA and India in 2005 is shining bright at Thattu, an award-winning restaurant catering coastal south Indian food to American taste buds. The Malabar cuisine of India sailed on a boat of love from the backwaters of Kerala to the Chicago River in the Midwest US, undermining sporadic visa and immigration curbs. All thanks to a Korean American and a Keralite Indian whose labor of love is Thattu Chicago.

A landmark for authentic flavors of Kerala, including Onam Sadhya in Chicago, Thattu was born out of the love marriage of Vinod Kalathil from Kozhikode and Margaret Pak from California. Be it spongy soft Appam, Kothu Parotta, Malabar Chicken Biryani, Meen Pollichathu (a flavorful dish of fish roasted in banana leaves), Avial (a thick stew of vegetables), or Jackfruit Cake, the Indo-American couple has been serving with love since 2018 when Thattu started just as a pop-up stall.

Vinod and Margaret fell in love at first sight in Los Angeles in 2002. After dating for 3 years, Vinod left for his native place in Kerala. Smitten by love bug, Margaret booked her travel on flights to India from USA and followed him to Kozhikode, where they tied the knot. The post-wedding ceremonies, including a grand family feast, introduced Margaret to Malabar cuisine, of which Onam Sadhya is a quintessential part.

Being a food connoisseur herself, she took it as an opportunity to learn the cultural nuances of cooking Malabar dishes during her month-long stay at the in-laws’. She inherited a number of unique recipes from her mother-in-law; some dating back to 1970. This heirloom not only strengthened her alliance with the coastal Malabar cuisine but also urged her to popularize the cultural significance of Onam Sadhya far away from God’s Own Country. It went on to serve as foundation for their dream project – Thattu in the Midwest region of USA.

Located in Avondale, a chic neighborhood in Chicago, Thattu serves Filter Kaapi, Lime Tea, and Malabar Ginger Cooler with Malasa Biscuit, a popular snack in Kerala other than banana chips. Margaret took fancy to it and added it to her anytime favourites during her stay in Kozhikode, as her father-in-law used to bring Masala Biscuit from a popular local bakery. Made from as many as 20 ingredients with balanced sweet, spicy, and salty flavors, the Masala Biscuit sells like a hotcake at Thattu.

Opening a restaurant to serve authentic Kerala food to different South Asian communities and Americans was easier said than done. One fine day in 2017, she decided to set herself free from the corporate grind after 12 years of marriage, as her strenuous corporate job became a deterrent to her dreams. She took up jobs as an entry-level chef at some local restaurants to learn the fundamentals of a commercial kitchen and how to run it with passion and precision. At the same time, she dabbled as a home chef to perfect her hands in cooking the cuisine of Kerala.

Vinod Kalathil, co-owner of Thattu in Chicago, quit his job in 2019 and joined his better half in the new pursuit – to make the Midwest fall in love with the Indian state of backwaters and its culinary platter. In a very short time, Thattu became a small outlet from a food stall under the care of the couple and entered the semifinals for the James Beard Award, equivalent to the Oscars in the world of food.

In mid-2020, the COVID-19 pandemic cut the lifespan of Thattu short by pulling down the shutters. But the Indo-American couple planned reopening, bigger and better, believing, “Every dark cloud has a silver lining.” In April 2023, Thattu reopened as a full-blown restaurant with 50 seats in Avondale and started receiving guests from far and wide. Soon, it became one of the best Indian restaurants in Chicago and went on to feature on The New York Times’ list of ‘America’s Best 50 Restaurants’.

Thattu owes a great fan following to its role in broadening the definition of Indian food to Americans beyond chicken tikka masala, butter paneer, and naan. The menu at Thattu celebrates South Indian cuisine beyond the quintessential dosa, idli, and sambar. Vinod and Margaret chose to walk the road less traveled by most Indian restaurateurs in the US by excluding those common dishes from the menu.

The USP of Thattu Chicago is hosting an Onam food festival every year and serving Onam Sadhya (Kerala’s festive meal of 18 to 24 dishes) on fresh banana leaves. The guests, a majority being Americans, are offered illustrative menu cards with the etiquette of enjoying the Onam feast. At their restaurants, Vinod and Margaret promote the Indian culture of eating with hands, especially during Onam celebrations, and educate the guests on science behind this.

This exclusive story is part of the series, Indian Life in America, by Indian Eagle, the most trusted travel-booking partner of Americans and Indian Expats in the US. Subscribe to Travel Beats, a thriving community portal by Indian Eagle, for Indian Diaspora stories, US-India travel news, visa and immigration updates.

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On his recent visit to the US as a guest speaker, Alakh Pandey – popularly known as Physics Wallah – motivated Indian students at Harvard University, Stanford University, and California University to reverse brain drain to India and be part of India’s growth story directly or indirectly. While delivering a keynote, he said, “Our country has many drawbacks; however, no country is perfect. Young Indians at home and abroad should work towards making it better.”

Ruchit Garg did 12 years ago what Physics Wallah told Indian students abroad to do now. Ruchit Garg, an ex-Microsoft program manager, quit his pursuit of American Dream, returned to the roots, and started working for the economic wellbeing of farmers in 2015. After a stint in the IT corridor of Hyderabad, he got an onsite opportunity to work at Microsoft’s Redmond headquarters. After 3 years in 2011, he left the job with a fat paycheck of INR 1 Cr per annum only to dabble as an entrepreneur in America’s thriving startup space.

He started feeling like a misfit there as his chase of American Dream lacked a noble objective for his native country. His grandfather was a farmer in Uttar Pradesh; therefore, his umbilical cord with fields and farming pulled him back home to transform the lives of smallholder farmers who belong to an underserved community though they grow crops for 80% of the planet. His compassion for farmers allied with technology for the launch of a field-to-market startup, Harvesting Farmer Network (HFN).

Dubbed as “Amul of the next generation”, Ruchit Garg’s Harvesting Farmer Network strives to increase the sales turnover of various farm produces by helping farmers get better deals directly from buyers. Precisely, he has eliminated the role of intermediaries who would take a significant chunk of farmers’ sales proceeds, and thus, helped nearly 40 lakh smallholder farmers in India since the launch of his startup.

Harvesting Farmer Network’s Kisan app is an all-in-one guide for farmers like a lighthouse on the seashore for sailors. It disseminates updated information in various regional languages about government schemes for farmers, modern farming methods, the sourcing of high-quality seeds and various raw materials, and likes. The app is a growing network of farm producers and buyers, and a platform for listing crops for sale. Ruchit Garg and his HFN team also provide scientific, financial and legal advice to farmers and those involved in farming some way or the other.

Ruchit’s agri-tech startup had a humble beginning. What he started on WhatsApp a few years ago has grown into a one-stop solution for farmers. Recently, he brought commercial banks with the ambit of his startup to help farmers seek finance at reasonable interest rates. He opines that the financial service offering is an under-penetrated market in the agricultural sector. Given that technology is yet to reach some parts of rural India, he set up more than 17000 offline kisan centers across the country, where non-tech-savvy farmers can connect with buyers and seek information, help, and/or expertise.

Like USA-returned barefoot billionaire Sridhar Vembu, Ruchit Garg believes in the virtue of giving back to society. His empathy for farmers at the grassroots level stems out of the hardships he had in his growing years after his father’s untimely demise. He was raised by a single mother who was a clerk at the Indian Railways library in Lucknow. While she could not afford to buy books for him, her job at the government library gave him unrestricted access to books and magazines. Reading case studies in Harvard Business Review magazines, which he considered a “fun pastime” back then, sowed the seeds of entrepreneurship into him.

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The global Indian community has been googling who are Indian-origin billionaires among the richest immigrants in America since Forbes’ 2025 list was published. For the first time, 12 Indian Americans made it to the Forbes list of billionaires, with Jay Chaudhry having retained the distinction – the wealthiest Indian-origin billionaire in USA – since 2021. His net worth rose to $17.9bn from $12bn in 2021. America’s highest paid CEO Nikesh Arora, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, and Atlanta-based Raj Sardana, a self-made billionaire, are the newcomers in the elite club of America’s billionaire immigrants.

Jay Chaudhry, Net Worth $17.9 Billion

With a net worth of $17.9 billion, Jay Chaudhry, CEO of Zscaler, is the richest Indian American billionaire and one of the 10 wealthiest immigrants in the USA. His journey from a small Himalayan village to Wall Street is an inspiring story of American Dream. Born in a remote village without running water in Himachal Pradesh, Jay Chaudhry is a leading cyber security business tycoon in San Francisco Bay Area. He co-founded Zscaler, a virtual security check-post for companies exposed to cyber threats, in San Jose after a short stint in sales and marketing positions at MNCs like IBM. He is an alumnus of Harvard University and the University of Cincinnati. Unlike other billionaires, he says “My success so far has mainly been because I have very little attachment for money. I definitely do not feel like a billionaire even with a multibillion-dollar fortune.”

Vinod Khosla, Net Worth $9.2 Billion

Vinod Khosla’s net worth has swelled to $9.2 billion from USD 2.3 billion in 2020. Sun Microsystems’ ex-cofounder Vinod Khosla is now the second richest of all Indian American billionaires, according to Forbes 2025. An alumnus of Mount St Mary’s School in New Delhi, he studied at IIT Delhi, Carnegie Mellon University, and Stanford Graduate School of Business. A newspaper article on the founding of Intel piqued his interest in technology when he was a teenager. He established Khosla Ventures, a venture capital firm in Menlo Park, California and co-founded the Indus Entrepreneurs (NiE), a non-profit network of entrepreneurs.

Rakesh Gangwal, Net Worth $6.6 Billion

Miami-based Rakesh Gangwal, with a net worth of $6.6 billion, is on Forbes 2025 list of richest immigrants in America. A former co-founder of IndiGo, India’s largest low-cost airline, Rakesh Gangwal topped the list of 10 Indian-origin American billionaires in 2018. With a drastic dip in his fortunes due to the pandemic’s impact on aviation, Kolkata–born Rakesh Gangwal’s net worth dropped to $2.3 billion in 2020. An alumnus of IIM Lucknow in mechanical engineering, he studied MBA at Wharton School of Pennsylvania University and fulfilled his American Dream when he became the Chairman of US Airways Group after a stint in strategic planning for United Airlines in 1984. He founded InterGlobe Aviation Ltd. in 2000 and co-founded IndiGo in 2006. Today, IndiGo is the Indian airline in terms of domestic market share.

Romesh T. Wadhwani, Net Worth $5 Billion  

Symphony Technology Group’s founder and CEO Romesh T. Wadhwani from California with a net worth of $5bn continues to be among the 10 richest Indian American billionaires in 2025. His fortunes rose from $3.4 billion in 2020. Romesh Wadhwani is not just the richest Gujarati Indian entrepreneur in USA but a compassionate philanthropist too. His family shifted from Pakistan to India during the 1947 Partition. He is an alumnus of IIT Bombay in electrical engineering and holds a PhD degree from Carnegie Mellon University. Romesh T. Wadhwani is a self-made serial entrepreneur. He set up the Wadhwani Foundation with several initiatives including the National Entrepreneurship Network to drive socio-economic development in countries like India. In 2012, he opened a research center at the National Center for Biological Sciences in Bengaluru.

Rajiv Jain, Net Worth $4.7bn 

Forbes 2025 list of richest immigrants in America features Rajiv Jain with a net worth of $4.7 billion among 12 Indian American billionaires. Born and raised in north India, Rajiv Jain is the founder, chairman and chief investment officer of GQG Partners, a Fort Lauderdale-based global investment firm managing over $150 billion in assets. He moved to the US in the early 1990s to pursue MBA at the University of Miami. He started his career as an equity analyst and had a progressive career spanning two decades at Vontobel Asset Management where he became co-CEO in 2014. His firm is closely tied to India, with major stakes in ITC, HDFC, RIL, ICICI Bank, SBI, Sun Pharma, Infosys, Bharti Airtel, Adani Group, and more.

Kavitark Ram Shriram, Net Worth $3bn 

With a net worth of $3 billion, Kavitark Ram Shriram stands sixth among the richest Indian Americans in 2025.  Among the early investors in Google, Kavitark was born in Chennai and graduated in mathematics at Chennai’s Loyola College. Based in California, he worked for Jeff Bezos, the founder and CEO of Amazon, before making headlines for his investment worth $250,000 in Google. A board member of Google’s parent company, Alphabet, Kavitark Ram Shriram founded Sherpalo, a venture capital firm for technology startups in 2000. He joined the league of Indian American philanthropists by donating a whopping $61 million to Stanford University.

Raj Sardana, Net Worth $2bn

Born in Delhi to a family displaced by the 1947 Partition, Innova Solutions CEO Raj Sardana from Atlanta is a new face on Forbes’ 2025 list of billionaire immigrants in the US. His journey from just $100 in 1981 to his current net worth $2bn is phenomenal. After he moved to the US, he worked in a college cafeteria while studying MS Georgia Tech. Later, he opened a small print shop in Georgia, which became the foundation of Innova Solutions. Today, the company has over 50,000 employees in multiple countries. From humble beginnings to building a billion-dollar company, Raj Sardana’s pursuit of American Dream is the envy of many.

David Paul, Net Worth $1.5bn

With a net worth estimated at $1.5 billion, David C. Paul, Executive Chairman of Globus Medical, one of the top spine and orthopedic device makers in the US, is featured on the Forbes 2025 list of richest immigrants in the United States. Born in India and educated in Chennai, he moved to the US to pursue a master’s degree at Temple University in Philadelphia. He began his career in biomedical research and later started Globus Medical in 2003. Currently living in Audubon, Pennsylvania, David is a prolific innovator with dozens of patents in surgical technology. Globus Medical operates a major subsidiary in Chennai, showcasing Indian-American innovation in global healthcare.

Nikesh Arora, Net Worth $1.4bn

California-based Nikesh Arora, with a a net worth of $1.4 billion, is one of the richest Indian American CEOs on Forbes’ 2025 list of immigrant billionaires. Originally from north India, Nikesh was born into an army family and studied engineering at IIT-BHU before heading to the US for MBA at Northeastern University and master’s in finance from Boston College. He spent nearly a decade in top roles at Google, then went on to become the President of SoftBank. Since he joined Palo Alto Networks in 2018, he has transformed the company into a cybersecurity giant. In 2023, he hit the headlines as the highest paid Indian-origin CEO in the US, earning over $150 million in a single year.

Sundar Pichai and Satya Nadella

Sundar Pichai and Satya Nadella, both sporting net worth of around $1.1 billion, are among the Forbes ‘America’s Richest Immigrants 2025’ list. They’re also at the helm of two of the biggest tech giants in the world, Google and Microsoft. Sundar, based in Los Altos Hills, is a graduate of IIT Kharagpur, Stanford University, and Wharton, and has been serving as the CEO of Alphabet and Google since 2015. Satya, originally from Hyderabad and now living in Washington, holds degrees in computer science engineering and business from institutions in both India and the US. He became the CEO of Microsoft in 2014 and now also serves as the chairman of the board.

Travel Beats is an Indian American community portal owned by Indian Eagle, a trusted travel booking partner of Indians in USA. Subscribe to our free newsletter and stay tuned to latest news & stories about Indian Americans, Indian events in USA, US visa & immigration news and US to India travel updates.

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Let your bucket list feature the Sankurathri Foundation if you’re traveling to India, especially Andhra Pradesh this summer. A visit to the Sankurathri Foundation campus in the coastal town of Kakinada is no less divine an experience than a pilgrimage. At the entrance of the campus, your attention will be caught by the larger-than-life statue of three human beings underneath a sprawling tree. Their unpleasant demise in the 1985 bombing of an Air India flight gave birth to the extraordinary journey of Dr Chandrasekhar Sankurathri, who has been named a Padma Shri awardee this Republic Day 2023. 

Padma Shri Dr Sankurathri, 79, is a living embodiment of what Helen Keller said, “Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it.” His life of success and happiness in Canada turned upside down after the crash of Air India flight 182, from Montreal to Mumbai, over the Atlantic Ocean near Ireland took away his wife and two children. However, unlike tragic heroes in literature and cinema, Dr Sankurathri transformed the darkness of grief and loneliness into a beacon of light for the underprivileged in rural India.

After three years of bereavement, he left Ottawa where he was a celebrated biologist for two decades, and returned to his roots in Andhra Pradesh on a quest for a new purpose of his life. He was also a scientific evaluator for the Ministry of Health, Canada. On seeing rural folks of his hometown and beyond mired in poverty due to the lack of education and healthcare, he rose over his personal grief to uplift them. He braved the tragedy to live for a bigger cause – breaking the cycle of illiteracy and physical ailments for the needy.        

In 1989, he established the Sankurathri Foundation in memory of his family ushering in a new era of empowerment for Kakinada. He also set up the Manjari Memorial Foundation (Manjari was his wife) as a registered charity in Ontario, Canada. Both the foundations have their goals aligned towards improving the quality of life for the poor. With all his savings, he started working on several projects through the Sankurathri Foundation, including free education to poor children at Sarada Vidyalaya that he consecrated to his daughter in 1992.

So far, the high school has educated over 5000 children from the economically weaker households, at a zero-dropout rate. The children are helped with study materials, meals, and health check-ups at the school. In its exclusive article on Dr Chandrasekhar Sankurathri, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) lauded Sarada Vidyalaya as “a ticket out of poverty for these kids”. The article also reads, “Ask them how many have parents who cannot read and write. Most of the hands go up. Ask them what they want to be when they grow up? They answer: Teacher, doctor, police officer….”

The Institute of Ophthalmology that the Sankurathri Foundation has been running since 1993 is named after his son, who was only 7 while traveling on the ill-fated flight. The mission of providing free quality eye care to the visually impaired living below the poverty line is inspired by his son’s dream of becoming an ophthalmologist. The Srikiran Institute of Ophthalmologist has restored vision to nearly 300,000 patients of vulnerable age-groups through cataract surgeries, 90% of which were conducted for free. The institute also holds free medical check-up camps in remote areas of the state.

“15 million Indians are living without vision,” according to Dr Sankurathri’s Srikiran Institute of Ophthalmology located on a serene five-acre site near Kakinada and equipped with modern equipment. There are 10 outpatient clinics, 4 operation theatres, a pharmacy, two optical shops, a cafeteria, and an auditorium. Interestingly, the institute is recognized as the best NGO in ophthalmology by the state government. The institute continues to get support from the University of Ottawa Eye Institute, Rotary International, Infosys Foundation, Eye Foundation of America, the Canadian International Development Agency, and Arvind Eye Hospitals Tamil Nadu. Moreover, the Indo-Canada Chamber of Commerce adjudged him as the “Humanitarian of the Year 2013”.

“The demise of his wife and children was the culmination of the family tragedy that had begun in his childhood. When Chandrasekhar Sankurathri was only 7, his mother died of an unidentified illness. His elder brother went missing after two years of his mother’s untimely death. The fate continued to be hostile against the family as the Godavari floods left many village households including theirs penniless the next year. He lost his only sister when he was 13.

However, he defied to be at the mercy of his fate and became a ray of hope for others. After the air incident in 1985, his stoicism became his strength. This reminds me of the concluding dialogue from “Riders to the Sea”, a popular Irish play, “No man at all can be living forever and we must be satisfied”, said Sourav Agarwal, the Editor of Travel Beats.

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Saas and Bahus are mostly at loggerheads from Indian TV family soaps to Indian households. Either mothers-in-law are dominating and daughters-in-law are submissive, or daughters-in-law are scheming and mothers-in-law are suffering. In times when their “kitchen politics” grab eyeballs to raise TRPs for TV serials, a real-life saas-bahu duo – Sushila and Aishwarya – have bonded over food as friends and business partners though they are thousands of miles apart from each other.

Sushila cooks Marathi flavors in her kitchen in Mumbai and her daughter-in-law Aishwarya serves the same from New York. The saas creates culinary magic in India and ships to New York with dollops of nostalgia. The bahu packages it and sells to Indian expats across the United States where all Indian things are available these days, except authentic Maa ka Khana. Their bond is called and celebrated as Namkeen Queens.

Before Namkeen Queens was born, Sushila Aai would send her handmade sweets and snacks to her son and daughter-in-law in New York on festive occasions like Diwali. Engaged in the American rate race, their only comfort of home away from home was Sushila’s besan ladoo, rava ladoo, and chakli from India. Festive boxes of homemade savories on flights from Mumbai to New York blossomed into a full-blown business – Namkeen Queens in the US.

For Aishwarya Shankar, a Keralite of Tamil descent, the Marathi snacks with touches of Kolhapur cuisine tasted completely different; however, the love, warmth, and care that Sushila Aai cooks with felt familiar to her. Little did she know then that they, in-laws by relation, would bond over food as daughter and mother, and business partners. With the neighboring Indians showing interest in her mother-in-law’s snacks, Aishwarya hatched a business idea.

Aishwarya quit her corporate career in the US and launched Namkeen Queens with Sushila Aai as a co-founder. She was a seasoned product manager with years of experience navigating the dynamic landscape of product development in digital commerce. Though located in different hemispheres, they teamed up with both ‘excitement and uncertainty’ – only to start ruling as ‘Namkeen Queens’ in September 2024.

When Aishwarya pitched the idea to the family, Sushila Aai did not turn averse to cooking savories at a commercial scale. Rather, she agreed to don a home chef’s hat for herself. Commercial cooking is not difficult for her, as she cooked for large gatherings and festive occasions for years – an age-old tradition in joint Indian families. Aishwarya’s brother-in-law also stepped in to supply logistics and provide any other support to Sushila Aai in Mumbai.

Piloted by the daughter-in-law’s business acumen, the mother-in-law’s culinary artistry began to take flights to USA from India, delivering an experience, a feeling, an authentic taste that Indians abroad long for.

“Namkeen Queens is not just a brand—it’s a tribute to the rich culinary legacy of my mother-in-law (Sushila Aai). Her cooking skills and authentic recipes are at the heart of our mission. She’s a remarkable woman with incredible culinary talent. I’m committed to preserving and sharing her culinary magic with the world, turning traditional Marathi flavors into a global sensation,” Namkeen Queens’ CEO Aishwarya told Travel Beats, a leading overseas Indian community portal.

Namkeen Queens’ authentic Indians snacks are equally popular with Indian expats missing the taste of home and other ethnic groups curious about Indian flavors. Yearnings for Maa ka Khana and value for the authenticity of ingredients used keep Namkeen Queens alive as a bridge not only between Aishwarya and Sushila, but also the US and India. Aishwarya defines Namkeen Queens as “a connection to heritage, a celebration of tradition, and a way of sharing the warmth of home…”

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“American by birth, Indian by heart.” That’s what the people of Maheshwar, a temple town on the Narmada River in central India, say about their beloved Sally didi. 82-year-old Sally Holkar is a living embodiment of what Mother Teresa, Sister Nivedita, Jim Corbett, and Annie Besant did to India, their lifetime home away from home. While America became a most sought-after destination for Indians seeking prosperity post 1950, Sally Holkar from Texas made India her home in the 1960s and dedicated her life to reviving a dying craft – the Maheswari art of weaving.

Born in Dallas, Sally Holkar is not just an art preservationist but also a family member of the legendary Ahilyabai Holkar, the ruling queen of Indore and founder of Maheshwar in the 18^th century. The Government of India honored Sally with Padma Shri in 2025, alongside four Indian American awardees, for her lifetime contributions to empowering women weavers and carrying forward the legacy of Rajmata Ahilyabai.

Sally’s journey to India from the US began with love. While studying political science at Stanford University, she met Richard Holkar, son of the last Maharaja of Indore and a descendent of Queen Ahilyabai. After tying the knot with him in 1967, she moved to India and became the first firangi bahu of the Holkar royal family without knowing the greater purpose of this cultural transition in her life. Restoring Ahilyabai’s fading craft – the art of weaving Maheshwari fabrics – to its glory at international level became the mission of her life.

“I was more at home in India than in Dallas,” she once said while recalling her early years in India as an American bride. “I was overwhelmed with the royal hospitality at the palace in Indore. A cup of tea meant that the whole table would be covered with food,” she fondly recalled. Just when Sally, who once dreamed of having a country life in Texas, started feeling at home amid the decorum of the Holkar family, they had to vacate the palace. In 1971, the Government of India abolished the privy purse system forcing the Holkars to leave the palace in Indore.

It was a blessing in disguise for Sally Holkar. They relocated to the 250-year-old Ahilya Fort in Maheshwar that Ahilyabai herself had established as the seat of the Holkar dynasty in Madhya Pradesh. One evening in 1978, as Sally and Richard were strolling to the river ghat, they crossed paths with an elderly weaver carrying a fine Maheshwari sari folded over his arm. The man humbly shared how the weavers community was struggling to survive due to the fading glory of Maheshwari weaving traditions that Queen Ahilyabai had introduced.

The chance encounter became a turning point for her. Moved by the sorry state of the weavers and the elegant beauty of the art form, Sally vowed to bring the age-old weaving traditions back to life and generate employment for the Maheshwari weavers.  She co-founded the Rehwa Society, a nonprofit weaving cooperative, with an initial grant of Rs 80,000 from India’s welfare board. The Rehwa Society started with 12 handlooms and a dozen local women weavers.

In those days, communication in the local language was a big challenge for Sally, a Padma Shri awardee. But language barriers with the rural weavers did not stop her. She set out on the mission with hope, humility, and patience. By ensuring fare wages, the Rehwa Society attracted women weavers to join the looms, and thus, Ahilyabai’s Maheshwar progressively regained its identity as a weaving hub. In 2003, she founded WomenWeave to support single mothers and widows from marginalized sections by training them in spinning and weaving.

Thus, Maheshwar became the final destination of her epic journey that had started from Dallas to India in 1967. Her journey continued with the launch of the Handloom School in 2015 to train young weavers from across the country, focusing on a seamless blend of Maheshwari traditions, contemporary designs and international standards. She has empowered over 5000 artisans, 90% of those are women. Their creations travel to not only premium exhibitions across India but also more than 20 countries.

Like Alfred Ford from Detroit, who spent years shaping his Guru’s vision of the world’s largest Radha-Krishna temple in India, Sally Holkar dedicated her life to the sacred cause of Maheshwar. The bride from America, who once knew nothing of saris, became a connoisseur of Indian handloom textiles. She even draped in nine yards of elegant Maheshwari silk saris for many years, blending in with the local culture. She became a most revered daughter of Maheshwar for the villagers, a transition from her being a daughter-in-law of Indore’s royal family.

This exclusive story is brought to you by Travel Beats, a leading overseas Indian community portal. Travel Beats is a subsidiary of Indian Eagle, the most trusted air-ticketing partner of Indians abroad for travel between USA and India. Subscribe to our newsletter for the latest Indian community news and stories.

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In March 2025, the non-availability of pre-booked wheelchair assistance forced an 82-year-old traveler, among the passengers of Air India, to walk with difficulty. The octogenarian suffered a fall before she could reach the boarding gate for a connecting flight to Bengaluru from New Delhi. She was hospitalized, thereafter. This unfortunate incident at Delhi IGI Airport sparked a debate in all quarters, from media to the Rajya Sabha (the upper house of the Parliament) and brought a grim picture to the fore – the increasing number of wheelchair assistance requests and cases of misuse.

It got Indian Aviation regulators, including DGCA talking about whether all the requests for wheelchair assistance are genuine, why the available number of wheelchairs does not suffice to fulfil daily requests at airports, whether wheelchairs are available to passengers who genuinely need this on-ground support for age-related health problems or physical debility. It has opened up a much-needed conversation about not just airlines but also passengers who are equally responsible to ensure no misuse of wheelchair service, a free facility for those with genuine needs.

Stats of Air India passengers requesting wheelchair service  

Data from early 2025 shows that nearly 30% of passengers booking Air India flights to USA from India requested wheelchair assistance. On February 19, for instance, Air India’s nonstop Delhi to Chicago flight had 99 wheelchair bookings for almost one-third of the passengers on board. On March 20, the airline had to cater to a whopping 90 wheelchair service requests for passengers scheduled to travel on the Delhi-Newark flight. Precisely, Air India alone processes over 100,000 wheelchair requests every month from passengers, domestic and international.

Demand for wheelchair assistance has surged among travelers to the US, Canada, and the UK, as many elderly Indians visit those countries for medical care or a vacation with their children residing there. The scenario is more or less the same in the domestic sector wherein Mumbai CSMI Airport registered 750 wheelchair bookings for Air India flights within the country. The airport staff members reported handling up to 120 wheelchair support requests for a single international flight.

Misuse of no-cost wheelchair service

The recent spike in wheelchair requests has become a pressing concern for airlines and airports alike. Mumbai and New Delhi airports are too big and crowded to navigate for senior citizens traveling unaccompanied. Having wheelchair assistance is the easiest way for them to skip long queues and zip through various checkpoints, from security to immigration to boarding. That’s the root of wheelchair service misuse at Indian airports.

There’s no denying that wheelchair-bound passengers get preferential treatment like priority baggage check-in and boarding. That’s another reason why even able-bodied senior travelers are resorting to misuse airlines’ no-cost wheelchair service for the sake of convenience. Delhi and Mumbai airports’ wayfinding signage and information displays in Hindi and English make the non-Hindi and non-English-speaking elderly depend on the wheelchair support staff to access facilities in the terminal.

A shocking truth

The airport staff noticed on several occasions that nearly half of the passengers with wheelchair bookings walked normally once past security or immigration checks. Evidently, many travelers requesting wheelchair assistance on the pretext of necessity are depriving those with a genuine need for the service. In a bizarre incident of wheelchair shortage at Mumbai International Airport in 2024, an 80-year-old Indian American, who had arrived from New York, collapsed, suffered a heart attack, and died leaving his spouse behind.

The overbooking of wheelchair assistance service has raised safety alarms for airlines flying a significant number of senior citizens and medically unfit passengers. It poses logistical challenges during a mid-air emergency that often forces unplanned flight diversions, given the fact that each flight has limited staff and equipment. With passenger safety being a priority, the Ministry of Civil Aviation is investigating the misuse of wheelchair service at major airports and is looking to mitigate it.

Some aviation experts opine that aviation regulators should direct airlines to ask passengers for valid medical proof as evidence of their genuine need for wheelchair assistance. This would help segregate adults with limited mobility from healthy elderly travelers. This accountability measure would ensure even younger adults with medical conditions are not deprived of wheelchair support at airports.

The post Wheelchair Requests from 30% Indians Flying to USA, UK: A Genuine Need or A Misuse first appeared on Travel to India, Cheap Flights to India, Aviation News, India Travel Tips.

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“Born into struggle, raised in limitations, but destined for greatness.” This sums up Seema Kumari’s journey from a remote Indian village where girls’ education is a taboo and child marriage is still in practice to a prestigious Ivy League university. Unlike the protagonist Anuja in the Oscar-nominated Anuja short film, Seema made it to Harvard University from the intersection of her small village and her boundless dreams. She earned a full scholarship to major in economics at Harvard.

Seema kicked off her legal journey to America with football. Hailing from Dahu, a small village in Jharkhand near the Indo-Bangladesh border, Seema had little access to education during her childhood. In her village of school dropouts, dreaming of higher studies is a daring act. Her parents had minimal schooling. Her father worked at a thread factory and struggled to make the ends meet for a joint family of 19 members under one roof. Seema once said,

“In my village, girls weren’t supposed to have dreams. They were supposed to help with chores, stay out of sight, and prepare for early marriages”.

In 2012, an unexpected visitor arrived in her village. Yuwa Foundation, an NGO, was looking for local kids for a football program aimed at empowering girls. Seema, only nine years old, didn’t hesitate to join the program. It was a decision that sent ripples through her conservative community. Between fetching buckets of water from a well and attending the local government school, she carved out time to join the team. What started as a simple game became a life-changing journey.

Football took her places. She played in local tournaments, then national championships, and eventually, international programs where she saw a world beyond Jharkhand. For her, football was more than a sport. It was a passport to possibility. “I just wanted to play. I never thought it would take me so far,” she once said in an interview.

While excelling in football, Seema had another battle to fight – education. Her class had 70 students, and learning felt distant and impersonal. Recognizing the potential of girls like Seema, Yuwa Foundation opened a school in 2015, reducing class sizes and bringing in teachers from across India and the US. For the first time, education felt personal, and the prospect of a brighter future felt real.

Determined to steer life to that future, Harvard’s Seema Kumari started working tirelessly. She became a football coach and paid her school fees from the salary, balancing academics and training with unwavering dedication. “There was the pressure of dowry and the cost of weddings in the village. Girls are a burden on their parents. You don’t get to live your education,” she had once admitted. But she gritted her teeth to change this narrative.

In 2018, she was selected for a summer program at Washington University and in 2019, she attended another at the University of Cambridge in England. Following Cambridge, she was one of the 40 students selected for a one-year exchange program in the United States. These experiences exposed her to new horizons, new cultures, new possibilities, and the epiphany that she was capable of much more than she had ever imagined.

Seema Kumari’s academic journey from India to USA culminated at Harvard University. It wasn’t even on her radar until one of her teachers encouraged her to apply. Seema hesitated. But with the support of her mentors, she took the leap and secured a full scholarship to Harvard. A divine blessing for a village girl for whom education is a luxury. Seema became a part of Harvard’s Class of 2025, majoring in Economics.

“I remember when I got the acceptance letter, I was happy, but my parents… they didn’t know what Harvard was. They had never heard of it.” She revealed in an interview. She became the girl who defied traditions and landed where no one from her village had ever dared to dream- the prestigious Harvard University in the USA.

When the news broke, it wasn’t just her village that celebrated. The world took notice. Actress Priyanka Chopra Jonas congratulated Seema. News outlets flashed her name. For the first time, Seema wasn’t just a village girl with a dream. She became an inspiration. “It was overwhelming. People I had never met before were talking about me. But deep down, I knew this was just the beginning,” she said.

As she prepares to graduate this year, she is thinking beyond herself. Seema doesn’t want to be the exception. She wants to be the start of a revolution. “I want to go back and create something for the girls in my village,” she says. “A place where they don’t have to fight to learn, where they don’t have to choose between dreams and expectations.” She envisions an organization to empower girls and women in villages through education and financial independence.

The post From Fetching Water in Village to Studying at Harvard: Seema Kumari Rewrites Her Life first appeared on Travel to India, Cheap Flights to India, Aviation News, India Travel Tips.

The post From Fetching Water in Village to Studying at Harvard: Seema Kumari Rewrites Her Life appeared first on Travel to India, Cheap Flights to India, Aviation News, India Travel Tips.

“A ship is safe in harbor. But that is not what ships are built for.” Similarly, some people are born to break from household confines, cross the seven seas, and travel across geographies. This is true about Molly Joy, a humble grocery shopkeeper from Kerala. The 65-year-old granny, who had never gone out of her village before and after marriage, prides herself on being a globetrotter with grey hairs. She funds her international flights and trips with her modest savings from the grocery store that she has been running single-handedly since her husband’s untimely demise in 2004.

Molly has been to more than 11 countries, including the US, the UK, and Singapore, in the past 10 years. Bitten by the wanderlust bug in childhood, she used to feel elated at the mere thought of traveling the country. But her low-income family in a village near Kochi City could not even pay fees to send her on school trips. Misty memories of those days, though buried in the grave of the past, made her belief, “You can’t cross the sea merely by staring at the water.”

She was married off in 1986. There was a magazine stand in her husband’s grocery store. She would borrow the travel magazine to read travelogues and destination stories – which provided her a window to the vast world outside of her everyday life in the village. It fed her imagination about the faraway places and nurtured her innermost desire to visit those places. But her husband’s sudden death in 2004 did not let her wanderlust bloom. She alone had to shoulder the responsibility of running the shop and raising the children.

After her children grew up enough to stand on their feet, Molly got a passport for her first international trip in 2012. With her own savings, as well as the children’s support and financial help, she travelled to Europe. France, Switzerland, Germany, and Italy were stopovers in her 15-day itinerary. “I was concerned about the expense a little, but my desire to travel mitigated the concern. The dream of standing in front of the Eiffel Tower in Paris, leafing through the history of Rome at the heritage sites including the Colosseum, and taking scenic train rides in the Swiss Alps was too overwhelming to be overshadowed by anything,” said Molly Joy.

The first trip to Europe was just the threshold that she had crossed to pursue her dreams. Her next travel was to Singapore and Malaysia in 2017. During the 5-year break, she accumulated savings by running the shop for extra hours even on weekends and holidays. Between her two foreign tours – one in 2012 and the other in 2017, she travelled across South India. Madurai, Mysore, Ooty, Kanyakumari, Kodaikanal, Puducherry, Gokarna, and Udupi found space in her travel album. Some tourist attractions in North India also became part of her travel memoirs.

A second trip to Europe happened to be her call in 2019. This time, she visited London, Greece, the Netherlands, Belgium, Portugal, and Sweden. “I have not had enough of Europe. The countries are so beautiful and full of history that I wish to make another trip to Europe someday. Travel gives me an amazing sense of freedom. After every trip, instead of feeling exhausted, I feel reborn. I impatiently wait for the next journey,” she said ebulliently.

Early in 2020, the pandemic brought international travel restrictions. Meanwhile, she saved money and geared up for her first trip to the United States. After the second wave of the pandemic receded from India and before the cost of international air tickets shot up, she took a flight to the US in November 2021. The northeast US cities formed a major part of the itinerary. She visited Newark, New York City, Buffalo, Philadelphia, Boston, Pittsburgh and other cities during the 15-day trip. “The Niagara Falls near Buffalo, the Universal Studio in Las Vegas, and the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco are the best experiences I will cherish forever,” said Molly Joy.

“She is an ultimate travel inspiration. She reminds me of a most popular saying, ‘Never get so busy making a living that you forget to live’,” said Sourav Agarwal, the Editor of Travel Beats, a leading overseas Indian community portal by IndianEagle.com, the most trusted travel-booking partner of Indians in America.

The post With Modest Savings from Her Grocery Shop, This Single Indian Mother Has Traveled to 11 Countries in 10 Years first appeared on Travel to India, Cheap Flights to India, Aviation News, India Travel Tips.

The post With Modest Savings from Her Grocery Shop, This Single Indian Mother Has Traveled to 11 Countries in 10 Years appeared first on Travel to India, Cheap Flights to India, Aviation News, India Travel Tips.

Air India, which played a knight in shining armor several times for the countrymen stranded abroad during geopolitical conflicts and COVID-19, was struggling with an albatross (debts, losses, and threats of a shutdown) around its neck before the Tata Group welcomed the airline back home as the best-ever tribute to JRD Tata. Since its takeover by Ratan Tata, Air India has resurrected from its decades-long state of inertia, inefficiency, incompetence…to become “a world-class airline with an Indian heart” through its 5-year transformation plan, Vihaan.AI.

Air India Lounges

Being a Tata brand, Air India is betting on hospitality to elevate passenger experience from the height of 40,000 feet to ground. The flagship Air India Maharaja lounges at New York JFK Airport and New Delhi IGI Airport are currently undergoing a large-scale renovation. Currently, Air India’s domestic lounge network covers 26 airports, including tier-II Lucknow, Madurai, Vadodara, Indore, Nagpur, Mangalore, Patna, and Srinagar airports.

Opened in early 2024, the Air India lounge at Bengaluru International Airport is wooing premium travelers with its regal décor, modern amenities, swanky furniture, and best-in class hospitality. The convenience of flying in premium travel classes with premium economy or business flight tickets to Mumbai, Hyderabad, Kolkata, and Chennai doubles over Air India’s lounging hospitality at those airports. Plush couches, cozy sofas, complimentary Wi-Fi, dedicated nap rooms with recliners, showers, fully-stocked mini bars…are some of the benefits at third-party airport lounges in Air India’s global network.

Air India’s Fleet Upgrade and Modernization

Fleet upgrade and modernization is at the center of Vihaan.AI – Air India’s 5-year transformation plan, which is halfway to repositioning the airline as a world-class carrier. Air India has inducted brand new A350-900 planes into international service as part of its multibillion-dollar fleet expansion project, alongside absorbing Vistara aircraft into its fleet after the merger. A350-900 planes with Premium Economy seats and luxurious business class suites tick all the boxes, from elevated inflight dining to redefined inflight entertainment – for premium travel experience that Indian Diaspora had been waiting for.

Air India’s game changer – A350-900s are operating nonstop flights to India from New York JFK, Newark EWR, and London Heathrow. The Tata airline is looking to roll out top-notch First Class suites on yet-to-be-delivered A350-1000s for select intercontinental routes with demand shooting up for premium travel.

Among Air India’s goals in 2025 is improving travel experience on domestic routes for domestic passengers and international passengers having domestic connections to/from the gateway airports – Mumbai and Delhi.’ Air India has retained the erstwhile Vistara A321neo aircraft with Premium Economy for flights to Singapore from Delhi and Mumbai.

Air India’s Fleet Retrofit Program

Vihaan.AI – Air India’s ongoing transformation from a laggard to a TATA brand, will see completion of the US$ 400-million retrofit project by mid-2025. As many as 27 A320neo planes in the A320 fleet family of narrowbody aircraft that Air India describes as ‘a backbone of its domestic and short-haul international operations’ are upgraded with new cushy seats, carpets, upholstery, and amenities to turn around the airline for 80 to 85% of its total passengers on metro to metro and non-metro routes.

The retrofitted aircraft in Air India’s fleet will up the game with contemporary interiors and passenger-friendly upgrades such as USB chargers, portable electronic device holders, and Wi-Fi. The single-aisle fleet will progressively feature a three-class configuration: economy, premium economy, and business. Also, 40 Boeing 787 aircraft in Air India’s widebody fleet will be refurbished and retrofitted starting this year, under the same modernization program, to deliver a whole new flying experience, according to Nipun Aggarwal, Air India’s Chief Commercial Officer.

Maharaja Club: Air India’s Frequent Flyer Loyalty Program

One of the advantages of flying with Air India in 2025 is the opportunity to earn award flights, extra check-in baggage allowance, complimentary cabin upgrades and lounge access. After two years of its takeover by Ratan Tata, Air India launched the Maharaja Club, a unique frequent flyer loyalty program with a myriad of benefits and privileges. You can earn Maharaja points not only for booking Air India flight tickets but also for traveling with its Star Alliance partners, including Lufthansa, United Airlines, Air Canada, SWISS Air, Turkish Airlines, and Singapore Airlines.

Interestingly, Air India’s Maharaja Club lets you create a family pool of loyalty rewards earned by your family members by linking their Maharaja Club accounts. Whenever the family members fly with Air India or any of the Star Alliance partners and spend with Air India’s non-airline partners (hotels, restaurants, brand stores, etc.), their Maharaja points get accumulated in the family pool. As the family head, you can specify what percentage of their reward points would be added to the family pool. Your spouse, children, parents, siblings, and in-laws can join the family pool, but the strength should not exceed nine members including you.

You can redeem your own Maharaja points or the points collected in the family pool to book award flights to Washington DC, Chicago, San Francisco, New York, London, Singapore, or Dubai in either of the two categories: Value Fare and Prime Fare. With Prime Fare, you can redeem points to book your travel during peak seasons or flight deals for last-minute travel. If reward points in your Maharaja Club account with Air India fall short of an award flight or a cabin upgrade, you can top up the account balance by buying points.

New Air India Hub in South India 

Taking the cue from the success of its nonstop flights to Bengaluru from USA and London, Air India is setting up a hub at Kempegowda BLR Airport for the vast South Indian Diaspora in the West. Central to Air India’s long-haul network expansion plans, the new Bangalore hub will streamline international departures and arrivals through Kempegowda Airport for any part of South India. Additionally, the upcoming Air India hub at BLR Airport would help open more international routes from south Indian cities.

Air India’s primary hub, New Delhi Airport, for most nonstop flights to India from USA and other countries has overgrown its capacity. The South Indian Diaspora connecting to their destinations via New Delhi has been vocal about inconvenient transit at Indira Gandhi Airport, especially during winters when dense fog causes flight delays and cancellations. Undoubtedly, setting up its second hub away from north India marks a watershed moment in Air India’s transformation as a most passenger-friendly airline.

Upgrade Plus: Air India’s Cabin Upgrade System for Economy Flyers

In the first year of its transformation journey, Air India introduced Upgrade +, an easy-to-use cabin upgrade system for economy travelers to fly in a premium class. Those, who are not Air India’s Maharaja Club members, can make the most of this program to upgrade their travel from economy to premium economy or business class for a little extra fare. Unlike the Maharaja Club, Air India’s Upgrade Plus facility is exclusive to flying with Air India, not any Star Alliance member airline. Check out Indian Eagle Travel’s guide on how to use Upgrade + for premium class travel on Air India.

Check-in Baggage Tracking on Air India Flights

Among the perks of flying with Air India in 2025 is end-to-end tracking of your checked bags in real time. Integrated to Air India’s website and mobile app, the luggage tracking feature provides real-time updates on your checked baggage from departure to arrival. It cover key touchpoints – check-in, security clearance, aircraft loading, transfer, and arrival – through your international journey with Air India. Read on to know how to use Air India’s checked baggage tracker for your peace of mind.

Air India’s Vision 2025 and Service Standards

Driven by CEO Campbell Wilson’s Vision 2025, Air India is committed to and focused on elevating its service standards, alongside the fleet upgrade and aircraft retrofit project in progress. There are some reports of travelers unhappy with the airline’s inflight service etiquette despite tangible improvements in onboard dining, seating, and inflight entertainment content on certain routes.

“2025 will see progress on many key initiatives, such as…elevating Air India’s service standards, raising the bar on what we consider ‘good’, and more consistently delivering to those new expectations. We will also strengthen and tighten our practices and processes so that we are not just consistent, we are also efficient and, ultimately, profitable,” said CEO Campbell Wilson in a company newsletter to the employees and stakeholders.

Wi-Fi on Air India Flights

Wi-Fi on select Air India flights operated by A350-900s and Boeing 787-9s lets you fly connected even above the clouds. Air India became the first Indian airline to introduce inflight Wi-Fi on domestic and short-haul international flights operated by A321neo planes. Air India’s Vision 2025 of customer service standards encompasses plans to roll out Wi-Fi across its network from America to Australia progressively. Inflight Wi-Fi is also part of the Tata airline’s $400-million aircraft refurbishment project (elaborated above). The travelers who got the best fare deals from IndianEagle.com, a leading air-ticketing partner of Air India, for their winter holiday trips to India from New York and Newark are all praise of seamless Wi-Fi service on board.

The post To Travel or Not to Travel on Air India Flights in 2025: Top 10 Compelling Reasons first appeared on Travel to India, Cheap Flights to India, Aviation News, India Travel Tips.

The post To Travel or Not to Travel on Air India Flights in 2025: Top 10 Compelling Reasons appeared first on Travel to India, Cheap Flights to India, Aviation News, India Travel Tips.