Chai, an incredibly versatile drink, is next to God in India. Like the Almighty, chai is omnipresent across the country, from a poor man’s hut to billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s Antilia, from a roadside stall to a Taj Hotel restaurant, from rural interiors to urban hangouts, from railway platforms to the height of 35000 feet, from Kanyakumari to Kashmir, and from a writer’s desk to an IT employee’s favorite pastime. Reportedly, India consumed over 1.1 billion kilograms of tea in 2021 alone.

Ek cup cha (a cup of tea) is the elixir of life, especially in Kolkata. Serving tea with a couple of Britannia biscuits to guests in households is unique to the culture of Kolkata. Discussing and debating the current state of affairs, from politics to economy, while sipping garam cha (hot tea) at a tea stall is a morning ritual in the City of Joy. Tea is a must-have stimulant accompanying a big bowl of jhalmuri with tele bhaja (fritters) at any adda, a get-together of friends or family members, in the City of Rabindranath Tagore.

Picture Credit: Kolkata Chai Co

Having grown discontented with the westernized versions of tea in the USA, Ani and Ayan Sanyal – an Indian American sibling duo – have been brewing desi chai for thousands of Indians in and outside New York since 2018. Chai is one of the few things that have filled in the void between their life in America and the life they lived in India during their vacations. Ayan and Ani Sanyal in their thirties, established Kolkata Chai Co, an authentic Indian tea brand in New York, out of their love for Kolkata, respect for the native tradition, cravings for cha and, most importantly, nostalgia.

The genesis of the Sanyal brothers’ Kolkata Chai Co began with their trips to India. Right from the booking of flight tickets to Kolkata from USA for vacations, their tastebuds would long for the flavor of roadside tea stalls and street food that the City of Joy is known for. Their excitement would culminate in a visit to their parents’ favorite tea stalls during every trip to Kolkata. The visit is as holy as that to College Street, Coffee House, Nandan, and the Victoria Memorial for art and culture buffs. Hardly does any American tea brand have the flavor and aroma of chai brewed by even traditional stalls in Kolkata’s lanes and alleys.

After their return from one such enlightening trip to the City of Joy in 2017, Ani and Anil started brewing their thoughts and cooking up business plans to make their dream of making America sip authentic desi chai come true. An overwhelming response to the pilot testing of desi chai in farmers markets and culinary workshops gave them green signal to launch Kolkata Chai Co in 2019. Today, Kolkata Chai Café is a landmark on the lower side of Manhattan and a must stop for Indian tea lovers.

Just when the business started toddling, the pandemic shut the café down. Inarguably, opening a business is a capital-intensive process in a city like New York. On top of that, the pandemic made it a lot more difficult to make the business stand as public life came to a standstill in the Big Apple (rather across the globe). They started delivering chai door to door across the city in between two waves of the pandemic. They also came up with Chai Mix and began to ship it across the country. Chai Mix, a signature packaged product with different flavors including the one made with “organic Assam tea leaves and premium spices”, sells like hot cakes.

“Tea being the mainstay of Kolkata Chai Café, the menu has Masala Chai, Kesar Chai, Ginger Chai, Iced Chai, Oatmilk Chai, Filter Coffee, Cardamom Coffee, and Assam Milk Chai. Masala Limca, Turmeric Latte (haldi doodh), and Almond Milk are among the seasonal specials on the menu. Be it the Sanyal brothers’ café in NYC or a humble tea stall in India, chai and samosa make a perfect Indian couple. Therefore, the menu features samosa with mint and tamarind chutney. With egg rolls on the menu, the sibling duo brought a slice of Kolkata’s street food culture to New York. Egg rolls dominate the mood of evening outings in Bengal. However, I am surprised to see jhal muri missing from the menu of Kolkata Chai Café in New York,” said Sourav Agarwal, the Editor of Travel Beats, a leading community portal for Indians in America.

Kolkata Chai Café in New York City is one of the best hangouts for Indians living in or visiting the United States. This exclusive story is part of the new series – Life in America – by Indian Eagle that hundreds of thousands of Indians in USA have chosen as their reliable travel-booking partner. Subscribe to Travel Beats, a subsidiary of Indian Eagle, for community stories, US-India travel news, visa and immigration updates.

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Indeed, America is the cradle for Indian prodigies and the incubator of their dreams. 16-year-old Pranjali Awasthi wearing eyeglasses appears like an ordinary Indian girl unless she introduces herself as an innovator and founder. Unlike Indian-origin business leaders who climbed up a ladder to the C-suite of American conglomerates, Pranjali made headlines as her own boss when she was 15 in 2022. With her disruptive idea, she has ventured into the AI-driven business landscape where two giants – Google and Microsoft – have locked horns to establish their supremacy over artificial intelligence.

While most Indian-origin kids of her age (under 15) were vying for the Scripps National Spelling Bee trophy, Pranjali Awasthi was looking to disrupt the online search landscape dominated by Google. In the process, she took the entrepreneurial plunge to found her AI startup, Delv.AI, which is currently valued at over $12 million. With Delv.AI having celebrated its second anniversary, Pranjali leads a team of 10 technology enthusiasts and helms such key departments as coding, operations, and customer service.

PC: Pranjali Awasthi | Linkedin (AI generated)

Pranjali Awasthi’s Delv.AI is a new age search platform that streamlines the data extraction process from the sea of online content. It employs artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies to understand queries and present specific information in the form of interactive charts and maps to facilitate better understanding. It also generates summaries of uploaded pdfs and provides valuable insights into the data. Her AI-driven innovation is a boon for researchers in the current era of information overload.

One of the few youngest members in the elite club of prodigious entrepreneurs, Pranjali owes her passion for technology to her father, a computer engineer, who moved to Miami, Florida from India when she was 11. Interestingly, the tender age of 7, when kids practice phonics, was her threshold of learning coding in India. With easy access to computer science and math programs at school level in the US, her passion intensified for emerging technologies, like artificial intelligence and machine learning.

Within two years of their living in Miami, she got to intern in machine learning projects at Florida International University when OpenAI’s GPT3 was making waves as a ground-breaking innovation. This captured her imagination, and thus, a billion-dollar business idea hit the latent entrepreneur in her. There was no dearth of motivation for her at home and beyond to nurture her interest in emerging technologies while juggling regular school work.

On successful completion of the internship, Pranjali Awasthi felt more inclined to develop a disruptive business model harnessing AI technology. She joined a 12-week AI startup accelerator program, Miami Hack Week, run by Lucy Guo and Dave Fontenot, the co-founders of Backend Capital, a venture capital firm in San Francisco. With unwavering support of her parents (unlike most Indian parents opposing the idea of taking a break from school), she put her high school studies on hold and dedicated her time to working on her business idea for an efficient data extraction process.

Pranjali, who has been a coder since the age of 7, developed her own AI platform and founded the startup, Delv.AI, in January 2022. It was first launched on Product Hunt, a popular American website displaying tech innovations. Eventually, an opportunity to showcase her product at the Miami Tech Week event came her way. It proved to be pivotal in propelling her startup to new highs and brought investors to her door. Demonstrating her mission and vision for Delv.AI with conviction, she has been able to raise $450,000 from angel investors. And her journey continues….

This story is part of our continued effort to give a shoutout to achievements of Young Indians in America. Travel Beats is a subsidiary of IndianEagle.com, a most trusted air-ticketing partner of Indians abroad. Best airline deals from Indian Eagle make travel between USA and India cheaper, irrespective of routes.

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The United States is just a long-haul flight away from India; but for Jyothi Reddy, it was an eventful journey of toil and moil starting from an orphanage and agricultural fields in India. She now drives a Mercedes Benz in the States, whereas she walked 5 km barefoot to and from school every day in India. She was sent to an orphanage for two full meals a day in childhood, whereas she owns four residential properties in America. She toiled 10 hours a day in the paddy fields for a meagre wage of Rs 5, whereas she gives paychecks to more than 100 employees in the US today.

D Anila Jyothi Reddy is the CEO of a billion-dollar IT company, Key Software Solutions Inc. in Phoenix, Arizona. Her story of survival and success is more poignant than that of those chasing American Dreams, as well as no less inspiring than that of the richest Indian American billionaire. “No compromise, no condition is permanent, nothing is impossible” are the founding principles of her life as a self-made millionaire entrepreneur.

She was one of the five children born to a daily-wage farmer who found it hard to provide for his family in a village of Warangal, Telangana. The everyday struggle of the family forced her father to send Jyothi and her younger sibling to an orphanage where they would get two meals a day to quench their hunger. However, her sister was sent back home as she would frequently fall ill due to homesickness. Jyothi continued to stay there like a forced orphan and completed her studies through grade 10.

Unsurprisingly, her life was not easy at the orphanage. Bathrooms had no water taps there. She would queue up for hours to fetch one bucket of water from a nearby well. Even the food given to her and other inhabitants of the orphanage was improperly cooked, unhygienic, and of poor quality. Her barefoot commute to and from school was a daily marathon for a total distance of 5km. All those hardships could not suppress her never-say-die attitude. Rather, she learned to be self-dependent for her needs.

Fate had more trials and tribulations waiting for Jyothi Reddy. She wanted to continue studying after class 10, but her family married her off to a poor farmer though she was only 16. She started working as a daily-wage farm laborer for Rs 5 per day in order to help her husband make ends meet. She gave birth to two daughters by the time she turned 18. While raising the kids and suffering domestic violence, she felt the need of looking for a decent job.

A new chapter of her life began with good notes when she joined a local government school as a National Service Volunteer for a monthly stipend of Rs 190 back in 1988. After a short stint there, she got a job opportunity for the librarian post at Jana Shiksha Nilayam in Warangal. Being a single parent of two daughters, she supplemented her income by stitching clothes at night. Simultaneously, she furthered her studies and earned a BA degree from BR Ambedkar Open University in 1994.

With a postgraduate degree from Kakatiya University in 1997, Jyothi became a government school teacher. Her life was a square running from working hard for hours to raising the kids, and saving for their future until a surprise visit by her cousin from the United States proved to be a blessing in disguise. It sowed seeds of ‘American Dream’ into her mind. Guided by her, Jyothi Reddy pursued a postgraduate diploma in computer application.

In May 2000 when the dot-com boom peaked up, she travelled to USA with a job offer from a friend of her cousin’s in California and leaving her daughters in a hostel in Telangana. While working in America, she hit upon the idea of starting a consulting business. After 18 months of stay in the US, she travelled back home to see her children. During her trip to India, she came across a priest who predicted that she would be her own boss as she was born to be an entrepreneur. It worked as a catalyst to her American Dream.

After her return to the States, Jyothi Reddy founded her first company – Key Software Solutions Inc. in Phoenix in October 2001 – to help others with visa-related documentation. She roped in her cousin as business partner and gradually extended the business by adding talent recruitment and software development services to the company’s portfolio. The headcount of her American company has exceeded 100.

CEO Jyothi Reddy is also a philanthropist working for the wellbeing of orphans and eligible brides from underprivileged families. She bears wedding expenses for specially-abled girls from economically disadvantaged backgrounds. Both of her daughters are married and settled in the US. They also work as software professionals.

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On January 24 in 1966, the young India (post-independence) was preparing for the Republic Day celebration. It was a most fateful day for both the nation and its national carrier, Air India. The fatal accident of Air India Flight 101 at Mont Blanc in France, killing 11 crew members and all 106 passengers including Dr. Homi Jehangir Bhabha on board, reduced the enthusiasm and excitement towards organizing the celebrations into grief and bereavement across the country.

After its image was rebranded for the western markets in the beginning of the 1960s, Air India was operating in full glory. Bombay to London and London to New York were the most popular routes in the network of Air India flights then. Unaware of its tragic fate on January 24 in 1966, Air India Flight 101 using a Boeing 707 named Kanchenjunga took off from Bombay for London via Delhi, had two scheduled stops – Beirut and Geneva.

Picture credit: Homibhabhafellowships.com

At Flight Level 190, the AI Kanchenjunga was supposed to descend for Geneva International Airport after passing Mont Blanc in the French Alps. The pilot, under the impression that he passed Mont Blanc, steered the aircraft to descend and ended up crashing the aircraft at the 15,584-ft elevation of the Mont Blanc Massif. A miscalculation by the pilot in determining the aircraft’s position while passing by Mont Blanc – which was mainly due to a communication error between the pilot and the radar controller – had caused the tragedy of Air India Flight 101, according to the report by India’s inquiry commission.

The pilot-in-command of Air India Kanchenjunga, en route to Geneva from Beirut, knew that one of the VORs was not working. Very High Frequency (VHF) Omni-directional Range (VOR) is a type of short range radio navigation system for aircraft to determine its position on receiving radio signals. As a result, the pilot miscalculated the aircraft’s position in relation to Mont Blanc and communicated his calculation of the position to the radar controller. On finding it an error, the controller determined the right position and sent a message to the pilot who misunderstood the ‘correction’ message.

Surprisingly, a similar mishap at the same place had reduced Air India Flight 245 into dusts on November 3 in 1950. The way both the aircraft – Malabar Princes in 1950 and Kanchenjunga in 1966 – were destroyed killing everyone aboard, has led to several conspiracy theories relating to the death of Dr. Homi Bhabha, the Chairman of the Indian Atomic Energy Commission.

Just two months before Air India’s Mont Blanc crash in 1966, Dr. Bhabha made an announcement on All India Radio that they would make atom bombs to establish India as a nuclear power within 18 months. Dr. Homi Bhabha was the father of India’s nuclear program. Some historians suspect the crash of Air India Flight 101 as a conspiracy for the accidental death of Dr. Bhabha. It was preceded by the suspicious death of Lal Bahadur Shastri, the second Prime Minister of India, on January 11, 1966 in Tashkent.

Hence, January 24 is etched as an ill-fated day in the history of Air India and a day of grief for the demise of Dr. Homi Bhabha in the annals of India. In August 2019, Prime Minister unveiled a monument dedicated to the victims of Air India Malabar Princess in 1950 and Air India Kanchenjunga in 1966.

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We are flying into 2024. Let’s thank the Almighty for blessing us with another year of new goals and milestones. A new year brings along new hopes and new opportunities for whatever remains unachieved in the year passing by. Nearly 5 million Americans and immigrants of Indian origin are glorifying their motherland, India, in the US through their achievements in different walks of life and contributing to their adopted home in myriad ways.

Naturally, they have some expectations from their motherland and the land of American Dream. 2023 saw fulfilment of some of their wishes, such as a new Indian consulate in the West Coast (Seattle) and the approval of H1B visa renewal within the US. There are some other wishes like dual citizenship, no ageing out of children on H4 visa, no per-country cap on Green Cards to Indians, a federal holiday on Diwali…that have made it to their list of ‘New Year’ resolutions.

Dual Citizenship

To get a foreign citizenship is to lose Indian citizenship since the Constitution of India denies dual citizenship to overseas Indians. In 2022 alone, a record 2,25,620 Indians renounced their Indian citizenship to become citizens of the US or other countries. The yearly statistics on citizenship renunciation fuel a debate about whether dual citizenship is the solution, sparking NRIs’ hopes for policy amendment allowing them to reap the benefits of holding both Indian and US (or other foreign) citizenship.

Both naturalized US citizens of Indian-origin and the inflated community of Indian immigrants pursuing American Dream in the United States have been demanding dual citizenship for years, but the government of India continues to maintain its stance against their demand. Most recently, the question of whether Indians abroad would be able to hold their Indian passports alongside foreign passports resurfaced in the Parliament, to which the External Affairs Minister of India responded clarifying that and security challenges are major deterrents to granting dual citizenship.

That’s why the continued demand for dual citizenship is among economic the New Year resolutions on the checklist of Indian Americans. Though they are eligible for OCI cards which enable them to visit, live and work in India indefinitely, they don’t hold any right to invest in agricultural properties and contest elections in India. They are not entitled even to voting rights in India. Dual citizenship will give them greater global mobility.

Removal of Per-Country Cap on Employment-Based Green Cards

The removal of the 7% cap on employment-based green cards remains to be one of the long-standing resolutions of Indians in USA, whose contribution to the US economy has been immense. The US immigration law limiting the annual issuance of employment-based green cards to 140,000 and further implementing a 7% country-wise cap on this allotment is at the root of the mounting backlog cases, increasing wait times, and more importantly, jeopardizing the immigration status of children on the verge of aging out.

There has been a history of immigration reform bills and acts seeking to either phase out or raise the per-country cap on employment-based green cards. But none of these bills saw the light of the day, to the sheer dismay of 1.1 million Indians stuck in the mire of green card backlog with a wait period of 134 years – nearly double the average lifespan. Alternate proposals like green card recapture have been approved by the US Presidential Advisory Council, but yet to take effect.

Now, Indians have pinned their hopes on the Immigration Visa Efficiency and Security Act of 2023 (HR 6542). Introduced in the US House of Representatives by 3 influential US lawmakers including Indian American Raja Krishnamoorthi and Pramila Jayapal, the bill addresses unfair immigration policies and proposes to eliminate the per-country cap on employment-based green cards. 2024 will decide the fate of this bill, and hopefully, it turns the tide in favor of Indians.

Federal Holiday on Diwali

To get Diwali recognized as a federal holiday has been one of the resolutions of Indians in America since before the legislation – Deepavali Day Act – was introduced in 2021. The fast-growing populace of Indian immigrants throughout the US is still awaiting conversion of the bill into a law. Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi and Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney are among the key members who backed the act in the House of Representatives in a bid to make Diwali the 12th federal holiday in the United States.

Meanwhile, Diwali has begun to be observed as a public school holiday in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. More and more US States are declaring October as ‘Hindu Heritage Month’. Since 2009, the ceremony of lighting a ceremonial lamp has been a sort of Deepavali tradition with US Presidents in the White House. Even as Indians’ cultural identity and their contribution to America’s ethnic diversity as well as socio-economic growth is being acknowledged more than ever, their demand for a federal holiday on Diwali is still unmet. May 2024 see this resolution be fulfilled for nearly 5 million Indian-origin people in America!

More Nonstop Routes to India from USA

At nearly 5 million, the rapidly growing Indian-origin community constitutes the second-largest immigrant group in the USA. A sizable portion of them call Seattle, Dallas, Atlanta, Houston, Boston, Los Angeles, and Detroit their home away from home. For years, they have been lobbying with Indian diplomats, Consul Generals, and airlines like Air India for nonstop flights to India. Few Indian American leaders have also started petitions urging to expand direct flights to India from Seattle, Dallas, Los Angeles and other US cities.

Nonstop flights to India from Charlotte or RDU Airport, North Carolina will facilitate frequent business trips of high-profile Indian professionals based in the Research Triangle Area. They have been vocal about the hassles involved in one-stop or two-stop itineraries such as long layovers, missed connections, transit visa issues, etc. Their appeals and demands are yet to yield results.

On the other hand, Air India’s plans to launch nonstop flights to Boston and Los Angeles came as welcome news for Indians in New England and Southern California. The airline is most likely to introduce nonstop service to Boston and Los Angeles in 2024 coinciding with the induction of its brand new A350-900 aircraft into international operations. With the fleet being upgraded and modernized as per the $400-million refurbishment plan, Air India is eying to expand its US-India nonstop service network beyond New York, Newark, Chicago, San Francisco, and DC.

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“When the going gets tough, the tough gets going”. Radhika Gupta’s life – a journey of self-acceptance, self-discovery, resilience and perseverance – exemplifies this saying. Born with a broken neck, she left her ‘Wall Street’ career in the United States at the age of 25 when other individuals dream of an American life and moved to make it big in India. She carved a niche for herself in the financial landscape of the world’s second most populous nation as one of the youngest Indian CEOs.

Though born to an Indian foreign diplomat in a privileged family, Radhika Gupta faced hardships and rejections right from the moment she entered this world with a broken neck. Her confidence and self-esteem nosedived to such a level that she once contemplated suicide by jumping off the 19th floor of her hostel. Today, she is the MD and CEO of Edelweiss AMC, a multibillion-dollar mutual fund business. She is not only a most admired business leader, but also a writer, storyteller, and a motivational speaker.

PC: Edelweiss MF

Radhika Gupta was not born with a broken neck. She developed this unconventional condition due to certain birth complications and negligence on part of the nurse who put the overweight baby in an inappropriate titled position in the incubator. It surfaced as a glaring feature as she shed baby fat while growing up. “I think I must be the only woman in the world who regretted losing weight at some point in her life,” she quips very casually now.

It was not easy for young Radhika Gupta to come to terms with bizarre stares and remarks about her unconventional appearance. Conscious as she was of being looked upon as an anomaly, she began losing her self-worth when she was bullied for her Indian accent and middle class lifestyle by her elite friends at an American International School. Despite having sought-after degrees from some prestigious schools in the US, she was subjected to discrimination and turned away by seven companies.

Radhika Gupta finished her Bachelor’s in Engineering and Computer Science from the University of Pennsylvania School. She earned another Bachelor’s degree in Economics from The Wharton School, UPenn. She is a summa cum laude graduate of the Jerome Fisher Program in Management and Technology at UPenn. Despite her academic excellence, she was rejected by seven out of the eight consulting firms she applied to during her final year in college.

What brought a paradigm shift in her attitude life, according to Edelweiss CEO Radhika Gupta, is the simple mantra of accepting herself as a unique individual. She learned how to take people’s comments with a grain of salt. She reflects on the hard road to embracing her flaws in the chapter titled ‘TGIF: Thank God I’m Flawed’ in her book, “Limitless: The Power of Unlocking Your True Potential”. She shares how self-acceptance and self-love turned out to be her transformative keys to conquering vulnerabilities and regaining confidence.

A job offer from McKinsey, USA lent her a new lease of life after seven rejections. After a stint at McKinsey, she worked as a Portfolio Manager with the US-based AQR Capital Management. During this time, Radhika Gupta found herself at the crossroads in her career. She was living her dream life, but her inner calling was something different. She wanted to establish her own capital management company in India. The idea sounded bizarre to others, as she barely had 2-3 years of experience and the financial market was still reeling under the lingering effects of the 2008 economic crisis.

With her American degrees and savings, Radhika Gupta took a flight from USA to Mumbai, reversing brain drain to India. She invested her entire savings in co-founding Forefront Capital Management. She grew the business that she set up with INR 25 lakh capital to INR 2 crore in just one year. When her venture gained a net worth of INR 150 crore, Forefront Capital Management was acquired by Edelweiss, a Fortune 500 Company, and was renamed Edelweiss Multi-Strategy Funds.

Her life started writing a new chapter, with this acquisition. As the business head of the Edelweiss Multi-Strategy Funds Management, she steered the company on the growth path and expanding the business by ten times in just 2.5 years. She rose through ranks and ascended the CEO position at Edelweiss Asset Management Limited in 2017, thus becoming one of India’s youngest CEOs.

Now, she celebrates being different. Now when people look up to her and hail her for all that she has achieved, she humbly states that her biggest accomplishment was accepting herself. For those who doubt themselves for any reason, she has a piece of advice: “Celebrate all your perfections. Celebrate all your imperfections. Celebrate everything in the middle. Because when this comes together, this is your own story.” When she faces strange questions and comments about her appearance, she says confidently, “Yes, I have a squint in the eyes, and a broken neck. What’s unique about you?”

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She would start her day early in the morning. She would leave for college by 9 am. She would come back to her dorm room early in the afternoon and do her homework the same day. She religiously followed a tight schedule to accomplish her academic goals. Her primary goal was graduation with a good GPA in four years.

One morning in the fall of 2004, her world turned upside down; her everyday life was thrown out of gear; her goals seemed to be far-off when she woke up with blurry vision in her left eye. It eventually pulled down a pall of complete darkness over her world. Permanent blindness slowed down her pace of life for a while, but did not become a stumbling block. Rather, she journeyed from darkness to light with a never-say-die attitude – which makes an inspiring story to read and share.

She is Jyotsna Kaki who has made it big at Google and has got an award named after her by her alma mater, San Jose State University. She had not only lost her vision, but also her confidence and independence. With every dark tomorrow passing into a yesterday, she moved towards discovering light within herself, regaining her independence, and reviving her zest for life.

Jyotsna Kaki was diagnosed with a benign tumor in the brain when she was in India. She grew up with the tumor slowly building up near the optic nerve. She had normal childhood and schooling like every other person of her age. When she was a senior attending college at San Jose University, her eyesight started getting weaker. Her parents took her to a doctor only to learn that an emergency surgery was the only option. Her optic nerves were traumatized during the surgery – which, in turn, took away her vision forever.

The sky came crumbling down for her when she opened her eyes to see nothing after the surgery. But her focus on the goals, her sense of discipline, and her urge to stand up again brought her life back on the track. While trying to be independent again, she realized that she could manage almost everything she used to do while having eyesight, except driving. On being asked what change the permanent visual impairment brought to her life, she shrugged it off with a smile.

She was so determined to lend herself a new lease of life that there was little room for despair or inertia within or outside her. She started learning braille, taking mobility training, and using accessibility technology, such as screen readers. On top of that her parents’ love and her brother’s support have been instrumental in her recovery and journey towards light. “I got back to college within two months of the fateful incident. Keeping myself busy definitely prevented me from slipping into depression. Not taking a break helped me normalize my everyday life after the surgery,” she said in a neutral tone. She got a job at the disability resource centre in her college where she experienced the testing of accessibility software. Later, that experience served as foundation of her career at Google.

You might be wondering how Jyotsna Kaki cracked the interview at Google. Was it more difficult for her to make her way into Google than it is for others? Though her confidence was low, she got through the interview procedure at Google, as it is said, “Fortune favors the brave”. She prepared for the interview by researching online on accessibility technology. She tried to gain as much knowledge as possible and practiced by performing accessibility testing of various products out there. “Even after the interview, I had no expectations that I would get a job at Google,” Jyotsna said to Travel Beats. In October 2006, Google hired her as a software accessibility test engineer.

Also Read: Indian-origin Google employee offers STEM scholarship to girls

The beginning of her journey with Google was more challenging than the interview because she was one of the first accessibility testers there. She tested Google products for the visually impaired and people with other disabilities, using screen readers. Initially, she had to figure out what she was supposed to do, prove the worth of her work to others, and convince her managers what she was doing was useful. Fortunately, she joined the search giant with prior knowledge and experience of testing accessibility software in the college campus.

Kaki always desired a job wherein she could do something to help others. Today, she is a program manager for Google’s central team of accessibility test engineers. The accessibility team has built a number of assistive technologies such as Voice access, Switch access, action blocs, ChromeVox, Talkback, etc. Her heart goes out to over 18 million visually impaired people in India. “It is definitely sad and unfortunate that accessibility technology from the developed countries has not yet reached many of them. I would say that the Indian government is also not so helpful in providing appropriate assistive help to them. In countries like the US, various programs are there to help individuals with disabilities who cannot afford assistive technology. But in countries like India, many individuals find it difficult to afford the appropriate hardware that any of the assistive technologies requires,” Kaki opined.

Jyotsna Kaki was aptly rewarded for her academic excellence by her alma mater, San Jose State University. When she was graduating in 2006, the chair of the college instituted a new award and named it after her in recognition of her efforts beyond the normal capability. The award is given to the students who academically excel every year. She had also received the ‘outstanding student’ award in 2005.

She still starts her day early in the morning and goes to bed in the night with the satisfaction that her work is helping many visually-impaired individuals regain independence. She keeps her weekends free of work to spend quality time with her husband and daughter. When asked what she would have been if not a program manager. She replied that she would have been running a daycare centre, as she is fond of kids. Facing the inevitable with confidence and courage is the secret to being happy – a multimillion dollar lesson that her life story has for others.

This exclusive story is brought to you on the occasion of #WomensDay2023 by Travel Beats, a leading community portal for Indians in America. Travel Beats is a subsidiary of Indian Eagle, a most trusted air-ticketing partner of Indians for travel between USA and India. Subscribe to our newsletter for the latest Indian community news and stories from the US.

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Air travel is not only the fast-growing but also ever-changing industry, living up to the maxim – the only constant in the world is change. The average passenger load factor for airlines has increased to nearly 85% in 2023 from 80.4% in 2018 and 70% in 2000, supporting the fact traveling by air between two hemispheres has become a lot easier than before. The US-India travel corridor is not untouched by developments that continue to improve the standards of flying.

The proliferation of codeshare partnership among airlines has streamlined long-haul flying into single-ticket journeys. The launch of point-to-point routes has reduced multi-layover flights into one-stop trips. Long connection time does not stand still at international transit airports any more. The busiest routes between USA and India are seeing more service frequency by major airlines. Major gateway airports in both countries are expanding their terminals and overhauling the infrastructure with better facilities. Airlines started offering free inflight Wi-Fi to facilitate mid-air messaging.

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Growing Air Connectivity between USA and India  

The air connectivity between USA and India for passenger flights is growing by leaps and bound with airlines expanding their networks and launching new routes in response to the post-pandemic travel rebound. For instance, Seattle to India travel got a boost with new one-stop flights by Qatar Airways and Turkish Airlines when the pandemic was on the ebb. Come May 2024, Lufthansa will put Seattle on its network map. The more one-stop and nonstop flights, the better the connectivity.

Among the upcoming and new routes between USA and India, Air India’s nonstop service to Boston and Los Angeles is the most anticipated in early 2024. Boston will see Etihad flights to and from India starting on 31 March 2024. Etihad Airways is all set to add Kozhikode and Thiruvananthapuram to its India network in January 2024. The likelihood of Denver to be among Turkish Airlines’ US destinations is pretty high after the airline started Detroit to India flights this month. Both Kuwait Airways and SWISS Airlines are adding Washington DC to their respective networks – which will raise the competitiveness of airfares from Washington IAD to Delhi and Mumbai.

Other than the Middle East airlines, Lufthansa and Air France are on an expansion spree in the US and India travel corridor. Raleigh in North Carolina and Minneapolis in the Midwest are the new destinations of both Air France and Lufthansa. The German flag carrier is also cementing its presence in South India with its comeback to Hyderabad in early 2024. Lufthansa’s one-stop flights to Hyderabad from Denver, Detroit, Charlotte, and Orlando will make USA to India travel easier for Indians residing in those US cities.

Airline partnerships facilitating seamless connections

Airlines having limited network in India and/or USA are providing seamless connections beyond their direct destinations through codeshare and interline agreements. Air India’s interline agreement with Alaska Airlines and the codeshare partnership between two rivals, Emirates and United Airlines, are two major instances in this context. This partnership gave Air India seamless access to 26 US destinations in Alaska Airlines’ network beyond five major gateways in the US. United Airlines’ passengers from across the US get access to Emirates flights to India from New York, Chicago, San Francisco, and Houston.

Air Vistara connects travelers of United Airlines’ flights from Newark to Delhi on domestic flights to their final destinations in India. American Airlines’ passengers are flown to Indian cities by Qatar Airways via its hub, Doha Hamad Airport. Air Vistara is a codeshare partner of British Airways and Lufthansa Airlines, thus extending their domestic connections in India. Delhi and Mumbai are the only destinations for Turkish Airlines flights from USA to India, but Turkish Airlines has indirect access to 30 Indian cities through its codeshare agreement with IndiGo, the fastest-growing low cost Indian carrier. IndiGo is a codeshare partner of Qatar Airways and Air France-KLM too.

Codeshare and interline agreements of airlines result in the convenience of traveling thousands of miles between USA and India with a single flight ticket, thereby making US to India long-haul travel easier than before. Code-sharing gives two, three or more partner airlines access to each other’s network and enables them to serve passengers on routes beyond their own network.

US and Indian Consular services expansion to new cities 

Be it a tourist visa, OCI card, H1B visa or any other US visa, it can make or break USA to India travel plans. The more US and Indian Consulates, the better the visa services. The US-bound students from India and the Indian community being a fast-growing immigrant group in the US are supporting the aviation economy with their rising travel demand, which has outgrown the consulates’ capacity for visa interviews, document verification, passport renewals, and other consular services.

India is setting up its sixth consulate in Seattle and planning to open two more consulates, one of which is likely to be in Los Angeles. In turn, the US has selected Bengaluru and Ahmedabad for its two new consulates in India. The new consulates are expected to expediate visa-processing services to facilitate travel between the US and India in the coming days.

While certain measures such as extending the drop box facility (interview waiver) to H-1B and L among other visa categories and restoring domestic visa renewals (H-1B, L1, H4, L2, etc.) have been announced, new consulates will further reduce the burden on existing ones and help streamline various aspects of travel.

Meet & Greet services at airports 

Airport procedures for international flights are somewhat stressful, particularly for senior citizens, pregnant women, unaccompanied minors and differently-abled travelers requiring special assistance. Meet & Greet services comes into play to make the airport journey as stress-free as possible for arriving/departing as well as transit passengers. This payable service helps travelers navigate the airport with ease, guiding them through the departure and/or arrival process, security checks, immigration, etc.

At present, this passenger-friendly service is available for arriving and departing passengers at Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Ahmedabad, and Kochi airports. These airports customize Meet & Greet packages to cater to individual needs. Air India launched its own Abhinandan service to provide personalized on-ground assistance to its passengers. Air India’s specially trained Service Assurance Officers are stationed at 16 Indian airports to engage with passengers, addressing their queries and concerns and reach out to them during an emergency on ground.

Transit airport facilities and terminal tours

Modern airports have become much more than just transportation hubs. Changi Airport, Hamad, Abu Dhabi and Dubai Airports are a world unto themselves! Besides offering endless shopping, dining, and lounging options, these airports feature amazing art installations, nature-inspired relaxation spaces, family-friendly zones, themed playgrounds, indoor gardens and more. Singapore Airport’s Jewel Complex and Dreamscape at Terminal 2, Hamad Airport’s Orchard, and Dubai Airport’s Zen Gardens are oases of greenery and tranquility away from the constant buzz at terminals.

Travelers who prefer not to leave the airport during transit in a third country can take a casual tour around the terminal or sign up for guided tours and explore various attractions within the terminal building. Most international airports offer guided tours that usually range from 1-3 hours. For example, Hamad International Airport has payable tours for transit passengers having less than 5 hours of connection time. Passengers can opt for a 2-hour tour of the interesting art exhibits installed within the airport. Singapore Changi Airport has group tours for 15-30 members.

International airports serving as transit hubs are equipped with useful facilities, including pay-on-hourly-basis sleeping pods for travelers to get some sleep between two long flights. Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Hamad Doha, London Heathrow, Munich, New Delhi, Chennai MAA, and Bengaluru airports have comfortable sleeping pods. Abu Dhabi Airport also has free rest zones with reclining seats. Free and paid shower facilities are available at transit hub airports. For family travelers with kids, these airports offer private family rooms, kid-friendly zones, baby care rooms, play areas, etc. Free baby strollers are available for Emirates’ passengers with infants, so they can comfortably tour the terminal during a layover at Dubai DXB Airport.

Stopover programs and transit city tours for transit travelers 

Gone are the days when layovers used to be boring, with limited scope for entertainment and relaxation at the connecting airports. Layovers are fun these days at hub airports, such as Dubai, Doha, Abu Dhabi and Singapore offering city sightseeing tours for international transit passengers. Also, the flexibility to explore an intermediate city while traveling from US to India via Middle East or Europe is one of the compelling reasons to opt for connecting flights with long layovers, which are usually cheaper than nonstop flights to India.

Middle East airlines’ stopover programs turn a long layover (typically 5 to 8 hours or more) into a quick sightseeing tour of the transit city. Transit travelers at Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and Hamad Airports can take advantage of the airline stopover programs that come with complimentary 1-2 night stay or cost-effective accommodation packages. Turkey Istanbul Airport, Seoul Incheon Airport, Switzerland Zurich Airport, and Singapore Changi Airport also offer curated layover tours for transit travelers. The best thing, most of these layover tours are free!

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No matter how familiar the beats of dhaak, the fragrance of shiuli flowers (Nyctanthes arbor–tristis), the taste of festive food, the ambience of festive evenings, the feeling of sacred flower offering, the significance of Sandhi Puja and the joy of sindur khela are to those living abroad, they strongly feel drawn to home this time of the year. They brave the odds to come home and go on a celebration spree in the neighborhoods where they have grown up. Undeniably, Durga Puja is not just an annual festival but a homecoming occasion for NRI Bengalis. So strong is their umbilical cord with the roots that many Bengalis in the Indian American community book last-minute flights to India out of an overwhelming urge to get together with the family, friends, and relatives back home during the festival.

On the other hand, there are those who have never been away from home during Durga Puja. They wonder how Durga Puja is celebrated abroad, how culturally different the celebration is, how authentic the rituals are, how joyous the festivity is, if young Bengali NRIs flaunt traditional fashion, etc. A women-only group from the Indian community in the San Francisco Bay Area has the answer to all these. Ena Sarkar, the founder and CEO of WomenNow TV, a trend-setting South Asian talk show in the Bay Area, shares nitty-gritty of their all-women Durga Puja celebration in Santa Clara with Sourav Agarwal, the Editor of Travel Beats, a leading Indian American community portal. 

Initiated in 2015 by the WomenNow TV team, the Santa Clara Durga Utsav is one of the best Durga Puja events in California. The women-only group is prepared with a better and greater plan for the celebration which has become one of the most awaited Indian events in the Bay Area. Ena Sarkar and her team of women from different walks of life pull all stops to make various arrangements for four days of the festival from buying the idol to shopping for puja-special things to organizing cultural functions to making culinary offerings for the Goddess to distributing Prasad to managing the gathering of visitors in the marquee.

WomenNow TV founder & CEO Ena Sarkar at Santa Clara Durga Utsav

What made the WomenNow TV team come forward to organize Durga Puja in the San Francisco Bay Area was the idea of celebrating the collective power of ‘women now’ (today’s women) that they represent. It coincided with the tradition of invoking Goddess Durga or Shakti to bless her children with the power of good over evil. In addition, a cultural platform was needed for the Bay Area Indians to gather under one roof and interact with each other.

“The Santa Clara Durga Utsav is an interface between the divine purpose of this festival and the philosophy of WomenNow. We also wanted to provide a cultural platform for the Bay Area Indians to gather under one roof and interact with each other. Ours is not just a women-only celebration but a community get-together,” Ena Sarkar said.

WomenNow TV’s celebration of Durga Puja is an absolutely different picture of what appears a male-dominated activity in the patriarchal society of India. In aristocratic households from urban India to rural India, women prepare for the celebration and make arrangements for ceremonies on each day of the festivity behind the curtain, while menfolk gear up with their tasks and activities in the outer world. However, the scenario is changing for women among the urban aristocrats of Bengal.

In contrast to it, WomenNow’s Santa Clara Durga Utsav is a women-only celebration in terms of preparation and arrangement. Needless to say, Durga Puja is a mammoth celebration which entails a lot of doing from fund collection to venue management to cultural performance to immersion of idols. However, the WomenNow team has proven that nothing is impossible for the collective power of women by overcoming all initial difficulties and challenges including selection of the venue. Since the celebration is not limited to worshiping but comprises feasting and cultural functions, they required a venue with ample space to accommodate a considerable crowd of visitors during certain rituals like dhunuchi dance.

The Santa Clara Durga Utsav in the Bay Area is no exception to such usual contrasts as India vs USA, East vs West, the Oriental vs the Occidental, and Indians vs Indian Americans which often come up in regular discussions, debates and conversations. Ena Sarkar unhesitatingly bared her mind regarding if there is any cultural difference between Durga Puja celebration in USA and that in India.

“Definitely, there is. You can never compare the way Bengal celebrates Durga Puja to anywhere else in the world. What a grand, fabulous, joyous, incredible celebration in Bengal! But we try to get as close to home as we can by dressing traditionally, having the traditional food and observing the age-old rituals during the festival no matter how many thousands of miles we are away from Kolkata. There is no dearth of enthusiasm about the celebration in the Bay Area Indian community.”

When Ena talked about the boundless enthusiasm of Bengalis in the Bay Area, we at Travel Beats felt curious to know if young Indian Americans who were born in USA feel the same about Durga Puja and connect with it the same way as India-born Bengalis or Bengalis from India do in America.

Ena Sarkar said in no uncertain terms, “It is somewhat difficult for young Indians in USA to feel connect with the festival as they have been growing up in a country where there are multiple cultures and religions existing side by side. They have not yet understood the value of surrender to a single divine power – the essence of Hinduism. However, children certainly visit the puja venue with their parents and enjoy the festivities. They may not groove to the beats of dhaak but they enjoy the festive music.”

On a closing note, Ena Sarkar acknowledged that the Santa Clara Durga Utsav would not have been a grand celebration in the Bay Area without her WomenNow team and that it has become popular with their American friends as well.

This article is part of the series, Indian Life in America, by Travel Beats, a leading community portal for Indian Diaspora. Travel Beats is a subsidiary of IndianEagle.com that thousands of Indians in USA have chosen as their reliable travel-booking partner for international trips. Subscribe to our newsletter for community stories, US-India travel news, visa and immigration updates.

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Rash Behari Bose is one of the unsung heroes and freedom fighters of India. The story of his role in India’s struggle for freedom is a significant episode in the history of Indian independence movement. Deeply affected by the Partition of Bengal in 1905, Rash Behari Bose quit his job as an officer of the British Raj and became a revolutionary. He was issued a death sentence for his involvement in some conspiracies against Lord Hardinge, the then British Viceroy of India. He fled to Japan where he did the groundwork for the foundation of Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose’s Azad Hind Fauj by writing about the colonized India’s struggle for freedom in the contemporary Japanese publications.

Rash Behari Bose is mostly known as a revolutionary in India, but he is remembered in Japan for another thing, which only the few know. During his stay in Japan, he introduced an authentic Indian curry that is a key dish on the menu at Tokyo’s popular restaurants, even today.

When the detective agencies hired by the British traced his whereabouts in Tokyo, Rash Behari Bose moved to Shinjuku, a commercial district of Tokyo and found a hideout there. The new hideout was the Nakamuraya bakery in one of the narrow, congested, bustling lanes in Shinjuku. The Nakamuraya bakery was owned by Aizo Soma and Kotsuko Soma, who hailed of a wealthy family in Shinjuku. Being supporters of India’s struggle for independence, the Somas sheltered Rash Behari Bose in the basement of the house.

Gradually he got close to other members of the Soma family and developed a bond of affection with them. During his stay there, he shared the recipe of his favorite Indian chicken curry with the Somas. They found it delectable and thumbed it as their favorite too. Thus the Indian dish became popular in the Soma house in Shinjuku.

Eventually Rash Behari Bose married Toshiko, the eldest daughter of Aizo Soma and Kotsuko Soma, in 1918, at a time when the act of tying the nuptial know with foreigners used to be condemned in Japan. Toshiko’s contribution to his pursuit of the mission, India’s freedom from the British, is still not much heard of. The nest of happiness collapsed like a house of cards when she died of tuberculosis, at the age of 28, in 1925 leaving him with two children behind.

After two years of bereavement for the demise of Toshiko, he got back to work and decided to help his in-laws who were struggling to run the bakery in competition with other stores in Shinjuku. He opened a small restaurant on top of the Nakamuraya bakery in Shinjuku and began to serve his favorite chicken curry along with other Indian dishes to the locals. The rich aroma of authentic Indian spices from the restaurant’s kitchen would attract passers-by. Bose himself selected the ingredients and supervised the cooking of the chicken curry which gradually became Indo Karii, a blend of Indian curry and Japanese rice.

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The print media of Japan described Nakamuraya’s Indo Karii as Rash Behari Bose’s “Taste of love and revolution,” which gave tremendous publicity to the restaurant and made it a must visit for the best Indian food in Tokyo. It evolved into such a big business that it went public on the Japanese stock exchange.

In 1944, Bose was hospitalized due to a collapse of the lungs. When the visiting doctor asked him about his appetite, Bose replied gloomily, “How can I have an appetite when the nurses don’t allow me to have the food I most desire?” The doctor asked what the food was. Obviously, it was Nakamuraya’s Indo Karii.

Even so many decades after Rash Behari Bose breathed his last in 1945, Nakamuraya’s Indo Karii continues to be a household name and a popular dish in Japan. The restaurant, Nakamuraya Manna in Shinjuku, was renovated in 2015, and is spacious enough to host more than 100 people at a time. Vintage photographs of the Somas and Bose in the lobby add to the historical significance of the restaurant.

Rash Behari Bose’s ‘taste of love and revolution,’ Nakamuraya Indo Karii, is a pure nostalgia for Indians, especially Bengalis, on a visit to Tokyo.

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