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.

The post This Indian-origin Sibling Duo is Brewing Desi Chai to Make America Fall in Love with Aroma and Taste of India appeared first on Travel to India, Cheap Flights to India, Aviation News, India Travel Tips.

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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Shivaranjini, a simple middle-class Indian woman, is living her American Dream though she is not a STEM professional with a US work visa. Her key to unlocking the American Dream for a happy life thousands of miles away from India is her passion for cooking – which she inherited from her parents in Karnataka. Ranjini’s journey as a businesswoman from her small home kitchen is an inspiration for other Indians, mostly on H4 visa, in the US.

Born in the family of cooks in Davanagere, the heart of Karnataka, Shivaranjini grew up learning and admiring cooking as a labor of love. When she moved to the States after her marriage in 2013, she arrived with a handbag, checked baggage, culinary creativity, love for food, the art of cooking authentic South Indian dishes, and hopes to make America her second home. Soon after having settled in California, she realized that homemade food is the way to the Indian immigrant community’s heart.

PC: Suggi Oota | Facebook

Her belief in the magic of authentic home-style food stemmed from her family restaurant, Hotel Sharabheshwara, that has been serving regional delectables with a perfect balance of flavors in the Davanagere district of Karnataka since the 1990s. The restaurant is a temple for her father, and working in the restaurant kitchen is a ritual for her mother. In her growing years, she watched her mother creating wonders with hand-ground spices, following the quality checklist, ensuring compliance with hygienic practices….

No compromise on quality – is the mantra that Shivaranjini imbibed from her family in India and instilled into her commercial kitchen ‘Suggi Oota’ in the Bay Area. Suggi Oota that Shivaranjini started early in 2020 is now a most sought-after Indian catering service in California. Be it a get-together, birthday bash, anniversary celebration, housewarming ceremony, or a community event of any size, Shivaranjini and Suggi Oota (meaning ‘feast’ in Kannada) are among the few names that influential Indian Americans recall to relish traditional Indian delights.

Her Suggi Oota kitchen has grown into a popular establishment with daily capacity of whipping up various north and south Indian thalis for an average of 100 guests. All this started with her son’s first birthday celebration in the Bay Area, their second home away from home, in 2015. “I still remember how the guests savored to their heart’s content the authentic South Indian food that I had cooked alone,” said Shivaranjini with a broad smile. “Some of them went on to ask me how I managed to cook for more than 20 people at once. I replied it is a lot more difficult to cook only for two people,” she added.

It was her epiphanic moment overwhelmed with the guests’ compliments – which encouraged her to start her own commercial kitchen service for those craving pure south and north Indian meals on various occasions. However, she started with baby steps, like taking small orders from neighbors and friends, registering with professional caterers for orders, etc.

Eventually, she became the talk of several neighborhoods in San Jose and beyond. Her name began to be circulated through word of mouth. It boosted her confidence to set up her own commercial kitchen. With her husband’s support, she obtained the official permits that she needed to start and run a commercial venture legally. She refers to the kitchen as a sanctuary where she works long hours with her team.

The USP of her Suggi Oota thalis is the use of millet and other immunity-boosting ingredients in her recipes. You name any dish from south Indian cuisines; she will cook it for you. You may wonder what worked in favor of an Indian woman in America; it is her steadfast love for food, passion for cooking, and the bond that she shares with a kitchen, no matter where it is. “While my cousins and friends would play or roam outdoors on school holidays, I spent time working and helping out in the family restaurant kitchen in Karnataka,” said Shivaranjini.

“If you have a dream and show up for it, there is nothing that can stop it from happening,” Suggi Oota’s founder Shivaranjini believes wholeheartedly. With both demand and love growing for her food, she is now aiming big to serve one million orders.

This exclusive story is part of the new series, Indian Life in America, by Travel Beats, a leading community portal for Indian Diaspora. Travel Beats is a subsidiary of Indian Eagle Travel that thousands of Indians in USA have chosen as their reliable air-ticketing partner. Subscribe to our newsletter for community stories, US-India travel news, visa and immigration updates.

The post With Suggi Oota, Shivaranjini not only Lives Her American Dream, but also Keeps Her Family Legacy Alive in USA appeared first on Travel to India, Cheap Flights to India, Aviation News, India Travel Tips.

“I didn’t know what I had been missing all these years. I am 60, diabetic and hadn’t hoped to see the world at this age. But now I am extremely happy and keep planning the next journey. My prayer now is to get my life extended by a few more years than destined,” Geetha Ramachandran, who is 65 now, said during an unexpected trip to Mount Kailash in Tibet.

Picture Credit: Instagram.com/sarathkrishnanmr/

Geetha’s second innings of life is nothing short of a travel memoire. Breaths of fresh air on a balmy beach or at a scenic hill station infuse life into her sexagenarian bones. The ivory beauty of snow-clad mountains, the effervescence of lush green landscape, the kaleidoscopic diversity of folk cultures, the sonority of hymns reverberated on the ghats of River Ganga…put roses on her cheeks. She is greying her hairs while posing for the camera, clicking selfies, riding a bicycle, taking heritage walks, hitting food trails, enriching her knowledge of historical wonders, intensifying her wanderlust….

She feels like a 20-year-old in her 60s. Draped in simple, monotone sarees and adorned with a red bindi on her forehead, she “lives with no excuses and travels with no regrets” – which sends her contemporaries on a guilt trip as they did not realize, “We travel not to escape life but for life not to escape us.” All thanks to her son, Sarath Krishnan.

“Amma is my travel companion for life,” said Sarath, a 34-year-old businessman and avid traveler from Kerala. Smitten by the travel bug at an early age, Sarath started backpacking for road trips across India with school friends. What started as an adventure, bunking school, became his pursuit of happiness. He never saw his mother Geetha step over the threshold of her household duties, and her only break from the daily routine within the house was a sojourn to temples in the neighborhood until one fine day….

How Sarath discovered his mother as his best travel buddy, is an interesting story. Once he dreamed of her strolling with him on a ghat in Varanasi and breathing in the numinous aura of the place on a balmy evening. When the dream broke halfway, he woke up with a start and found himself in his house in Kerala. The dream had a spell on him for a few moments; then he realized it was an epiphany. To make the dream come true, he booked two flight tickets to Varanasi in the morning. He tiptoed into the kitchen and surprised his mother, “Amma, pack your bag now. I have booked a trip to Kashi….”

The surprise trip to Varanasi gave birth to a never-ending wanderlust in her by the time she turned 60. Impromptu traveling is an elixir of her life these days. The mother-son duo goes on a tour discovering the unseen once in every three months. Her second trip was to Mumbai for 11 days, and it ended up exploring the mystique at the Ajanta-Ellora Caves following a sojourn in Nasik and Shirdi. Her travel scrapbook also boasts about moments of hitting sightseeing, culinary and heritage trails from Delhi to Dubai. The patriotic feeling of watching the Beating Retreat Ceremony at the Wagah Border is preserved in her scrapbook.

She did not hesitate to hit the road less travelled as a pillion rider when her son drove a 500cc Bullet from Shimla to Manali via the precarious Rohtang Pass. “On reaching Manali, I could see my mother transformed into an 18-year-old. At the sight of snow, she was jumping, running, laughing, playing…” Sarath reminisces. Indeed, he is a modern-day Shravan Kumar.

Geetha realized, travel and happiness are synonymous, on her trip to Mount Kailash in Tibet. Watching meditatively the golden halo of Mouth Kailash, the most sacred peak on earth, was a watershed in her travel memoire. The trip is also unforgettable because she would not have been able to make it after her 60 years of age. Being a devotee of Lord Shiva, she says, “Even now, if I close my eyes, I can see the mountain exactly as I had seen back then.” She also accompanied her son during a ride on an eight-seater plane hovering over the summit of Mount Everest, a most adventurous trip that her son says was a lot more exciting than the trips with his friends.

This exclusive story is brought to you by Travel Beats, an Indian Diaspora portal by Indian Eagle. On the occasion of Mother’s Day, we are giving away flight discount coupons to our readers and newsletter subscribers. You will get $25 off on booking your mother/parents/parents-in-law’s flights to India/USA at IndianEagle.com, a trusted travel partner of Indians in USA. If you accompany them on the trip, the discount can be availed on the total fare.

The post Geetha Feels Like a 20-year-old in Her 60s while Traveling; Thanks to Her Son who Says Mom is His Best Travel Buddy 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 63-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 Indian Diaspora portal by IndianEagle.com. “On the occasion of Mother’s Day, we are giving airfare discounts to our readers and subscribers. You can use the below coupon code to grab a $25 discount on booking flight tickets for your mother/mother-in-law/parents. If you will accompany your parents or only mother, you can get the discount on the total airfare,” he added.

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.

“We need to provide educational opportunities to the bright minds born in underprivileged backgrounds as we firmly believe that education has the power to not only uplift individuals, but also transform communities, nations, and the future of our planet. Education is the only reliable way out of poverty. We are on the mission to help disadvantaged children become world-class professionals and great humans so they could become a beacon of hope for their community and millions of other underprivileged children,” said Dr Amit Singhal who co-founded Sitare Foundation with his wife, Shilpa Singhal.

Picture Credit: REUTERS/Stephen Lam

With a PhD degree and 4 years of work experience in information retrieval, Dr Amit Singhal had joined Google at its nascent stage in 2000. After a few days into the job, he found the code sloppy that the founders of Google had developed and rewrote the algorithms in only two months. His rewriting of Google algorithms was an overhaul to the speed of ranking and the relevance of search results, for which he was named a Google fellow, an honor worth millions of dollars. He was also nicknamed ‘King of the Ranking’ at the Google campus in San Francisco Bay Area.

In 2016, Amit Singhal quit his executive-level Google career of 15 years to give back to the community. When he became Senior Vice President for Search at Google in California, he asked himself, “What would you want to do for the next fifteen years?” He heard from within himself, “Give back to others. My life from a small Himalayan town to Google has been a dream journey. Now my priority should be to give back to people who are less fortunate.”

Amit, a PhD alumnus of Cornwell University, and Shilpa, a physicist from the State University of New York, came to India for a bigger and greater cause. They founded Sitare Foundation, a bootstrapped NGO in Rajasthan, with the sole aim of transforming the lives of meritorious students from low-income, minority households with quality education and opportunities for higher studies. At Sitare Foundation, Amit and Shilpa fund education of the brightest minds from middle school in India to prestigious universities in the United States.

Sitare Foundation started with 250 registrations in its founding year, 2016 and received more than 50,000 applications for its merit-based entrance test in 2021. The NGO handpicks the most promising students from families with a hand-to-mouth existence through an aptitude test every year. They are further examined through a comprehensive evaluation process at a free, two-week camp. Out of the nearly 75,000 applications received for the entrance test 2022, 100 students have been selected. With its growing presence in five cities across India, Sitare Foundation has partnered with private schools where they will be schooled from 6^th grade to the grade 12 for free.

Their emotional health and social wellbeing are also taken care of by Shilpa and Amit Singhal at Sitare Foundation. “All our energy goes into ensuring we transform 50,000 lives through education by 2050. Besides education, we support them with food, clothing, books, school supplies, and transportation. Additionally, we have a fully residential program for students to focus on their college admissions. We spend on an average $2000 per student every year from our life savings,” said Amit.

“Where I am today is only because of education,” says Amit with beaming eyes. His great-grandfather had never been to school and used to run a small bicycle repair shop, but he gave education to his son (Amit’s grandfather) and helped him become a school teacher. Amit’s grandfather sent his son to IIT Roorkee where Amit’s father studied civil engineering. Amit is the first in his family to have earned a PhD and that too in the US. “The only thing every generation gave the next generation was education, no money,” he reminisces.

Bearing a testimony to the success of Dr Amit Singhal’s Sitare Foundation is 17-year-old Kusum Chaudhary, who is all set to travel to the US and study a 4-year computer science program at Maryland University. She had an uncertain future in one of the narrow lanes of Jodhpur unless she was selected by Sitare Foundation. Farming is the only means of sustenance for her family that does not have land of their own. If she were not able to earn Sitare Foundation’s scholarship, she would have dropped out of school.

Shilpa and Amit Singhal’s philanthropic journey has not been without challenges. Students’ family background has been a deterrent to their parents’ wish to send their children to school. Especially, the obligations for girls to help their mothers with household chores, look after their younger siblings when both of their parents are at work, and supplement the family income by working in the field keep them away from school. Early marriage of girls is another reason for them to drop out of school in rural backwaters, and this social issue has been a big challenge for Sitare Foundation.

This inspiring story of philanthropy is brought to you by Travel Beats, an overseas Indian community portal by Indian Eagle. A reputed air-ticketing partner of Indians in USA, Indian Eagle is committed to making you travel with cost-to-cost flight tickets to India from USA even though international airfares are incredibly high these days.  

The post He Quits Top Google Job in USA, Selects Bright Kids of Poor Indian Families, Helps Them Study in USA appeared first on Travel to India, Cheap Flights to India, Aviation News, India Travel Tips.

Kati Roll, an easy-to-grab snack on the go from the street food landscape of Kolkata, has found home in the United States since Payal Saha started cashing in on her nostalgia in 2002. A newly wed bride from India back then, Payal turned her cravings for Kolkata’s Street food into her passion for a business in the US where spouses of H1B visa professionals were barred from taking up jobs due to H4 visa restrictions. She opened the first outlet in New York City, which eventually became a $16-million franchise – The Kati Roll Company – from the US to London.

Stuffed with skewer-grilled ingredients wrapped in flatbread (paratha) topped with sauces/chutneys and seasoned with chopped green chilies, Kati Rolls resonate with various emotions of Kolkata and define the vibes of different occasions. Grabbing bites of an egg roll or a chicken roll or a chicken egg roll is a ritual during a movie interval, a get-together, a friendly soiree, a holiday outing, a shopping spree, and during a lazy walk on a breezy evening in Kolkata. Even hopping across Durga Puja pandals and binging on Kati Rolls go hand in hand in the City of Joy.

Today, Payal Saha’s Kati Roll Company in New York has four outlets – Grand Central, Greenwich Village, Midtown East, and Midtown West. Grand Central is the newest one, while the oldest outlet is at Greenwich Village. Her business expanded to London where she owns an outlet near Oxford Street. Presenting Kati Rolls as a quick snack and a casual meal to people on the move in highly cosmopolitan cities like New York and London has been the recipe of her success thousands of miles away from India.

She took a flight to Kolkata from New York before making her entrepreneurial debut and visited many fast-food joints selling Kati Rolls from north Kolkata to south Kolkata. She also helped at a shop to learn the nitty-gritty of making and serving Kati Rolls the way it is done in every nook and corner of Kolkata. She went on to open the first outlet of the Kati Roll Company in New York without a business plan and any prior experience of running a business. There was no such extravagance as ceremonial opening. Her zeal to offer an authentic taste of Kolkata’s favorite street food to Americans, especially New Yorkers helped the business grow.

“She knew she may not be able to provide the vibes that treating one’s tastebuds to Kati Rolls in a typical Kolkatan setting comes with. However, she recreated the filmy ambience that many Indians are fond of by decorating her Kati Roll Company outlets in New York with vintage posters of old Bollywood movies and Bengali films. This reminds me of the décor of Google’s Indian restaurant in Silicon Valley,” said Sourav Agarwal, the Editor of Travel Beats.

The USP of Payal Saha’s Indian street food business is chapati, not paratha. She chose whole durum wheat over refined floor to make chapatis to wrap various fillings in rolls. Durum wheat is rich in protein, potassium, zinc and dietary fibre. This is what distinguishes her rolls as healthy delights from the paratha-wrapped rolls sold across Kolkata. Achari Paneer Roll and Chicken Tikka Roll are the bestsellers of all varieties, including Chana Masala Roll, Shami Kabab Roll, Aloo Masala Roll, Egg Aloo Roll, Egg Paneer Roll, and Egg Chicken Roll.

Kati Roll Company’s founder Payal Saha inherited the entrepreneurial streak from both her grandparents, paternal and maternal. Her maternal grandfather studied chemical engineering at New York University and came back home to start a business. Her rolls are so high on demand even after 20 years that she sells over 3000 rolls a day and over a million a year. The rush is so huge some days that she hires bouncers to manage the serpentine queues of customers. Today, her company is a popular brand recognized by Americans and Indians alike.

This exclusive story is part of the new series, Indian Life in America, by Indian Eagle that hundreds of thousands of Indians in USA have chosen as their reliable air-ticketing partner. Subscribe to Travel Beats, a community portal by Indian Eagle, for Indian Diaspora stories, US-India travel news, visa and immigration updates.

Also Read: Americans in Love with Desi Chai Brewed by Indian-origin Siblings

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In the 1970s when Mumbai was Bombay; when Lijjat Papad was catching up with Indian taste buds; when Premier Padmini taxis hit the roads of Bombay; when taking Air India flights was a matter of prestige; when Bombay was greener than Mumbai; when Amitabh Bachchan was the new poster boy of Bollywood, a simple Gujarati homemaker from a one-room chawl in South Bombay took the first step towards becoming India’s Bhel Queen. Nila Mehta, who became a household name for her homemade Gujarati delicacies and a brand abroad, lived her passion until she breathed her last on October 15, 2019.

Nila Mehta’s journey from selling dhokla door-to-door to becoming the Bhel Queen of Mumbai City to being popular among overseas Indians is not just a rags-to-riches story, but an inspiring story of India’s women power. Before Google, Microsoft, Apple, and Amazon were born in a garage in the US, “Nita Mehta snacks” started making its way from the tiny chawl on Napean Sea Road to rule the taste buds of Bombayites.

Nila Mehta, who shifted to Bombay from Gujarat, took to stitching clothes to make the ends meet for a household of six before she turned her passion for cooking into a profession. Unhappy with the petty income from her ordeal of stitching garments, she decided to explore her versatility and expertise in cooking. One day she cooked some twenty packets of dhokla for the local women’s association where women from the upper reaches of society took fancy to her delicacy – which made her homemade dhokla a hot cake in South Bombay.

Orders of her delicious dhokla started pouring in despite no delivery mechanism from her end. At times, she would send her son to make the delivery to remote parts of the city. Before two decades of India’s IT boom, her newly found success as a home-based businesswoman was fraught with difficulties and challenges.

Being a wonder woman, Nila Mehta managed to take orders over the phone though her one-room apartment was on the fourth floor, there was no elevator and the building had only one telephone (on the ground floor). The chawl dwellers including her family had to manage with one-hour of water supply every day due to acute water crisis in South Bombay. Braving all odds, she used to complete the orders on time.

Her dhokla being a staple on the menu for local celebrations, religious events and illustrious weddings, Nila Mehta was the unrivaled ‘Dhokla Queen of Bombay’ from 1980 to 1995. Alongside dhokla – the key to her success, other popular Gujarati sweets and snacks from her repertoire were making their way to hundreds of households and shops in the non-social media era.

As dhokla is a fast perishable item, she was not able to venture out beyond Bombay. To make way for her business into other markets of the country, she took fancy to Mumbai’s new gastronomic fascination – bhel in the second half of the 1990s (Bombay was renamed Mumbai in 1995). Since it was possible to export bhel in airtight packets to any corner of the country, she started taking orders from other metro cities. It made her the ‘Bhel Queen of India’, a few levels up from the “Dhokla Queen of Bombay”.

Over time “Nila Mehta snacks” including mouth-watering bhel found space at Indian stores in the USA, the UK, Australia, Singapore and other countries, and became a hit with NRIs there. The offshore revenue helped Nila Mehta open brand outlets across Mumbai and in other parts of Maharashtra.

Her demise is not an end to the brand “Nila Mehta Snacks”. May this wonder woman of India continue to inspire generations with her entrepreneurial journey and rags-to-riches story!

This story is brought to you by Travel Beats as part of the continued series, “Explore India with Indian Eagle”. Travel Beats is a leading overseas Indian community portal by Indian Eagle, a trusted travel-booking partner of Indians abroad.

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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.

PC: Facebook.com/Sankurathri/

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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The Government of India’s UDAN scheme has given wings even to the lower middle-class for domestic air travel since its inception in 2017. UDAN, a Hindi word for flight, is an acronym for Ude Desh Ka Aam Naagrik that means “May common people travel by air”. UDAN is a regional air connectivity development program that makes domestic air travel affordable for commoners from regional and remote areas of India.

Common people from remote areas, who have never been to an airport, feel at a loss while flying for the first time due to their unfamiliarity with airport signages and aviation vocabulary. Specifically, senior citizens feel helpless amidst a crowd of English-speaking urbane travelers with Bluetooth earphones plugged into their ears, and with smartphones keeping them connected to the virtual world. Anxious looks of first-time flyers from rural India are a common sight to behold at major airports.

Picture Credit: Amitabh Shah | LinkedIn

In one such recent instance at Delhi IGI Airport, an elderly couple from a remote village was waiting to board a flight to Kanpur. They were tired after an 8-hour bus journey to the airport. Unaware of the boarding process, they were hesitantly wondering whom to approach for help. Amitabh Shah, among other travelers in the boarding area, turned a good Samaritan for them. Following the elderly couple’s uneasy stare at others, he walked to them. With a smile, he asked where they were going.

Amitabh Shah is the Chief Inspiration Officer of India’s Premier CSR Implementor, Yuva Unstoppable. Knowing they were traveling to the same destination as his, Amitabh told them to follow him. This made them feel good and relaxed. Assuming that he worked for the airline, they followed him onto the plane for a flight to Kanpur in Uttar Pradesh. He requested a flight attendant to guide them to their seats.

Coincidently, they got seats in the row just before him. They gave him a pleasant smile in gratitude and asked him for one more favor. “Can you take our picture and send it to our daughter, so that she knows we are aboard the flight and safe? She has WhatsApp on her phone.” Amitabh shared this in his words on LinkedIn. He nodded within a blink of eye. He clicked a picture of the couple with his phone and sent to their daughter. It doubled their joy of flying for the first time.

Amitabh Shah went an extra mile to make the elderly couple’s first flight the first best experience. He keenly noticed they were hungry and thirsty. Since food was not complimentary, he told the airhostess to serve them paneer sandwiches and juice. He paid for the food without their knowledge and asked the airhostess to tell them the service was complimentary. On arrival at Kanpur Airport, he also guided them to the exit point where their daughter was waiting to receive them.

“Likewise, many senior citizens speaking regional languages feel helpless and puzzled while traveling alone on international flights to or from India, especially by American and European carriers. That’s why NRIs look for a travel companion for their visiting parents on flights from India to USA, Australia, Singapore, Canada, New Zealand, and other countries. If you come across an unaccompanied senior citizen on your flight, offer help and be kind to them,” said Sourav Agarwal, the Editor of Travel Beats, an overseas Indian community portal by IndianEagle.com.

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