Posts Tagged ‘culture’
Sufism
The central concept of Sufism is love. It was a reform movement, and believed in mysticism and preached the worship of God through devotional singing. In Sufism, music, dance, meditation and are seen as the spiritual guides in attaining unity with God. At Sufi shrines music help lift the devotees into a state of spiritual ecstasy. The 14th century Muslim mystic Hazrat Nizamudduin Auliya, IndiaÕs most revered Sufi saint, preached the values of prayer, love and unity. He told his followers that love was omnipresent and the route to the divine. The unorthodox methods of worship has divided Sufis from those following more puritanical ways of Islam. Muslims have claimed that the practices followed in Sufism were taken from Christianity and Hinduism.
US Farmer’s Markets
The average American sources his or her diet from that same long distance-2,100 kilometers away. It’s not the mileage itself, say environmentalists and some health experts. It’s that the farther the food travels, the less fresh it is and the more fuel is used to transport it. But many people are changing their ways, going to local farmers’ markets to handpick fresher produce. The U.S. Department of Agriculture says that as of 2006 there were 4,385 organized farmers’ markets in the country, up from to 2,410 a decade earlier.
A 2006 department survey showed that 25 percent of the vendors interviewed said they relied on farmers’ markets as their sole source of farm-based income. Average sales at individual farmers’ markets in 2005 totaled about $245,000; average annual sales per vendor totaled $7,108.
Read article here.
Edison’s Little India
From indoor cricket to a Hindu temple, pan shops, dosa and biryani stalls, and saris in the store windows, this eastern U.S. suburban area could be an Indian municipality.
Driving down Oak Tree Road in Edison, New Jersey, is like going through Lajpat Nagar market in New Delhi-albeit with some key differences. Chock-a-block with sari showrooms, grocery stores selling curry pata, and Bollywood music shops…even the mannequins have the same plastic hair.
This is “Little India,” and like the Chinatowns and Little Italy’s that came before it, it is the expression of an immigrant culture that is finally establishing itself in the melting pot of America. According to the 2000 U.S. Census, Edison’s population of about a 100,000 was 17.5 percent Indian American. That is the highest percentage of any municipality in the United States, and growing.
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Bhangra on U.S. College Campuses
Every spring, around the same time as the Baisakhi festival in Punjab, college students from across America gather in a historic theater a few blocks from the White House. Some hail from India, some from Pakistan, and others from New Jersey, but today they are united in a common purpose: bhangra.
You can spot them from a mile away. Wearing shocking pink and green turbans and sparkling dupattas, the girls and boys of the top U.S. university teams make quite a spectacle as they pass the gray and white stone buildings of downtown Washington, D.C. They are here to compete in George Washington University’s Bhangra Blowout, the biggest intercollegiate bhangra dance competition in America.
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Bangkok Street Food
In April 2006 my wife and I traveled to Bangkok with a single motive – check out Bangkok’s best secret, its street food. So for a week we ate every meal at any street kiosk we fancied. Our travel was subsequently published in India Today Travel Plus and The Eureka Reporter (the newspaper has ceased publication).
Read the article here