Expats Booked

It8217;s official. Non-Resident Indians have competition. How about 8216;Internationally Recognised Indians8217;? The suggestion came from Indian Ambassador to the US Lalit Mansingh on a midsummer Manhattan evening at the release of NREyes: Profiles in Success, a coffee table book presented by The Indian Express Group.

As the name suggests, the book is a celebration of the exceptionally skilled Indian expats who have made a difference not only to their own lives but also to their communities, native and adopted. Growing from a mere 2,000 in 1900 to nearly two million now, Indian Americans, said the ambassador, 8216;8216;have proved their merit in a most exceptional manner8217;8217;.

As tongues rolled around the unfamiliar sounds of Sycamore and Hotmail, as news trickled back that Kalpana from Karnal was aiming for the stars, as NRI doc Chitranjan Ranawat flew down to Mumbai8217;s Breach Candy hospital to perform possibly the most closely watched knee operation in history, sequels to NREyes were drafted in a million Indian homes.

It was to celebrate the grandeur of dreams that the who8217;s who of Indian American society gathered at the Shaan restaurant in the heart of New York City. Keeping Mansingh company were India8217;s Permanent Representative to the UN Vijay Nambiar and India8217;s Consul-General to New York Pramathesh Rath. Some of the luminaries, who feature in the book, and also present at the party were tabla maestro Zakir Hussain, actor-food writer Madhur Jaffrey, designer Anand Jon, spice 8216;boy8217; Gordhandas Soni, industrialist Monte Ahuja, motel man Albert Jasani, heart surgeon Dr VA Subramanian, visual solution-provider Baldev Duggal, 8216;pan-Asian8217; Sreenath Sreenivasan. Kanwal Rekhi and Dr Ranawat, who couldn8217;t make it, sent family members as their representatives. And they all went towards creating the kind of evening that will be remembered for a long time.