Cocooned Conclaves

Font Size

Print

Feedback

Email

Discuss

Related Articles

‘People still prefer piracy to paying for world ci...

: Remember Tilo, played by Aishwarya Rai in the film based on Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Mistress of Spices, who runs a San Francisco store called ‘Spice Bazaar’, where she helps people solve their problems with her spices? That may just what Indians over generations have needed while in alien shores. Fact and fiction are quite close here, resulting in what are commonly known as India bazaars, providing the India connection that most yearn for, the Indian food, culture and their dose of Bollywood/Mollywood/Tollywood movies.

The names are not inventive. They do not need to be, for their purpose is to establish the instant connect. So expect Gandhi Marg or Little India or Indian Street or India Bazaar and India Town. They will have a relatively larger concentration of South Asian shops, bazaars, restaurants, boutiques and businesses and are generally an eclectic mix of businesses and entrepreneurs from the Indian subcontinent — India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka — catering to the 30 million odd Non Resident Indians (NRI) and Persons of Indian origin (PIO) around the world.

Little India in Singapore or East End in London are now regularly featured as centres of desi culture in an alien land, courtesy literature and cinema recognising the tales of survival and economic growth. And as the second and third generations have emerged, along with new waves of migration, more such India islands are becoming the order of the day. While the US has an estimated 2,563 ‘Indian’ grocery stores (indianfoodguide.com), even New Zealand’s Auckland has 10 and Tauranga has one.

Places with historical links have now established Indian stores and even markets, much like Chinatowns. But is also evident in comparatively new settlements like Silicon Valley, California. Corporate giants like Intel have Indian community groups, they also have Gujarat’s jewellery chain Bhindi, and Sarovar restaurant.

And Pune jewellers, a store that PN Gadil set up in Sunnyvale in August 2007 to cater to the 300,000 Indians in the area, becoming the latest in the line of mainly Gujarati and Rajasthani entrepreneurs who have set up jewellery shops to cater to the Indian diaspora. During festivals, jewellery, diyas, raisins, clothes and phone cards become popular, Dilip Amin of NewYork-based Tajmahal Imports shares.