Kudos to our good friend D’Lo and his recent article in the Guardian! You probably caught D’Lo in the first season of Amazon’s “Transparent”,  HBO’s “Looking” and he just completed a successful tour of “D’FunQT“, where he “considers queer love and the artist’s personal and complicated relationship with Sri Lanka as a trans masculine person”.  And, he’ll be in the upcoming Netflix series, “Sense8″ directed by the “The Matrix Trilogy” creators,

Posted: May 28th, 2015

“Seeking 25-40, well-placed, animal-loving, vegetarian GROOM for my SON (36, 5’11”), who works with an NGO, Caste No Bar (though IYER preferred)” Harish Iyer’s mom, Padma, felt her son needed a little push in the romance department and like many meddling Indian parents, she decided to take the matter into her own hands by placing a personal ad in a local Mumbai newspaper. The fact that her son—an activist and

Posted: May 21st, 2015

We were shocked and saddened early Saturday morning to hear that Prashant Bhargava suddenly passed away the previous evening .  Prashant, born and raised in Chicago and based in Brooklyn, was a vital part of our South Asian creative community in New York.  He made international headlines with his debut feature film “Patang“, which was based in Ahmedabad during India’s largest kite festival.   His most recent venture was “Radhe Radhe”, a collaboration

Posted: May 18th, 2015

If you woke up early this morning with your alarm clock set to NPR and heard Desilicious and ‘gay desi“, you weren’t dreaming. NPR reporter Alexandra Starr, who wrote a piece on Desilicious for the “New York Times” in 2007, attended our Sholay Birthday Bash last month.  You can listen to the audio version of Alexandra’s  “Weekend Report” here and read the text version.  A big thanks to Sazzad Reza,

Posted: May 9th, 2015

Guests at our Sholay Birthday Bash this past April may have caught a flash of orange sequins and smiles as Junoon Performing Arts took over the dance floor for a dazzling Bollywood fusion performance. The dance troupe will be taking their talents to Manhattan Movement Center with “Dil Se–a Journey of Emotions.” Coming up on Sunday, May 10th. We had a chance to sit down with them between rehearsals to

Posted: May 6th, 2015

“I wondered if I could create a minuscule postmodern hippie outpost, a safe haven for artists, musicians, writers, poets, activists, and thinkers — essentially anyone who wanted to escape the relentless tyranny of the city for a little while,” Sabeen Mahmud described her inspiration behind founding The Second Floor—a coffeehouse and haven for progressive expression—in a recent interview with MIT’s Innovations Magazine. On April 24th, the Karachi-based human rights and counterculture

Posted: April 28th, 2015

With the death toll climbing to 4,000 as a result of Saturday’s 7.9 earthquake in Nepal, the deadliest in 80 years, the situation is extremely dire.  While humanitarian aid is beginning to flow into the capital, authorities are still trying to deal with the situation outside of Katmandu.  There are many ways we can help – most important for Nepal is to donate money to effective and efficient charities that have

Posted: April 27th, 2015

In an unprecedented move, the Indian Censor Board passed a music video by Friends of Linger called “Head Held High” which aims to spread the message of love and acceptance in the LGBT community. This is the first time a video with such a theme has passed the Censor Board without any cuts or edits. This is the same country that still has 377 on its books and persecutes our

Posted: April 24th, 2015