The Culture Desk
Music, film, food, faith, and identity
He first touched India at two and a half, went back alone at eighteen, and returned a decade later to sit with an Aghori monk in the lanes of Varanasi. Robin Leo Hoffmann of the Still Human podcast on sadhana, seva, samadhi — and the monk who told him a better world is simply ours to build.
On 30 September 2026, a first officer stabbed Captain Smit Machchhar and tried to crash Flydubai flight FZ1073 to Tel Aviv. Bleeding, the Mumbai-born pilot got the cockpit door open — and 174 people lived. How an Indian captain became a hero to two prime ministers at once, and what it says about the diaspora in the Gulf.
Born in Durban, raised in New Zealand from the age of 15, and Indian by heritage — Ashina Singh now wears the Mrs Indian Ocean Globe 2026/27 crown, and heads to a world final in the United States next June. She talks to Diaspora Dreams about identity, resilience, and why, she says, there is “an entire journey behind the crown.”
At eighteen she flew to Mumbai alone to claim a heritage she had only ever looked like — and spent two decades turning it into a life in Kathak. The British-Indian dancer, teacher and TEDx speaker on identity, the school she built and gave away, and her journey “from karma to dharma.”
The Indian diaspora isn't waiting to be discovered anymore — it's posting. Twelve Indian-origin names worth a follow right now, across screen, comedy, music, wellness and food — from Maitreyi Ramakrishnan and Simone Ashley to Hasan Minhaj, Raja Kumari, Jay Shetty and Padma Lakshmi — each with their verified Instagram handle.
From Merle Oberon — the 1930s Hollywood star who hid her Bombay birth — to Persis Khambatta on the Oscar stage, Nina Davuluri's Miss America crown, and today's Padma Lakshmi, Priyanka Chopra and Maitreyi Ramakrishnan: a century of Indian-origin women in the global spotlight, and the barriers they broke.
From Hindustani classical training in Hyderabad to a Berklee stage and the clubs of Los Angeles, Asmi Aderay writes alt-pop that slips between pop-rock, soul and R&B — betting that a distinct voice and an honest song will outlast a neatly labelled sound.
For decades the most famous Indian on American TV was Apu — a white actor's cartoon accent. The story of how the diaspora went from caricature to controlling its own image is the story of this whole series.
When Never Have I Ever premiered in 2020, an Indian-American teenager was finally the star of her own coming-of-age story. Streaming did what cinema rarely had — put the diaspora's everyday life at the centre.
Tamil films have a second life abroad — in the packed cinemas of Malaysia and Singapore, and, improbably, in Japan, where Rajinikanth's Muthu ran for 23 weeks and held a box-office record for 24 years.
For decades, Indian faces in Hollywood played cab drivers and terrorists. A crossover generation — Irrfan Khan, Dev Patel, Priyanka Chopra, Mindy Kaling, Aziz Ansari — turned that into leads, Oscars and authorship.
From a Wandsworth launderette to a Springsteen-loving teenager in Luton, British Asian film built a body of work about the second generation — made by the British-born children of South Asian migrants.
While Bollywood made the diaspora its muse, three Punjabi women — Mira Nair, Deepa Mehta and Gurinder Chadha — made it their subject, turning the immigrant's double vision into world cinema.
In 1995, Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge made the non-resident Indian Bollywood's hero — and the diaspora its most valuable audience. How the 'NRI film' was born, and the movies it made.
A record 34,500 packed a Long Island field for India–Pakistan in 2024. From Major League Cricket to the UAE's ILT20, the Indian diaspora is turning cricket into a global business, far from home.
Part 5 of Temples of the Diaspora. Denied land to build his temple, an indentured labourer named Sewdass Sadhu built one in the sea instead, by hand, over decades. Trinidad's Hindu temples are monuments to a stubborn refusal to disappear - and to a diaspora that made an island its own.
Part 6 of The Diaspora Plate. In the Gulf, Indian food is not a cuisine you seek out - it is the background hum of daily life, from the Malayali cafeteria's morning parotta to the tiffin carrier at a labour camp. How millions of Indian workers made their food the region's own.
Part 5 of The Diaspora Plate. Butter chicken, garlic naan, a steam-table lunch buffet and a framed photo of the Taj Mahal - for millions of Americans, this was India. The story of how a standardised menu conquered the United States, and how a new generation of chefs is now tearing it up.
Part 6 of Temples of the Diaspora. On 14 February 2024, a pink-sandstone-and-marble mandir rose from the desert outside Abu Dhabi - the first traditional hand-carved Hindu temple in the Gulf, built on land the UAE's ruler gifted, and now the largest in West Asia. It is a diaspora announcing its permanence in the unlikeliest of places.
At Paris Haute Couture Week, Rahul Mishra's 'Devi: The Eternal Muse' turned the apsaras of Ajanta and a 12th-century Karnataka stone dancer into couture - with Cardi B and Isha Ambani front row, and a Tanishq diamond first.
Los Angeles singer-songwriter Asmi Aderay is back with her attention-grabbing new hit, ‘I’m That Woman’. Her first release of 2026, the song is a tough yet tender, confident and emotional statement that helps to build her growing reputation on the global music scene.
A 140-foot golden statue of Murugan, 272 rainbow-painted steps, and a Hindu temple set inside a 400-million-year-old limestone cave outside Kuala Lumpur — Batu Caves is the spiritual capital of Malaysia's Tamil community, and the site of the largest Thaipusam festival on Earth.
Gobi Manchurian, chilli chicken, Hakka noodles, Schezwan everything — the beloved 'desi Chinese' found in every Indian town exists nowhere in China. It was invented by a tiny Chinese-Hakka community in Kolkata, and it has since become one of India's great gifts to its own diaspora.
A hollowed-out loaf packed with curry, eaten by hand off a square of newspaper — Durban's bunny chow is South Africa's best-loved street food, and a dish whose history runs straight through indenture and apartheid.
Behind a tower crowded with painted gods, in the middle of Singapore's Chinatown, stands the city-state's oldest Hindu temple — founded in 1827 by a clerk who sailed in with Stamford Raffles, and still the spiritual anchor of Tamil Singapore.
As homegrown Indian clean-beauty brands win a global following, CodeSkin's CLARIFI AC Spot offers the diaspora a targeted fix for the red, pus-filled pimples that flare up in humid weather — wherever home happens to be.
In a corner of north-west London, a Gujarati congregation built Europe's first traditional Hindu stone temple — 5,000 tonnes of hand-carved marble and limestone, raised entirely by the community.
A north Indian street snack crossed the ocean with indentured labourers, lost its name, gained a new one, and became the unofficial national breakfast of Trinidad and Tobago.
The Assamese thriller 'Rudra', led by award-winning actor Ravi Sharma, is now streaming on ReelDrama — part of a wave of regional Indian films reaching diaspora audiences worldwide through OTT.
Part 1 of Temples of the Diaspora. In the fields of central New Jersey, a hand-carved stone mandir the size of a cathedral announced that the Indian diaspora in America had come of age.
Part 1 of The Diaspora Plate. A dish nobody in India had quite eaten became, in the hands of Bangladeshi cooks in Britain, the country's unofficial national meal — and a perfect parable of how diaspora food is made.
A June essay by matchmaker Lakshmi Nagasamudra argues the big matrimony platforms won over the immigrant generation but are losing their children — who distrust profiles in an age of fakes and AI-generated content.
The 2026 Grammy season made it impossible to ignore. Across Best New Artist, Best Pop Duo, Best Global Music Album, Best Global Music Performance, and Best Contemporary Instrumental Album — five different categories — Indian-origin singers and musicians weren't just present. They were the conversation.
Directed by Lakshmipriya Devi and backed by Farhan Akhtar, the Manipuri-language film 'Boong' won Best Children's and Family Film at the 2026 EE BAFTA Film Awards — the first Indian film to take the category in the prize's history.
On 6 September 2026, the AMARA Hall of Fame Awards became the first Indian and Indo-US-centric awards platform to be staged at New York's David Geffen Hall.
Ustad Amjad Ali Khan, along with his sons Amaan Ali Bangash and Ayaan Ali Bangash, won a 2026 Grammy as composers on 'Meditations: The Reflections of His Holiness the Dalai Lama'.
Indian-American filmmaker Geeta Gandbhir — a multiple Emmy and Peabody Award winner — picked up two nominations at the 2026 Academy Awards.
They invest before they turn 22. They run side hustles before they land their first job. They send money home and build portfolios abroad — at the same time. Meet Gen Z NRIs: the most financially ambitious generation India has ever produced. With sources from WEF, SEBI, BCG, and AMFI.
If you or someone you know has been quietly Googling hair transplants abroad — and wondering whether it makes sense to combine a trip home with treatment — this story is for you. Picture this: a man boards a flight from Manchester to Mumbai, not for a wedding or a family visit, but for a hair […]
Mumbai: Eugenix Hair Sciences has etched its name into global medical history as representatives from World Records Book of India officially conferred the title for achieving the highest number of grafts in a single hair transplant sitting. In a landmark moment witnessed at the event, the team validated the procedure a
