Editorial May 2021

Dear Readers,

I hope all of you are as excited as I am with the wide variety of articles featured in each issue of Desh-Videsh and the May issue is even more interesting. 

First, let me wish all our Muslim friends and readers a Happy Ramadan. Over the years, I have been reading and hearing from my college roommate Iqbal about Ramadan, but when I read the article by Professor Khalil “Why is Ramadan called Ramadan?,” it really shed some more light about this important occasion including a few facts that I did not know. I hope all of you, especially young kids, learn the real meaning of Ramadan.

Now let me turn to another important topic, Mental Health in Our Community. When Shivani Patel, a graduate student at the University of Florida (Go Gators!) approached me about writing an article about the importance of mental health awareness in our community, it gave me a bit of pause. Mental health in South Asians? But when she gave me some stats about mental depression in South Asians, I was very much convinced that it is high time we bring awareness to our community about this silent killer disease. Rewinding my own life, while I was fighting with cancer, I went through mental depression myself. But I was lucky. With the help of family, friends and my extended family of Desh-Videsh readers, I came out of it, not only with mental depression, but a deadly disease called cancer. What Shivani tells us in her article is that we should be aware of it, accept the illness as any other illness and get proper help.

Now let me talk about my lifelong hero, Gandhi ji. These days a few radical people in the Black Lives Matter group are using violence to spread hatred against this ‘Great Soul” by vandalizing his statue and labeling him as a “racist.” As I said before, I consider Gandhi ji my hero, mentor and guide. I can assure you, some of these radical people do not even know one word about Gandhi ji. His non-violent fight against the British empire in South Africa began when he was only 23. How many 23-year-old young men do you know who raised their voice against brutal governments in foreign countries? I remember when I came to this country in 1970, I was also 23 years old. Forget about raising a voice against brutal governments, I could not raise my voice against my landlord. To understand more about Gandhi ji’s principles in detail, please read the articles “Faced with today’s crisis, what would Gandhi do?” and  “Words to Live By – Non-Violence.” 

At Desh-Videsh we always love to talk about young people and their success. So in this issue rather than talking about the over 50 crowd of Indian-Americans, we are changing the focus to the younger generation, CEOs who fall into the below 40 group as well as younger school-age Indian Americans who are winning notable prizes and awards.

As they say, there is always a silver lining on a dark cloud. For the last year and a half, we have been cooped up in our house because of Covid -19. The silver lining I see is that a lot more people and especially young kids have developed an affinity for reading books. Please do not forget to read the articles “Why stories matter for children’s learning” and our expanded Must Read Books section.

After taking a short break, our young writer Chahna Tailor is also back with another very informative article on Copper immunity. As always, her tips are wonderful for those who seek to follow the Ayurvedic tradition.

As you know, we always want to listen to what you have to say about the articles we cover and the articles we do not cover. If you like any of the articles especially written by our young writers, please encourage them by giving us feedback.

Until next time, Be safe and Be well!

Raj Shah

Managing Editor

Desh-Videsh Media Group