Editorial January 2015

Dear Readers,

New Year, New Hopes, New Exciting Moments!

On behalf of the entire Desh-Videsh Media Group, I wish you all a happy, healthy, and prosperous New Year! With all your support and encouragement, we are ready to embark upon 2015.

As an Indian American and especially a South Floridian, I am very proud our own Dr. Vivek Murthy was confirmed as US Surgeon General, the top doctor in the US. We are honored to cover his achievement as a front cover story in this issue of Desh-Videsh. It is also noteworthy that when he took oath, he did so on the Bhagavad Gita, a sacred book for Hindus, rather than the Bible.

This is not the first time Vivek has graced the cover of Desh-Videsh. Back in 1995, he headed a delegation to India for AID awareness, and Desh-Videsh was there to cover that story.

As you know, I always get excited (and sometimes carried away) when I talk about our youth. This issue is full of articles about youth and for youth. Rina Shah, owner of our PR company The Arpan Group, has written an informative article featuring resources to raise confident and cultured children. She also did an in-depth interview with Sailaja Joshi, an up and coming children’s book writer. We are also very proud to include two winning essays from the Hindu American Foundation’s NextGen essay competition in this issue.

In closing, I would like to thank each of you who has acknowledged that Desh-Videsh magazine is in a class of its own. All of the articles included in each issues are unique and not copied and pasted from the Internet. We are glad that you noticed we cover a range of topics that concern South Asian families living in the US: from raising children, immigration, beauty, and weddings to religion, politics and, of course, Bollywood.

Thank you very much and keep the feedback coming. Your suggestions and comments are what keeps us on our toes!

Raj Shah