One of the places that I have remembered the most from a childhood visit to India was Brindavan Gardens. We visited India for five weeks during Christmas break (Dec. 1977 to Jan. 1978), and at the end of the trip we came to Bangalore, Mysore and Brindavan Gardens. I have been dying to return to the gardens, since I last saw it because I remember it as a mystical place with waterfalls. But when I reached my hotel last weekend, the hotel desk said to “hold on to my memories from 1978.” She did not encourage me to visit the gardens as she felt it was not maintained the way it used to be. I refused to listen. I went and saw the gardens that day. It was fun walking around, but it didn’t feel nostalgic. Maybe because, by now I have seen so many gardens just like it in other parts of the world. My childhood memory of the gardens was at night with all the waterfalls lit up. But now, both the gardens and Mysore Palace are lit up at the same time, so unfortunately if you’re only in Mysore for one night, you can only see one or the other. I had to choose between keeping my childhood memory or replacing it with a new memory. I chose to keep my childhood memory of Brindavan Gardens as I do not even remember Mysore Palace at all from my visit in 1978. For me, the palace was worth seeing again, especially lit up at night.
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About somanii
Indira S. Somani, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor of Journalism and Mass Communications with Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Va. She began her tenure-track position in the fall of 2008 bringing 10 years of broadcast journalism experience as a television producer to the classroom. Somani teaches online and broadcast producing and broadcast reporting and has introduced two new courses called "Media, Race and Gender" and "Cross-Cultural Documentary Filmmaking." Somani studies effects of satellite television on the Indian diaspora, specifically the generation of the Asian Indians who migrated to the U.S. between 1960 and 1972, and their media habits. She has been published in the Journal of International and Intercultural Communication, and the Asian Journal of Communication. For the fall of 2011, Somani has been awarded a Fulbright research award to study the Western influence of Indian programming in India. Somani is also an award winning independent producer and director of documentaries about how Asian Indians maintain and preserve their cultural identity. Her most recent production is “Crossing Lines” (www.crossinglinesthefilm.com), a personal essay documentary about her struggle to stay connected to India after the loss of her father. The film has won numerous awards, screened in film festivals nationally and internationally, screened on PBS affiliates, and has also been distributed to more than 50 university libraries in the U.S. through New Day films. Prior to W & L, Somani taught for five years at American University and the University of Maryland. Prior to transitioning to academia, Somani was a television producer most notably with CNBC and WJLA-TV, the ABC affiliate in Washington, D.C. She has been a leader of the South Asian Journalists Association (SAJA), where she has also won several "Outstanding" awards on her coverage of South Asians in North America. Somani earned her Master's in Journalism from the Medill School of Journalism, Northwestern University in 1993, and her Ph.D. from the Phillip Merrill College of Journalism, University of Maryland, College Park in May, 2008.
