By NITISH S. RELE - editor@khaasbaat.com

Here’s a roundup of the Festival of Lights celebrations by Indian American communities throughout Florida.

Find Out About Events All Over FLorida

	NorthStar's Personal Banker Vinita Mehra poses with Directors Paresh Patel, left, and Dr. Kiran C. Patel at the bank’s grand opening recently. Photo by Aakash Patel

Exactly one year after filing with the Florida Office of Financial Regulation to become an official bank, NorthStar Bank opened its doors to the Tampa Bay community. More than 400 people attended the grand opening celebration held recently at the company's first office and headquarters inside the cylindrical Rivergate Tower in downtown. While NorthStar is among a dozen startup banks to open in the area since 2005, it is unique because of its ties to the Indian community.

Philanthropist Dr. Kiran Patel is the company's largest individual shareholder and Paresh Patel (no relation) is one of the main organizers of NorthStar. Both are among the 10 founding Board of Directors.

"We wanted a community bank owned by local investors for Tampa Bay businesses," said Paresh Patel in an interview with Khaas Baat. "Marty Traber (also a Board member) and I first discussed the idea in 2004 at an Indo-US Chamber of Commerce meeting (www.indo-us.org) Tampa Bay has a vibrant business community especially amongst Indians, yet we are just a number to the big banks. Why not instead bank somewhere where you are valued as a customer? After much discussion with other community leaders, we felt that time for our opening was now."

In keeping with the community owned spirit the bank has over 100 individual shareholders from in an around Tampa Bay with over 25 percent being Indians. Investors in the bank include a variety of professions such as pharmacists, engineers, doctors and businessmen. According to Patel, NorthStar's goal is to provide financial services for small to mid-sized businesses and their owners, executives and employees, as well as consumers in general. Aakash M. Patel is secretary of the Indo-US Chamber of Commerce Executive Committee and has been a Khaas Baat contributor since 2005. He can be reached at Aakash.M.Patel@gmail.com

	Dr. Mohan Singh Rattan

The Sikh community of Tampa Bay, United Sikh Religion & Educational Foundation (USREF) held the seventh annual health fair Oct. 14 at Tampa Gurdwara Sahib, 15302 Morris Bridge Road, Thonotosassa.

“We started the health fair in 2001,” said physicians Gunwant S. Dhaliwal and Tejinder Dhaliwal, “in memory of our parents Davinder Kaur and Dr. Jaswant Singh Dhaliwal in collaboration with the foundation to provide free preventive medical care to the Gurdwara community members and neighbors every year.”

At the health fair, primarily free flu shots were given and blood sugar and blood pressure also were checked. According to Gunwant Dhaliwal, 200 people were administered flu shots while 100 were given a blood sugar check and 120 a blood pressure check.

	Physicians and nurses provided free flu shots as well as blood sugar and blood pressure checkups during the health fair at the Gurdwara.

The Gurdwara, which opened in 1997, caters to a small community of 100 Sikh families in the Tampa Bay area, said Dr. Mohan Singh Rattan, principal, Sikh Heritage College. Every Sunday from 10 a.m. to noon followed by langar, the Sikh community meets for a weekly service. “On special historical days, we have special gatherings. The management has established Sikh Heritage College, which is imparting online programs to the Sikh community and others.”

The Tampa Gurdwara will celebrate Guru Nanak Jayanti on Sunday, Nov. 25.

For more information, call the Sikh Gurdwara at (813) 986-6205 or click on www.tampagurdwara.org

	Naresh S. Dalal

Naresh S. Dalal, the Dirac Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry at Florida State University in Tallahassee, has been selected to receive the 2007 Southern Chemist Award from the Memphis Section of the American Chemical Society.

The award honors “an outstanding researcher who has brought recognition to the South,” specifically the states of Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia. A medal and honorarium will be presented to Dalal at a meeting of the Memphis Section of the American Chemical Society in December. “It always is a great honor to be recognized by one’s peers in such a manner,” Dalal said of the award. “I’m particularly pleased because this award recognizes the work I have done since I moved to Florida State in 1995.”

Dalal has made notable contributions to spectroscopic techniques spanning frequencies from a few hertz to several terahertz over more than three decades of pioneering research in magnetic resonance spectroscopy, mainly electron magnetic resonance. Such research has novel applications to a wide range of problems, ranging from free radicals in toxicology and carcinogenesis to ferroelectric and magnetic phase transitions in quantum solids, quantum dots, quantum computing and high-temperature superconductivity. Over the course of his career, Dalal has been a prodigious writer and researcher, publishing scholarly articles in more than 350 publications.

Earlier this year, Dalal was recognized as the top chemist in Florida by the Florida Section of the American Chemical Society, which bestowed up on him its annual Florida Award (www.fsu.com/pages/2007/03/15/FloridaAwardInChemistry.html). He also was named a fellow of the American Physical Society in 1999, and in 2003 was designated a Distinguished Research Professor, which recognizes outstanding research and/or creative activity, at FSU.

	Renu Khator

Tampa’s loss is Houston’s gain. Dr. Renu Khator, provost and senior vice president at University of South Florida since 2003, will be taking over as chancellor and president at the University of Houston, Texas in January 2008. The University of Houston system, with an enrollment of 57,000 students, encompasses four universities and two multi-institution teaching centers.

Khator, who has a doctorate and master’s in political science from Purdue University and earned her bachelor’s degree from Kanpur University, started at USF as professor of government and international affairs in 1995. Later, she was director of USF’s Environmental Science & Policy Department. After serving as dean of College of Arts & Sciences for three years, she took over as provost.

“I have spent more years of my life in Tampa than any other place so it is going to be an emotionally difficult move,” said Khator in an exclusive interview with Khaas Baat. “But, the opportunity of join the University of Houston as its chancellor and president is an honor that is the right move at the right time. My friends in the Tampa Bay and beyond have so lovingly groomed me over the years to take on this responsibility and I hope to make them proud.”

Khator is married to Suresh, a professor of Industrial & Management Systems Engineering and director of computing for the College of Engineering at USF. The couple has two daughters, both ophthalmologists.

10 THINGS THAT RENU KHATOR WILL MISS ABOUT FLORIDA (NOT NECESSARILY IN ANY ORDER!) Being with the Indian community (starting with Rashmi and Ram Jakhotia);
Being a Floridian (and receiving all that love and affection from the people of the Tampa Bay and beyond);
Being a part of my precious USF family;
Spending an unplanned afternoon with my daughter and son-in-law on their boat;
Feeling the white Florida sand between my toes;
Relishing a big piece of key lime pie and believing that it has no calories as long as it is made from Florida key limes;
Doing daily yoga on my dock;
Sharing stories of how things were 25 years ago;
Spending Sunday morning in a Cuban restaurant dipping Cuban bread in a hot cup of Cuban coffee;
Canoeing down the Hillsborough River.

	Dr. Rao Musunuru

Rao Musunuru, a practicing cardiologist at Regional Medical Center Bayonet Point in Hudson, was named the “Lifetime Achievement Award winner” at a dinner banquet on Oct. 11 honoring the Tampa Bay Business Journal’s 2007 Health Care Heroes.

Dr. Musunuru has helped establish Regional Medical Center Bayonet Point in Hudson as one of the leading heart hospitals in the nation. He also was recognized for his advocacy work on legislative initiatives related to cardiovascular health, including the recent passage of the “Florida Youth Tobacco Education and Prevention Bill,” which reinstated the nationally recognized tobacco prevention program in Florida.

	Pandit Vishnu Sharma

Deepavali is celebrated in honor of three things. The first being the passing of the old and heralding the New Year based on lunar time measurements preceding the Vikram era. This day is identified as Amavasya (the 15th dark night of the month of Kaartick), which will be on Oct. 21, 2006. The second reason is in honor for bountiful crops at the beginning of the fall harvest. The third reason is the anticipatory longing for Hari-Prabodhini (i.e., end of chatur-maas).

Firstly, the New Year is a time when we reflect on the past. We analyze our accomplishments and learn from those experiences.

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	Patrick Hernly

NEED TO BE CREATIVE AND EXPRESSIVE THROUGH MUSIC
By PATRICK HERNLY

In my home town of Richmond, Indiana, it is hard to find a set of tabla, let alone someone who can play them. In that part of the country, the marching band is king, and marching drumline is often a doorway for many American kids to get into music as a career.

When I went away to college at Miami University (in Oxford, Ohio) to study music education, my focus was 110 percent on marching percussion. However, one evening during my freshman year, I was walking through the music building at Miami and happened to pass by a classroom with an open doorway. From inside, I heard a beautiful sound that I did not recognize. I could tell it was a drum, but unlike any I had heard before.

That night, I became acquainted with the tabla, a pair of small drums commonly associated with the Hindustani music of Northern India, but also found in settings all over the world. I met my teacher and mentor, Srinivas Krishnan, student of Ustad Ahmed Jaan “Thirakwa” Khan, and began a journey that has lasted for more than 10 years.

Since then, I have had the good fortune to travel to India on multiple occasions. I have sat with great gurus such as Umayalpuram K. Sivaraman, Anindo Chatterjee, Yogesh Samsi, and T.V. Vasan, and performed with artists of classical and film music such as Embar Kannan and A.R. Rahman. As a percussion and tabla teacher at Excel Music in New Tampa, I am able to share with others the profound connection that I feel with India and her music.

All along, I have wondered what it is in Indian music that has resonated within me, a boy from the cornfields of Indiana. I think it must be the rhythmic nuances of tension and release that unfold a dramatic story within the music. Yogeshji describes it as a “poetic graph.” In some ways, when I hear a tabla solo performance, I am reminded of how Bach would weave together improvised Baroque compositions on the organ. In both cases, the artists are presented with the challenge of creating something that is new and original, while at the same time doing justice to the long-standing traditions of the music. The need to be creative and expressive through music is a bridge connecting these two parts of the world.

Patrick Hernly has a Masters of Music degree from Indiana University in Applied Percussion and is currently working toward a Ph.D. in Music Education at University of South Florida.

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It is time for the Tampa Bay community to have a forum where voices can be expressed, respected and heard. This column will provide just such a corner. In time, I hope there will be enough interest generated when you, the reader, will begin to request certain topics of discussion.
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