For 34-year-old Mitu Malhotra, painting is more than just a passion in life. For the Dubai-based mother of two it is also therapeutic and a key element in her battle against a rare soft tissue cancer. In the past four years, she has spent most of her time flitting between Sloan Kettering Hospital in New York, Gangaram Hospital in Delhi and the Armed Forces Hospital in Washington D.C. Yet, in her free time Malhotra has pursued an active painting career. Last week, she chose to combine her annual review visit to the New York hospital with a solo exhibition in the Big Apple. Hosted by Arts India, the exhibition featured 51 paintings from her brush-all of them compiled in the past year-and-a-half. For Malhotra cancer had become a means of igniting the creative elements within: "I believe that I had to go through this hell to realise my gift of painting. I believe I was born to paint."

Giant Leap

A clutch of second generation Indians recently presented a dance performance, Megh Dhanush: The Six Seasons of India, at the prestigious Meadow Brook Theater in Michigan. For the motley group consisting of children drawn from the Indian diaspora in the Michigan area, this was a big step forward as hitherto they had been restricted to smaller scale performances concentrated in high schools. The group, which came together as Nadanta Inc, a non-profit outfit, performed the dance that embodies the cycle of seasons in India and is symbolised in a rainbow. Nadanta reaches out both to the Indian community and to non-Indian audiences.

Backing Out

I'll have your jobs. Do you know who I am?" Gurbux Singh had thundered at police officers at Lord's after a scintillating encounter between India and England. Turns out he has not only not got "their jobs" but has, in fact, even lost his own. The chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality recently resigned from his post after admitting to threatening the officers in what District Judge Nicholas Evans called "disgraceful behaviour". Singh later apologised and stepped down from his £120,000-a-year post for which he was headhunted by none other than former home secretary Jack Straw.

More Plucky Than Lucky

Bollywood: Popular Indian Cinema is crossing over. Literally. The book-London-based
Lucky Dissanayake's effort at chronicling the Indian industry's progress through the years-has now been launched in the US after recording sales of 12,000 copies in the UK, which saw a glorious Indian summer. The plucky Dissanayake, of Sri Lankan origin, is hoping that the coffee-table book priced at $45 will emulate Monsoon Wedding and win a crossover audience like it has in the UK. Step one successful.