American Masala; They've changed the way we eat, dress, work and play. South Asians come here from many places, and they succeed by blending East and West.

Publication: Newsweek

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Byline: Barbara Kantrowitz and Julie Scelfo, With Vanessa Juarez, Lorraine Ali, Jen Barrett, Mary Carmichael, Joan Raymond and Vibhuti Patel; Karen Springen in Chicago; Anne Belli Gesalman in Houston, and Sudip Mazumdar in New Delhi

Six floors above Times Square, in a bare rehearsal studio, the sun is rising on Bombay. At the center of the room, a slender middle-aged woman chants softly. She's surrounded by two dozen young performers playing beggars and peddlers who rise from slumber in the intricate ballet of an urban morning scene. Their dance moves become ever more energetic as the pianist in the corner pounds harder on the keys. The woman is Madhur Jaffrey, the actress and cookbook author who has made a career of introducing the tastes of her native India to the West. But this time she is serving up an enticing mix of Indian and Western rhythms called "Bombay Dreams," a Broadway musical that Andrew Lloyd Weber and his creative team hope will hook mainstream America when the show opens next month.

The timing couldn't be better. "Bombay Dreams," which has been playing in London since 2002, tells the story of a young man from the slums who rises to film stardom. It's an apt metaphor for the growing visibility of a new generation of South Asians in the United States--some immigrants from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nepal, and others born here--who are making their mark everywhere from Hollywood to Wall Street. Politicians here may be in an uproar about outsourcing jobs to India, but India has also been exporting tremendous talent to this country. Young South Asians are transforming America's cultural landscape, setting the pace in business, the arts and media as well as the traditional fields favored by their parents'...

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