New York (The Hawk): In New York, a community group that speaks for the Kerala diaspora will recognise six Indian-American Malayalees for their exceptional professional and communal accomplishments.
Indian Consul General Randhir Jaiswal and New York State Senators Kevin Thomas and Anna Kaplan will be in attendance at the Indian American Kerala Cultural and Civic Center's 30th Annual Awards Banquet in Elmont on October 22.The Chairman of the NeST Group, Javad Hassan, will receive an award for his outstanding leadership. To help Indian businesses compete on a global scale, he has been working to establish campuses of top American colleges in India.
Suffolk County police officer Thomas Joy will get an award for his public service. The India Association of Long Island recognised Joy in 2020 for his dedication to the community during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Performing arts winner Bindiya Sabarinath is the brains behind the Mayura School of Arts.
Sabarinath, a graduate of Kalakshetra Chennai who is proficient in Bharatnatyam, Mohiniyattam, and Kuchipudi, has been working to make the most popular forms of Indian dance more widely available in the United States.
Twenty years ago she earned a Presidential Award for her performance of Mohiniyattam on Republic Day on behalf of Kerala and since then she has devoted herself to teaching and performing Indian Classical Dance.
In the year 2000, Bindiya founded the Mayura school of Arts in the United States. According to her website, she has more than a thousand pupils and a number of locations in the New York and New Jersey metro areas.
The Applied Science awardee, Silvester Noronha, was born in the Kollam district of Kerala. At the moment, he is a member of the MIT faculty in a visiting capacity (MIT).
To help bring about the long-awaited nuclear power fusion that will revolutionise the world's energy sector, he collaborated with a team of MIT scientists to build a massive high-temperature superconducting electromagnet.
Jose Kaniyaly, Executive Editor and Partner of the Kerala Express weekly newspaper, and P.T. Paulose, for their respective contributions to Malayalam media and journalism.
"Since 1991, the Kerala Center has been recognising exceptional people. Every year, we seek nominations and the committee must reach unanimity on who should win in each category; the achievements of those nominated and chosen for awards in 2018 are no different from those in years past "Thomas Abraham, chairman of the Trustee Board and a member of the Award Committee at the Kerala Center, made this statement.
Although the precise number of Keralites in the United States is unknown, the International Institute of Migration and Development (IIMD), based in Thiruvananthapuram, estimates that there are at least 40 lakh Keralites abroad, of which at least 20 percent or even higher number are now settled in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, Australia, and New Zealand.
Officials in Kerala are compiling a database of its citizens in order to learn how many Malayalis are currently employed in other countries, particularly the United States, Canada, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand.
(Inputs from Agencies)