Pushpa Bhargava

"Any American cook who longs to plunge deeply into the cuisine of India is bound to grow impatient with the cookbooks offered by major United States publisher....But mainstream cookbook publishers are no longer the only game in town." Anne Mendelson, New York Times - July 18. 2007

Pushpa Bhargava is a mother of two who came to the US in 1972 as a newlywed. Pushpa currently lives outside New York city with her husband Vikram. She has two children who are business executives in the greater New York area.

She has seen a whole generation of Indian Americans including her own two children grow from birth to highly successful professionals. As rich as their American experience has been, she felt they missed out on the warmth of the touch of mothers, aunts and grandmothers that she had the privilege of having grown up with in a traditional home in India.

Her book was initially an attempt to fill that gap that started as hand written recipes for her own children.

To her pleasant surprise, there was a huge base of mainstream US and

International customers who saw the same value in the book. In less than two years the first edition was completely sold out -mostly through street fairs and personal networking. It was replaced by the second edition - that was available through the main stream book outlets and websites. It also sold out in about a year. The third printing has been available since December 2010.

The book exemplifies a wonderful and unique trait of the American life... "If you will build it, he will come." (Movie - "Field of Dreams").

Pushpa dared to "build' a book. And the users came!

Thus, this is a story of a loving home maker mother and her engineer husband who had few resources and little knowledge of writing or publishing. Through sheer grit and determination lasting almost eight years and with the help of friends, family and a camera, they toiled on perfecting the recipes, designing the book, starting a publishing company, going to Book Fairs and finding a willing printer.