Kunal Nayyar wants to make bank: As The Big Bang Theory gets ready to start its sixth season this week, its cast is looking for a salary bump. Stars Jim Parsons (who won an Emmy yesterday), Johnny Galecki and Kaley Cuoco have decided to negotiate for a new deal together, while ensemble players Kunal Nayyar and Simon Helberg have teamed up to get a raise of their own. All of the cast members are expected to use the success of the series — currently the top comedy in the United States — as a bargaining chip. BBT episodes continue to do well both on CBS and in syndication. The cast hasn’t gotten a raise since 2010. Nayyar’s costars Mayim Bialik and Melissa Rauch successfully received pay raises last week. (USA Today, UPI)
The freedom to write what you don’t know: Novelist V.V. Ganeshananthan compares coverage of Chinese American author Bill Cheng, whose debut novel Southern Cross the Dog takes place in the Mississippi Delta in the 1920s to fellow debut novelist Anthony Marra, whose book A Constellation of Vital Phenomena takes place during the 2004 Chechen War. (AAWW)
A gourd grows in Brooklyn: ABCDs of Cooking blogger Chitra Agrawal describes sneaking seeds into the United States in order to grow authentic Indian vegetables. A sumptuous meal followed a few months later. (Medium)
Opera with a Gujarati twist: Musician Rushi Vakil has just released the first single from his new album Click Kar. Opera singer Natalie Di Luccio is the star of the song “Prarthana,” which fuses both Western and Indian classical styles. Watch the video below:
Lakshmi Gandhi is a co-founder and editor of The Aerogram. Follow her on Twitter at@LakshmiGandhi or email her at editors@theaerogram.com. Find The Aerogram on Twitter at @theaerogram.
