Last Saturday, the war raged on in Iraq, and demonstrators chanted for peace in Manhattan. But, 90 miles away, at the Nassau Coliseum in Long Island, thousands of people dressed in bright clothes and fashionable jewelry braved the rain and formed serpentine queues to attend a concert.

Inside the Coliseum, a music composer from India brought the crowd to their feet by singing a hymn in Tamil in his soft voice. Translated, it meant “Let white flowers bloom all over the world.” The curly-haired, cherubic, 32-year-old A. R. Rahman—the composer of the musical Bombay Dreams, now on the West End in London and soon to debut on Broadway—finished singing, and the crowd of 13,000 people, most of whom were of Indian origin, were on their feet, chanting for more.

And more they did get, for the next four hours as ten of the best singers in India, regaled and enthralled the audience with songs from Bollywood, the power block for film production in India.

For the stars, it was a chance to get paid for traveling overseas—Rahman reportedly got close to $15,000 for the night and the other singers from $5,000 to $10,000, according to their current popularity. They were scheduled to tour four other cities in the next couple of weeks. For the organizers, it was yet another chance to revel in the magic of Bollywood’s heady mix of glamour and big bucks. For most expatriates, it was a journey back to their roots, a chance to shed the second skin of their adopted homeland if for only a few hours.

Bollywood, with its movies and music, is among the strongest links between most expatriate Indians and their roots. It churns out more than 1,000 films in more than 25 languages every year. In the United States, 14 of the 24 largest cities have at least one theater devoted to showing only Indian movies. At places like the Eagle Theater in Jackson Heights and the Strand Theater in New Jersey, the atmosphere is like any theater in Delhi or Mumbai. The surrounding music shops and hole-in-the wall restaurants blare Hindi music from popular films the minute they open.

Bollywood shows are perhaps the one entertainment extravaganza that continues to grow in New York despite the uncertain times and the economic slump. Even as Hollywood braces itself nervously for another summer of sink-or-swim big budget films, the Indian show promoters are optimistic. The Rehman night augured good tidings. There are 12 mega shows scheduled for this summer in New York, which is roughly one per weekend.

For the promoters, a good night with no glitches and a full house in a medium-sized venue like the Nassau Coliseum means an instant windfall of at least a few hundred thousand dollars. A glitch in the proceedings, or in the worst case scenario, a show never taking off, means losses in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, and for many promoters, bankruptcy.

For star promoter Jotwani, who came to the United States 28 years ago, the Rahman show was yet another feather in his cap. Jotwani worked for 20 years in the passenger relations department at Air-India, where he had the opportunity to make acquaintance with most film personalities stepping off the jetway. He decided to enter the entertainment business, but his first venture nearly proved to be his undoing. In 1994, the much-vaunted film actor Govinda’s show was canceled at the 11th hour because the national promoter who had given the rights to the local promoter (Jotwani) failed to cough up the money and the star never got on his flight to Kennedy Airport.

But Jotwani took the massive loss—some calculate it to be close to half a million dollars—in stride. The next year, he organized a mega night with stars like Salman Khan and Karishma Kapoor at the Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City. It went off beautifully. Jotwani has since conducted 28 shows in New York.

“I love the challenge and the glamour,” said Jotwani, reminiscing of the night at the Trump Taj Mahal in the summer of 1995, his first successful show: “I have a high standard. For me the name ‘Taj Mahal,’ the Indian name that signifies so much beauty and magic, and I knew it would bring back memories of India to the audience who came for that show.” That night some 2,000 people went back disappointed: they could not get in as the 5,000-person arena was choked to capacity.

Jotwani dismisses suggestions of that a dent in the economy has made the Indian show biz industry in New York a high-risk gamble. “It is a growing phenomenon,” he says.

But the prices of the stars have gone up exponentially. Jotwani says that the top-of-the-line stars demand half a million dollars for 10 shows that make the rounds of the country, including in New York. Aishwariya Rai, the former Miss World and star actress, for instance had a price tag of $75,000 for one night for the Filmfare awards night in India held recently in Mumbai, akin to the Golden Globe awards.

The Bollywood Show biz industry, according to South Asian experts, is a $100 million industry here in the United States. According to several sources, the advent of South Asian pay-per-view television has cut into the profit margins for many promoters, who are divided into three tiers. There are international promoters, who arrange the shows and get instantly paid; the national promoters who get contracts from the international promoters and who too are safe as they get their money back as soon as they reach an agreement with a local contractor like Jotwani. The third tier of local promoters, many based in New York, are the ones at big-time risk if the show is jeopardized. But unlike gambling at Atlantic City, the odds for success for a show are better. The Indian craze for seeing film stars beats all rationale. The local promoter is also the one who rakes in the most money if he gets big advertising rights and the venue fills out at higher range tickets.

“Earlier there was no professional television, now one can see stars performing live in their living rooms, even from India” said Hari Srinivasan, the head of the entertainment channel, B4U. “But watching live entertainment in the United States is a unique experience for many South Asians, and for people of Indian origin from the West Indies. Many come back to see more shows. It becomes for some an addiction and their only touch with home.”