India Inc.

Whenever the mood hits her, Hollywood film producer Ilene Staple gathers several friends and heads to Little India in Artesia, where she slips inside Ziba Beauty Salon to have her hands stained with henna in the ancient style of Indian adornment called mehndi.

Staple, 36, says she prefers to dress simply but that “this is a way of marking myself for special occasions that is beautiful and meditative. We plan a whole day around it. We have lunch, buy music, go to the shops for spices and bangles. You can get kohl [eyeliner] sticks for a dollar.”

Whereas Staple has been a mehndi aficionado for years, other Americans are just beginning to embrace the culture and fashions of the subcontinent in a trend that is making all things Indian hotter than a Madras curry.

Several months ago, Nicole Kidman graced the Oscars loaded down with 16th century Moghul jewelry. In a recent issue of US magazine, singer Gwen Stefani of the band No Doubt sports a bindi, the Indian beauty mark on the forehead traditionally worn by married women. Actress Liv Tyler displays full mehndi on her hands and feet in the May Vanity Fair. The New Yorker just devoted its summer fiction issue to Indian literature. And from London to Bombay to Los Angeles, club DJs are spicing up their dance fare with the remixed Punjabi folk music called bhangra.

All that mainstream attention means cash registers are ringing for the 120 Indian merchants who cluster along three bustling blocks in Artesia, the second-largest Little India in America after Jackson Heights in New York.

More than 50,000 Indians live within a 10-mile radius of Little India, and 200,000 more call Southern California home, according to Ramesh Mahajan, founder and president of the Little India Chamber of Commerce.

For them, as well as for an increasing number of non-Indians, the beating heart of Little India is Pioneer Boulevard, where sparkling new shopping centers and renovated storefronts sell everything from sapphires to spices, saris to samosas.

The boom has turned a down-at-the-heels downtown commercial district into a thriving retail center. Properties are snapped up as they go on the market, and there are waiting lists for new construction.

Retail space along Pioneer Boulevard--where 80% of the businesses are already Indian--goes for roughly $2 per square foot, more akin to West Los Angeles than a decidedly unglamorous strip in Southeast L.A.

“Anything that would come up, I could sell it; I have a waiting list,” says real estate broker John Sade, who owns a Century 21 brokerage on Pioneer.

Sade, a Latino and longtime city businessman, says the Indian community has injected much-needed life into Artesia, a city of 16,500 that is 42% white, 40% Latino, 15% Asian (including Indians) and 3% Black and other, according to the 1990 U.S. census.

“They’ve pretty much taken over redevelopment single-handedly here, and they spend money to make the businesses look nice,” Sade says. “They rejuvenated the commercial strip, which was starting to get pretty bad in the late 1970s and early 1980s.”

Artesia City Manager Paul Philips agreed that Indians are vital to the city’s fiscal health. Philips doesn’t know what percentage of the city’s businesses are Indian-owned or how much income they generate via sales tax revenues, because the city doesn’t break out that data by ethnicity.

However, “it’s a very, very critical part of our local economy,” Philips says.

Little India is also a regional draw. More than 20,000 people are expected Aug. 16 for a parade celebrating the 50th anniversary of Indian independence from Britain.

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But the emergence of Little India has not been without its growing pains, and some Indians complain privately that Artesia has been less than accommodating.

Indian merchants want the city to create more parking, but so far Artesia hasn’t come up with anything workable, although officials are considering building a structure.

Then there’s the controversial issue of the sign.

Four years ago, Indian merchants banded together under Mahajan and asked the City Council to pass a resolution asking Caltrans to put a sign on the 91 Freeway announcing Little India. Similar freeway signs for Chinatown and Little Saigon have helped boost visibility in those communities. But the council balked.

“The council felt that if they recognized one group they should recognize them all, and that’s just not realistic,” Philips says. “Artesia is so international and diverse that they didn’t see the need for it.”

Mahajan says the sign could list all the ethnic groups in Artesia. He calls the council’s decision “shortsighted” and says city officials are missing the point. “This is a pie that everyone can enjoy because our main purpose is growth and business. I don’t know what they’re scared of.”

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Marius Lakeman, a businessman of Dutch descent whose family has owned Artesia Bakery on Pioneer for 50 years, sees both sides of the debate.

“Once in a while we clash,” Lakeman says. “They’re always trying to bargain. If I have something for $1, they’ll say, ‘How about three for $2?’ It’s like an open-air market.”

But Lakeman says the growth of Little India has been a terrific boon to Artesia and especially to those like him who own real estate along Pioneer.

“I get good rent. You’re talking Beverly Hills prices here,” Lakeman says.

The transformation started in the late 1970s and early ‘80s when several Indians opened businesses along Pioneer. It grew slowly but steadily each year.

Mahajan, who owns the critically acclaimed Standard Sweets & Snacks, says the idea for Little India came to him in a dream in 1991.

That year, he started the Little India Chamber of Commerce with 45 members. Today there are 80, including restaurants, grocery stores, music stores and furniture emporiums. There are clothing boutiques selling exquisite saris and gowns embroidered with gold beads and snack shops like the Surati Farsan Mart, which specializes in Gujarati vegetarian food and ships UPS with a five-pound minimum. Merchants say the plethora of stores only stimulates business.

“People from all over come here. They go to Disneyland, then Artesia. So this is the place to be,” says Bali Sidhu, a clinical psychologist who started the boutique Mem-Sahib because she couldn’t find anything to wear.

Some Indian immigrants come from as far away as Las Vegas and Arizona each month to buy supplies and get Indian beauty treatments such as henna, mehndi or threading, a centuries-old hair removal technique involving two threads that are run at lightning speed over the skin.

But many stores are also booming from crossover trade as Indian products, wares and services become better known to Americans.

One who visits Ziba Beauty Salon regularly for threading is Ana Barajas, 24, of Whittier, a Latina who heard about Ziba from her manicurist. At $6 for both eyebrows, it’s a treatment she can afford.

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Customers like Barajas have helped Ziba expand from 400 square feet to 2,000 in 10 years and develop a client base that is 80% non-Indian, despite no mainstream advertising.

“It’s all word of mouth; people tell their friends,” says Sumita Batra, Ziba’s marketing manager, whose mother started the salon.

Batra has big plans for Ziba and has designed do-it-yourself bindi and mehndi kits for $19.95 that she’d like to market through national retailers in suburban malls. In the last few months, she’s sold 1,000 kits through mail-order alone.

Like most Little India merchants, Batra believes imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, whether it’s rock singers affixing bindi to their foreheads or movie stars like Goldie Hawn wearing a sari in a recent issue of In Style magazine.

“If there’s something good about Indian culture that makes it into the mainstream, I think that’s great,” Batra says.

The coming of age of Indian business is also evident at India West, the largest Indian newspaper on the West Coast, which was founded with seven pages more than two decades ago and now runs 124 pages weekly, according to Circulation Manager Supriya Bharadwaj. The Emeryville, Calif.-based newspaper has also seen advertising double as stores run price-slashing ads to lure customers.

“India’s time has come,” Bharadwaj says.

State Bank of India, which opened a branch on Pioneer Boulevard in 1988 to serve local merchants, now handles $21 million in deposits at its Artesia office, which has ballooned into the largest of its five offices nationwide.

“It’s grown steadily at about 10% a year, and we are now dealing with some of the second generation,” says Perinne Medora, a senior vice president.

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Some Indian merchants have shrewdly branched into real estate. Mala Malani, who opened her first boutique on Pioneer Boulevard 18 years ago, developed 15,000 square feet formerly occupied by a Payless Shoes and Lamp City and subdivided it into seven stores--all of them Indian-owned.

“I had people giving me deposits two years in advance,” Malani says.

Her boutique, Sona Chaandi, has flourished, encouraging Malani to open branches in New York, Berkeley and Chicago. The entrepreneur, who owns factories in India, also wholesales to Saks Las Vegas.

Another merchant who got into real estate is Vinod K. Bhindi, president of Bhindi Jewelers, one of three partners in a $2-million, 30,000-square-foot shopping center where buses pull up to disgorge tourists looking for bargains on the 22-karat gold, intricate enamel and gem-studded jewelry favored by Indians.

Bhindi says non-Indian customers drawn by word of mouth now account for more than a quarter of his sales, and include Hollywood celebrities who slip into the upstairs rooms for private showings.

Indeed, along Pioneer, many stores that once catered exclusively to Indians report that up to 50% of business is now non-Indian.

“We’re getting young girls; they’re interested in bindi, henna and iodized silver jewelry,” says Jyotti Nagrani of Sari Boutique.

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Non-Indians also snap up Nehru jackets and bolts of fine sari fabric to make window valances and skirts.

Lisa Wood, 25, of Long Beach bought three yards of chiffon with eyelet embroidery for $22 to make a skirt she saw at Nordstrom for $100.

“It’s the same type of sheer fabric,” she says. “I have a friend, he’s a clothes designer who’s big into Nehru jackets, and I told him about Little India. Now he shops here too.”

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Bombay West

About 120 Indian merchants have established businesses in Artesia’s Little India, most of them along Pioneer Boulevard between 183rd and 187th streets.