An unpleasant and unusual situation for both the crew and controllers. Disregard glofish's comment about "irrelevant babble". In this situation there is bound to be an amount of thinking aloud by both parties. Had they had 30 minutes notice of the failures the crew would have been able to give concise statements and requests and these would have been returned by the controllers with concise options and clearances.
My experience of Air India is that they only speak with an accent...they don't think with one. And as for the JFK and New York Controllers they were as helpful as I would expect them to be so well done everyone involved chaps!