San Francisco bay area folks are in for a wonderful cultural treat of films, music and food att this s year’s Asian American Film Festival. The 10 day long festival starts today -March 14th and continues till March 24th, 2013. Films, music and foods are the 3 strands that bind the various Asian-American communities across [...]

Madhur Jaffrey is an actress, author and a cook, who seems absolutely indefatigable. Now in her late 70s she continues to write, act,  and is back on the BBC this year with a new TV series  Curry Nation that looks at the impact of Indian curry in the UK. In the 1980s her BBC series [...]

Craving for American food in Banglalore? Not a problem. The concierge at your hotel will rattle off a list of places where you can get your cravings fixed and might even mention a well-known fast food joint. But back in the 1960s and 1970s there was just one place that served American food like steak [...]

I have known about  Bridget White Kumar  for over 6 years, and every year on my purpose-filled trips to Bangalore, I’d promise myself to meet her. Every year her name would dutifully appear on my list of people to meet in Bangalore, and every year I’d carry her name forward to the next year’s list. [...]

  Bangalore special so far in case you missed listening or watching the interviews in our life, people and ideas channel. Our goal is to highlight Bangalore, a city in rapid transition, while remains of an older and gentler times still exist in pockets of the city. Every Thursday, you can expect to see a [...]

Bangalore special.  This month’s  focus is on life, people and ideas from Bangalore, one of the fastest growing cities in India. Often referred as Silicon Valley of India, this once laid-back town known as “pensioners paradise” is fast morphing into vibrant, ever-expanding megapolis in India. Megapolis you ask? Consider this. Whitefield was once considered a [...]

What is Pongal? This is a question that  I often get asked in the US. Think of it like an Indian version of Thanksgiving I respond. Come January, and people in different parts of India gear up for a “thanksgiving” celebration that also marks the end of winter. This harvest festival has different names in [...]

You have probably had a paan right after you have had a rich, delicious Indian meal. You may have popped that paan into your mouth automatically & may or may not have wondered about the various flavors that ooze out of that betel leaf. Prof. Pushpesh Pant deconstructs what goes into a paan. The ingredients [...]

Paan. What a great way to end the year with a paan that aids in digesting all the news/videos/songs we consumed in 2011 including the video of the year Kolaveri Di. All your kolaveri induced emotions should subside with a nice, mitha (sweet) paan. If you’ve never had paan, let’s take you behind the scene [...]

There are a few dates that you might remember from your history class. Perhaps your remember the following dates? 1453 1493 1498 1453 kind of rings a bell? That is the year that Constantinople fell as your high school textbooks may have described it. An upshot of this was that that the overland route from [...]