Sam Rizvi

Samim or “Sam” Rizvi (45) is an extreme athlete from Bangalore, India. This week he became the first Indian to participate in the grueling bicycle event Race Across America. The race is flagged off in Oceanside in Southern California and ends in Maryland on the east coast.

Cyclists race coast to coast biking 3,000 miles in 12 days, crossing 14 states with just an hour’s sleep everyday. That is just the description of the race. What about the total number of calories Sam expects to burn by the end of the race? 200,000 calories. Sam is unfazed by the challenge and says he has tested his endurance level a handful of times. In 2007 Sam became the first Indian athlete to run from Bangalore to Mumbai averaging 50 miles a day. “It was like a marathon everyday,” he says. It took him 22 days to complete the race. Flushed with success Sam discovered and decided to participate in his next extreme sports and honed in on Race Across America. Established 29 years Race Across America is a often described as an ultra-endurance sport.

I talked to Sam on the eve of the race to find out what inspired him to participate in this race that tests an athlete’s mental and physical endurance. Tune in to find out.

You can also follow Sam’s progress by checking the hashtag #samrizvi on Twitter.

In Part-2 of the interview Yogen talks about innovation, digital lifestyle, his mentors and his old high school headmaster Jack Gibson of Mayo College.

You can also read the transcript of the interview.

In case you missed you might want to listen or read the transcript to Part-1 of the interview with Yogen.

This interview was created in association with LiveMint and published on their website in Nov 2009.

Photo credit: Mayfield Fund

In this 2-part interview we talk on a wide-range of issues including magic of Silicon Valley, studying with Vint Cerf and co-authoring the specifications for TCP, working at Xerox Parc and Apple, how he became an investor, innovation, investing in India and his alma mater Mayo College in India.

Can this elusive magical qualities of Silicon Valley be reproduced in other parts of the world? What are the missing ingredients that make it difficult to recreate that magic? What was it to be one of the first graduate students of Vint Cerf, the Father of the Internet? What has surprised Yogen the most about the growth of the Internet? What was it like to work with Apple? What are his thoughts on IPv6 and the new wave of innovation, esp social media and the questions about privacy? Tune it to find out.

You can also read a transcript of the interview.

Listen to Part-2 of the interview of Yogen or read a transcript.

This interview was created in association with LiveMint and published on their website in Nov 2009.

AR is a private person, who likes to sit huddled in his music studio rather than talk to the media. But, with the sudden and unexpected success of Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire AR  finds himself in the media spotlight.

In Part-2 of our conversation AR Rahman talks about his journey that began in Chennai’s (or Madras) Kodambakkam, the epicenter of the South Indian film industry during the 1970s, and the pivotal role his mother played in shaping his career. His mother Kareema Begum believed in AR’s musical gift and talent and helped nurture and nourish it. In this candid interview he talks how his mother helped  and worked as his business partner to set up his first music studio.

AR also talks about the loss of his close friend and colleague Sridhar, his senior audio and sound engineer, who worked with him right from their first film Roja to Slumdog Milliionaire and Delhi 6.

Tune it to find out what AR has to say about his musical journey and the people that helped him along the way and how Sufism has changed his life.

You can also read the transcript here.

In case you missed, you might want to listen to Part-1 of the interview with AR Rahman.

Both Part-1 and Part-2 of the interview originally ran in Feb 2009 on NDTV.com

In early February 2009 right before the Oscars I caught with AR Rahman on one of his brief visits to Los Angeles. In Part-1 AR as he likes to be called talks about working with Danny Boyle, his thoughts on Slumdog Millionaire and why he instantly connected with it and why he thought the movie reminded him of Shawshank Redemption.  Like everybody else I wanted to find out how he was mentally preparing for the Oscars? Tune in to find out what he has to say about that.

In Part-2 he talks about his  journey as a musician.

You can also read the transcript of the interview.

This interview originally ran on NDTV.com.

I also asked Danny if he has any plans on making a Bollywood film. Danny appears to be clearly smitten by Mumbai and all the while when he was shooting for Slumdog Millionaire he had this persistent thought that Mumbai would be a great city to shoot a thriller.

Slumdog Millionaire, an independent film that come from the left field has become an instant hit and has turned out to be a hot favorite.

Slumdog Millionaire won  10 Oscar nominations and went on to win 8 Oscars, including for best picture and director. Prior to winning the Oscars the film had won a string of prestigious awards including 4 Golden Globes.

This interview was recorded in Feb 2009 a few days before the Oscars.

You can also read the full transcript of the interview with Danny Boyle. This interview originally ran on NDTV.com

Photo credit: NDTV.com

Brij hit upon this novel idea of using music to learn a new language while studying at Cornell University, New York. He devised this new musical method to improve his Spanish language skills he us It turned out that this way of learning a new language was very. Through this experience he recognized the  potential of extending this method to help spread literacy in India.

Brij founded PlanetRead , a non-profit organization that used Bollywood songs to spread literacy in India. Using Same Language Subtitling (SLS) their first successful impregnation of the project was in Gujarat, India. The target audience were people with low reading skills and the goal was to help improve their reading skills and bring them up to speed to read newspaper headlines. They used Indian film and folk songs for their SLS project. This simple and innovative technique proved to be a success. This was in 1996, and since then Brij and his team members have slowly expanded their work and helped fight illiteracy in India.

PlanetRead became one of the first NGOs to be funded by Google philanthropy.

Brij was  an Ashoka fellow and was an Associate professor at IIM, Ahmedabad.

This interview was first recorded in 2006.

Adam says everyware is “information processing embedded in the objects and surfaces of everyday life.”  Or, as he puts it, “the colonization of our everyday life,” by technology. Naota Fukasawa san famously describes this kind of behavior in an elegant and simple way: “Design dissolving in behavior.” That is, our actions are so unconscious that we are not even aware of the underlying technology that makes our unconscious acts possible. These devices are essentially invisible, or attain near invisibility that we don’t pay attention to them.

Everyware is an umbrella term that Adam coined to capture the unfolding of this fast moving phenomena that many of us are not paying attention.

An interesting upshot of this everyware technology is that people are unaware they are using it extensively. An old example of this is the cell phone, but that has been replaced by new and nifty devices that we use in our everyday life, and we are not even aware of them Adam explains. Some of them include the touch and go pay system credit card that Chase Bank has introduced in New York; the RFID technology that is used to tag goods; and in some cases used to tag people (some patients have RFID chips embedded in their arm that help doctors get instant access to their medical history and prescription); the instrumented floors used to build houses for senior citizens in South Korea and these are just a few examples of how technology is increasingly meshed into our lifestyle.

And with IPV6, the next generation Internet, Adam thinks that every grain of sand in the world could have an IP address. Every device at that point could have multiple IP addresses.  The fact that every object in the world could potentially have an IP address is partly what worries him.

Through this book Adam wants to create an awareness of the unintended consequences of everyware and the impact that it will have in our collective lives. One of the worrying aspects of this development is that all kinds of information can be gathered, tagged, stored and searched for future reference. So, every action of yours persists in some kind of a meta database for a long time. That in turn has him worried about privacy issues, and how that will impact society. By addressing these issues early on in the debate perhaps some of these issues can be addressed and corrected is his line of reasoning. Adam is in some ways advancing and pushing forward a debate that Howard Rheingold of Smartmobs started a few years ago with the coming of IRC, mobile phones and PDAs. Adam was involved with the first Moblogging Conference that took place in Tokyo in 2003.

This interview was recorded in Manhattan in 2005 and first played in February 2006.

In this autobiography she paints a wonderful picture of her childhood in India. Madhur grew up in a large “joint family,” in Delhi during the 1930s and 1940s. So in the book she describes a particular period and history of Delhi that is almost forgotten. This is about a Delhi on the cusp of change, at least in terms of food. What was Delhi like in those days? What kind of taste memories are permanently embedded in Madhur’s mind from that time?

After graduating from Miranda House College in Delhi, Madhur went to London and studied at the Royal Academy of Drama Arts. It was during her stay in London that she discovered how to cook all the familiar dishes of her childhood starting with the simplest ones first. She got the recipes sent to her via snail mail or aerogram as it was known in those days.

Madhur has acted in a number of films and TV shows. In the early 1980s Madhur made her first cooking shows for the BBC: Madhur Jaffrey’s Indian Cookery in 1982 and Madhur Jaffrey’s Far Eastern Cookery in 1989. Subsequently she has made other cooking shows.

Madhur live in New York with her husband.

This interview was first posted on October 14, 2006.

In Part-2 of our conversation Priya Commander, Billy’s youngest niece fondly shares some private moments of her intensely private uncle. Often perceived as obstinate or cantankerous by others, Billy was a very warm and fun-loving person, who loved to have his extended family around him during Christmas time according to Priya. Billy’s passion for the big cats was clearly evident in the way his home Tiger Haven was built – it was a place for the big cats. He famously built his mother a haven that came to be known as “Gran’s Cottage.” He converted a cage and put it under a tree and that was the safe haven for his mother to sit and do her daily crossword puzzles.

A polyglot, Billy was fluent English, Hindi and the local dialects of the region. He loved to read and  had an extensive collection of books including signed copies of Jim Corbett’s “Man Eaters of Kumaon.” Unfortunately most of his book collection was ruined during the monsoon rains a couple of years ago.

Besides fighting for the rights of the “big cats” of India, Billy was also a writer, and wrote books about the wildlife, especially in Dudhwa National Forest.

Billy’s story underscores the power of what a single person can achieve if they put their mind and body to it. For over 0 years Billy worked and fought for the rights of “the big cats” of India. He was “tenacious” and “obstinate” in his single-minded pursuit to save the tigers of India. It was that obstinate and single-minded streak that helped in creating Dudhwa National Forest, which is the only national forest in the state of Uttar Pradesh, India. He successfully helped rehabilitate “the big cats” into the jungles near Dudhwa. The first “big cat” that was rehabilitated was Prince, followed by Harriet and Tara.

Priya was born and brought up in London, but spent a lot of time at Tiger Haven with her uncle.

In case you missed, you might want to listen to Part-1 of the conversation, where Priya talks about how Price, Harriet and Tara arrived at Tiger Haven and how those big cats were rehabilitated into the jungles of India.

Billy’s story underscores the power of what a single person can achieve if they put their mind and body to it.

For over 50 years Billy worked and fought for the rights of “the big cats” of India. He was “tenacious” and “obstinate” in his single-minded pursuit to save the tigers of India. It was that obstinate and single-minded streak that helped in creating Dudhwa National Forest, which is the only national forest in the state of Uttar Pradesh, India. He successfully helped rehabilitate “the big cats” into the jungles near Dudhwa. The first “big cat” that was rehabilitated was Prince, followed by Harriet and Tara.

Billy was born on August 15, 1917 in Gorakhpur, Uttar Pradesh, India.  A fantastic marksman, Billy went on “shikars” (hunting trips) with his extended family members as a young boy. Sometime in 1960 Billy underwent a transformation and became a fierce champion of the “big cats” and dedicated the rest of his life in preserving them. Billy won a number of awards for his work including the Padma Bhushan and the J.Paul Getty Wildlife Conservation award.

In Part-1 of our interview Priya Commander, Billy’s youngest niece fondly recollects stories about her uncle including the back stories of Prince, Tara and Harriet and about Jim Corbett, the author and wildlife conservationist, who was a family friend of theirs.  Through Priya’s recollections we get a peek into the “real” Billy, an animal loving and fun-loving man, who loved having his extended family around him during Christmas time.

Priya was born and brought up in London, but spent a lot of time at Tiger Haven with her uncle.

You can listen to Part-2, where Priya talks about the private side of Billy.

In case you missed, you can listen to Part-1 of the conversation, where Nandan talks about his appearance in Jon Stewart’s show, his book Imagining India: The Idea of a Renewed Nation, and the challenges facing a new and emerging India.

Nandan is co-founder  and former CEO of Infosys, an Indian IT powerhouse that was founded during India’s famous “License Raj,” phase. Thomas Friedman in his book credits Nandan for coining that famous phrase, which became the title of  his book: The World Is Flat.

Currently, Nandan heads the Unique Identification Authority of India. He was appointed to this position by Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in June 2009.

In 2009 Nandan was on a tour of the USA to talk about about his book Imagining India: The Idea of a Renewed Nation. I caught up with him in Silicon Valley to talk about the book, changing India, and entrepreneurship.

In Part-1 of the interview Nandan talks about his appearance in Jon Stewart’s show, the structure and essence of his book, the challenges facing a new and emerging India and the startup culture in India. Why is that the role of Indian universities in helping start business?

Nandan left Infosys and joined the Government when Indian Prime Minister appointed him to a cabinet level position in June, 2009. Currently, Nandan heads the Unique Identification Authority of India. He was

You can listen to Part-2 of the interview here.

Rudresh often collaborates with fellow musician and New Yorker Vijay Iyer.

In this interview we get to hear a rare behind-the-scene look on how Rudresh conceived and worked on his jazz album titled Mother Tongue: Do You Speak Indian?

Mother Tongue was released by Pi Recordings in 2004 and has
Rudresh on alto saxophone, Vijay Iyer on piano, François Moutin on bass, and Elliot Humberto Kavee on drums. The album made the Jazzmatazz Top 10 list for 2004.

Born and brought up in the US, Rudresh was often asked if he spoke Indian? The idea for the album was born when he and his fiancee were searching for a priest to conduct their wedding ceremony in English. And that is when he heard that all too familiar question: Do you speak Indian?

Once he got the idea for the album Rudresh had a challenging time trying to get audio samples of various Indian languages. Surprisingly, he did not get anyone to speak in Hindi. The album has samples from seven Indian languages including Kannada, Gujarati, Konkani and others. Rudresh plans to work and expand the scope of the project sometime in the future.

Recently, Rudresh and Vijay’s first album titled Raw Materials was released by Savoy Jazz. The two musicians have been working together for the past 10 years. Rudresh has worked as a sideman with jazz musicians such as David Murray, Steve Coleman, Jack DeJohnette, Samir Chatterjee, Von Freeman, Tim Hagans, Fareed Haque, Vijay Iyer, Howard Levy, David Liebman, Greg Osby, and Dr. Lonnie Smith.

As a composer, Rudresh has received commission grants from the Rockefeller Foundation MAP Fund, American Composers Forum, Chamber Music America, and the New York State Council on the Arts to develop new work.

Rudresh lives with his family in New York.

This interview originally ran on July 20, 2006. You might be interested in listening to Part-2 and Part-3 of the interview with Rudresh.

Technorati Tags: Rudresh Mahanthappa,Jazz,Music,Do You Speak Indian,New York

copyright Kamla Bhatt @2006-2009

David Filo and his classmate Jerry Yang started Yahoo! in the mid-1990s, when the Internet was just taking off. Their initial website was a collection of interesting links, a list of sorts, which eventually morphed and became a major Internet company.

In this interview David talks about the early days of Yahoo!, frugality and Bangalore, which is where Yahoo! India’s is located.

Tune is to find out what is David’s favorite Indian food and music.

This interview was originally recorded in 2006 in Bangalore.

In November 2009, this version of the interview was  broadcast on Stanford’s radio station.

You can listen to a longer version Part-2 and Part-3 of the interview with David.