Pico Iyer is a well-known author and essayist. In 2008 during a hectic book tour schedule Iyer graciously made time for an hour-long interview to talk about his book The Open Road: The Global Journey of the 14th Dalai Lama. He first met the Dalai Lama through his father Prof. Raghavan N. Iyer, who taught at Oxford and University of… Continue Reading
This interview was recorded in 2009, when Padmasree Warrior was Cisco’s Chief Technology Officer (CTO). Her role has expanded since then and she is currently a Chief Technology & Strategy Officer at Cisco. She joined Cisco in 2007 after having spent over 20 years at Motorola in Chicago. At Motorola she was an Executive Vice President and Chief… Continue Reading
Meet David Rai, who is a third generation Punjabi-Hispanic farmer from Yuba City in California. Rai’s grandfather Bishan Gill Singh came to America over 100 years ago and married Ernestine Zuniga, a Hispanic. Their daughter Mary married Lal Singh Rai, who came from Punjab to America before World War 2. Rai along with his sister Leela… Continue Reading
London-based journalist and author Jules Stewart’s second book titled, Spying For The Raj: The Pundits And The Mapping of the Himalayas was released in 2006. Sir Ranulph Fiennes, who is listed as the world’s greatest living explorer by the Guinness Book of Records, has written the forward for the book. I caught up with Stewart in London in 2006 just… Continue Reading
Before CK-12 Neeru’s attention revolved around her on her family, children and their education. During this time she got busy volunteering for her children’s school. She also went back to school and got a second master’s degree in education from Stanford University. Inspired to do something in the area of education Neeru’s husband Vinod Khosla suggested looking into textbooks… Continue Reading
ATMA is a new track by a A.E.S., a San Francisco bay area-based music group. The track fuses American hip-hop style lyrics with Hindustani or North Indian Classical music. A.E.S was formed last year by a trio of musicians. The name is derived from the alphabets of their first name – Alam Khan, Eligh and… Continue Reading
President Barrack Obama became the first American President to visit India twice, and the first to attend India’s Republic Day parade. He spent 3 days in New Delhi meeting with politicians, entrepreneurs and other policy makers. There was lot of talk about the “bromance” between Obama and Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India. It is… Continue Reading
The splendors of an Indian Maharaja’s court is the stuff of legend that you may have heard or read in books. Ever wondered how they lead their lives? What jewels or clothes they bought? Or, who designed their clothes and jewels? Or, what artwork they collected? There is a book that takes you behind the… Continue Reading
President Obama just wrapped up a 3-day visit to India. While the President’s visit to India may not have received extensive coverage in the US, the Indian media scrutinized every move and gesture of the President. This is President Obama’s second visit to India. At a symbolic level President Obama’s meeting had a couple of… Continue Reading
In 2006 I did a series of interviews with technologists and entrepreneurs in India to understand the booming telecom (mobile) boom in India. One of the people I spoke to was the late Atul Chitnis, who described himself as a disruptive technologist. He is the person to talk in Bangalore was a common refrain I… Continue Reading
We continue our series on the Indian Telecom boom. This interview was recorded in 2006. In Part-II of our conversation with the late Atul Chitnis talks about the two competing technologies in India: CDMA and GSM, and how they are duking it out and finding their own levels in the Indian market. It was only four years… Continue Reading
Academy Award Winning filmmaker Kevin Macdonald’s “Black Sea” releases today in San Francisco bay area. We spoke to Macdonald about the making of “Black Sea,” and what drew him to this particular story about a group of ragged submariners, who want to salvage gold from a sunken World War Two submarine. What was the real life… Continue Reading
In Part-2 of our conversation Gurcharan Das we continue our conversation about his new book “The Difficulty of Being Good: On The Subtle Art of Dharma.” Das turned to the ancient Indian epic Mahabharata to study the concepts of dharma or doing the right thing. He writes that the Mahabharata “is unique in engaging with the world of politics.” He writes, “The Mahabharata is… Continue Reading
When Gurcharan Das took an early retirement from his corporate job he decided to pursue a “full-time career as a writer.” And that change in direction from a corporate life to a scholarly pursuit was greeted with a fair amount of surprise. How could this be? He was a “box-wallah“ or a corporate executive. Mr.Das was the CEO of Proctor and… Continue Reading
This interview was recorded in late 2008 at LinkedIn’s Mountain View office. Reid Hoffman co-founded LinkedIn in his living room in Silicon Valley in 2002. The company went IPO in 2011. This was the first time an American social network company is going public to raise money. Hoffman owned about 20 percent of LinkedIn shares before it… Continue Reading
This interview was recorded in 2008 at LinkedIn’s office in Mountain View. LinkedIn was co-founded by Reid Hoffman in 2002 and was officially launced in 2003. Hoffman is often described as the most connected person in Silicon Valley. He is the executive chairman of LinkedIn and a partner at Greylock Partners, a venture capital firm in Silicon Valley. In… Continue Reading
Today is Pongal, a harvest festival celebrated in South India. In other parts of India the festival has different names: Sankranti, Lohri or Bihu. The underlying idea is the same – it is like the American Thanksgiving festival points out Dr. Geeta Vasudevan in the video interview below. Families get together, cook special dishes for… Continue Reading
Ira Pande is an author, editor, translator and teacher. She worked in the publishing industry for many years and was the managing editor of Dorling-Kindersley and chief editor of Roli Books India. She also worked as the chief editor at India International Center. A gifted storyteller with a keen eye for details, Pande has translated the works of Shivani… Continue Reading
New Enterprise Associate’s Managing Partner Kittu Kolluri is an engineer-turned-entrepreneur-turned-investor. In 2006 I met with Kolluri at NEA’s Sand Hill Road office in Menlo Park, to find out how he made this transition from being an engineer to an investor. In Part-1 of our conversation Kittu describes his transition from an engineer to an entrepreneur to an… Continue Reading
In 2006 I met with Kittu Kolluri at NEA’s Sand Hill Road Office in Menlo Park. He had just joined the VC firm and I wanted to find out how he made this transition from being an engineer to an investor. Around the time of the interview one of Kolluri’s portfolio company Teracent was acquired by Google… Continue Reading
Crime and infrastructure are two of the top issues for folks in San Jose and Silicon Valley. In Part-2 of our conversation we talk to Ash Kalra (D), San Jose City Councilmember about these twin issue. He studied law at Georgetown University and headed back to his hometown of San Jose, where he spent over… Continue Reading
Prof. Greg Booth is a musician, author and teacher at University of Auckland, New Zealand. In 2008 Prof. Booth’s book “Behind The curtain: Making Music in Mumbai’s Film Studios,” was published. It highlights the contributions of individual musicians, who were part of a larger Hindi or Bollywood music orchestra. The musicians came from different background spanning British military… Continue Reading
Prof. Greg Booth is a teacher, author & musician. In his book Brass Baja: Stories From The World of Indian Wedding Bands he takes us behind the scene into the world of the Indian brass band musicians, whose rich musical traditions and history has been largely ignored. It was way back back in the 17th century that the first wedding brass band made… Continue Reading
Prof. Greg Booth is a musician, teacher and an author. In his book “Looking Behind The Curtain Making Music In Mumbai’s Film Industry” he takes us behind the silverscreen to show us how music was (is) made in Hindi or Bollywood films. In Part-2 Prof. Booth talks about the process of how songs were created especially… Continue Reading
2014 was an interesting year, where we got to meet and interview guests from the world of technology, films, culture and politics in Silicon Valley. You can watch all the interviews on our YouTube channel and subscribe to it. Every Thursday and Saturday mornings, you will find new videos on our YouTube channel. 2014 was also the year… Continue Reading
Bangalore has a long tradition of celebrating Christmas with Christmas cakes, plum puddings and other Christmas goodies. One of the places where you get to see Christmas celebration and goodies is at Taj Vivanta on MG Road in Bangalore. We got to spend our Christmas morning at Cafe Mozaic at Taj Vivant as guests of the… Continue Reading
When you think of wine in California then the two places that instantly come to mind are Napa and Sonoma located north of San Francisco. Instead, if you drove down south of San Francisco into Silicon Valley area and a little beyond into the towns of Gilroy and Morgan Hill you will discover a wonderful wine trail of family-owned… Continue Reading
Award winning actor Timothy Spall has a new film releasing later this year. “Mr. Turner” is directed by British filmmaker Mike Leigh and is about the legendary British artist JMW Turner. Spall won the best actor award at this year’s Cannes Film Festival for essaying the role of Turner. Spall was in San Francisco recently to talk… Continue Reading
Chinese food is very popular in Bangalore. There are 2 kinds of Chinese food – there is Indian-Chinese food and then there is authentic Chinese food. Chef Tong William has witnessed the growth and popularity of Chinese food in India and specifically in Banglaore. Originally from Hong Kong, Chef William first came to India to… Continue Reading
Laura Dern was in San Francisco bay area to attend Mill Valley Film Festival, where “Wild” was the closing night film.Last year her father Bruce Dern was honored at the festival for his role in “Nebraska” “Wild” is based on a real life story by Cheryl Strayed, who trekked and successfully completed the 1,100 Pacific Crest… Continue Reading
The Kamla Show 