Oscar nominated director Lenny Abrahamson’s film Room has got 4 Oscar nominations. They are for best director, film, best female actress and best adapted screenplay. That the film scored 4 Oscar nominations may come as a surprise to some, but not to those who have seen the film. We recorded this interview with Abrahamson in San… Continue Reading
The San Jose Jazz Winter Fest starts on Feb 25th and runs all the way through March 8, 2016. And this year they have a great line-up of singers, who will perform in downtown San Jose and in Palo Alto. I think this is the first time San Jose Jazz is spreading its wings and reaching to… Continue Reading
Forget zooming up and down the coastal towns of Kerala, Karnataka and Goa to explore the various cuisines of this region. Instead head straight to Karavalli at Taj Gateway in Bangalore to explore new and old dishes from these coastal towns that are a patchwork quilt of Christian, Hindu and Muslim communities. There are the… Continue Reading
Indian filmmaker Prashant Nair’s award-winning film Umrika will screen at San Francisco’s CAAMFEST. The film premiered at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival, where it won the World Cinema Dramatic Audience Award. Umrika generated a lot of buzz after it premiered at Sundance. Umrika is a humorous film about a young man’s journey from Punjab, India to Umrika, or America.… Continue Reading
In the last few years San Francisco Bay area has emerged as a hub of food startups, who are using technology to create new products and Kite Hill is one such company. We talk with Matthew Sade, CEO of Kite Hill to find out what they are doing differently about making cheese that is dairy… Continue Reading
It is boom time in Indian e-commerce space. The heat is on for an epic race between Snapdeal, FlipKart and Amazon India. All 3 major players are vying to corner a piece of the lucrative Indian market that a Goldman Sachs report pegged at $100 billion (FY20201) reports the Economic Times. FlipKart and Amazon have invested hundreds of millions… Continue Reading
Facebook India’s Managing Director Kirthiga Reddy is stepping down and will “explore new opportunities” at the company’s Menlo Park headquarters in the US. The decision to relocate to the US is based on personal reasons wrote Reddy in her Facebook post. For the next 6 months she will be busy transitioning out of her role as… Continue Reading
Nila trailer from Selvamani Selvaraj on Vimeo. Nila (Moon) from first time director/screenwriter Selvamani Selvaraj will premiere at Silicon Valley’s Cinequest Film Festival this year. The film is part Spotlight section of the film festival that you can watch on Friday, March 4, 2016 at California Theatre in San Jose. Nila is an independent Tamil film from India. Over the past… Continue Reading
I guess we can no longer have, as Facebook puts it “digital equality for all Indians.” Despite aggressive lobbying by Facebook, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) ruled in favor of Net Neutrality and against Facebook. What this means is that Facebook‘s Free Basics service, a limited and free Internet service, can no longer be offered in India.… Continue Reading
I was craving for some Mexican food from San Jose’s La Victoria Taqueira in Bangalore after seeing all those Superbowl 50 tweets about salsa and burritos. If only there was a local taqueria from where I could order a veggie burrito and get some nachos with some guac it would be wonderful I thought. While… Continue Reading
Bill Pohlad directed and produced Love & Mercy (2015), a biopic of Brian Wilson of The Beach Boys fame. This is Pohlad’s portrait of the talented singer and composer Wilson and is not a “cradle to grave” biopic as he puts it. The film focusses on two different parts of Wilson’s life that is… Continue Reading
Coorg or Kodagu is a stunningly beautiful and verdant place in the Southern state of Karnataka, India. Driving through Coorg’s rolling grasslands, misty mountains and thick forests studded with coffee and pepper plantations is a wonderful experience. Of course, you need to overlook the potholes dotting the road as you make your way through… Continue Reading
Fitoor is a new Bollywood film starring Aditya Roy Kapur, Katrina Kaif and Tabu (who acted in Mira Nair’s The Namesake). Abhishek Kapoor of Kai Po Che and Rock On is the director of Fitoor, which is an adaptation of Charles Dickens’ novel The Great Expectations. Tabu plays the role of Miss Havisham and Kapur I guess plays the role… Continue Reading
I finally got to watch Neeraj Ghaywan’s directorial debut Masaan, an Indo-French film. The film generated a lot of buzz on my Twitter time line last year. Masaan won two awards at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival. The first was an award from the International Federation of Film Critics (Fipresci), and the second was Prix de l’Avenir award that it it shared with Nahid, an Iranian film. I… Continue Reading
Meet Nicki Boyd of VersaMe, a Silicon Valley-based startup. We sat down to speak with her about her entrepreneurial journey and how she and her two co-founders founded VersaMe, a wearable tech company. VersaMe means talk to me and we talk to Boyd about their first product -Starling. This is the first time Boyd is working… Continue Reading
Meet Mythili Kumar, who is the founder and artistic director of Silicon Valley-based Abhinaya Dance Co. She founded the dance company in 1980 and has won many awards for her original and innovative work in dance. Recently, we sat down to speak with Kumar to find out more about her work as a cultural ambassador and… Continue Reading
Mojave is a new thriller film starring Oscar Isaac, Garrett Hedlund, Louise Bourgoin, and Walton Goggins. Academy award winner William Monahan wrote and directed the film. Monohan was a novelist before he began writing for Hollywood. In 2007 he won an Oscar for his screenplay for The Departed. It will be interesting to watch this film since… Continue Reading
Cascada de Flores is a San Francisco-based musical ensemble that plays music from Mexico, Cuba and Latin America. Their repertoire consists of original and old, forgotten music from these regions. But, what they do is package and present that forgotten and new music in new and evocative ways. The group was founded by Jorge Liceaga and… Continue Reading
https://www.youtube.com/embed/N4d7Wp9kKjA” target=”_blank”>David Bowie passed away of cancer today. He just celebrated his 69th birthday and also released a new album called Blackstar. The news was confirmed through Bowie’s official twitter account. January 10 2016 – David Bowie died peacefully today surrounded by his family after a courageous 18 month battle… https://t.co/ENRSiT43Zy — David Bowie Official… Continue Reading
Meet Dan Garblick, co-founder of Bandar Foods of San Francisco. Garblick and Lalit Kalani met at Wharton Business School while doing their MBA. They created Bandar (monkey) sauce as a fun, side project for one of their classes. They soon realized they have the makings of a new food company and that is how… Continue Reading
Wish you all a wonderful and happy 2016 filled with love, laughter and kindness.
This was a wonderful and got to interview interesting folks from the world of technology, startups, films, food (yes, food startups is a big trend) and authors. This collage is a sample of the various guests on our show about life, people and ideas. Thank you all for your support and encouragement. And, if you… Continue Reading
Every Thursday you can catch a new interview on my YouTube channel. We feature interviews with entrepreneurs, technologists, filmmakers and other news from in and around the San Francisco Bay area. These interviews air in various TV channels in the Bay area, Los Angeles and in Cambridge, MA. Here are a couple of playlists… Continue Reading
Director Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s latest Bollywood film Bajirao Mastani appears to be a hit in the San Francisco Bay area according to an unscientific poll I conducted. The first few days were sold out explained the ticket sales person at the local Silicon Valley theatre when I went to see the film. I, of course, waited for a… Continue Reading
Meet Shy Mudakavi founder and CEO of Safari Kid headquartered in the San Francisco Bay area. How Mudakavi built Safari Kid is a fascinating story of one woman’s determination to succeed in her mission and how she hired the right resources to expand. What drove her to build her school was her belief, passion and committment.… Continue Reading
Shahdokth “Shy” Mudakavi is founder and CEO of Safari Kid, a preschool and kindergarten school that started in San Francisco Bay Area. America is a land of opportunities and this is where dreams come true points out Mudakavi. What did she do right? “I believed in it. There was 100 % belief and they say when… Continue Reading
Martin “Marty” Cooper is often described as the “Father of the Cell Phone.” Cooper along with his team worked on creating the first cell phone or wireless phone as it was known at Motorola. The very first call Cooper made in April 1973 from the streets of Manhattan was to his counterpart Joel Engel at… Continue Reading
On Monday, Dec 21, 2015 Elon Musk’s SpaceX made a brilliant breakthrough that had people talking about it for quite sometime. To say a little bit of space history was created with this breakthrough would be an understatement. For the first time Space X’s Falcon 9 rocket made “a successful ground-based landing at Cape Canaveral… Continue Reading
Santa Clara county is not only home to many Silicon Valley companies, but is also home to some of the oldest vineyards in California. Some of the vineyards in Santa Clara Valley are over 100 years old. Surprised? So was I when I discovered the Santa Clara Wine trail, which is literally a few miles south… Continue Reading
Ever wondered who created the compression algorithms and all the technical stuff in the startup world that you see in HBO’s Silicon Valley. We talk to the character behind the technology. Meet Dr. Vinith Misra, the technical consultant, who worked with Mike Judge and his team on the series. He was working on his PhD with Prof. Tsachy… Continue Reading
The Kamla Show 