Theodora Lee is a lawyer & owner of Theopolis Vineyards located in Yorkville Highlands in Mendocino county. Mendocino county is located right next to Sonoma, and is famous for its stunning coastline, food and wine. While Napa and Sonoma are famous for their vineyards, neighoring county’s Anderson Valley in Mendocino has its own share of vineyards. Theodora… Continue Reading
Marryam H. Reshii is a New Delhi-based food writer, who has her pulse on all things related to food in her city. She is the author of Celebrated Chefs of India, Eating out in India and 101 Popular restaurants. She is a Consulting Editor with the Times of India for their Times Food Guide. In this interview, which we… Continue Reading
Muir Woods National Monument is located a few miles north of San Francisco past the Golden Gate bridge. Named after John Muir, the famous naturalist, this place is home to old Redwood trees that are hundreds of years old. Some trees are about 800 years old. There are 6 trails of varying lengths and levels of… Continue Reading
Meet Madhur Jaffrey – an award-winning actress, cookbook author and the host of TV cooking shows that helped demystify Indian cooking. Born in British India, Jaffrey went to London to study acting and relocated to the USA in the late 1950s. She currently lives in New York with her family. When Jaffrey moved to England… Continue Reading
Post cards. Remember getting those colorful post cards from your family and friends when they visited a new place or city? As a kid I used to collect these post cards, and pester folks to send them to me. Sometimes, a Kindly neighbor would give me their old post cards that their “foreign” friends sent them. Somewhere… Continue Reading
With a title like this “San Francisco is obsessed with food and that is an understatement,” how can you not read the article? This was not published in a local San Francisco bay area paper, but in the Washington Post (WaPo) and it brought back memories of a conversation I had with a chef in… Continue Reading
Meet Anshuman Bapna of MyGola.com. Bapna and Prateek Sharma founded their startup in Bangalore in 2009. They raised a seed round and Series A and pivoted a couple of times. Here is how Bapna describes the pivots: Arguably, travel planning is one of the top worst ideas entrepreneurs can think of. In our quest to crack that impossible… Continue Reading
This week as you celebrate Earth Day, you may want to remember the California naturalist, who played a key role to help create awareness and advocate the preservation of America’s natural wilderness. If it were not for him, we would not be paying our annual pilgrimage to the various National Parks of America from the Grand… Continue Reading
Food is the centerpiece of many Asian-American communities in the USA.There is absolutely no question about that and I can vouch for it. What are we eating today is a daily conversation in my family, and we cook everyday. And there are many memories and stories woven around food in my family. And food is… Continue Reading
Starting next week San Francisco bay area residents are in for an unusual treat of films, food and music from different parts of the world with an Asian American theme. It is time for the annual CAAMFest the oldest Asian American film festival in the US. This year the festival runs from March 12-22, 2015… Continue Reading
Pico Iyer is a well-known writer and essayist. He is a prolific writer, who spends most of his time living in Japan. In part-2 of our conversation Iyer talks about growing up in England and California, his writing style, globalism, living in Japan and his favorite author Graham Greene. Iyer often writes about globalism, and yet lives in a… Continue Reading
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
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
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
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
December is the season to celebrate and we are doing just that with a series of interviews on food and wine in Silicon Valley and Bangalore. We are talking California wines and Chinese food in India. Now, that is a combination to think about. Santa Clara county is home to many of Silicon Valley hi-tech… Continue Reading
Diwali, the Indian festival of lights is a celebration of the triumph of good over evil. Diwali is the Indian (desi) equivalent of Thanksgiving and Christmas rolled into one. It is a time when friends and family come together and celebrate. Here is a quick peek into how San Francisco-based Non Stop Bhangra (NSB) celebrated… Continue Reading
Gandhi in San Francisco you ask? Yes, there is a statue of Mahatma Gandhi tucked away in one corner of San Francisco’s Ferry Building. You may miss it if since it is located a little away from where folks sit on the bay and watch the water, boats and the traffic on bay bridge. In… Continue Reading
Mill Valley Film Festival is one of the last major film festivals of the year. Organized by the California Film Institute this annual film festival is generally held in the last quarter of the year in the beautiful town of Mill Valley located a few miles north of San Francisco. This year’s festival runs from… Continue Reading
Is it possible that Benedict Cumberbatch could be at this year’s Mill Valley Film Festival? He recently attended the Toronto Film Festival for the premier of his new film “The Imitation Man.” This is a true story based on the legendary British mathematician & code breaker Alan Turing. There is a India connection that the Turings had.… Continue Reading
This year’s San Jose Jazz Summerfest ((August 8-10, 2014) was a treat for your ears, eyes and soul. For 3 days I heard all kinds of music from jazz, hot jazz, blues, mambo, salsa, zydeco, gypsy and soul in various venues in downtown San Jose. This was the 25th year of the festival organized by San… Continue Reading
I wish these pictures could play the music we heard at the 25th San Jose Jazz Summer Fest that just concluded yesterday. Bootsy Collins headlined the show on the opening night on August 8, 2014 in the main stage right in front of the Fairmont Hotel. I caught a little bit of Bootsy Collins music… Continue Reading
I just got back from the famous Gilroy Garlic Festival. Today is the first day, and apparently the best time to visit if you want to beat the huge crowd. For years I vicariously read about the garlic festival, but never gathered the courage to venture down down to Gilroy, the garlic capital of the… Continue Reading
San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge was a bridge that many thought could not be built. Can you imagine what it would be like if that beautiful and iconic bridge in that International Orange color was not built? The Golden Gate Bridge is one of the first things folks want to see when they visit San… Continue Reading
Master Sommelier Richard Dean of Taj Campton Place in San Francisco is a gracious and generous host, who shares his deep knowledge of wines in this interview. There are less than 140 Master Sommeliers in the US, and Dean was the second person to became one, and also the youngest. He grew up in the… Continue Reading
It is that time of year again in San Francisco bay area – film festival season. And we are not talking about “talkies,” but the Silent Film Festival of San Francisco, which is one of the longest running festivals in the US in this genre. This year marks the 19th year of the an Francisco… Continue Reading
Nob Hill or “Nabob Hill” is a tony neighborhood n San Francisco. Yes, yes, the term “nabob” is derived from the Hindustani/Arab word “nawab” but morphed into “nabob” when the British were in India. The first reference of the word “nabob” was supposedly in 1612. “Nabob” was used quite a bit in Britain to describe the… Continue Reading
The Kamla Show airs on various TV channels in San Francisco bay area. Every week we bring you interviews with entrepreneurs, technologists, filmmakers and other newsmakers from in and around the bay area. We just completed our 50th episode Here is a quick peek that highlights some of our upcoming shows along with interviews you… Continue Reading
The Kamla Show 