Rudresh Mahanthappa is a New York-based jazz musician. 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 Mahanthappa: alto saxophone, Vijay Iyer: piano, François Moutin: bass, Elliot Humberto Kavee: 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 Rudresh and his wife 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 Iyer’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

How do you know you have what it takes to be an entrepreneur? How or when do you recognize that you want to become an entrepreneur? What about the role family and spouse in an entrepreneur’s life. Often, the extended family pays a significant toll during an entrepreneur’s roller coaster ride to make their company successful. How does an entrepreneur juggle their personal and business life?   What about spirituality? What is a typical day in an entrepreneur’s life?

I turned to Diaz Nesamoney,  a serial entrepreneur, who heads Jivox, a Silicon Valley video ad network company. Diaz grew up in Africa and India and says it was not until his undergraduate days at BITS Pilani that he realized he just might have what it takes to be an entrepreneur. He came to the USA in the 1990s to work as an IT consultant and went on to co-found Informatica, a business  company. He then went to create Celequest that was acquired by Cognos. After 2 startups he thought it was time for a break, but within a few days he was already working on his latest business idea:Jivox.

Diaz talks about the role of his family, especially the support that he gets from his wife. He confesses that when you are in a startup it is like being married to two people: your wife and the company. He talks at length about how he juggles his work and family life and describes a typical day that usually runs into 18 hours with a couple of breaks for family and commuting. What gadgets help him be productive? Tune in to find out.

If you missed, you might want to listen to Part-1 of the interview with Diaz where he talks about Jivox.

Technorati Tags: jivox,diaz nesamoney,entrepreneur,startups,technology,ideas,silicon valley,BITS Pilani

What is web 2.0? How do you harness the intelligence of users? What does “the network is the platform,” really mean? And why are rules on the network different? Why is it better to share information rather than hoard it in the online world?

To find answers to these questions I turned to Tim O’Reilly of O’Reilly media. I caught up with Tim at TiECon 2007 in Santa Clara, where he spoke about Web 2.0 and chaired a panel discussion on Web 2.0 with Navin Ashwin of BitTorrent; Alex Welch of Photobucket and Jaideep Singh of Spock.

Tim is founder and CEO of O’Reilly Media and is an activist for open source, and open standards.

Ajit Jaokar of OpenGarden was kind enough to decipher the interview and post the major points made by TIm during the interview.

The interview first ran in May 2007.

Photo Credit: O’Reilly Media

Technorati Tags: Tim O’Reilly,Web 2.0,open source,twittering,jaiku,bitorrent,technology,emerging technologies,TiECon 2007,Silicon Valley

Anita Nair is the author of Malabar Mind, Ladies Coupe, Mistress and other books. Her book Ladies Coupe is described as “what must be one of the most important feminist novels to come out of South Asia,” by The Telegraph, UK. The Times Literary Supplement wrote that Anita’s “strength as a writer lies in bringing alive the everyday thoughts, desires and doubts.”

Anita’s books have been published in various languages in Europe and Latin America.

I caught up with Anita Nair in her Bangalore home, where we spoke about her transition to a full-time writer, her books, what inspires her to write, studying in a small town in Kerala, about sex and Indians and the influence of films on her writing.

Anita started her career in the advertising industry. She always wanted to write, and started writing while holding down a full-time job. She slowly made the transition to first as a part-time writer, and eventually into a full-time writer.

Anita divides her time between Bangalore and Kerala.

This interview was first published on 28th January 2007 and  was part of the literary podcast series for Mumbai’s Kala Ghoda Arts Festival 2007.

Technorati tags: Anita Nair, Ladies Coupe, Malabar Mind, Mistress, author

How do you serve the next billion is the the central focus of conversation in many telecom companies. How do you address the bottom of the pyramid in emerging and developing economise? I caught up with Anil Raj of VNL, an Indian-Swedish telecom company that recently introduced a new product: solar based GSM -system that appears to clearly address the needs and challenges in rolling out mobile infrastructure into rural areas. VNL uses the term microtelecom to address the needs of the bottom of the pyramid.

The current population of the world is 6.68 billion out of which close to 3 billion have access to a mobile phone. While telecom operators have figured out how to manufacture low-cost handsets they are still working on how to manufacture low-cost, rugged telecom infrastructure that can be deployed in the rural areas of these countries. A central challenge for expansion has been the high cost of energy bills, non-availability of engineers or trained technicians along with the high cost of transportation.

The needs of the next billion is very different from the first billion. Big telecom Research and Development dollars are focused in providing streaming media, web services etc for consumers in these developed companies, but what about those people who have never used a phone and live in less developed country asks Anil. He sees an opportunity in providing mobile phone access in South and SE Asian and African countries. For instance about 80 percent of the Indian population is still without access to mobile phones he points out.VNL has factored in all these capital and resource constraints in creating their base station that they have dubbed as people’s base station. VNL’s WorldGSM™ system base stations needs about 50W and 120W of power to operate (compared to 3000 W for a typical GSM base station. The system also includes a rural-optimized MSC (Mobile Switching Center), and a compact BSC (Base Station Controller) that in essence makes it an end-to-end GSM network.

The OPEX costs of installing the base station is very low according to Anil. Installing the base station does not require trained engineers or laptops, but instead with the aid of simple to follow diagrams and audio prompts anybody can install it within a few hours. Once the base station is installed, people can start using their mobile phones within hours. Anil says they were inspired by their Swedish neighbor IKEA’s do-it-yourself strategy in developing their microtelecom solution.

In Part-1 of the interview Anil talks about VNL’s product, how they came up with the idea, their inspiration from IKEA, and also how the company started and how they plan to grow the company. VNL is backed by Rajeev Mehrortra of Shyam Telecom, who is also the man who brought the cable TV revolution to India according to Anil.

Prior to VNL, Anil was with Ericsson for many years. He was first head of Ericsson’s India operation and later served as the chief strategy officer for Sony Ericsson. He was the first CEO of Hutch Max, which became Hutchison that was acquired by last year.

Tune back in for Part-2 of the interview where Raj talks about the mobile revolution and what he thinks is is store for us.

Technorati Tags: VNL,Anil Raj,microtelecom,nex billion,mobile phone,mobile,people’s base station,telecom,ideas,india,technology

Murli Wanchoo looks back at India from a distance since he now lives in California. He worked for the Indian government for over 40 years. What were the early years like after India got its freedom in 1947? For many who lived and worked during the early stages of nation-building those early years hold a special place.

Mr. Wanchoo looks back at India and shares some of his thoughts on the caliber of bureaucrats and politicians and the 1962 war with China that left deep, psychological scars on many people’s mind, especially in the government and defense forces. General BM Kaul was hand-picked by Krishna Menon to fight against the Chinese in the Tawang area in Arunachal Pradesh, where turned out to be disastrous for the Indian forces. Why was Gen Kaul chosen? Tune it to find out.

Related Post: Prof. Rajesh Rajagoplan: India-China War of 1962

Technorati Tags: murli wahchoo,india,iindia-china 1962 war,generall bm kaul,life,diaspora