Jensen Huang, CEO, NVIDIA at TiEcon2024

Artificial Intelligence is not just as a technological tool but a fundamental driver of innovation, setting new paradigms in the tech job market. One of the highly anticipated keynotes at #TiEcon2024 was by Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of #NVIDIA.

In a fireside chat with Naveen Chaddha, Managing Partner at Mayfield Ventures, Huang shared the story of his journey, saying it was rather mundane, and he didn’t anticipate a movie being made on it. He said, “It was ordinary people doing ordinary things, trying to solve a problem. We believed in what we believed. We had to shape and shift the entire industry to join us and it took 30 years”. Huang can be modest but every NVIDIA shareholder will agree it has been an exhilarating ride.  The primary challenge, Huang said, was “to make sure we didn’t go out in the process of reaching our goal. NIVIDIA competed against 110+ graphic companies and what made us unique was our perspective. We saw the world differently and we saw it as an application problem.” This reframing of the problem led them to novel solution of more user friendly, application accelerated computing enabled not just by graphic technology but a platform technology devoted fully in service of the application. This inspired a generation of graphic users to make their graphics better. NVIDIA did not focus on building great graphic chip but instead focused on making application better with an end to end platform. 

As new solutions emerged in the course of reframing the problem in terms of application rather than designing a new graphic chip, more new pathways opened up. “We discovered an incredible cost benefit to doing it and reduced the cost of computing by a factor of 10, every 5 years and in the last 10 years, we have reduced deep learning cost a million times”, said Huang.

One can make lot of good choices but you are a master of making great choices, How? asked Chaddha. “I do it just like everyone else does” said Huang. That was followed by a golden nugget of advice for entrepreneurs. Huang said, “sure there are skills involved, but you also make money in the process, no lives need to be lost in the creation of the future”. Speaking of how the world is changing, Huang said, the wealth used to be concentrated on what was below the earth but in the new world taking shape, the wealth is what is above the earth, concentrated  in the society’s data.

Speaking of his leadership style and culture at NVIDIA, Huang asserted, “I don’t want anyone to die in the battle for me”. He has 60 direct reports under him. Speaking of his team Huang said, “these are all world class experts, they are highly talented and they require little management or life coaching”. Speaking of one of the toughest decisions he had to make, Huang said that after starting entirely new architecture the team realized it was totally wrong. However, it’s hard to accept the right answer. “We made the tough decisions after arriving at the realization that one right or wrong choice does not define a company. We need to separate one choice from our identity and our long term vision and purpose and that gave us the freedom to accept our mistake and course correct”. Huang attributed his reasons to keep working – to the job that is “incredibly fun – just the joy of working with amazing people, doing what I can do with a team, make impact on other industries, build a platform for other startups, see how grateful they are for the platform we created. It can’t be compared to writing a book”. 

Jensen Huang is living the dream and enabling others to dream in the process. 

Integrating AI at Global Level: “Juggad” & other examples – TiEcon2024

Integrating AI at Global Level

With TiEcon2024 theme of “AI Ubiquity: Envision the Future”, on all three days of the largest tech conference, there was relentless focus on how seamless integration can be achieved across diverse spheres of human endeavor, at a global level.

Exponential opportunities in global india

A panel of experts with Kushagra Shrivastava, CEO and co-founder of Key, Madhu Shalini-Iyer, Managing Partner with Rocketship, Rakesh Mathur, CEO at Fizz, Sakina Arsiwala, VP, community health at Twitch, Vinod Muthukrishnan, Chief Customer Officer at Umphore, and Waqar Hasan, CEO at Zenda Financial, focused on opportunities in India. 

Some interesting discussion focused on how to take strategic vision of progress in the field of AI and make it tactical and actionable in India with examples of “juggad”. Juggad is a colloquial word used in India to refer to non-conventional, innovative ways to get the task accomplished.  It is a mentality or approach that is focused on finding innovative solutions in adversity. Sometimes it’s about bending rules and sometimes it’s about finding a way around existing norms, always driven by ingenuity to get the results. Panel shared interesting examples of getting things done in India, including innovative financial models. It seems any discussion of cross-cultural execution often involves being culturally savvy or acquiring cultural expertise and knowledge. Waqar pointed out that the strength of India lies in its highly educated population and collaboration with Indian talent gives US corporations the “masala” to put together a successful venture. There was a discussion on how those who have attained huge successes are now willing to pay it forward and share their wisdom and offer mentorship, leading to win-win outcomes. 

Global founders panel – AI enables faster scaling at global level

With J F Gauthier, Founder & CEO of Startup Genome and Apexe, Dany Papinneau, Founder and CEO at WeChalet, Rodrigo Tamellini Ayres, Co-founder and CEO at GamerSafer, Ashish J. Thakkar, Founder and CEO at Y9 Bank and Beth Rogozinski, CEO at Oncoustics

The panel discussed opportunities to scale created with AI at global level. Ayeres felt the need to enhance safety in gaming content creation and and ensuring that anything that comes into gaming through AI is safe.Rogozinski asserted that their platform technology focused on liver disease which is a global phenomena automatically gives them a global footprint. India and China with volumes of patients who need their technology makes it imperative that they scale as an AI company and access the data from India and China. She asserted that without sophisticated AIML technology, they could not have existed as a company. But with the AI technology, they also plan to expand into other anatomical areas and use the help of the technology to decipher patterns in datasets of patients. Thakkar said Y9 focuses on emerging markets, primarily on the continent of Africa. They can only scale in 54 different countries with the help of AI technology. Papineau’s WeChalet focuses on next gen marketplace of accommodations for nature travelers. They have had 10M bookings this year and are looking at raising series A, the scaling made easier through the use of AI for photo optimization and marketing related functions.. Though they started as a tech company, they are growing into a FinTech company to manage various payment systems. He feels that going forward, with sophisticated AI,, WeChalet will scale faster with a smaller team, while giving customers better service, with less costs.   

Security in Gen AI, and AI for Next Gen at TiEcon2024

TiEcon 2024 was a groundbreaking event that showcased artificial intelligence’s profound and pervasive influence in our world. Besides the transformative role AI is set to play across diverse industry sectors, some of the greatest challenges will be in the area of cyber security and this was discussed at great length. 

Addressing Security and Privacy in the age of Gen AI – Panel at #TiEcon2024

One of the breakout panels with Naveen Bisht, founder and CEO of Akitra, Kapil Chhabra, co founder of Wisdom AI, Syona Sarma – Director at Cloudfare, T R Vishwanath co founder at Glen, discussed challenges of security and privacy.  

Privacy and security concerns are so huge that at times it is scaling back the adoption of Gen AI. Getting data privacy and security right is a huge barrier with multiple potential leak points. It is of utmost importance to safeguard integrity of the data and yet it is also immensely challenging. There can be leaks from the host of the data as well. The whole data infrastructure and integrating it with existing infrastructure creates difficulties at scaling as well. Chhabra mentioned challenges rise to the surface when data goes into the model, from the model itself and when data is coming out of the model. Sarma pointed to the time of transitions from one cloud to the other as points of high vulnerabilities, the times when data is at rest, data is in transit and data is in use. All of it necessitates continuous monitoring.  There are risks when you talk to customers, every time when you bring in new technology. Vishwanath discussed the pros and cons of hosting your own AI model. He said, As organizations introduce new AI models and enable the teams, they must also invest in the guardrails around it. Chhabra ended by putting a positive spin, “this is an exciting time and we should embrace AI with open arms, while keeping risks in mind and being aware that there is a lot that is yet unknown”.
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AI for Next Gen protection – Navigating from Code to Cloud

Predictive AI is becoming very important and that was discussed in a breakout session at #TiEcon2024 with track chairs, Monica Baja, VP of Engineering at Okta and Ashish Aggarwal, co-founder and CTO at Productiv. Meerah Rajavel, CIO at Palo Alto Networks talked about “Navigating from code to cloud – a practical and scalable approach to cloud security”

There are monumental costs attached when the cloud is breached. On average, these attacks cost $4.45 million. Rajavel shared staggering statistics of enormous monetary costs and damages on resources when data breach occurs and she asserted that everyone is vulnerable. Leveraging multiple point solutions leaves enterprises vulnerable to attacks. “Cloud completely shifted the dynamics where everything is a code. And the journey of cyber security and protection must begin with the code”, she said.  

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AI for Next Gen Protection – Massive Security Challenges

Rishi Bhargava – co founder Descope & Varun Badhwar founder and CEO Endor Labs sold their companies to Palo Alto Networks. Bhargava’s Descope focuses on making customer journeys user friendly, secure and scalable by removing the need for VPN and passwords. “AI has democratized the ways to attack and it’s now easier and cheaper to launch cybersecurity attacks”, said Bhargava. With AI generated faces, they can take a 10 sec clip of someone and create a full audio based on text. There has been lot of investment in understanding and decoding natural language but still deciphering deep semantics is not easy, said Bhargava. False positives and false negatives can be very very costly and shortage of killed workforce is a huge opportunity. Badhwar talked about how we can leverage security with AI.

Badhwar’s Endor Labs helps create secure software supply chains that make developers more productive and helps scale. Developers spend a lot of time writing AI generated code and then reviewing it. While companies need to defend attacks 100 percent of the time, the hackers need to be right only once. So cybersecurity needs to be integrated at source. Badhwar agreed to massive shortage of talent in cybersecurity as an immediate challenge.

AI Transforming Life Sciences & Health Delivery – TiEcon 2024

AI Transforming Life Sciences

All things AI was discussed at TiEcon2024. The transformative power of AI across wide spheres of human endeavor includes the impact of AI in life sciences. 

AI Transforming Life Sciences panel with Jeremy Zhang, Senior Director at Gilead Sciences, Michaelle Rohrer, Global Head of Product Development of Regulatory at Genentech, Roche, Priya Abani, CEO at AliveCor and Tarun Mathur, CTO at Indegene discussed how these leaders are spearheading the integration of AI within their organizations. 

Zhang opined that for drug companies, the key to providing value is to integrate AI in how the decisions are made about multi million dollar drugs. Rohrer talked about the challenges of AI in large pharma primarily in regulatory aspects is a huge challenge. “We operate in over 100 countries and we are drowning in paper process, but some day soon AI will create breakthrough change”, she said. Abani said AI will have a huge impact on devices. At AliveCor, “we see nothing but opportunities with generative AI”, she said. Other discussions focused on the need to roll out AI carefully, as a step by step process, and carefully integrating AI in clinical workflow and in decision making. 

AI in healthcare delivery Panel:
Caroline Zhang, co founder and CEO of Knowtex, Preetha Ram at INpact fund and Pier 70 Ventures, Ganesh Krishna, Pulmonologist at UCSF, and Daniel Kraft at Next Med & digital health discussed AI with specific focus in the clinical setting.

The panelists agreed that this is an exciting time to reimagine healthcare. With AI, the clinicians will be empowered to give the best care possible. Healthcare delivery is a people process and requires face to face interaction in addition to digital tools. The panelists discussed the challenges of maintaining a human centered approach and work with the system to integrate AI such that while AI is implemented to take out redundancy, leaving clinicians to spend more time with the patients. The impact of AI would be monumental if it can lessen the workloads of the clinicians significantly. The panelists also discussed the impact of AI in democratizing medicine and improving access and availability. 

Jay Chaudhry at TiEcon2024 – Zcaler’s $26B largest security cloud helps customers sleep better

Sometimes it may not be about a mattress, sometimes it’s about the cloud!

After some basic introductions by co-convenors of TiEcon 2024, Sandeep Bhat and Surbhi Kaul and President of TiE, Anita Manwani, the first day keynote was eagerly awaited by a packed audience. Jay Chaudhry, CEO of Zcaler, spoke of how the company transformed the focus from legacy network and security architecture like VPN and firewalls to a comprehensive suite of AI powered security and data protection services with ability to add new capabilities without the need for additional hardware to their clients.

“Companies and leaders are often held back by inertia, as people get comfortable doing what they do. We need to think of tech such that it leapfrogs the bad guys to enhance security”, said Chaudhry.   A valuable lesson for entrepreneurs, “Don’t listen to customers, if you’re building disruptive technology”, Entrepreneurs need to listen to customers when focusing on incremental ideas. However, disruptive technologies come into existence because they believe in them. Founding team and early leaders must be passion driven and hungry. “Experience is good but it should never come at the expense of passion and drive, when you are building a company”. Culture is critical to maintaining the drive. If an organization seeks to retain entrepreneurial spirit then it must focus on creating a culture that is execution focused, where risks can be taken, failures are accepted, focus is on moving away from politics and leaders lead by example. “Innovative technology helps but sales and marketing are key to scaling successes”.

Chaudhry said he realized that as a CEO, he needs to spend at least one third of the time with the customers.  For a CEO with a fast growing company, a realization sets in that decisions need to be made and made fast and even though “I collect multiple data points and then decide”, in the end, it’s a lonely job and the buck stops at you”, said Chaudhry. To professionals looking for investment or exit, Chaudhry’s advice was, “raise money when you don’t need it, sell company when you don’t need to sell”, from a position of strength, and if you are leading a public company, then you lead with a long term vision, a mindset of creating deep impact, without looking for shortcuts.

Gujarati Poem Turmoil – ગડમથલ

 

અંધારી આ કોટડી
મને કારાવાસ જેવી લાગે 
લમણે હાથ દઈને હું વિચારું 
ઉભી થાવ 
વળી બેસી જાવ 
ઉઠ, બેસ, ઉઠ, બેસ 
હાય શું કરું?
સાંજ પડી અને ફરી થશે 
એજ રોજની રામાયણ 

હમણાં ટકોરા પડશે 
એ આવશે  
રોજ ની જેમ મેં ક્યાંક તો ભૂલ કરીજ હશે 
રોજની જેમ ગાળાગાળી 
અને પછી તો તેના મૂડ પ્રમાણે 
મારો ચોટલો ખેંચશે, વાસણ ફેંકશે 
તમાચા, લાત, ધુમબા વરસાવશે 
મારી માફી…
અને મૂડ હોય તો તેના દ્વારા 
માફી સ્વીકાર્યા બાદ…..
મારે પત્નીની ફરજ બજાવવાની
એજ રોજની રામાયણ 
ફરી મારી ઉઠ, બેસ, ઉઠ, બેસ 

આજે તો બારણુંજ ન ખોલું 
તો…… 
પેલા દિવસની જેમ 
બહારથી ધાક, ધમકી
આજીજી અને પાડોશીનું આગમન 
પછીતો ખોલવુજ પડે ને?
અને ફરી એની એજ રામાયણ 
મારી ઉઠ, બેસ, ઉઠ, બેસ 

બંને મુઠ્ઠી વાળી હું ઉઠી 
થેલો લીધો 
તેમાં જરૂરિયાતો નાખી  
ચપ્પલ પહેર્યા 
દરવાજો ખોલ્યો ને પગલું ભર્યું 

બહારના પ્રકાશમાં ઘડીક અંજાઈ ગઈ 
પ્રકાશની આદત પાડવાની હતીને?
પગલે પગલે આશાના કિરણો મંડરાતા ગયા 
આગળનો રસ્તો થોડો સ્પષ્ટ દેખાયો 
ને થોડો ધુંધળો….
પાછળ મુકેલ રસ્તો વધુ સ્પષ્ટ દેખાયો 

પાછળ જોઈને પણ ક્યારેક…..
આગળ વધવું પડે છે ને?
આજે ફરી એનું એ રામાયણ નહિ થાય
જે મહાભારત સર્જાય તેનો સામનો કરીશ  
હા અર્જુન બનીશ, દ્રઢ રહીશ 
ઉપરવાળો ભલે સારથી બને 
હવે ફરી એ ને એ રામાયણ નહિ થાય 
મુઠ્ઠી વાળી હું આગળ ચાલતી રહી…..

Jewish and Israeli Voices Promoting Peace in Homeland

On October 7, 2023, all of my sympathy was with Israel. I was aware of the history and did not agree with the apartheid and keeping Gazans locked in a prison. And yet, I did not agree with Hamas doing what they did. I read every story of every person impacted and I hugged my computer and cried. But I was not filled with hate. I am never filled with hate. I believe in  the underlying goodness of people on all sides of divisive issues. 

And now we come to May, 2024. All of my sympathy is with the people of Palestine, with Gaza and the West bank. What they are enduring for the past many months, defies every code of humane behavior. Again, I am not filled with hate towards anyone and or even anger at all Israelis or all Jewish people. In fact, our biggest hope stems from them. 

While people with ties to Israel, Jewish people standing for peace, and some Jewish people with close family members having experienced holocaust, are all increasingly speaking up for peace, on the other side is Zionist lobby calling out anyone who simply wants peace as pro terrorist and antisemitic. That is simply incredible!!  

In this blog, there are links to only Jewish voices (I will keep updating and adding) .

All of them insisting on peace and end to the genocide in Gaza. These are informed and compassionate voices of journalists, historians and others. All of them are saying what Israel is doing in Palestine is wrong and wrong has been done historically to the people of Palestine. These are all Jewish voices. Will Zionist lobby shut them down too? Yes, of course. Many of these people endure a lot of hate and attempts at being shut down. However, none of them can be called antisemitic. Who am I to argue with these people who have heard first hand stories of holocaust from their close family members and loved ones and insist on not doing the same to others?

If anyone cares to learn the truth then they must expand their horizons and get news from broader sources. Why not listen to these voices of Jewish people, standing for peace? Students can be called antisemitic, adults can be called antisemitic, but these Jewish voices are not antisemitic. They are just standing on the side of humanity and asking for peace. Why should the world endure a world war, supply weapons, enable one country to amass wealth, simply so that this country practicing apartheid can not only engage in all kinds of human rights abuses but also ruthlessly kill nearly 50,000 people, half of whom are children? 

Indeed WORLD MUST INSIST ON GETTING THE HOSTAGES BACK (see link https://bit.ly/3WlBuxi on a possible path to bringing the hostages home safely and peacefully). Meanwhile listen to some the voices below at the links provided. And let us remember never ever hold prejudices against Jewish people, Muslim people, Chinese people, black, brown, or any group of people.

• Ilan Pappe Israeli historian and humanist – This is end of zionism – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8iNJ1UuH_g

• Yuval Abraham: Israeli film director of documentary “No Other Land” – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBSZERpYyB8&t=8s

• Israeli army veterans Nadav Weiman and Tal Sagi – Breaking the Silence and speaking out against occupation – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUW7Ds4hWhM&t=2528s

• Rabbi David Wolpe with Dr. Gabor Maté, Israeli humanist and academician & author  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDs9rTdw4Mo

• Peter Mass – Jewish reporter speaking on war crimes in Gaza – https://youtu.be/AQV6s0tASGI?si=uatj02b1A2RAFpTU

• Norman Finklestein – speaking on Israel’s apartheid and crimes in Gaza – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELNr_ro97MI&t=1481s
•  Gideon Levy, Israeli author and journalist –  https://youtube.com/shorts/GVebcxqdcVM?si=Yy-MI_-bLbDfpEVm

• Ronnie Barkan: Israeli dissident https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKKvLF1R-fw

• Ori Givati – IDF veteran breaking the silence on atrocities in Gaza – https://youtu.be/8QA7y1ywr8M?si=Xtu-K8lRZKLT9J_O

• IDF soldier blowing the whistle on Israel’s crimes – https://youtu.be/8QA7y1ywr8M?si=Xtu-K8lRZKLT9J_O

• Jewish students speaking up even while student protesters are called anti semitic – https://youtu.be/oeYAA7I7nhE?si=C91Im5y9DaV5QCHe

• Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi co founder of Jewish Voice for Labour says “not in my name” – https://www.linkedin.com/posts/mohammed-faiz-5278a5212_must-watch-im-the-wrong-jew-the-media-activity-7190302953457487872-M7TD?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_android 

• Naomi Klein – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U75KcMUjMyI&t=184s 

• Jewish students of Columbia – https://www.linkedin.com/posts/mohammed-faiz-5278a5212_these-beautiful-jewish-students-at-columbia-activity-7189104949123837952-2Qpi/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_android&fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTAAAR3vov7moW4p6IAz4xddvc1xc1Bh15KS9nOQJqWTm8ucgXs6QNROoSxLKv0_aem_AZmjDMSLIEg4LgApU1VtlnavDpbM2UULs-gCX_BIaupYz9aMQKLDi9opDQUVI1iF-UxcU4wz8iRtDfe5tUpEuCiR 

• Grant Miner: Jewish student at Columbia debunks media lies – https://youtu.be/k7IvC0NWt3E?si=XgekDMvh05VEpOfZ 

* Simone Zimmerman: cofounder of If Not Now, When? Jewish Resistance – https://youtu.be/Zqg0IvUiVWY?si=dYCZ7UBOUXTAXVkY

* Israeli Rabbis including Alissa Wise and Israeli born novelist Ayelet Waldman try to bring food to Gaza – https://youtu.be/k7IvC0NWt3E?si=XgekDMvh05VEpOfZ

* Omer Bartov – Israel born scholar and professor of the Holocaust on student protests: they’re peaceful and there’s no sign of antisemitism – https://youtu.be/Ie3InYIVXF8?si=loz6ouD__LCTgx9H

* Jewish US Senator Bernie Sanders – https://www.linkedin.com/posts/ugcPost-7191873512825860098-yMPu?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_android

* Jewish professor at Dartmouth – says stop wraponising antisemitism https://youtu.be/2YOfXdJcseU?si=bb6A7tzOcZQ4EKGg

*Jewish professor at Columbia talking about made up antisemitism – https://www.linkedin.com/posts/sahar-aziz-0b3b764_the-real-takeover-of-columbia-was-by-those-activity-7193576076458029056-htYD?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_android

* Alisa Solomon, Jewish professor at Columbia – right-wing politicians are using exaggerated claims of anti-semitism to advance a conservative agenda. https://www.thenation.com/article/society/columbia-takeover-campus-protest-rightwing/

* Miko Peled, son of decorated Israeli army general, coming from a family of “blue blooded Zionists” says he lived a lie but is now calling for end of apartheid – https://youtu.be/27-bLpGYgPo?si=QBuMhac6MD3Ajy9r

Bring them home – Where are the hostages in April 28, 2024, abducted by Hamas in October, 2023?

Indeed WORLD MUST INSIST ON GETTING THE HOSTAGES BACK. No one wants to walk away except Mr. Netanyahu.

If Bibi Netanyahu cared then he would’ve focused on getting the families united through negotiation BEFORE engaging in revenge killing. There was still time for revenge killing AFTER getting hostages back through negotiation. 

If Mr. Joe Biden cared for either the hostages OR the slaughter of innocent Palestinians then he would have showed his compassion with the Israeli families rather than its Zionist leadership. Even as Biden hugged Bibi, in his address ALL of his compassion should’ve been towards broken families and he should’ve insisted and taken leadership in communicating with the mediating countries to retrieve the hostages. After that give Bibi a free reign to kill a few thousand innocent people and then ask him to stop or withdraw the aid.

For the past several months, ENTIRE GAZA HAS BEEN UNDER SIEGE with no food, water, electricity, bathroom facilities, medical supplies or medical help. 

Picture these scenarios. 

Hostages must be dispersed with various entities taking care of a few at a time. If someone managing them locked them up and went to get food and got killed then how is the world going to know what happened to the hostages? 

Without care or concern, Netanyahu’s revenge machine is bombing the heck out of a tiny strip of land. If thousands and thousands and thousands of people are dying, why is it impossible to imagine that perhaps many hostages died during the bombing by their own country?

Why is it hard to imagine that older hostages were starved to death by their own country because people are starving with lack of food. 

Why is it hard to imagine that people evacuating Northern Gaza might have thought they may come back and left the hostages locked up and ran (not wanting to be seen with hostages) and hostages starved and/or got killed in bombing by their own country?

Why is it hard to imagine when Israel gave bombardment warnings with minutes to spare, that the people must have run, gathering their loved ones, their meds and wheelchairs and forgot about the hostages locked up? Wouldn’t you first save your family? 

If ENTIRE GAZA IS IN A DISARRAY, why is it hard to imagine that deals about return of all hostages or their bodies are now nearly impossible? Most of the actively involved Hamas people on October 7, have likely procured their ticket out of Gaza. 

And yet, yes we should never forget the horror that these families experienced and all attempts must be made to unite them. 

HOW?
Logic says – There is only one avenue and that is not through bombardment. The war must stop. All supplies and medical aid must start flowing into Gaza. Gaza must be marked completely safe from Israel’s bombardment. AFTER Gaza is marked safe from bombs and bullets, the USA and the negotiating countries as well as the UN personnel must go into Gaza and undertake extensive and exhaustive search through the entire strip. They must go door to door through the tents and the broken houses and painstakingly talk with the Gazan people in a non threatening, information gathering manner.  If there are any live hostages still in Rafah then they must immediately retrieve them and unite the families. After combing through Southern Gaza,  then they must go up North and conduct the search for bodies and retrieve the bodies. For that, they may need to go door to door, literally through the doors lying in the rubble and look for the bodies with information supplied by the families. This is an enormous undertaking. But if the world cares to unite even a few families then we must insist on stopping the war and focus on finding the people and uniting the families.

Gaslight – @naatak Play Review

The play “Gaslight” by @naatak company is an absolutely not-to-miss play of this theater season, in the bay area. The play is in Hindi with English supertitles (dialogs projected on the screen above the stage). 

The term gaslight is such an antiquated term that it might have easily been forgotten. However, political events during the Presidency of the 45th President, brought the term back into usage. Originally the play “Gas Light” premiered in 1938 and later in the year a movie by the same name premiered with Ingrid Bergman. The term gas light refers to the days when gas-powered light fixtures were in use where the brightness can be lowered or increased by turning up or lowering the gas. This gripping story is about a man manipulating his wife to doubt her own senses and her reality. He deliberately makes her commit errors, for instance, asks her to turn the light on then he turns it off and then points such things out as mistakes on her part. Alternating his reactions with concern, restricting her movements, gentle cajoling, anger, and threats, he is gradually driving her towards insanity. There is a broader purpose behind his strategically cruel behavior.

Hamilton’s production has aged although the gripping tale of manipulative masculinity has echoes for the present and it has continued to resonate with the audiences. However, it is no small feat to bring such a production on stage in another language and keep it real.  Kudos to Alka Sippy for bringing such bold production on stage, to Director Poulomi Sarkar for her flawless direction and to Ritwik Verma for excellent translation.  Much can be lost in translation where not only the words laden with emotions carry deep meaning but swirl of emotions must resonate with the words. Nothing is lost in this production.

In the role of Rafi,  Harish Agastya, Simarpreet Kaur as the maid Naina and Monica Chitkara as the maid Alifa are absolutely incredible and bring humor, cunning, and compassion as demanded by their roles. Madhumita (Devika Ashok), as frightened, highly observant but seemingly forgetful and constantly doubting herself and Mahinder (Anshul Malik) as manipulative, evil, and conniving husband, act flawlessly and bring all the meaning and depth to an all too familiar tale of how an abuser controls his victim leaving her feeling powerless and confused. When Madhumita feels concerned about her forgetful behavior, Mahinder trivializes it and when she is happy then he suddenly brings up her behaviors, leaving her feeling agitated, disoriented, depressed and confused. Despite low budget production, staging and props are perfect and give an aura of upper middle class living with multiple maids to do the chores. 

Naatak’s “Gaslight” is a not-to-miss play and tickets can be obtained at www.naatak.org .

Tiger Style! – @Theatreworks Play Review

Written by Mike Lew and brilliantly directed by Jeffrey Lo, the play Tiger Style! is a satire on “tiger” parenting that is associated with Chinese immigrant parents in the USA, on universal tendency of the teenagers to blame the shortcomings of their lives on their parents and on the ultimate truth that no parenting style achieves perfection and no country is a panacea.

The origin of the name for the play comes from the 2011 book about Tiger mothers who are focused on raising their Asian American kids to be the best in everything. Having fed on a diet of orderliness, discipline, strict regimen of school work, home work, extra curricular activities, acing every subject and every piano recital, how do things turn out when they grow up? Apparently, not very different from kids who have had laissez faire parenting. It’s possible that their success meters and achievements may be different but parents are the easiest target for blame either way when people encounter challenges.

Albert (Will Dao), cello player in his free time, is a hard working, computer programmer working for a medtech company who finds that despite his tenacious work ethic, he is passed over for promotion and he rarely gets credit, presumably because he is Asian. His sister, Jennifer (Jennifer Nguyen Nelson) is an oncologist as well as a concert pianist who gets dumped by her boyfriend who installs car radios for a living. 

Somewhere in the middle of whining and squabbling, the siblings figure out that blame for their foibles must lie with their “tiger parenting tyrant parents”, and they decide to confront their dad, (Francis Jue) and mom (Emily Kuroda). Their parents refuse to take the bait and the blame and explain that the whole idea behind parenting with boundaries was so they can figure things out for themselves when the time comes. Albert and Jennifer decide that since they cannot “escape the context of being Chinese in America then let’s move to China and be Chinese in China”. 

Totally unprepared, they face different sets of stereotypes in China. Sprinkled in between the humor and cultural faux pas, at it’s core, this is a journey of self discovery. The siblings realize that regardless of the place and the parenting style of how they were raised, as adults, they need to find their own tools to meet life’s challenges. The tools that give them professional success, Jennifer’s strict adherence to planning and list making, Albert’s strict work ethic can get them a certain measure of professional success. But life is far too complex and they need to find their “therapy” and their own personal “tools” to navigate challenges of dealing with bosses, boyfriends and cultural and other interpersonal issues.

Tiger Style! is running at TheatreWorks, Silicon Valley till April end and tickets can be purchased at www.theatreworks.org