RAJI WRITES

The South Asian Literature and Art (SALA) festival presented its 6th edition Global Gaze, South Asian Soul on September 26-27 at Menlo College in Menlo Park, CA. As usual, there were stellar speakers, warm reconnections with previous attendees and old friends, stylish attire to admire, and tasty Indian fare with cups of steaming chai. I interviewed some speakers / authors at the Festival - Nobel laureate Venki Ramakrishnan, filmmaker Nandita Das, tech executive Kamini Ramani

People often come to Nandita Das with their own causes. Can you make a film on addiction? On disability? One request that surprised her immensely was for a film about a man who fell off a coconut tree and died. Das has directed films that are thought-provoking, with themes such as identity and displacement (Manto), communal violence (Firaaq), and the dignity of the working class (Zwigato). Nandita Das has acted in more than 40 films, in 10 different languages. Deepa Mehta’s 1