Community
– that’s all you need to know
Bya StaffWriter
P
apa CJ, one of India’s lead-
ing stand-up comedian
and a pioneer of the
‘Stand-up’ movement in India,
has been invited to perform at
Carolines on Broadway, New
York’s premier stand-up comedy
nightclub.
Papa CJ who is bringing his
acclaimed new show Naked will
perform for two nights – on Feb
10 and 11. ‘Naked’ is the first
ever show from an Indian come-
dian to be invited to premiere at
the prestigious Soho Theatre in
London. It was also the first
show by an Indian comedian to
be invited to premiere at the
Melbourne International
Comedy Festival.
The show also represented
India at the Shared History
Festival in South Africa where it
received standing ovations at
every show.
Papa CJ has won awards for
both Asia’s and India’s ‘Best
Stand-up Comedian’. Forbes
Magazine called him ‘the global
face of Indian stand-up’ and
Toastmaster International called
him one of the most influential
comedians around the world.
He has performed over 2000
shows in 19 countries.
His work has been broadcast
on NBC, BBC, Comedy Central,
Showtime, MTV, Paramount,
The Comedy Channel, ITV and a
host of other international net-
works. He taped a Showtime
USA Stand-up Comedy Special
with Russell Peters in
Amsterdam and in the American
TV show Last Comic Standing,
and was adjudged one of the top
ten acts from over 3000 contest-
ants across the world.
Papa CJ also holds an MBA
degree from the University of
Oxford and has worked as a
motivational speaker and execu-
tive coach.
India’s Leading Stand-up Comedian Papa CJ To Perform In New York
By Jack Clark
oogle said its longtime
search chief Amit
Singhal is retiring and
will be replaced by
John Giannandrea, an
executive who has worked on
machine intelligence efforts.
Singhal joined Google in 2000
and has led the technical devel-
opment of the Internet search
engine since then.
Improvements overseen by
Singhal have helped make the
eponymous web-search tool
faster, smarter and able to peer
into the innards of software run-
ning on mobile devices. At the
same time, it was augmented
with clever widgets like calcula-
tors and weather forecasts that
materialize in response to cer-
tain queries.
“When I started, who would
have imagined that in a short
period of fifteen years, we would
tap a button, ask Google any-
thing and get the answer,”
Singhal wrote in a Google+ post
announcing his retirement. “My
dream Star Trek computer is
becoming a reality, and it is far
better than what I ever imag-
ined.”
With Giannandrea’s appoint-
ment, the technology may get
smarter. The executive has over-
seen recent artificial intelligence
efforts, including RankBrain,
which saw Google plug an AI
technology called a neural net-
work into its search engine to
boost the accuracy of results and
an e-mail service called Smart
Reply that automatically writes
responses. Other work he has
managed include efforts in
image recognition and tech-
nologies that fetch information
based on what users are doing
with their devices, rather than
what they’re explicitly searching
for.
Giannandrea joined Google
in 2010 when it acquired a com-
pany he co-founded called
Metaweb Technologies. Those
assets became the basis for
Google’s knowledge graph, a vast
store of information on hun-
dreds of millions of entities that
helps the search engine present
factual data in response to cer-
tain queries.
Singhal’s last day is sched-
uled to be Feb. 26.
The elevation of Giannandrea
represents a further emphasis
on the importance of artificial
intelligence to Google, a unit of
Alphabet Inc. Chief Executive
Officer Sundar Pichai said the
technology has been key to
recent efforts in search on
mobile devices and personal
assistant technologies.
“This comes thanks to our
years of investments in areas
like natural language processing,
computer vision, knowledge
graph and other areas,” Pichai
said on a recent earnings call.
“The next wave will be powered
by big advances in machine
learning and artificial intelli-
gence, an area where we believe
we lead the industry.”
Shares of MountainView,
California-based Alphabet fell 4
percent to $749.38 at the close.
– Bloomberg News
Google’s Longtime Search Chief Amit Singhal To Retire
G
Indian-American Adviser To Edison
Democratic Committee Sues Chairman
From News Dispatches
B
havini Shah, who has
served as an unpaid
attorney for the Edison
Democratic Committee in
New Jersey, advising the party
on legal issues, has sued Keith
Hahn, the Democratic chair-
man who reportedly has ter-
minated her appointment.
According to NJ.Com,
Hahn, who became the chair-
man in June after beating the
establishment’s pick, told Shah
that her services were no
longer required as she had
missed three meetings, and
therefore had resigned.
His claim was contested by
Shah, saying that Hahn never
told her about the meetings,
and that the committee, not
the chairman, has the power
to remove her.
“Put simply, I don’t think
that the Edison Democratic
Organization is a one-man
operation,” Shah was quoted
as saying. “The chairman
making a decision and cow-
boying this entire organization
is not fair to the committee-
people.”
Hahn said last week that the
issue is nothing but a distrac-
tion. He said alluding to Shah
that unfortunately for the tax-
paying public, some people
don’t think the rules apply to
them. “That’s the culture I’m
determined to change,” he
was quoted as saying in rhe
report. Shah also has the sup-
port of Councilwoman Sapana
Shah , but the two are not
related..
Councilwoman Shah said
that given Bhavini Shah’s solid
professional reputation and
her high regard in the commu-
nity, it’s “unconscionable for
anyone to demand her resig-
nation let alone try to termi-
nate her from a voluntary
position.” Sapana Shah is also
a committee member.
After Hahn told Bhavini
Shah that she’d been terminat-
ed, the latter sent a letter to
members of the committee,
claiming that Hahn had told
her he wanted someone “more
in line with his thinking.” Shah
said that’s not what a lawyer is
for.
The report said that Shah
isn’t seeking any money, but
wants the court to intervene
and declare that she’s still the
organization’s attorney.
Comedy Play Looks At How N.Y.
Co-op Rules Spoil Marital Bliss
From News Dispatches
N
andita Shenoy’s
“Washer/Dryer,” a new
comedy play that exam-
ines the pressures of modern-
day marriage against the back-
drop of NewYork City, opened
in Beckett Theater in Manhattan
Feb. 2 and will run till Feb. 20.
The play, which recently held
its world premier in Los
Angeles, revolves around the
obstacles of wedded bliss of
Sonya (Shenoy) and Michael
(JohnnyWu) who are just mar-
ried because Shenoy did not
mention to Michael that her co-
op apartment is single-occu-
pancy and so he can’t legally live
there, but she refuses to give it
up because of the washer and
dryer that came with the place.
They realize that there’s noth-
ing like a hostile co-op board to
wreck a honeymoon. The apart-
ment is tidy, but friends, family
and co-op rules are a mess.
When the tyrannical co-op
board president, Wendee (Annie
McNamara), starts sniffing
around, Sonya denies being
married, saying Michael is her
“best gay boyfriend,” according
to a NewYork Times report. This
lie will sow much confusion
when it reaches Michael’s impe-
rious mother, Dr. Lee (JadeWu).
Presented by Ma-Yi Theater
Company at the Beckett Theater
at Theater Row, “Washer/Dryer”
is “only partly in keeping with
Ma-Yi’s mission of producing
“new and innovative” work by
Asian-American playwrights,
the report noted.
Nandita Shenoy is a writer-
actor from Buffalo, and now liv-
ing in NewYork City.
“After a week of packed hous-
es in previews, not to mention a
blizzard, I am about to open my
first Off-Broadway show which I
wrote and in which I star. I am
over the moon with delight on
arriving at this point in my jour-
ney.
Three years after first writing
it, “Washer/Dryer” has finally
arrived in NewYork where it
seemed always to belong,”
Shenoy writes on her website.
11
News India Times February 12, 2016
