Kamal Sharma A Cultural Trailblazer Preserving South Asian Heritage

By Monica Sethi

Early Life

Son of an Indian diplomat, Kamal grew up in Old Delhi, near Novelty Cinema, one of India's oldest movie theatres. On his way back from school, he would invariably check out the current and upcoming movies at the theatre. He also enjoyed spending time reading and researching extensively about the Indian film industry. Kamal moved to Vancouver in 1978 when his father got posted to the Indian Consulate here. He fondly reflects that despite being an avid reader and traveller, he had not heard of Vancouver until then. After relocating, Kamal joined computer programming at UBC. Alongside this, he started working with a travel company. In 1979, the owner's brother was venturing into the video business and asked him to join as a manager. This fascinated him as it resonated with his love for movies. And within a year, he got married, quit UBC, and started managing the video store, The Video King, full-time. The Video King was the first store to introduce original video prints in North America for Bollywood movies. Kamal has been a part of the entertainment business ever since.

Foray into the Entertainment Business

Kamal recalls his early days in Vancouver when there were only three places where one would find people from the South Asian community – the Gurudwara at Fraser and 11, grocery stores, and the third place that became a focal point was the video store. The latter became a major attraction where people, including prominent media personalities and community leaders, would spend hours discussing and exploring which movies to pick.

In 1983, when India won the cricket World Cup, Shushma Datt, the first Canadian broadcaster of South Asian descent who was one of the producers at the World View Channel, which catered to the ethnic communities, met Kamal at the video store and asked him to come and give his views on India's victory as he was a cricket enthusiast and also played for the Everest Cricket Club. Impressed with his speaking ability, one of the producers hired him on the spot to do sports news for the TV channel. However, since sports news was limited at that point, Kamal pitched a show called "Yaadien," where he would delve into the lives of famous yesteryear Bollywood personalities whose contributions remained etched in the minds of the community. Yaadein's first episode on Madhubala was a smashing success, and Kamal followed it with episodes on Meena Kumari, Guru Dutt and many more. This established him as a household name in the South Asian community, someone who helped in connecting people to Bollywood back in India.

While Yaadein appealed to the older generation, there was also a strong demand for a show catering to the younger audience. To fill the gap, he came up with another show called "Kamal's Top 10", where he ranked and played the top 10 songs from the movies released in the month. This, too, became a huge hit, even bigger than Yaadein.

According to Kamal, most immigrants who came to Canada in those days were from small towns and villages and were too shy and scared to venture into the city. His zest to do something more for the community inspired him to do "Kamal's Top 10" from different locations in BC. "During those days, people from our community seemed confined to their homes, and I wanted to take them around and show them what BC had to offer, which resonated with them," he said. Since then, he has hosted this show from different parts of Canada, London, Hong Kong, and almost every major city in India, which made it famous across all ethnic communities.