A Wedding in the Family

December 2018, I got a chance to play the Father of the Bride, again! Once before, at a Church wedding in Jamshedpur, I gave away the bride to a friend from Bhubaneswar. This time, it was in Sangli at a traditional Maharastrian wedding of a daughter of our extended family. An emotional moment for all of us, and fun too, as the pictures below depict. And since the couple live in Pune now, we are not sad either!

 DDLJ (top).. and dressing up (below). Shrirang and Shweta.

 Mehendi laga ke rakhna. (above), and serious stuff, involving both parents of both sides (below).

 Solemnity with some fun thrown in (above), and stage presence (below)

 Wedding finery, and not just for the bride..above and below.

 Traditonal feeding- a promise of sorts to continue? (above)
Le jayenge, le jayenge, dilwale dulhaniya le jayenge.. and she doesn't seem to mind at all. (below)

2019-What I Look Forward To

 A pavement in Clemson (above) which has my name on it ..that is looking back, a pre-requisite to looking ahead.

Look forward to-playing golf, travelling (road trips too), teaching and mentoring, having conversations on the tea and lunch table with colleagues, karaoke-ing, blogging, watching more films, reading good books/blogs, tasting some more Single Malts, listening to a lot of music, maybe a few more concerts (like the one below)..and some completely unexpected experiences! My book on Marketing Research is set to come out with a fourth edition soon too. 

 

Look forward to random and planned meetings- I met at least these friends/students in the last 2 years (at least some whose names are in italics I met for the first time, having known them pretty much from Facebook-I am grateful to Zuckerberg for this- some others I have subjected to torture in my classes).

Meghana Joshi, Varun Somaiya, Vikas Jain, Vishal Golchha, Anant Ajmera, Navroze Sethna, Abha Kulkarni, Tosha Dubey, Pallavi Sharma, Sirisha Adi, Khyati Jha, Divya Singh, Urvasi Anand, Shatakshi Tripathi, Garima Shah, Shreyashi Chakraborty, Nidhi Kanungo, Jogeswari, Bhuvneet Raheja, Shruti Suman, Swathika Selvam, Akash Gupta, Shafique Gajdhar, Anupriya Pandit, Zargar Basharat, Manjari Mundanad, Achint, Savitha, Punyashlok Dwibedy, Sanjana Rao Yarram, Sapna Patni, Shripad Kulkarni, Dheeraj Mohan, Mrunal M B, Pragya Singh, Arvind Joshi, Supriya Jain, Umesh M., Vishal Tibrewal, Vrinda Khanna, Aishwarya Omprakash, Sidhanta Patnaik, Bhagyalakshmi, Shahida, Saumya Sharma, Gadgil, Vijayakumar, Dhanapal, TK Chatterjee, Anant Ram, Milind Fadnavis, Radhika J., and a little earlier, Vidya and Swapna Reddy, Meghna Sinha, Nikita Kumar, Animesh,..

Made some new friends from Conferences- among them people from China, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, (finally went to Vietnam too). Reconnected with some from Vignana Jyoti on fb.

Tried some new things while teaching Digital Marketing and Marketing Research, and from collaborations with students of our programs- from IPM (Shivangi, Aradhya, Satchi, Ayushi,...) to FPM (Shweta Jha, Anjali Sharma, among others). Presented a few of these papers in conferences.

2017-18 in Pics

Some pics from this year and last.

 Two spots of significance- Sigiriya, Sri Lanka (above) and the Gurudwara in Nanded.

 Above- looking out at Pondicherry, and below, cruising at Ha Long Bay, Vietnam.

 Flowers on show, January, at Pune's Empress Garden. And below, celebrating my Mom's 88th, also at Pune.

Qasbah, a restaurant in Hyderabad where some of us Engineering college-mates met.

Mandu in the Monsoon

Some more pics of an outing to Mandu. 2018.

I am up to my usual tricks-photographic ones.

Tea for Lilliputs?

Jahaz -mahaling.

Perfect! The board and the bhutta!Teen Deviyan bhutta khane pahunch gayin dharti par.

AHTMM 2018 Conference Pics

Conferences are wonderful networking opportunities with global audiences. Proved yet again. I presented a paper co-authored with Aradhya Vats, my student, on Positioning of Travel Brands.. some pics of the Conference in Bangkok, last week. The organiser is from the U.S.

A part of the gathering at the welcome dinner (above). Below, another session in progress.

I introduced myself with this pic from IIM Indore with some champions of the last batch (above).. and below, with a Nigerian (US Based), and a global Indian (Australia-based).

One pic of the presenters of a traditional Thai dance.and another of a fan of Amir Khan films from Turkey..

Golf 2018- Creating Memories

Some games are good, some bad, but memories are always golden. It's important to create some every now and then. These past few days, got a chance to look at Golf again after a longish break due to Operation (on my) Wrist. Managed to play a few good shots, though the luck+skill to get a good score was elusive. Nevertheless, it was great meeting old friends Dhanapal and Vijayakumar and playing, thanks to our gracious host at Wellington, Col. Ramki- a former student of Vijayakumar's.

 A ringside view (above)- and we pose (Vijayakumar is with me)

 Action, and a closing shot to end the game.

The 19th hole-the party-is an integral part of the game.

New Year Eve 2017-18

 There were lights..and thunder (a transformer conked).

 ..and starters..

 ..and beverages..

but best of all, family for company. Celebrated everything that was nice about 2017.