Ambition and Round Up of 2019

I don’t remember what my ambition was earlier.

Now, my ambition is scaled down, to meeting nice people, looking at Nice DPs (and awarding the good ones), and some good food and drink (like Vietnamese coffee and Irani tea), books, blogging, occasional travel, films, singing and listening to music (retro, Hindi), watching my students do well in life..

Slightly off-track - I was trying to recollect what happened in the last 12 months. 

A wedding in Hyderabad, one in Mumbai, and another in Bangalore, and yet another in Delhi recently- made me a preferred wedding guest (!) of friends and family-one who can’t balle balle though 😊- just a friendly warning! Can be a wedding photographer, though..try me out!

A visit to the Kishore Kumar memorial and house in Khandwa. A conference trip to Bali, and another to Chennai, from where we visited Kancheepuram and its magnificient temples. In July, we hosted an international conference for the second time, and were overwhelmed by the number of attendees.

I also re-visited Calicut, and IIMK where I had worked from 2003 to 2005. And of course, met numerous students- in Ahmedabad (Manjari, Punyashlok, Ankita and Ishan, Keyur,..), Mumbai (Tosha Dubey, Urvashi, Abha Kulkarni, Siri Adi, Khyati, Anuj, Shraddha, Nishka and Vikram Rathi, Garima and Dwipa Shah, Akshat Surana, Sampark.. ), Delhi (Padmapriya, Shweta Agarwal, Shruti Sharma, Aditya Naag, Nikita Kumar, Sharmistha Singh, Sunil Kataria, and my new personal photographer Kanika Mhendiratta), Pune (Neha Adiga, Divya Singh), Bangalore (Shatakshi and Varun, Anushka Mishra, Savitha, Bharath Shenoy, Anshita (with hubby and their twins), Anusha and Aashish, Sreeram), some for the first time, some for the second or third. This part- meeting students and colleagues, I would like to repeat next year, and the year after...have a few more pending invites.

IMTians, above and below. In Mumbai

IMTian Anshita above, organiser of a party at Bangalore, and below, Gurugrammies and Pranksters.

Anam, IIMI alum, above, and Kanika, IMTian below. Indore and Delhi.

Friends and colleagues- in Bangalore, above, and Tollygunge, Kolkata below.

KIAMS alum Shweta above in Delhi, and Divya Singh (ex-IMT, author of a case in the book) in Pune.

Below, KIAMS alums Sharmistha and Sunil, Delhi.

Met a few of my old colleagues from IIM Lucknow at Ranchi where I had gone on invitation. Trips to Belgaum (near where my Dad grew up) through the monsoon rain and one to Kolkata to meet a friend (Dash) were also highlights. So was one to IIT Guwahati, a lovely campus. Also went to BITS Goa, and stayed at a small beach, Bogmalo. 

Of course, I gave away a lot of DP and Photography Awards-this gets more difficult, but motivating. To close the year, I got a new car after exactly 14 and a half years- replacing my loyal warhorse (Esteem) with the new Wagon R-getting a loyalty bonus too. My book, Marketing Research -4^th edition- got published this year, and contains a lot of cases from my Indore students. Met a few of our alums in Indore too, like Harshad (and his wife), Tamros (his wife too), Ruminder Kaur, Ritu, Pratima and Arshia Mulla. Of course, I connected or chatted with many more online.

Students at Work- Digital Marketing

In the Digital Marketing course, 2019 edition, students at work.. on a class assignment.

Looking Back at 2019

I know it's not December 31st, but I am looking back at the action-packed eight and a half months that have passed by. I started in January by reading a new author- Kazuo Ishiguro. Never Let Me Go was the book-poignant, about human-like creatures grown for a purpose, and how they turn even more human-like. Unexpectedly, the delayed fourth edition of my Marketing Research text came out, and I was able to release it at our own conference. Lots of students from IIM Indore a couple of years ago contributed the case studies, so it was a proud moment. There was a Delhi conference at IMT too, and I managed to meet Padmapriya and her hubby, after long!

Started a new photography competition on fb in addition to usual awards and quizzes..discovering good photographers is a byproduct.

As usual, I met a lot of past students, some who visited Indore (like Anam and Harshad), and many more outside Indore on my travels to Mumbai, Bangalore, Delhi and Ahmedabad (that was for a book release by a friend at MICA). Pune too, where I met Neha Adiga. Also gatecrashed (no, I was invited) into an alum meet of IMT Nagpur in Mumbai.

Met Sharmistha Singh, Shweta Agarwal and Sunil Kataria of KIAMS after about 16 years- and Anushka Mishra for the first time (we'd met on fb first). Also met Bharat of IFIM and Shatakshi of IIMI in Bangalore. In May, I went to Reva University for a talk on Smart Cities and ran into Shinu Abhi, a former colleague. Met SP Kumar and Manoharan, also past colleagues at PES. In Mumbai, visited Bhagyalakshmi and family. Met Shraddha Nigdikar too.

My friends from MBA too. I met Dash in Kolkata, and a big gang at Venky's boy's wedding. Stayed at the Presidency Golf Club too, a first. Also went for a conference at Goa, but missed out on meeting Prashant who lives there as he was busy. Harish and Snail at Delhi and Hyderabad I did meet.

IIT Guwahati was a revelation. It looks like a European town, with lakes on campus. Had gone to Belgaum's Gogte Institute on invitation, and had a fabulous drive through the Chorla Ghat, with the rains and clouds for company. Saw a few good films too, and read a few more books-among them old favourites by A.A. Fair and Rex Stout.

Also visited Bali for a conference, and went rafting on a river. Not bad for eight months!

Nostalgic Meet of IMT Alumni 2019

We did a lot of alumni meets when I worked with IMT Nagpur, across India. I still get invited to some, and I attend when I can.. some proof below, in the form of candid shots :) No 360 degree zoom, but have tried to get everyone in with these..

at the end, we were joined by another pretty young lady.. oh, that expression on meeting so many aliens is so lovely!

Rain Pictures IIM Indore

Some pics from today from the IIM Indore campus, just before the afternoon rain.

Amar Photo Studio- A Play With Substance

This is a very inventive play (in Marathi) that I saw yesterday. Proof? Here it is, clicked by Amey Wagh, a key actor, at the end of it. We are at the left end, first row. I am second from left.

Did I say inventive? I will say it again. It had elements of the classics (V. Shantaram appears as a character, making one of his films), mid-70s ( a character played by Parna Pethe dances to the song Mehbooba, Mehbooba, from Sholay), and today's selfie-obsessed generation that is trying to define love in the time of breakups.

Brilliantly cast and directed, it's a must-watch in my view. Nipun Dharmadhikari, the director, proves he is nipun with many things- the time travel, the representative characters from each age group, and the handling of the story and the dialogues, were all of a level that was impressive. Participative elements, with the heroine and hero both coming into the aisle and pulling in audiences, aded zing to the proceeding. The humour is ROFL.

Amey Wagh, and some others too, played multiple characters, not easy to do in quick succession. Hats off!

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.