Meeting Meghana Khadilkar

 This requires a blog post, because we met on Facebook a few years ago, both were at IMT Nagpur (she as student, me as prof.) and yet we had never met. Finally, it happened, on a short visit to Pune. Therefore, we had a wonderful long chat, and Prarthana was there too, as she lives in Pune and works there. Some pics from our outing. Truly a landmark meeting, and just the beginning of many more .. have to meet her two daughters and husband too..

She's an Oak from her earlier life, before marriage, and so was my grandpa, so we could be related too! 

Meghana looking good in pink..

Meeting Meenu

 I had mentioned her earlier as having a unique-sounding name- musical too. Meenu Mynam. Now we met, after connecting over social media. She is now in the Gulf, and was visiting Bangalore-an IMT Nagpur MBA. We last met at a Hyderabad alumni get-together, and had a lot to catch up on. It's great fun catching up with old students who are now more like friends. Recommended!

Woman Umpire in Cricket

 More bastions are being conquered by women. One such is cricket umpiring. We got lucky, and met Gayathri, one of only 3 umpires in India who are women. She happens to be a friend of our colleague Preeti Ravikiran, and was on campus to meet her. So naturally, we hijacked her for a while, and had a scintillating conversation, and a little Golf Putting outing too (my idea). During the conversation, I found out she is an alum of XIMB where I taught early in my career (though she was there later). Some pics.

Prof. Preeti, Gayathri, Prof. Narayani and I try out putting on the front lawn of our campus.

Book Review- Lady, You are not a Man

This is a book by Apurva Purohit, CEO of Radio City and an alumna of IIM Bangalore. I picked it up at the Hyderabad airport recently, and since I had heard of it from the alumni, decided to read it at once.

It has a semi-feminist  and humorous look at the positives and negatives of the workplace. Its tone and language are not feminist in its aggressive sense, and men would enjoy reading it as much as women. I did. The take-offs on men/husbands and their egos are particularly good. How a subordinate (man) needs to be cajoled into doing something after planting the seed in him and making him think it was his idea, has invaluable lessons for women bosses.

There are summaries of the sections at the end of each, which make it a little didactic (hope that is the right word), but you can skip those portions. The case studies of real people sprinkled throughout are very nice, adding to the 'theories of the workplace' coming from Apurva's own experiences.

The importance of Indian men understanding the value of women generally, and those in their lives, has been brought out well. How women can help the process, as mothers bringing up sons (the same as girls, helping with cooking or household work, and respecting husbands/fathers who do it) is also relevant to the feudal/patriarchal society that is still evolving around us.

A good read, with a lot to learn. For both genders.