Tour of Kolkata Schools

 JIS is a sponsor of Saraswati Pooja Awards given to schools. I represented the university and went to 5 schools starting with APJ in Salt Lake, to Taki Multipurpose school for Boys, Sanskrit Collegiate School, Jadavpur Vidyapeeth and Little Memorial School in Garia. A highlight was that we were accompanied by two celebrities- Soham Chakrabarty, actor, and Jose Baretto, former Mohun Bagan football star from Brazil who lives here. 

Barreto presents an autographed football to the principal of Taki Boys' School, Raja Bazaar

Jadavpur School, a well-run govt. school.

Below-Little fella having fun, Little Memorial School, Garia

Young ladies who look after the little ones.

A selfie with my partners in crime.

Above- At APJ school, I told them about Mandrake and Phantom, my childhood heroes

Below- Jadavpur Vidyapith

Why I Will Not Get a Nobel

 It's a real reality check. But in accordance with the adage Know Thyself, I will do some analysis of the Self. It's like taking selfies, but deeper.

I have almost zero knowledge of Physics, Chemistry, or Medicine.

I only read good literature, don't write any.

My knowledge of Economics is limited to the current prices of vegetables.

I have not helped solve an India-Pakistan conflict, or an Israel-Gaza conflict, or a Russia-Ukraine conflict, or one in my backyard where dogs fight with man, or with other dogs. Catfights are also not my territory to solve- because they usually don't involve cats..

Which basically leaves me with other Prize options, like the following-

Greatest Golf Trainer in Asia Prize

Great at Forgetting People's Names Award

Most Regular Blogger at 65 Medal

Punek (Anek) Pun Creator Prize

Best Movie Critic Award

PJ forwarder and OJ Maker Award

Not a bad set.. what are you likely to win?

Best Friends

 These are awards that have nothing to do with your DPs or Cover Pics. Just to recognise you for being good friends on social media, or in life, or both. Of course, in instalments, because the numbers are just too many to tag in one or two posts.

Roughly, in the order of our meetings, reverse chronological (logical?) order- Nishka Rathi, Bhagyalakshmi and Venkatesh, Shraddha Nigdikar, Harsh Halve, Abha Kulkarni, Ananya Nandi De, Jayasimha, Amitabh Kodwani,  Payal Kapoor, Mohita Maggon, Nidhi Kanungo, Sudeshna Srivastava, Bibhuti Dash, Ishita Modi, Savitha NK, Shatakshi Tripathi, Sheetal Garg, Prachi Jain, Akansh Khandelwal, Shafique Gajdhar, Vandana Kumar, Kanika Mhendiratta, Divya Singh, Meghana Khadilkar, Harshad Lunavat, Tanmeet Kaur Sahiwal, Neeti Ingole, Pratishtha Batra, Abhishek Mishra, Rajhans Mishra, Pratima Gaikwad,... 

to be continued.  

Birthday Month Resolutions

 Why make resolutions? As we make revolutions around the Sun, it's nice to have some goals before you join the stars. So since New Year is also around the corner, here goes, on the last day of October 2022-

I shall be a nice guy. Of course, I have been trying all these years, but I will try harder. Tele-callers, and unsolicited physical callers, please excuse. To all others, I will be nice!

Extend unsolicited advice -less of it than in the past. Even solicited advice, for that matter!

Will go South (in India, I mean) at least once a year. This is necessary because I have left Bangalore for good, and the pubs need me for business reasons. Friends too, I hope!

My quest for good food, untasted dishes from any part of the world will continue, while savouring the favourites- Biryani, Kababs, Irani chai, etc.. 

I am not really sure what other resolutions are needed, so I shall come back with more as I discover the need. In general, will try and make myself less of a pain to all my friends. Giving them awards for achievements - or for just smiling at me- does not count, so will continue to do so. 

IIM Indore days, 2013-2020, till the first wave of COVID.

With Mom on her 91st. Below. Above, my party shirt and some Chinese beer!

Above, Anusha meets us in Pune. Below, the crack team of IMT Nagpur.

Sameera, with Vandana and Rama Sastry. Below, Alisha Thomas. All profs., and part-time Golfers.

Fan Mail to Self 2

 Why stop with one? Now that I have got started, let me write about other good qualities. (Ahem!). 

Dear Raj,

You always try and keep in touch. I like this quality in you. It's very old world, like the media you use - facebook, for instance, which nobody of the young generation uses any more. But I must say you use it to good effect on those who count. I realise you have managed to engage people by some really creative means, like your DP Awards, and Awards for Quizzes that you seem to have almost on a daily basis.

Not just that, you are available for chats on Messenger at various times of the day, even if it's a simple hello or an answer to a question that someone has. Also, to meet, when you travel. You seek out old students, friends and share a chat over chai (will not say Chai pe charcha, it's copyrighted :) )

You are also quite funny with your posts, and routinely bring a smile to my face, and many others too, I am sure. In a world full of gun shots, migrants and wars over nothing, we need a calming influence of some kind to keep us sane. I am glad you are doing your bit. It might not change the world, but it helps.

I am happy to be connected, and occasionally, meet up. 

Yours truly..

Felicitating Students and Staff 2021

 The students who topped various programs and staff and faculty who were "best" at their jobs, were felicitated by our institute - NMIMS, Bangalore last week. This was a kind of a substitute for a Convocation, which happened online earlier. Some pics with and of the awardees.

Zoom on Zoom-An Award to a Distinguished Alum

 Good things do happen to nice people. Kusum, better known as Zoom, was a livewire we had who fought for Women's Rights- to be allowed to move in to the Bilekahalli campus on Bannerghatta road. way back in 1982, along with us- the boys. She won, and they moved, to our delight. She made her presence felt, in every way, and was one of the most liked-girl or guy- in the batch. She recently won the Distinguished Alum award from IIMB, not a surprise at all. She is a professor of marketing at Tuck, Dartmouth for the past many years. Some pics from the event held online due to Corona pandemic.. 

Some other winners, first.. many have gone into social causes with entrepreneurship or support of various kinds..heartening to know.

Revathy Ashok, among other things, runs a political incubator with a 9-month flagship program to train people for public service.Sameer Nair, below, runs Gram OOrja, to provide electricity to rural areas which never had it-while keeping it commercially viable!

Laxmana Rao has done wonders for manufacturing in India, with advanced toolrooms, building robots, and IML (in-mould labeling) for FMCG, pharma industries, among other innovations, with many manufacturing plants.

Ramesh 'Hassled' Srinivasan is also a classmate, and a past winner of the award. Gopal Mahapatra is currently with IIMB as  professor of practice, and is a classmate too- he got his FPM from Bangalore, was with us in the first two years. He also worked with me at Indore more recently.

Here is Kusum, remembering her profs., and friends, and the anda bhurji she was famous for making in our mess.

She was awarded a bit late due to Cornoa-strike last year. 

DD Saxena is a pioneer-entrepreneur in Australia, and from an earlier decade at IIMB, when they operated from the city. He also battled cancer and won, and runs multiple ventures. He recounted his days at Hindustan Lever, Thapar and a gherkin export venture he set up, which has grown in scale.

Good Versus Evil

 They say the world is a constant tug of war between Good and Evil, or Good and Bad. All epics or legends have these two sides, so do most movies. But the idea of setting up a BAD bank gave me some ideas.

Why not have a Bad Governance model, and study it as a contrast to Good Governance models? It will be interesting, to see who is classified where.

We can also have a Bad Boy award, like a Good Boy award, in schools. So we recognise both, and know where we (and they) stand.

Not just boys, we do this for Girls too. Not all girls are good (though most are).

A Bad Actor Award- an Oscar or Filmfare for really bad acting? Ram Gopal Verma would win for Bad Direction every year, at least in India.

Bad Cricketer Award, maybe? Bad Author?

Bad Politician award may get controversial, and there might be too many contenders, so we'll forget that.

Bad Teacher Award, along with Best Teacher?

Ok, will let you think of some more, I am running out of Bad ideas.

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.

The Nobel and Other Awards

This is a reflective piece-don't say I didn't warn you!

Some people get awards-others don't. Does not usually mean that the others are not worthy. If I remember this right, Dharmendra never got a best actor award. But we enjoyed his acting in many films- Sholay, Chupke Chupke and Satyakaam, to cite just three.

Mahatma Gandhi did not win a Nobel, while lesser mortals got it. Murakami has not yet got one, and given the controversy about the Academy, this year is unlikely for him too. Point is, awards or no awards, every one of us may be contributing in our own way to something good. Award-givers are human, and can't possibly be right in selection all the time.

From a different angle, artists may get love and affection from their fans, which is bigger than other awards (for them) and helps sustain some of them for long periods.

Nothing against awards-many of my students have got them regularly, and I am proud of them. But I am also proud of those who did not get the awards, but are good at anything they do-or, are simply sensible human beings.

Bad Acting Awards

The way we praise/reward good acting, so we should bad acting. So here goes-

My nominations for Hamming Birds-Male.

1. Dino Morea- Dinosaurial skills in acting. In fact, Tyranno would have acted better.

2. Deb Mukherjee- Not sure what he was doing in films.

3. Bhushan (or was it Kishen?) Kumar- Gulshan jee was his brother, or something. Forgettable.

4. The guy who the wonderful song Chalte chalte mere yeh geet was shot on..whatwashisname.

5. Dabboo Kapoor- the wonderful RD Burman tunes did nothing for his acting. People laughed when he tried enacting a cancer patient's role in Harjaee. and laughed again when he discoed in the same film...to Tujhsa haseen dekha na kaheen, tu hogi meherbaan kabhi na kabhi..

6. Sunil Shetty. Comparable with the all time greats, such as Rajendra Kumar, Manoj Kumar, and a few others.

7. John Abraham- his abs were better than his talent- abs-olutely!

Diwali in North Korea

During Diwali, there used to be an array of differently named bombs attractively packaged and named. Laxmi bomb, atom bomb, hydrogen bomb, lavangi, and so on are some I remember from my childhood. It is said that (male) children grow up to play with different toys. Country heads seem susceptible to this too-male ones in particular.

So North Korea gets into its own Diwali celebration act with its recent explosion that it claims is a hydrogen bomb. This has brought the usuually soporific U.N. to an emergency meeting to discuss what it should (or should not) do. Many countries have (politically correctly) expressed outrage. But what I don't get is why that outrage is missing when any random act of war is carried out by the ex-colonial or the new colonial powers.

Anyway, to express our own, maybe we can return a few awards. Anyone game for it? Criteria-

1. You must be outraged
2. You should have won an award

If not, find someone who can give you one, and then express your outrage. But careful, someone may be outraged at your receiving it.

Books That Need to Be Written

This is inspired by a book review of a book titled "Let's Be Less Stupid" that I chanced upon somewhere. There are lots of books that should be written, and I am not sure they have been. So here's a call to writers if they are inspired by the suggestions-

1. Colonial Powers Say Sorry for Terrorising Half the World
2. Tolerance? What is That? When was it Ever There?
3. A Guide to Ethnic Riots, Worldwide. 2015th edition
4. Awards-A Who's Who and Why's That and What's What
5. If Russia does it, It's Wrong..
6. Bihar - A State Gone Wrong After Nalanda
7. Maharashtra, ditto after the Cows came Home
8. Telangana, ditto, after KCR/NTR/ANR/IT Boom
9.  Bangalore, a history-from Narayanamurthy to Sikka (film rights titled Khotey Sikkey)
10. IIM A, B, C, ..X, Y, Z. Particularly, Y?
11. All the Answers to Malala's Question- If you can spend on Guns, why not on Books?

Returns and Ink on Your Face

All the current events have me in a tizzy.

In this era of ball point pens, where do you find ink to blacken faces with? Is it a ploy of the ink manufacturers to increase their sales?

With respect for authors returning their hard-won awards, you can only return it once. Where does that leave you once the next earth-shaking event happens?

Putin bombs the hell out of some terrorists who have been ruling some parts of the world. Is he trying to showcase what hell looks like?

Is the Bihar election worth winning? I mean, can anyone actually govern it even if he wins?

Where are Radhe Maa, Indrani, and all other attention grabbers of last week? Can we bring them back?

Will he, won't he? This is not about Salman Khan's marriage. But about Dhoni resigning from the team, and becoming a commentator.