Memorable Moments - USA 1986-89

The day I landed. Sometime in June 1986, abroad for the first time, except a stopover in Zurich by Swissair). Went to New York, took a can from JFK to another airport, and caught a plane to Greenville, South Carolina. Was picked up by Alok and Satish. 

My first teaching experience for undergrads (BS in Management). At Clemson, where I taught computer applications. I barely had a month or two to prepare, but I managed reasonably well. Class size was small, and we had software and a lab. 

First football match with Clemson playing. This was American Football, handheld. Exciting, colourful, with cheerleaders at halftime doing some acrobatics. Great atmosphere, and Clemson was a Champion team from the same decade, a few years earlier.

First drive across the U.S., in a Ford Granada, which also conked out near Las Vegas. Had to change the radiator, which we found in a junkyard. On our way in a hour or so! 

Amusement Parks. Six Flags over Atlanta, Knotts Berry Farm, and Disneyland (last two in L.A.), NBC Studios, and Universal Studios.  Hollywood, a bit of a letdown. The animation studio at Disney was great to see.

Graduating in 3 years, August 1989! Got my name carved on a sidewalk at Clemson- coz it was a centenary year!

Keepsake Photos

 Photographs are a great way to remember people, occasions, planned events, chance meetings, and places too. Many of us have a Taj Mahal pic from our visit to the beautiful monument. I have one from the Eiffel Tower, and the Leaning Tower of Pisa too.

My grandmother's pic at the steering wheel of a car (she didn't drive) is one of her best in my collection. Another is from when many of my aunts had visited us with their kids - my Mom had six sisters and a brother. 

Another category is with students, alumni or colleagues from various workplaces. Some I meet repeatedly and some I met maybe only once. But a photo reminds me of the fun time we had. There is one with Vivek Gupta - a colleague at IIM Lucknow, which was during a hailstorm we had on campus. I went home, got my camera and we took some memorable pics. One with Avinash Mulky too, during this short time.

Many of the vintage pics from IIM Bangalore-an architectural wonder that I was lucky to be in- are now priceless. A couple with the Clemson Tiger- he was a mascot of Clemson University, or one during a break in the Football game -very colourful, are similarly priceless. 

Pics with family - particularly when our daughters were small-are gems in our collection. Digitisation has made it easy to preserve these, but I have a huge collection from pre-digital days, including a flight in a Cessna over Clemson! 

Coincidences and Connections

 I was watching a video in which Anupam Kher was interviewing Naseeruddin Shah and Om Puri, the title of this show being Kuchh Bhi Ho Sakta Hai (Anything Can Happen). He also questioned them about happenings in their life. They came from different backgrounds, religions and became great friends during their stint at the National School of Drama and later acted in many films, sometimes together and sometimes not. (I am going to watch a play starring Shah this week- theatre remains his passion.)

I started thinking about coincidences and connections (in case you noticed, I sometimes do) as a result. For example, a friend from Hyderabad, Alok, got me an admission into the Clemson Ph.D. program, which took me into academia. My first IIM job interview (Lucknow) had my teacher, Prof. JD Singh, on the interview panel. I met one of my former students, Padmapriya, at night, while standing outside my cousin's place in Mumbai, and have remained in touch since. Another former student, Jogeswari, started a Golf touring company, and I went on their first organised tour to Thailand.

Sheetal Garg and I met by chance at an alumni event at IMT Nagpur, and have been meeting regularly since-we are also members of a music community. The music group itself, I joined (and met some great people in) due to Mohan Gopalratnam, another former student from XIMB. Nikita Kumar happened to be working in Hyderabad and Pune when we met in both places. Animesh Jain in Bhopal also I met coincidentally when I went for a guest lecture. Abhinav Kamal happened to make a film, Pradyumna, Bhagyashree and Harshad Lunavat happened to be good photographers at IMT, and I noticed. Soumyashree, a student who I met accidentally made my blog popular by posting a link on hers. 

I ran into Rohit at a mall in Bhubaneswar, and lots of people at airports-Jimmy Jain of IIMK, and Siddharth from KIAMS, for instance. Anne, from the Agriculture Dept. at Clemson, who I met through a roommate, became good friends and we visited her at her French home and she came to India too. 

I was fortunate to meet Ravi Gadgil, who had played Golf, while I was at IMT, and we set up a two-hole Golf course on the campus. I also run into former colleagues regularly, when invited for faculty selection, or guest lectures. Some former students also come and meet me at times. All these coincidences and connections are highly rewarding, and fun. I played Golf with someone I met years ago, recently- we happen to be in Bangalore now. An entrepreneur saw a post on LinkedIn and connected with me about her startup. I also met Pooja Varun, a former PES student, and Nagendra Shenoy in similar coincidences.

Zindagi, ittefaq hai..as the line from a song says (Life is a set of coincidences)

Poetry

 Attempt at putting to verse, my experiences at various places-

School

Burning the midnight candle at school,

But also playing cricket and all

Were my wonderful teen years 

That I spent at Ramanthapur

College of Engineering

Osmania was awesome on the whole

Hau, aisa campsich nahi milta bol

Ate a lot of bun omelettes and Sambar

But also explored the theatres with my bus pass

MBA

The band of Bannerghattans was a cool lot

and writing for Mural, I learnt a lot

The yearbook captured the years well

And I regret nothing at all

Ph.D.

Clemson had lakes and blue skies

And a student crowd from near and far

Driving on highways to Hollywood, and watching the colours of Fall

Those were dreamy days, Advisor, Budweiser et al

My Avatars on Earth- 4

A few more avatars remain. The golfer, for one.

 The Golfer- above, swinging away in Kodaikanal, and below- with Gadgil, Vijayakumar and Dhanapal at Munnar.

 The photographer (above, Mandu), and the photographed, as  Mexican-hat-wearing Indian in Clemson, USA.

American Graffiti

Ron Green. He was like a pillar of support in understanding the U.S. university system, and much more. He was also a great friend, and his family had an open invitation to a few of us to go visit them anytime. Even after he had moved out of Clemson, we visited him at Johnson City, Tennessee.

Mike Stahl: My guide for the thesis. A couple of seminar courses I took with him were very useful to me in understanding the subject of strategy, and much more. I developed my thesis proposal too, during one of his courses. He was quick in his reactions, and also accepting you if you made sense.

Chuck McNichols: Taught a lot of the multivariate statistics that I still find useful, and which shaped my textbook later on, on Marketing Research.

Steve Cantrell: An easy-going statistics prof. (yes, there are some), with a Southern accent. He was also instrumental in reviving basic statistics which I had forgotten, mostly.

                                       University football stadium, with my wife and parents.

Leslie Price: A prof. At Lander, she was a great friend. Fun-loving, and sociable. We haven't met after 1991, but my wife and I are still friends with her on facebook, and know her kids through the virtual medium.

 One of our abodes at Clemson (above). A trip to New York (below).

 Las Vegas and Mount Rushmore (above).

 Boating at Table Rock Mountain. and below, a truck I drove from Clemson to Greenwood while moving to my new job.

International Colleagues

When I worked at Lander in the U.S., I had colleagues from various countries- I remember at least two- a Venezuelan and a South Korean. Of course, we had American colleagues as well. Got along with one particularly-Leslie Price, who was (is) a fun-loving person, and her husband Bob, and mom Joyce. We are still in touch virtually, though we haven't been able to meet after I left South Carolina.

This is a pic of Leslie (above) from those days.

Ron Green had been a colleague at the Clemson Ph. D., and went to teach at Johnson City in Tennessee later. We visited him regularly, and the drive was spectacular in the Fall season. He had been close for three years, and his wife Carmon and daughter Sara made us feel at home.

A lot of visiting faculty from Europe and the U.S. came for short visits when I was at IMT Ghaziabad, and here at IIM Indore too, some of them Indians working abroad. We are likely to internationalise a  bit more as we are getting accredited by global bodies.

Samren Singh was an Indian in the US who taught at Lander like me,

and we became friends with him and Annie, his Canadian wife. Still in touch virtually.

International Friends

Being in the U.S. for a Ph.D. (1986-1989) was good from many different angles. One was that I met people from many different countries- Alberto from Portugal, Godwin Udo from Nigeria, Masoud from Iran, to name a few. Our group of Indian students also had a permanent member from France, Anne Pouliquen, who was studying in the Agriculture Dept. We actually visited each other's homes later on. Her place in Northern France was an interesting one to visit, full of history and charming rural atmosphere. Mount St. Michael was nearby, and Rennes too. She took us around to these places, and we ate some excellent seafood and cheeses at her place and her parents' farmhouse. She in turn visited us in Harihar, and we went along to Hampi and Pondicherry with her. Muthu, our friend in Bangalore, received her at the airport. She also travelled alone to various places in India.
Some pics from Hampi (above and below, first) and Pondicherry.

Masoud and his wife also visited us in Bangalore, and I met him in Malaysia while he was a visiting prof. there.

What I Learnt and From Whom

Ok, let me get this off my chest..I haven't learnt how to dress elegantly, though some women constantly tried teaching me..bad learner. But I did learn the following,..

From Alok, a classmate- what GRE was, how to apply for M.S. to the U.S., and what an MBA was and how to apply for CAT. Later, how to live in the U.S. too.

From Vijayakumar, a friend and colleague- Applied SPSS, the difficult parts. The easy ones I learnt from Profs. at Clemson.

Basics of marketing from my marketing profs. JD Singh and Thirunarayana, and Bhaskaran (advertising, my favourite course) at IIMB. Stats from Dr. Cantrell and Dr. McNichols, at Clemson.

Human behaviour from two profs. and observation. I am eternally grateful to Profs. Valecha and SK Roy of IIMB.

Mischief, from all my friends over the years, and the million students I have had since I changed sides.

Being sensible, from my wife. And parents. and Father-in-law.

How to facebook, from my daughters. And some complex manoeuvres on my phone too.

How to blog, from my BIL Hari.

How to appreciate others? Comes naturally :)

English, from reading authors like Wodehouse, Agatha Christie, Erle Stanley Gardner, Arthur Conan Doyle, Alistair Maclean,..

My First Snowfall

A first view of snow was in Gulmarg, Kashmir, in 1978, I think, but my first actual snowfall was in the U.S. at Clemson. And boy, it was exciting- for about an hour, maybe two. We did all the crazy things that one does, usually. Here, I was bewitched-

Clemson not being used to much snow, did not have equipment to clear it. So we were pretty much stranded as far as using cars went, and we walked as much as we could. But mostly, we chilled (literally) at home. It was like the Mumbai rain holidays.

The beauty of a snow-clad view was in two places- Leh recently, and Grand Canyon in the U.S. The night we visited one Thanksgiving Weekend, we found there was heavy snowfall. The next morning, there were amazing views (this place remains one of my favourites in the U.S., apart from Yellowstone).

Leh with snow-women.-

Avatars

 We all have avatars. This was mine (Clemsonavatar) in the late eighties. With Anu at Clemson, South Carolina, where I got a Ph.D. Not sure why I wore a jacket and tie. Maybe it was the day I defended my Ph.D. thesis.

 We outside our abode (above and below). I think a Clemson prof. owned the apartment.

Why You Remember Places

Why do we remember certain places more than others? There are two kinds of places I am talking of-places where we have lived, and places which we have visited.

In both cases, a common reason may be the people we associate with the place. I have lived at least a year in the following places- Kothagudem, Bellampalli, Ramagundam, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Delhi, Bangalore, Mumbai, Clemson, Greenwood (both in the U.S.), Bhubaneswar, Harihar, Lucknow, Kozhikode, Nagpur, Indore.

 Indonesia

 Udaipur

 Me at Athens, Greece and (below) my wife in Clemson, SC, USA.

Of these, the longest spell at one place as a grownup was at Harihar, where we had small class sizes in our MBA program, and therefore I tend to remember the students pretty well, even with my fading memory cells. There was also another unrelated reason to remember the place itself. An 18-hole Golf course in our colony (thanks to the Kirloskars) made me feel like a millionaire.

Nagpur, a campus (IMT) that was scenic, and people who were among the nicest anywhere, changed my ideas about the place ('hot as hell' would have been the earlier idea)- staff and students included, but the general population too.

Clemson was great for its atmosphere, scenic beauty, and what it taught me- the first baby steps towards research. Teaching too- as a graduate assistant, where I taught undergrads who were more scared of computers than I was!

Visiting places I liked in the U.S. were Grand Canyon, and Yellowstone National Park. In Europe, Rome, Athens and Northwest France (Brittany) are places I remember the most. In Asia, it has to be Japan and Camobodia, which are very different, but memorable, though I also liked Indonesia and Sri Lanka.

At the Kodai golf course with Ravindra Gadgil, a colleague from IMT

Indian destinations that I like include diverse ones like Mandu, Jog Falls, Konarak, Hampi, Lonar, Leh, Goa, Udaipur, Nainital, Srinagar, Kodaikanal (for its Golf too), Kinnersani in A.P. where we had lots of outings as kids, and Bangalore and Hyderabad among the cities. 

A Pictorial Journey

 Guns and Mothers-in-law. Charleston, USA. 1988.

 Paella at Amsterdam conference. 2008.

 IIM Indore jailbirds. recent.

 Desert Moon hotel room. Jaisalmer. 2015.

 Another gun (tope), another time.

 Lovey times, IMT Nagpur.

 Feeling festive at IMT Nagpur.

 Prarthana and Pooja. Daughters' love.

 Parents, brother, sister in law and wife..family pic, Clemson. 1989.

Naturals at fancy dress, IIMB classmates. 1983.

Living with Change of Places

I have lived in Bangalore, Bhubaneswar, Lucknow, Mumbai, Harihar, Hyderabad, Interior Andhra Pradesh, Calicut, Indore, Nagpur, Delhi, Clemson, Greenwood (both in the US)...

The upshot of all this is I feel like a global citizen, because of the variety of people that I have encountered in these places. To their credit, most people I came across have been Good to Great (to filch the bestselling title of a book), with just a few exceptions.

The things I remember the most are the good things - the Oranges, the kababs, the biryani, the pickles, the chaats, the chhole-bhature, the Chettinad chicken, the fish, the Pizza Huts (in the US, they were a favourite), the California Rose wine, Mahatma brand of rice (in the US), the Fall Colours (amazing work of nature), the lakes and mountains of South Carolina, Virginia, the Geysers and multi-hued terraces at Yellowstone, stalactites and stalagmites at Carlsbad Caverns (Arizona), Bryce Canyon and Grand Canyon, Muzappilangad beach (though I can't pronounce that), Edla vagu and Muredu vagu (these are rivers in A.P.), Nagarjunasagar, Kinnersani,...World Trade Centre (before they fell), Mandu, Lonar crater...you get the picture. If you don't, look at my facebook history.

That's me (centre-of the pic, not the Universe!) and Anil (left)- Oonche log, oonchi pasand.

Anniversaries and More

We all have anniversaries. I recently had one- of my wedding, many years ago. OK, 28 years to be precise. I was in the U.S. at the time we married (in Pune), two-thirds of my way through a Ph.D. and living with 3 flatmates in Clemson, a university town in South Carolina, on a student budget.

After the Ph.D., we moved to another town, Greenwood, with exactly 15,000 as its population. Two Indian friends, Samren (and wife Annie, below)

and Dr. Soni (and wife Shakun in this pic)

kept us great company, and some American friends  too (like Leslie, and Ron Green, who are in touch). Alok, my senior at Clemson (and Pam, his wife), and the former flatmates (Satish, Anil and Suresh) and their partners Marla, Vinita also occasionally met with us. Some of them are in this pic taken outside our Greenwood apt.

My wife Anuradha (Iyer/Nargundkar) was able to manage the chaos of all these new friends effectively, and we also agreed on coming back to India, proving that it's possible to have unanimity after marriage :).  Of course, we visited Vegas before we came back, and Europe too.

Our stay in India so far has included Bhubaneswar (XIMB), Hyderabad (Vignana Jyoti Inst. of Mgt), Harihar (Kirloskar Inst.), Lucknow (IIM), Kozhikode (IIM), Bangalore (PESIT and IFIM Business School), together. After this, for the sake of our daughters' education, she set up base in Pune and I moved on to IMT Nagpur, Ghaziabad, and on to IIM Indore. It has been an eventful journey of 28 years, and we made new friends in each place- and more importantly, retained them even after we moved from a place. Having a large contingent of relatives also helped us in many ways, including in the US where my cousins Jayashree and Sheelu (and friend Kiran Kenjale) have lived for years. With the support of friends, relatives, well-wishers including former students (between the two of us, we have about a million), it's been a great ride- and continues to be. This pic is of Prarthana, Pooja and their mom in Jaisalmer on a trip last year.

Pics from the Past

At home on a bike, with the wife suitably impressed. Gambling a fortune away (explains my present state) at Vegas, gallivanting on Liberty island, and exploring the four faces of Mount Rushmore with my dad.

A Vintage Collection of Pics

1. There is immortality involved here. A sidewalk at Clemson Univ., South Carolina has my name engraved .in it. Not because I won a Nobel Prize, but because I was one of the centenary year graduating students. So people there walk all over me! With me is Anu, my wife who had to be convinced she'd married the right guy!

2. Bond (Moore) and I share a pose at a wax museum in Hollywood, around 1987.

3. The third is a shot of Wendy, a student I taught at Clemson, who modelled for my shot of the vintage car parked in campus.

These are to celebrate my 500th post (and 15000 readership) on this blog. Now, where's the champagne?