How to Have Fun

Our definitions of fun may vary widely. For someone, fun may mean skiing in the Alps, for another, beach-running in Goa, and for a third, trekking in the Smoky Mountains.

But I have tried classifying what I consider fun things to do-

Having an unstructured conversation (Gossiping) over a beverage- Chai, usually, and wine or a malt at other times. Accompanied by food, usually. I remember many such conversations with Savitha, Achint, Pallavi, Shafique, Vrinda (and her family), Shweta Agarwal, Abha, Tosha, Urvashi, Garima, Meghna, Ratnashree, Divya Singh, Radhika, Sowmyashree, Prabhakar, Dash, Harish, Himanshu Manglik, Pragya, Arvind Joshi, Mrunal, Sheetal Garg, Anant Ram, TK Chatterjee, Gadgil, Vijayakumar, Dhanapal,.. and some family members, over the last couple of years.

Planning what to teach or how to teach it- the actual thing may be fun or not, depending on the response. Planning an exam, likewise.

Discussing ideas for research/case writing. Sometimes the doing is also fun, but getting bad reviews is not!

Travel, for any purpose..essentially, the prospect of something new is exciting, even if the travel is sometimes tedious. Road trips are actually more relaxed, and I did many of them in the U.S. Train travel in Europe was pretty cool too.

Reading. I love reading, though my throughput has reduced thanks to social media. But there's nothing like a good book. Currently, it's a biography of Asha Bhosle that I am reading.

Watching a movie- of late, my tastes have changed from the formula film to a slightly more meaningful type of cinema, but I still like a variety of films if well-made.

Coffee Room Banter

That's just a term-the beverage could be tea, which it is more often in my case. But it's not the beverage, it's the banter that is the focus here. We underestimate the power of socialisation, methinks. It needs effort. You can always have tea in isolation-doesn't taste the same. You can watch inane stuff on TV and comment about it, joke about it, or have a serious discussion about the world's problems and solve most of them in the course of one morning -or afternoon. I have done it many times over!!

The tea break relaxes you like nothing else, when you are busy working on something or thinking- we in academics need to do a lot of the second, and it can be hard work, though some think it's vella-giri ( an Indian term for fooling around, wasting time).

Therefore, I recommend a tea break as a restorative, if you are doing something serious, once in a couple of hours. Of course, after a break-up, it's even more important- just kidding!

Meeting Old Friends

I have realised that I have a major hobby. That is to talk about old times. I guess all old guys have this one. But there is a twist in the tale. I like to talk about old times with new people. And I have a huge stock of people with whom I can talk. That includes my 3000-odd students from around 9 places I have been in. The most recent ex-students are from IMT Nagpur/Ghaziabad.

So it was when I met Nikita at Pune. She is from IMT Nagpur, and now working. It was great catching up on old times, with of course, new perspective. She had been in the student placecom (committee) and that was one thing to talk about. Because this was the first time that IMT achieved record placements. It took years of effort, but it paid off. Nice to learn such things.

There was a lot of other gossip too, which will remain undisclosed, but it was great fun catching up. I recently met with lots of alumni at Bangalore too (Madhulika, Abhinav, Anupriya and Gowri-Sreeram from IMT and Sowmyashree from PESIT). And those meetings also produced a lot of good feelings.

Here's to more such!