Met IK Gautam, classmate from IIMB, on a visit to Kolkata from his place, Alwar. He runs a farm there, and mostly lives on the farmhouse too. His friend was with him, and Dash and I made the rest of the quartet. A long conversation on many things under the Sun, our kids included, was a part of this outing. At Tollygunge Club.
IKG on the left, his friend on the right. Dash and I, centre.
Of Sirs, With Love
This
piece was written to commemorate a guest lecture in a visiting faculty’s class.
The visiting faculty was Prof. Kalyan Das. The style is based on a popular
column in a mag called Blitz, then edited by Russi Karanjia.
The SLAVE who’s a clinical psychologist
gave a gueshtu lecture yesterday on ‘Managing Change’, instead of the SLAVE who
is WELFARE. . Samajh gaye na?
A large part of his opening was punctuated
by shrieks and creaks of a tortured door- opened by the late Lateefs (and
Lateefas) at regular intervals. The speaker paused at the twentieth
interruption while saying “For instance, how do you sell home computers?” (CRE…AK)
Looking at the door with trepidation, he
continued, “We’ll see how….when the door is closed.”
He exhibited brilliant wit while narrating this
one about how children relate to SCHEMAS- the images of things they see.
A child which sees a dog for the first time
might say to its father, “Daddy, dog!” and point to it.
The pleased father, feeling proud of his
child, may respond, “Shabhash beti. You are all set for the IIM already.”
Such was the KINSHIP effect that Jockey (a
classmate) asked 3-minute-each questions full of words and containing some
sentences. What JUNTA now wonders is- Who is next in the line of the
illustrious SLAVE dynasty? K.C. SLAVE (the sweet shop) or our own SLAVE-H
(Dash, another classmate) who is a LINE ?
-In collaboration with Rajan of India aka
ROI.
Ok, it was called PGDM then, but that's not relevant. I learnt a few things apart from the course.
1. There are a lot of smart people in the world, some smarter than me.
2. There are a lot of nice people in the world, some nicer.. yes, you got it.
3. Multiple styles of teaching exist, and they also work.
4. Computers are not essential to the learning process- we had none. Internet neither.
5. Group work is fun, and works- even with one or two shirkers
6. Extra curriculars can teach you a lot.
7. Having fun is as important as not having it...
8. Jargon can be fun.
9. Document things for posterity. I still have handwritten, and cyclostyled stuff.
10. Have a Yearbook. Helps at reunions.
We finished our MBA in 1984. So our 40th year after was 2024. We pushed it to January 2025 for the celebration in Goa. We enjoyed meeting around 40-42 colleagues and spouses who added spice to the proceedings. One spouse, Anu Venkitaraman, took up the responsibilty of taking group pics of various groups during the event. Some representative pics-
I have a few good pics from our days at IIM Bangalore. Actually, for our Yearbook, I had shot block-wise group photos of all the floors in the hostel. Most of these are available, and take us on a nostalgic journey.
A simple vintage pic of IIM Bangalore got 67,000 impressions in a day on Linkedin (now, 116,000 at last count- update). Lots of current students were amazed by what they saw- a totally different, young campus in the making. Our generation must have felt nostalgia.
Making me nostalgic, was this pic, the view from my room - G 10. Where I spent 2 beautiful years.
Another post that recently got a lot of views was a pic of a pile of books that I have authored/edited. That was gratifying.
This is about classmates, starting from school. For many years, we never met. Only a couple, like Ram Kumar Seshu, I met in Hyderabad or Bangalore. Rajiv Krishnan too, just a couple of years ago.
Then, suddenly, we had a major gathering, with about 17 classmates showing up last year at Hyderabad. Before that, a smaller one had happened with 7-8 people (men, it was Boys' school)-Kamlesh hosted it, on a visit from the U.S.
Above- With TAS Vijayaraghavan, IIMB classmate, at XLRI. His wife is also in the pic. Met him after many years, in 2024.
College (Osmania engineering), I remember a large gathering at Begumpet around 12-14 years ago. After that, off and on, I met Venugopal Reddy in Delhi, along with a few visitors, Nagarjuna in Harihar and elsewhere- Indore, recently. And we went on a Bheemeswari outing courtesy G Sreenivas, near Bangalore. We also met at Makrand Deshpande's invitation at a wedding in Pune. KSM I met when he was at Euroflex too, and wrote a case on the company's international marketing effort as well.
Bangalore IIM classmates I have met in large and small groups, or individually, more regularly. Prabhakar introduced me to Single Malts, and I am grateful. Killer and Smoke Smoke Ramesh in Bangalore, Hassled Ramesh in the U.S., Banny and Ravi in the US, Venky, Cheenu, Anu, Chitra, Sekhar in Mumbai, Sandhya in Nagpur, Shanks, Bishop and Paddy in Chennai, Sajeev in Lucknow and Chennai recently, Rajan of India at Indore, Bangalore, Mumbai, Dash multiple times in Kolkata, Goa, Indore and Delhi, Vijjy at XLRI after years, Uday and Suma at Calicut and Mumbai, Sardie and Sujit in Goa, Harish in Delhi, Bangalore, are some warm and fuzzy memories. Snail in Delhi and Indore too. Dunhill in Lucknow.
A rich source of guest faculty is my class from IIM Bangalore. Therefore, we at Prestige University have started tapping into this. We have had B.B. Dash, Ph.D. from IIT Delhi in addition to the MBA, recently. The latest was Shankara Rajan, also nicknamed Rajan of India, as a guest faculty in H.R. He was head of H.R. Transformation at Reliance Industries in his last corporate foray.
Pics from his visit-
Even more recently, in March/April 2024, we had Dr. Sunil Gupta, an IIT Delhi Ph.D. once again (after IIMB). We co-taught a course called Business Research Methods.
We don't have to repeat the same things we did. Alongside, look for new experiences. It's possible. Some new things I can remember from 2023.
Made a new friend from Argentina. Veronica is a guest faculty at Prestige University, and brings a unique flavour to the classroom with her KPMG Spain stint. She's a great conversationalist, warm and has a great sense of humour.
Went to Nagaland-Kohima and Dimapur- for the first time. One needs to visit this area and learn about it, I think. Also went to Shillong, though it was touch and go.
Met Ananya Nandi De and family. She is an alum of IMT Nagpur, and a member of a music group I belong to. Met her again in December, last week.
Met Meghana Khadilkar, finally. At Pune. IMT student, but we hadn't met.
Made new friends among the Ph.D. students at IIM Indore. Neeti Ingole and Pratishtha Batra are two of them, (in the pic with old friends Prachi and Akansh)
Had a great time giving a keynote speech at NIFT Gandhinagar, with fashionable people, beautifully dressed, all around me. Dhanali Sandesara and Mehak even started following my blog!
We had this tradition of a Tear Book, with some memories of the institute, along with photos and writeups about each student. I, along with Dash, partner-in-crime and co-editor, wrote/edited the one for our batch at IIM Bangalore. Our MBA batch of 1982-84. I recently found some later years' Year Books at the campus, and took a few pics from them, just for keepsake nostalgia.. here are some. We included nicknames, like some of these do.. The name remains IIMpressions.. iimpressive?
It is not often that I post from an airport while in transit.. but I have the time, and the laptop, so why not? Life is transitory, so why not the posting while transiting?
Had an interesting couple of days at IIMB, what with a symposium on Digital Innovations, Financial Inclusion and sustainability.
Got to listen to a lot of experts on the subject. I liked the HDFC rural/agri initiatives the best. Mahindra also had some interesting new businesses aimed at the rural population in terms of housing loans..
As an aside, met a couple of former colleagues - one of whom is transiting, out of academia into industry- Google, to be more precise.
IIM Bangalore has a few new classrooms, of which I saw one from the inside. A U-shaped seminar hall (pic above).
Interesting to meet a childhood friend after a few decades too. I have written about that elsewhere.
