Buddies - On Making Friends

 This Bud's For You was the tagline of Budweiser.. now that I am wiser, I see some sense in that, though I never liked the beer, after being bred on the King of Good Times, or Kingfisher. The Mexican ones were more up my street..but I am digressing. This is about bud-dies..making buddies.

Two new, and two old buddies- made through a Play directed by Shweta Kushal at IIM Indore first. And then, through an impromptu invite for a pizza. Prachi Jain, Pratishtha Batra, Neeti Ingole (she turned out to be an alum of IIMK too) and Aakansh with me at a year end meetup. 

So I have these major kinds-

School buddies

College buddies

MBA class buddies

Ex-student buddies

Office buddies

Single Malt Buddies

Golf Buddies

Niece/nephew buddies

Chaddi buddies from home

Facebook buddies too, who I may not even have met.. though I try.

Blasts From the Past

Been meeting friends and students from the past who are now friends. Gives you a great feeling to see what they are up to, in the case of students, and in the case of friends, to see how they have aged (ripened). A bit of both happened, recently.

 PESIT alums Siddhant and Aishwarya (above) I met after quite a few years, and their little cute daughter for the first time.

Prabhakar and I checked out the Single Malt collection, with Mona Lisa smiling down at us-we were like the Columbuses of Single Malt discoveries a few years ago, and have now achieved the status of We Have Seen it All- almost!

Also had a chance to meet IFIM alum Bharath Shenoy again after a while, and found he's a globe-trotting researcher. And attended the Ganesh Chaturthi with Muthu and Vasanti at their place too. He like me, is a member of the Two Daughters' Club. Seems to be enjoying his time off from Marketing Research these days. When will my turn come? (Mera number kab aayega, in Hindi).

A recent trend I have noticed is that I first meet people on facebook, and then in person. So it was with Shatakshi and Varun, a couple from IIM Indore who I had never met except on fb. Meeting them at home though, it seemed like we had known each other for a long time- a homely feeling.

Red Corner Notice

I find the colour red very interesting. But red corner notices, even more so. I am hereby issuing (sorry, Interpol) a Red Corner Notice -

-for all those who promised to write a digital marketing case and did a disappearing act- barring one or two who are in the process, and have said so.

-for all friends who promise to go to Goa and then forget all about it.

-for those who promise to get me a Single Malt from trips abroad, and..you get the rest.

-for those who make promises to meet (in Pune, Indore, elsewhere), and go to the Maldives or Mauritius (or Agra) instead.

These will change into search warrants after a reasonable time has elapsed.
 

Snobbery

Snobbery was a preserve of the elite (read English Lords/Ladies, Royalty, Page 3 crowd) once. Not so today. Anyone can be a snob, due to the democratised universe that we inhabit today.

I tried my hand at it the other day. Someone offered me a drink. I took one look at it, turned my nose up and said, "This is not a single malt." As if I had been born with a silver tap pouring single malts in my mouth.

It had no impact on the guy who had offered me a drink. "Take it or leave it" he said. So I swallowed my pride, and then some.

Then I tried it in a conversation about sports the other day. Cricket, as usual, threatened to dominate the conversation, so I saw an opportunity arising for some snobbery.

I said, "Cricket used to be a gentleman's game, but what with the big money and 'quick-fixes', it is one for the rogues. Golf, on the other hand, remains pristine, a true gentleman's game."

"Oh yes, only, there are a few ladies involved off-course with the gentlemen sometimes," an unpleasant guy in the group retorted. Since the evidence had been all over the newspaper tabloids over a prolonged period, I couldn't stick to my stand and revel in my sports snobbery.

Then I tried the ultimate trump card- country snobbery. I was in a crowd of mixed nationalities, and I tried the age-old trick of talking about age-old achievements of our country in various fields of human knowledge and endeavour.

"We had some great mathematicians, you know, like Aryabhatta, and many down the ages."

The response was swift and unexpected. "Why do you need a great mathematician to compute the single digit growth rate of your GDP today? You are Ok with learning some basic arithmetic, right?"
I was nonplussed, and vowed to come back with some excellent rejoinder to restore the snob's pride of place. I am still thinking...

Indus Pride Beers

I got to taste a newly relaunched beer in four different flavours recently. The brand is called Indus Pride, and is produced by SAB-Miller in India. It is flavoured with spices such as cardamom, coriander, cinnamon and so on. There are more variants, which are seasonal and available only at certain times. It was at the house of a friend who works there, so it was a great experience learning first-hand about the relaunch at a premium price. A first for an India-based brand? Maybe, at least for a product such as this.

But I also had the opportunity to taste an Indian Single Malt that has made waves internationally. The Jagdale group makes it near Bangalore. It is called Amrut single malt, and one of their creations has been ranked among the top ten malts by a respected critic/ranker. I liked it, and it is 'duty-free' to Indians, and therefore significantly cheaper than the malts from Scotland. A good option to have, apart from the Laphroaigs and the Ardbegs and the like, which one can pick up at the duty free shops. Also found some imported (read French) brandy that is of high quality and sold in Goa, during a recent survey.

Not So Secret Service

A joke that I had not heard about 9-11 times.

The Prime Minister of China called President Bush to console him after the attack on the Pentagon: "I'm sorry to hear about the attack. It is a very big tragedy. But in case you are missing any documents from the Pentagon, we have copies of everything."

I also had a chance to taste the single malt whiskey that India is famous for-yes, it's called Amrut, and it's made in Bangalore. But it is hard to find, apparently. So I am glad I got that item on the bucket list out of the way. It tastes pretty good, incidentally. I would put it in the top ten, after Ardbeg, Laphroaig and Lagavulin- the Islay malts with a peaty, smoky flavour.