Madhosh Kiye Jaa

Women Students and Colleagues

I had a lot of women colleagues and even more women students at all the institutes I have worked in. Some that I am in touch with offline or online, after a varying number of years since I met them at those places-

IMT Nagpur- probably the maximum number from here. Sheetal Garg, Ananya Nandi De, Abha Kulkarni, Tosha Dubey, Shraddha Nigdikar, Aditi Atre, Swati Jain, Nikita Kumar/Ray, Shreyashi Chakraborty, Shruti Sharma, Meghna Sinha, Meghana Khadilkar, Meghana Joshi, Meenu Mynam, Anshita Chetty, Rupam Verma, Gowri Kishore, Anusha Mamidanna, Twinkle Jain, Ishita Modi, Vrinda Khanna, Pallavi Bajpai (my twin, as per FB), Roshni Chhabra, Divya Singh, Sayantani Saha, Gunjan Nagpal, Nitya Pranav Chawla, Nidhi Naseri, Laura Shah, Noori Agarwal, Kanika Bhatia, Phalguni Banerjee, Priyanka Rajurkar, Karishma Dattani, Garima Shah, Esheeta Ghosh, and profs. Veena Pailwar, Smita Dabholkar Singh, Saleena Khan. Lots more, actually..

IMT Ghaziabad- Profs. Lubna Nafees, Sita Mishra, Jayanti Ranjan, Rashmi Agarwal,

IIM Indore- Prof. Shweta Kushal, Prof. Surbhi Dayal, Radha Ladkani. Students- Anusha Soni, Shatakshi Tripathi, Shailja Gupta Kapoor, Pratima Gaekwad, Sapna Patni, Prachi Jain, Neeti Ingole, Geeti Mishra, Vartika Varyani, Pratiksha Batra, Sanjana Rao Yarram, Shreya Surana, Anam Nuhi, Bhuvneet Raheja

Kirloskar Institute- Nidhi Kanungo, Achint Kaur, Savitha, Jogeswari, Sharmistha Singh, Shweta Agarwal, Padmapriya Janakiraman, Nishka Rathi, Sudeshna Srivastava, Pooja Daniel, Smita Mohan, Vidya TC, Swapna Gurijala, Anushka Mishra..

Prestige University- Prof. Juhee Singh, Sohni Roy, Divya Sairam, Ayushi Kabra, and students Bhavna Ojha, Annette, Jayantaa, Nandini, Roshni, Sakshi,.. and admissions team.

JIS University- Bratati Bhattacharyya, Surjyasikha Das, Moumala Bhattacharya, Shrabani, Debasmita, Ankita, Riya of admissions team, Sanghamitra Kundu, Sunita Samanta and Karanjyot Kaur from exam cell, ..

Vignana Jyoti- Deepa, Deepthi, Ranjana, Rashmi,

PESIT- Pooja NM, Yogita Shanbhag, Roopshree Narayan, Profs. Manasa Nagabhushanam, Bhagyalakshmi Venkatesh,

IFIM- Chaithu Gunapali,

Jeffrey Epstein

This is darker than any fiction an author could cook up. The scale of his operation, which went unchallenged for so many years, aided apparently by a lady who recruited other handlers or procurers, was unprecedented. We do hear of gangs of sex traffickers, but usually those are gangs of criminals. This was a gang of sophisticated socialites who routinely did sick stuff and blackmailed the elite of the U.S. and the world to perhaps arm-twist them into paying money, and using influence to silence any attempts to inquire into their crimes.

Thanks to some activists in the U.S., the DoJ has been forced to release the possible evidence of wrong-doing. Funnily, no American other than the lady Maxwell has been arrested, or charged, in spite of a lot of statements which are in the files. Other countries have done slightly better.

No idea when this will end or how, but surely, some more people must be guilty?

Ghalib in New Delhi- Play Review

Reminded me of Adrak ke Panje by Babban Khan. That was in the 70s. I think Sayeed Alam acted as Ghalib. He was brilliant. Ghalib takes birth again in Modern Delhi, is the basic storyline. He asks God to give him rebirth in either Varanasi or Delhi. God says there is already a tough guy with a beard in Varanasi. So he sends him to Delhi.

It is full of jokes about politics, society, education, corruption, language and everything in between. And includes all that is happening, therefore topical and relatable.

The best jokes were about Galgotias University, which was in the news recently. Also about Kejriwal, whose contribution was to give khaansi (cough) to the whole of Delhi.. and as a result, the IQ of Delhi went up (a joke about the current CM, who doesn't know the difference between AQI and IQ).

Also, many jokes about Kangana, Language deterioration, Haryanvis, Gurgaon, Yamuna-paar Dilliwasis, Modi's travels, Chara ghotala of Lalu Yadav, removal of Mughals from history books, and so on.

He says, If Kapil Dev can learn English, anyone can..

It's in the form of 5-6 skits, including Ghalib's encounters with a paanwali, a drunk, two taxi/auto drivers, a Punjabi landlady (with jokes about Punjabis included), a police constable who thinks he's a terrorist, and a couple of ad agency executives who try designing a campaign to make him famous- through photoshoots with Mallika Sherawat or Kareena Kapoor. Very engaging, a laugh a minute. Political and social satire at its best!

Meetings With Old Friends in Kolkata

Met Navneeta, Shakti Ghosal and Indukant Gautam of IIMB 1982-84 fame, in the last year.

Met Banikanta Mishra of XIMB- a colleague from 1991-92, on his visit. Also Amit Gope, a student from the same institute, who is settled in Kolkata.

Renewed contact with Ananya Ghosh, a Ph.D. scholar with St. Xavier's University, whom I had earlier met in XLRI at a doctoral consortium. She is close to finishing her Ph.D.

Akansh Khandelwal, a former Ph.D. student at IIM Indore.

Jasbir Matharu, a former colleague, along with Abhinav Chandel, both from IMT Nagpur.

Sayantani Saha, also a former student at Nagpur who is with ICICI Lombard.

And of course, Dash who is also an IIMB classmate, retired cop now settled here.