The Curious Case of Ken Jolly

No, this is not a Sherlock Holmes mystery or an Agatha Christie whodunit. It is a friend who renamed himself Ken Jolly. The story begins around 40 years ago in the coal mining towns of Kothagudem, and Ramagundam. We were kids then, and had a lot of older friends. Kiran was one among them, his full name being Kiran Kenjale. He completed his engineering from VRCE (now called VNIT) at Nagpur and went to Texas Tech at Lubbock in the U.S. for his Masters. But what he did after that was amazing (to me at least). He figured out that he did not want to be an engineer, that he could maximise what he wanted out of life by becoming a real estate broker.

Why a real estate broker? Because according to him, it required minmal skills and got maximum returns in terms of brokerage fees. And a lifestyle that allowed him to take long or short breaks from work to travel and experience things that most of us only dream about through our entire lives. He has probably been to every continent and more countries than I can even remember. He has done bungee-jumping, taken cruises in Alaska, and visited Rio several times.

I think it's also a tribute to his market-orientation that he changed his name from Kiran Kenjale to Ken Jolly because it made it easy for customers to remember it, and give him their business. As a marketing professor, I think that is sheer genius! He came visiting yesterday to IMT Nagpur with his wife Neena, and we had a good time meeting up after a long time. His brother Prakash Kenjale was a sort of legend at TCS, where he worked a long time, and in a curious turn of fate, TCS is here today for campus recruitments. Amen!