Paul John Distillery Visit

 Just went on a tour of the distillery in Cuncolim, Goa. Amazing! It's a beautiful visitor centre, and our our guides.. two young men and a young lady- were very good.

Asmita took us around the distillery, and showed us what appears to be a simple process of making great whisky. Obviously, it's not so simple! We enjoyed learning about the process, that begins with Barley being converted to beer, and then distilled to make Whisky.

Bourbon casks, for aging

Some products.. there's also an XO Brandy, and Fireball -a cinnamon whisky.

Roulette is also their brand.. 

Asmita, who did a great job explaining the process..

Copper stills, above.

The Peat coms from Scotland, Barley from the Himalayan plains, and water is local. Yeast is also a special variety of Brewer's yeast. Tasted one sip from an in-process 61% alcohol beaker too. 

3 years aging in India is equal to roughly 7 in Scotland, due to the heat. And losses due to evaporation are bigger here. Our malts may not carry an age statement for those reasons, but they are good!

Malts I have Tried

 Glen Grant, Aberfeldy, Singleton, Glenfiddich, The Glenlivet, Laphroaig, Lagavulin, Smokehead, Ardbeg, Balvenie, Caol Ila, Dalmore, Jura, Dalwhinnie, Talisker, Old Pulteney, Loch Lomond, Ledaig, Glenmorangie, Kilchoman, Bowmore, Ardmore  among the Scottish ones.

Indri, Amrut, Paul John, Kadamba, Rampur, Kadamba and a couple more of Indian ones.

Yet to taste the Japanese Malts.

Pics From MBA

 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.

From the tank. And groups..

Alibag, where we stayed at a Grindlays cottage.

My room with a view, and the Tank.

Activities

 I have attended conferences, and organised a few.

I went to a few conferences abroad with Jayasimha, my colleague at IIM Indore. These were in Japan (Beppu), Cambodia (Phnom Penh), Vietnam (Hanoi), Sri Lanka (Colombo). 

Organised a few at IIMK, from IMT Nagpur at Goa. The latter, 4 editions, with Harsh Halve as a collaborator. Tripti Shrivastav assisted in the first, as an RA.

Music group - attended two physical meets at Hyderabad and Bangalore. Smaller meets at Chennai, Pune, Mumbai, Kolkata and Bangalore.

Parties with friends all over. Bangalore with Anshita and gang, Savitha, Vandana, Anushka, Divya Sisodiya, Bharath Shenoy, Mumbai with Meghna Sinha, Meghana Joshi, Tosha Dubey and Abha, Sirisha and Khyati, Sheetal, Swati Jain, Kedar Muley and Ravi Mittal, Pune with Meghana Khadilkar, Harshad Lunavat, Pushpinder, Anusha Soni, Delhi with Prachi Jain, Abha, Ananya Nandi Dey, Nikita Kumar/Ray, Shruti and Aditya Naag, Jaya Dulani Sardana, Padmapriya, Shweta Agarwal, Sharmishtha Singh and Sunil Kataria, Hyderabad with Jogeswari, Indore with Neeti, Pratishtha and Akansh...

Groups of classmates in Bangalore, and Hyderabad and now, Goa next week. Bangalore with Veronica, Kolkata with Dash, Shakti and Sudeshna (missed Roopsha).

Bhagyalakshmi and Shraddha Nigdikar at Mumbai, Faculty colleagues at Nagpur and Bangalore and Chennai and Coimbatore too, apart from Golf at Kodaikanal Munnar and Wellington. 

Golf at ASC with Dr. V, and with Venu at Hyderabad. Also with Muthu at KGA, and Sunil at Hubli. Belgaum wth Sadanand, Pattaya with lots of people led by Golftripz, ..

Weddings- Coimbatore, Hyderabad, Mumbai were the latest in a long list. Aditi Prabhakar in Bangalore where I took some good pics. At homes of friends, in Delhi IIT, Chennai, Bangalore, and other places. 

The Role of Jargon

 Jargon makes the world go around, Your Honour. Or so it would seem. Lawyer/court jargon, management/corporate jargon, Medical jargon, and so on.

A friend at IIM had constructed a matrix for generating management jargon. He created three columns, with complex words in each stack. Random mixing of any three- one from each column- generated a new term. Instant Jargon Generator was the name he gave it. It was great fun!

Maybe jargon is a shortcut for communicating with people in the same field, but it also leaves others mystified, most of the time. 

I learnt some law jargon by reading Erle Stanley Gardner's Perry Mason series. Habeas Corpus, for example.. Mandamus or something similar too.. anyway, I rest my case. You go figure if it helps, or hinders ..

Sangeet Manapmaan - Film Review

 A classic being remade into a film. A new trend in Marathi films. Commendable attempt, good to view on the big screen. Though it reminded me of Bahubali, with a fighter leading lady - without over-the-top special effects. 

Subodh Bhave does a good job as the outsider who wins the heart of the Army commander and later, his daughter. Vaidehi Parshurami, as the daughter Bhamini, is equally good. (Balgandharva played her, in the original play, 100 years ago). Sumeet Raghavan as the kaba mein haddi, is competent. Others too.

Music is very good, and a strong point- though it stretches the length of the film. Worth watching is my view.

I am a Fan of...

 Mostly, non-celebrities, with a few exceptions.

People who have no airs.

Those that have interests in interesting stuff- books, films, plays, music, painting, writing..

Those who express themselves freely on any subject.

Those who like to travel, and are willing to discuss or share the experience.

Those who don't care about the age (mine) or number of years between meetings.

Have been meeting such people now for a few years, and have a Mutual Admiration Society going with most..

Jilabi- Marathi film review

Swapnil Joshi and the rest of the cast - Prasad Oak, Parna Pethe .. nails it, in this suspense film, with a super cop and a villain who is tough to figure out. Enjoyed every moment. Has a taut screenplay, with action as its watchword. 

A cop is tasked with solving a murder in a business family, and what he unravels is much more than he bargained for.

Rarely do Indian films do well in this genre. Also, no frills such as songs, so the story is king. A good decision, like in Ittefaq, many years ago.

The twists in the story keep you hooked. A good thing in themes of this type, with intrigue. Jilabi (jalebi) is an apt name too.

Nothing Like Lear- Review of the Play

 Rajat Kapoor has directed Vinay Pathak in this solo act, which was staged at Pune recently. I caught it, and was pleasantly surprised to see the Director greeting us at the exit. Shook hands, and told him it was very good. You may recognise the names as actors from Bheja Fry, a few years ago.

This was delightful, and covered a lot of ground. Interactive, with a few jokes directed at the interactive audience as well. Pathos, comedy, tragedy, and great solo acting, in a clown's costume. Reminded me of Mera Naam Joker. 

Holding people for more than 90 minutes itself is huge, in my view. I have seen Naseeruddin Shah and Arundhati Nag do it, so it's not impossible, but it's tough.

The accent he used is typical Bambaiya, with a touch of the Bandra crowd, which the Mumbai crowd will identify with. But a must-watch for theatre lovers.

Meeting an Ex Student

 Usually, I am not very talkative. But in the right company, I can hold a long conversation. Happened again in the company of my friend Swati Jain, ex-IMT Nagpur. Met and discussed all topics under the Sun that one can, our lives, and work included. Sherlock Holmes and Korean serials were some that I remember. Her batchmates including her roomie Aditi Atre too, and others like Ishita Modi, Pushpinder, Jaya Dulani Sardana and others. And Dance classes, Palmistry, Astrology, Goa trips, Bhopal (she's from there), Alumni meets, Professors of Finance, Jain food etc.. This was only our second meeting, but did not feel that way..

Sankranti Outing

 With Prestige University colleagues at Shreemaya. Celebrated with great food and conversation- 

Celebrations

 What is a celebration? A moment in time that we think is special in some way- a birthday, an anniversary, a new job, start of a new year, and so on.

Pic- On our way to see Orchha sights, from our Riverside Resort. (Betwa river)

But isn't there something good happening every day? For instance, you ate something nice, a kid smiled at you for no reason, or you did something right. Or, your Boss praised you (OK, that's rare, forget that!).

So why don't we cut a cake or eat a poha or a dhokla- what you eat/cut is immaterial here) every day?

Because we feel that we are living a mundane life. The truth is, it's anything but mundane. At least in my experience, there are 5 or 10 things that are unique, happening to us every day. If I try listing some of them, it'll turn into an essay that's too long to read at one sitting. But just an example-

Take an academic setting, from a student's point of view. Meeting your classmates, learning something new from a class (I was going to say Teacher), or a book you found in a library (what's that?) or a conversation with anyone, planning for an event, a case study discussion that surprised you, are just a few things that can happen in a single day. 

So it is with life elsewhere. It throws up surprises, many of them good. So each day might be worth celebrating, barring very few.

Purush- A play in Marathi

 Written by Jaywant Dalvi, a revival of this play is on in Pune.

A powerful indictment of the way a woman is treated in our society by the powerful patriarchy. It has a lot of messages about politics, corruption in public life, the susceptible judiciary, and so on.

The story unfolds through an upright social worker, whose daughter is in love with a low caste revolutionary. But when push comes to shove, he and most others turn their back on her. Desperate for revenge and to teach a powerful man a lesson, she takes the law into her own hands, after the justice system fails her.

A lot of twists in the plot and good dialogue, acting keep you engrossed. It's a social statement within a play. Actors including Spruha Joshi playing the young girl excel.

Book Review of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf

 Brilliant material for a play. I first saw the movie, and by chance, found the book last week. The movie was very good, starred Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton (he was a prof.). The play is of course the raw material, and is worth a read.

The whole story unfolds in the home of the couple, where another young couple (a professor and his wife) are invited to get to know each other. And they get personal, and skeletons tumble out, one by one. Of ambition, or lack of it, and extra-marital flings by the professor's wife, and a gold-digger (the younger husband).

By the way, the play has nothing to do with Virginia Woolf, the author. Just a song the characters sing.. that says, Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Book Review of Amol Palekar's Memoirs

 It's called Viewfinder in English. I read the Marathi version.

It has a lot of content that I was not aware of. I liked it for its personal tone and insights into how theatre works in Marathi and Hindi at least. Both mainstream and parallel categories. He also interacted with Bengali playwrights, and directed Badal Sircar's plays like Juloos. 

He has a soft corner for Jaidev, who scored music for Gharonda and Ankahee (he also co-produced this with Jayant Dharmadhikari, my BIL). 

His attempts to get out of the boy next door characters in Hindi films, and attempts to make films about taboo topics including LGBT starring subjects gets a mention. Also how Nana Patekar got after him for that role in Thoda Sa Roomani Ho Jaayen. And did it so well!

Hrishikesh Mukherjee (Gol Maal, Naram Garam) and he shared a bond. And of course, Basu Chatterjee, who gave him 3 hits in a row- Rajnigandha, Chhoti si Baat and Chitchor.

Those who like theatre, and his kind of films will enjoy this memoir.

Vintage Pics- 1961 and 1978

 Found some vintage pics of mine from 1961 and so on, while digging up the archives. Here are some-

With my brother (above)

1978, Kashmir trip and Shikara ride (left) with parents, and my sister in Pahalgam (right)

Below, me in 1961- about a year old

With my Mom and brother, above 

and with Suhita Thatte, cousin, below

New Year Party 2025

 Ok, remember to sign cheques with 2025 as the year- if you sign any. Our party heralding the year was with cousins and their kids, or some grandkids. Held at Pune, we had participation from Mumbai and Australia, and the US.