Memorable Moments USA 1989-1991

Pic- Leslie with Anu in Greenwood. 

 Moving from Clemson in a U Haul which I drove. Mini-truck.

Meeting the diverse faculty in my department at Lander, and Leslie Price Bennett and her husband Bob. We really hit it off. 

Went to Yellowstone, and saw Mount Rushmore in 1990 in a trip with my parents. 

Visited Sheelu, a cousin, Jayashree, another cousin and their families in New York Staten Island, and Warren, Ohio. Prakash Kenjale in Detroit, and Kiran in L.A.

Made new friends- Athena and her family, and the Sonis, and some Gujarati families in Greenwood. Wilma Reeves from Home Science, Samrendra Singh and his wife Annie- we are still in touch.

Stopped in Europe, visited Greece for the first time and was captivated. Corfu, mentioned in Gerald Durrell's My Family and Other Animals, was on the route our Ferry took from Brindisi to Patras.

While we were in Amsterdam, heard about Rajiv Gandhi's assassination from a local newspaper.

Joined Xavier Institute in Bhubaneswar, on return to India.

Meeting Annie and AJ

 There were a few good friends we had at Greenwood, South Carolina, USA. Annie and Samrendra Singh were a couple we grew fond of in the two years we spent there. Samren was a colleague at Lander College where I taught, though in a different department. We hung around with them and sons Eric and AJ quite a bit, enjoying a few drinks and the company.

We left in 1991, to return to India. Since then, Samren passed away a year ago or so, and the kids were grown up. It was thus great to see both Annie Singh and AJ at Delhi last week. Just like we had met yesterday! Here are some pics!

The last one is of our Greenwood days, with AJ being on the couch with his dad!

Loss of a Friend

 Losing family and friends is always tough. Around two years ago, my mother passed away at the age of 91. Though she had a full life, healthy and satisfying-pathbreaking in many ways too-it was not very easy to digest the loss. COVID saw many lose their life, and even hearing those stories was tough. Now, I heard about the loss of a dear friend who was a pillar of support, and a great joy to be with, in Greenwood, where I taught for a few years before returning to India. He was a prof. at the same place too.

We would land up at his house unannounced, any time we felt like meeting up, Indian style. He was always welcoming, and insisted on us having a drink. His wife also became a great friend, and continues online to this day. His sons were little at the time, and I remember them prancing around, or playing Basketball out in the lawn.

Well, it's true that the bell tolls for everyone, but still, hard to bear some losses of dear ones.

American Graffiti

Ron Green. He was like a pillar of support in understanding the U.S. university system, and much more. He was also a great friend, and his family had an open invitation to a few of us to go visit them anytime. Even after he had moved out of Clemson, we visited him at Johnson City, Tennessee.

Mike Stahl: My guide for the thesis. A couple of seminar courses I took with him were very useful to me in understanding the subject of strategy, and much more. I developed my thesis proposal too, during one of his courses. He was quick in his reactions, and also accepting you if you made sense.

Chuck McNichols: Taught a lot of the multivariate statistics that I still find useful, and which shaped my textbook later on, on Marketing Research.

Steve Cantrell: An easy-going statistics prof. (yes, there are some), with a Southern accent. He was also instrumental in reviving basic statistics which I had forgotten, mostly.

                                       University football stadium, with my wife and parents.

Leslie Price: A prof. At Lander, she was a great friend. Fun-loving, and sociable. We haven't met after 1991, but my wife and I are still friends with her on facebook, and know her kids through the virtual medium.

 One of our abodes at Clemson (above). A trip to New York (below).

 Las Vegas and Mount Rushmore (above).

 Boating at Table Rock Mountain. and below, a truck I drove from Clemson to Greenwood while moving to my new job.

Living with Change of Places

I have lived in Bangalore, Bhubaneswar, Lucknow, Mumbai, Harihar, Hyderabad, Interior Andhra Pradesh, Calicut, Indore, Nagpur, Delhi, Clemson, Greenwood (both in the US)...

The upshot of all this is I feel like a global citizen, because of the variety of people that I have encountered in these places. To their credit, most people I came across have been Good to Great (to filch the bestselling title of a book), with just a few exceptions.

The things I remember the most are the good things - the Oranges, the kababs, the biryani, the pickles, the chaats, the chhole-bhature, the Chettinad chicken, the fish, the Pizza Huts (in the US, they were a favourite), the California Rose wine, Mahatma brand of rice (in the US), the Fall Colours (amazing work of nature), the lakes and mountains of South Carolina, Virginia, the Geysers and multi-hued terraces at Yellowstone, stalactites and stalagmites at Carlsbad Caverns (Arizona), Bryce Canyon and Grand Canyon, Muzappilangad beach (though I can't pronounce that), Edla vagu and Muredu vagu (these are rivers in A.P.), Nagarjunasagar, Kinnersani,...World Trade Centre (before they fell), Mandu, Lonar crater...you get the picture. If you don't, look at my facebook history.

That's me (centre-of the pic, not the Universe!) and Anil (left)- Oonche log, oonchi pasand.