Students' Day

 I just learnt that today is World Students' Day. It is important to note that Teachers' Day is in September, and a different day! Anyway, irony apart, it's nice to celebrate students, if you are a teacher. 

My first students were Undergrads in Business at Clemson University. The thing I most remember about them- around 25x3 students each semester was that they were courteous, ignorant about computer usage- I was teaching them that- and usually nice to me though I was a Ph.D. student from India. There was a giggling duo of girls, in one of my classes. And Melinda, one student walking past a vintage car parked on campus, modeled for me when I asked her.. I was clicking the car, and she posed alongside.

My last full time teaching assignment was at IIM Indore. I taught a variety of courses there to PG and Ph.D. students, and also Executive MBA students. There were also a few MDPs for specific companies, such as Trent of the Tata Group (Retail) or Hindustan Petroleum.

In between were students at Lander College, USA, Xavier Institute, Bhubaneswar, Vignana Jyoti Hyderabad, Kirloskar Institute Harihar, IIM Lucknow, IIM Kozhikode, IFIM, PESIT (occasional teaching), IMT (very little teaching, but met lots of students, and continue to do so). 

At Prestige university I really did not teach much, except a few classes of Marketing Research along with Sunil Gupta.

And at JIS University, even less, just one or two guest sessions in our Management programs.

Mostly these were wonderful experiences, and I keep following Facebook and Linkedin updates on what many of them are up to, globally. Makes me quite happy. Also meet a few occasionally, on my travels.

Offices- Current and Past

 My offices in pics, over the years-

Memorable Moments- 1992-1995

 I was in Hyderabad most of this time.

Reconnecting with Alok's family in Hyderabad. We lived in the same building. Alok was my friend and mentor through college, admission to Clemson University and through my Ph.D. 

Meeting interesting colleagues like Thomas, Dayakara Rao and Sudha at Vignana Jyoti Institute.

A shoot we did for the first PGDM/MBA brochure. Set the stage for later ad material we did at KIAMS.

First batch of MBA- teaching them was fun. Deepa, Deepthi, and Ranjana Rudra are still in touch. Giri too, on fb.

Pooja was born, in December 1992. Daughter no. 2.

Saw a couple of good films, like Roja and Prabhudeva starrer Humse Hai Muqabla (remake of a Tamil original). It had an amazing dance sequence, Mukkala, muqabla, laila.. 

Also saw Darr, and the remake of Sleeping With the Enemy (shot in Greenwood, USA where we lived), which had a song 'Iqraar karna kushkil hai, inkaar karna mushkil hai, sung by Manisha Koirala on stage-my daughters' favourite). Nana Patekar starred as the villainish husband.

Mallus in My Life

There have always been some Mallus in my life. To begin with, there were the nuns in my convent, early in life. I remember one in particular, who taught Hindi, and pronounced all the bindis..hoom instead of hoon is what I mean.

Classmates, if any, were NRIs or at least non-natives of Kerala, until IIMB. Senior was called that to distinguish him from Junior- Nanda Kumars both. He was the genuine article from Kochi, along with one Uday Damodaran. Later in life, I had Rameshan as a colleague and Revi as a good friend, both from near Kozhikode. Revi was a cocktail expert, and we may have created and had hundreds in those two years. We also went fishing and on family picnics.

But in between, I also had a few students in Kirloskar Institute, some of whom were Gelf-returned. I am in touch with Vidya TC, Smita Mohan, Dheeraj even today. (here he is, with Jayasimha)

Later students include Sreeram and Gowri from IMT Nagpur, along with Unnikrishnan. Padmapriya became an honorary Mallu by acting in Malyalam films-she was also a student at Kirloskar.

Of course, since I worked in IIM Kozhikode, there were quite a few who worked there too- Unni the prof., and John (a couple of them), Shaji, Kunhikrishnan and Kurup (he usually had a flower in his ear, Indonesian-style) in admin., and many more. Of course, Uday was also there, as a colleague.

Thomas was a close friend at Vignana Jyoti, Hyderabad. Hilarious, and great at coining nicknames for people, he and I must have had a zillion biryanis at Garden restaurant, at Clock Tower. He had also worked at U.B.'s brewery before, and was always telling me how little the cost of beer is for the manufacturer.

My Favourite Students

This is not a recounting of all my favourite students over the years, because there are about a million of those, but a select sample. Many of these I remember because we are in touch on fb or otherwise. From many different institutes, because I have seen a few of those too...XIMB, Vignana Jyothi, PESIT, KIAMS, IIML, IIMK, IIMI, IFIM, IMT Nagpur and Ghaziabad..

Yamini, Aishwarya and Anjali Iyer, Shreyashi, Shruti, Harshad Lunavat, Abhinav Kamal, Pradyumna Mohanty, Bhagyashree aka Bugzy, Parul Kashyap, Hitansh, Vivek Anant, Dushyant, Sreeram, Anupriya, Anuja, Shivashankar, Murtaza, Aashish Chaudhary, Sheetal Garg, Anumeha Saxena, Anukeha Jain, Shafique, Nikita Kumar, Meghna Sinha, Adarsh, Jasleen, Pallavi, Vidisha, Kanika Mhendiratta....IMTians all, with a creative spark..actually many more, but this sample might be representative. Adding Ananya Nandi De, Abha Kulkarni, Ishita, Anshita, Rupam to that list as I met them a few times too. Abha, who was at IMT later on..

Deepa, Ranjana, Deepthi, Sudhir, Roopali, Giri, Sanchit, from Vignana Jyoti, Hyderabad.

Smita, Aditi, Nidhi (she's from Indore), Vidya, Swapna, Padmapriya (National Award winning actress afterwards), Dheeraj, Jogeswari aka Jogi (director at Golftripz), Nikhil Damle, Praveen, Jimmy, Siddharth, Aman, all from Kirloskar Institute at Harihar, an idyllic place if there was one. Anushka Mishra, who came to KIAMS later, after I had left.

Anusha, Siddhant Patnaik, Aishwarya, Sowmyashree Gonibeedu, Viju Varghese, Chaitra, Sonam, Sushmita, Sanjeev Undri, ..from PESIT.

Shreesha, Bharath, Aashneet, Veena, Nagendra, Monika Ghosh, ..from IFIM.

Anusha, Sapna, Tamros, Monika, Barleen, Bhuvneet from IIMI. And all the bunch who acted in The Importance of Being Earnest (many from IPM, such as Sanjana, Jasmine, Shrunga, Avik, Philip, Ayushi, and Urvaksh from PGP)

And some who weren't my students- a big group  of Ph.D. students at IIM Indore who I became friends with, some on the Golf course- Prachi Jain, Akansh Khandelwal, Neeti Ingole, Pratishtha Batra, Vartika Varyani, Geeti Mishra.