Creating Nicknames

Nicknames are always interesting. Chhotu and Motu are the garden variety ones, but if we exercise the grey cells, we could come up with newer, gooder- err, better-ones.

Example- Bhatinde ka tinda.

Here are a few names that my batchmates were called. (It seems as if there were many people fully occupied in coining nicknames rather than doing their MBA!)

R2D2 (Star Wars character), Tintin, UFO, Dangler, Gadfly (real name Gadkari),

Dede (inspired by a prof whose last name was Lele), Bond 003(this was a girl),

Shah of Kiraan (Kiran was his first name), Jerome K. Jerome (Jayram), Toddler, Bhau,

Mandrake (for Manglik), Gothix, Fu Manchu, Marcus Gundolius (guess who?)

Bishop, Thalaivar, Henry Fayol (for Srikant Payal), Dancing Queen (for a guy who danced his way into our hearts), Captain Haddock,

POM I, POM II and POM III (after a course called Production and Operations Management, which was not exactly the most liked. The OM stands for Old Man.

Endearing Film Characters

The two profs in Chupke Chupke are not professorial at all, and are funny in the extreme. Dharmendra and Amitabh in  roles that paralleled Sholay in quality, for me.

Sunil Dutt as Bhola in Padosan, Saira Banu as his haughty but music-loving neighbour.

Mehmood as a Charlie-Chaplin look-alike in Aulad. He sings "Jodi hamari jamega kaise jaani, hum to hain angezi, tum ladki Hindustani"with Aruna Irani in the film.

Om Prakash as Jijaji in Chupke Chupke, a lover of Shuddh Hindi.

Ramesh Deo and Seema Deo in Anand. Very real, and beautifully portrayed.

Jaya Bhaduri in Mili-slightly over-the-top, but her character was like that.

Keshto Mukherjee in all his films, playing a drunkard.

Soorma Bhopali aka Jagdeep in Sholay.

Pran as a Pathan in Zanjeer. Yaari hai imaan mera yaar meri zindagi, he sings in the film, and how!

Rajesh Khanna in Bawarchi-the goodness of his character comes through in each frame.

Deven Verma and Sanjeev Kumar in Angoor. Fabulously innocent.

Naseer and Ravi Baswani in Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro. Satish Shah in the same film.

Saeed Jaffrey in Chashme Baddoor.

Zeenat Aman in Hare Rama Hare Krishna, as the girl who gets into drugs.

Shreyas Talpade in Iqbal.

Circuit (Arshad) in Munnabhai MBBS.

Aditi (Genelia D'souza) in Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na played an easy-going teen. Reminded me of Ayesha Takia in Socha Na Tha.

Abhay Deol and Diana Penty in Happy Bhag Jayegi impressed me a lot.

The two girls in Dangal were great.

Kangana in Queen was also one of the best.

Phillauri- Film Review

I really hate to see good acting talent (Anushka and Diljit) being wasted because of a lack of understanding of the medium among key people. In this case, the director and scriptwriter-probably more of the latter.

Cinema is a medium that needs a strong screenplay, if it is to make an impact. This one moves too slowly, and is unimaginative, and the film badly edited. So it tests your patience. Most scenes should have been around one-third their length.

The story is mildly interesting, the period atmosphere is Ok, but it is all excruciatingly slow-moving. Unless you are a director who can make that riveting with emotion or some other peg, the result can be disastrous. When interest picks up for a few minutes, at the end, it again meanders through to a very slow last scene. Really stretching it.

Avoid if you can, is my opinion.

My Assistants Over the Years

I have had lots of them helping me do my job as a faculty. I was one in the U.S. too, assisting faculty with research. RAs or TAs by whatever name are a great help. These were the ones in the last five-seven years, who I am grateful to. From preparing material to some part of the grading when needed, they all increased my effectiveness.

At PESIT, I remember Anusha Narayan helping out with odds and ends.

Rachna Mittal was briefly my assistant at IMT Nagpur. She helped me with a leadership session that I had to prepare, for an executive program, among other things.

Tripti Srivastava and Abhinav Chandel were instrumental in running a Goa Case conference which we had run when in Nagpur IMT. Both were wonderful, and as I once told Tripti, did the work of five people (at other conferences we saw) single-handedly.

Abhishek Mandowra was my first AA here, and assisted me through a few courses taught to the EXec PGP and regular PGP (MBA by another name). Did a good job, without showing any stress.

Saumya Sharma was great with technology, and enthusiastically helped out on downloads for PPTs, case and empirical research. She was (is) also very nice to get along with, and upbeat. Went on to work at Hansa Research in Bangalore.

Veenus Tiwari assisted me for a while, and was competent at her work. She is now running a marketing area conference for us in July this year.

Sarada Mahanti is currently on the job, and I am quite relieved with all the back-end help in the massive class sizes that we deal with.

Machine- Review of the Hindi Film

Abbas-Mustan have made a comedy. It's just that they don't realize it yet. When the critics start comparing this to cult comedies like Gunda, they will.

Just watch the last ten minutes of this film (preferably free) to get what I am saying. No rhyme, reason, and brains. Lady meets her murderer who threw her off  a cliff, and instead of shooting him, listens to him spewing crap about 'love' for 6 minutes, accompanies him to another cliff, listens to him for four more minutes before he throws himself off, tired of waiting for her to do it. DON'T miss the ending, even if you miss everything else.

A mish-mash of Baazigar, Race and a few more films (wih inferior actors), and songs from yet other films, all badly mixed-up, makes up the rest of the story. Johny Lever is the only genuine piece of intended comedy. Actors are like zombies- sorry, machines. The cars used in the races have more emotion in them. They should all go to acting school.

Very funny, if you don't miss the end. Otherwise, somewhat..

Simple Joys

A smooth, well-used Hawaii chappal. When we lived in the U.S., this was a premium item that we carried from India, because the so-called flip flops sold there weren't Hawaiian-comfortable, I mean.

A belt which has enough holes in it to adjust to your changing waist-size.

A shoe that fits, and is comfortable to wear for a few hours.

A room at the right temperature-particularly, an airconditioned one.

A fan/light switch one can reach without getting up from bed. With all the technology around, why isn't this mandatory?

Passwords that remember themselves- biometrics, anyone?

Fog-clearing machines at airports-not so simple?

Not so simple ones- publishers who publish (and not argue about WHAT to publish), customer service people who serve customers, Indigo air-hosts/hostesses who serve you more than 10 ml. of water in a glass at slow speed, students who have no excuses, news channels that report news instead of hyperventilating, ...well,..this is going to take a long time. See you after a break. 

Jetsetting and Shopping Spiced Up

SpiceJet is to open retail stores, according to a headline I just read. I had seen online shopping, and on-board shopping before, but this brings me back to earth.

I have a few suggestions for them.

Have the same selection process for shopping assistants as they do for flight stewardesses/stewards.

As you enter the shop, they give you a warning to leave your senses behind, and shop till you drop. If you do drop, they have a first-aid kit that they demonstrate how to use. The mask drops down from above where you have dropped,...

Drone delivery is free, if you use the self-billing kiosk.

Makemytrip can offer pick-up and drop service for customers if they promise to buy goods for 2000 bucks.

You can shop in one town and have SpiceJet carry it with you as free baggage allowance to another.