Concepts and Characters I like From Books

 I like the idea of literally rolling in wealth, like Richie Rich did.. he had a room full of dollars. Also, having a butler- his was called Cadbury.

The concept of a magic potion used by Asterix, brewed by Druid Getafix- that's s great idea.

A mouse like Mickey, and a talking duck like Donald.. great imagination, Walt Disney!

Nero Wolfe, a gourmet AND a detective.

Hercule Poirot with his egg-shaped head, and little grey cells. Mon ami, Mon cher, whatever, ..pardon my French.. Oo la la!

Phantom's skull cave, with a waterfall covering its entrance, is a masterstroke, according to me. Mandrake's hypnotism too.

James Bond- I never read the books, but he rose from the books to become the colourful character everyone wanted to Bond with...

Of course, Sherlock Holmes, with his deductions based on observation. Market researchers could learn a few things from him.

All the Enid Blyton characters who were as different as chalk and cheese. Fatty, in particular. And Goon.

Thomson and Thompson.. and Captain Haddock..

Being A Thought Leader

 It's not about just being a disruptor. Thought leaders have to qualify on multiple counts to be thought leaders. 

They should be different, of course, but ahead of their times. Visionary is some sense, and breaking the mould.

They may or may not have a lot of followers, but their thought could gain acceptance later, as has happened in radical theories about the shape of the earth, or the Earth going around the Sun in Astronomy, or many others.

Nobody accepts anything new without kicking and screaming. So a lot of antipathy can sometimes be a precursor to acceptance, though not always.

You can have thought leaders in Feminism, LGBT rights, or simpler things, like new ways of teaching, discovery or looking at cures for hitherto incurable diseases. Any field of human endeavour, really. We wouldn't be high-fliers without the Wright brothers, right?

P R and Narayana Murthy

 P.R. is  Public Relations. And one of the finest practitioners of this individually was, in my view, Mr. Narayana Murthy. I.T. industry as a whole benefited from it, and Infosys also, of which he was a founder with a few partners.

He would tirelessly go and speak at various forums, on various subjects, and I have heard him twice myself. At PES Bangalore, and later at IIM Indore. He spoke about the industry, of course, but also about the quality of education in India, etc. Having an opinion and expressing it are two different things. He was a rare combination of these two. He did this for more than two decades, probably three.

Combined with his company's story of how it brought I.T. to Bangalore, in the days when it was not easy to do I.T. from India. His story about importing a computer (for his company) through the red tape that was Indian bureaucracy also became a talking point for a long time.

The company also did a few things right, including increasing transparency in accounting- their Annual Report was a THING- and listing on an American stock exchange. But his use of personal P.R. techniques added a lot of value, in my opinion.

This Blog

 This blog of mine has had 772255 views till date, across some 2550 blog posts. Even I am impressed, in this day and age, that there are some regular readers, who have subscribed to the feed, and I assume, read some of the posts. The stats reported say many views are from USA, but that might be because of location of the servers, as somebody pointed out earlier. 

Also surprising because I am mostly a writer of text, though I understand that visual content is consumed more widely and easily. I have only stuck to photographs of people or things that I have clicked, or someone who was with me has clicked, when I use these. Very rarely, shots of celebs or book covers. This year, I posted 175 times, till date. Not bad, approximately averaging one post every two days.

Anyway, I am grateful for the fact that you are one of those who have read the blog, or some of it, from time to time. Some bloggers have a huge fan following, and I am amazed. I would probably only want a few comments now and then. Not much else to ask for.

Meeting People in Person

 You could say, it's a great feeling. Say that again. Even if you have met online for years. I have been meeting many people recently who I mostly met online before. Past students, or colleagues. Met a few recently at IIM Kozhikode and IIM Raipur, where I had been on a scouting trip to recruit faculty tow ork with us at Prestige University. Also met some who gave me an endorsement for my Marketing Research book- even non-marketing faculty. Anyway, we hope to meet again, somewhere.. a while ago, in Bangalore, I met Divya Sisodiya and Meenu Mynam, and in Mumbai, met Swati Jain, after a decade or more, and it was fabulous catching up.

Some old and new friends from academia, Calicut airport.

Calicut Beach with Ravi, above, and with Payal Anand, IIMK.

Former colleagues, and current doctoral students (below), IIMK.

Indira, a colleague at a sister institution at Gwalior

Above, IIM Raipur faculty in marketing. Below, Saumya, my former teaching assistant at IIMI.

Ishita and Anurag, in Indore recently.

Divya Sisodiya, at Bangalore. With her creation she gifted me.

Pratima Gaikwad in Hyderabad, above, and Meenu Mynam in Bangalore, below.

Below- Swati Jain, of IMT N and BoB, in Mumbai

Why Driving is Over-rated

 Like many other things, driving is vastly over-rated, in my view.

First off, you have several factors that you have no control over, when you drive. Other drivers, who seem to be nitwits to use a mild phrase, mostly.

Second, you have to contend with traffic. And signals. My God, that RED circle stays with you for eternity.

The zigzagging morons. Less said the better.

Highways which earlier were a paradise, now have a serpent. The toll booths. Not sure for whom that bell tolled, but these toll for you.

Best of all, those who come straight at you, driving on the wrong side. And then give you a mouthful when you so much as stare at them... 

Well, that is why I drive no longer. Unless my life depends on it.

Driverless cars? I am all for them. Let the machines fight it out. May the best robot win. And why stop at cars? Let's have driverless scooters and motorbikes too..the more the merrier! What say?

Gwalior Fort and Beyond

 I visited Gwalior Fort for the first time, among other things. Thanks to some work at the Prestige Institute there. Gwalior is a historic city, and a nice place to spend some time in. By road, also crossed Shivpuri, the hometown of Manuja Seth, a former student I met at NMIMS Bangalore. Also met one of my fb friends, Indira Sharma, who is a faculty member in the HR/OB area at Prestige. She and us (my colleagues Dr. Chandrashekhar and Dr. Sohni Roy) went around the city in some spare time we had. The Director, Dr. Nishant Joshi, took good care of us too.

Pics from the outings.