Meet My Friends

 Out of a million, these are some-

Sheetal Garg

Abha Kulkarni+Tosha Dubey

Pratima Gaikwad

Ananya Nandi De

Swati Jain

Ishita Modi+Anurag

Manjari Mundanad

Harshad Lunavat

Harshad Sachani

Phalguni Bannerjee

Nishka Rathi

Sayantani Saha+Ananya Ghosh

Jogeswari

Natalija Lepkova

Anushka Mishra

Savitha

 Nidhi Kanungo

Divya Singh

Laura Shah

Samudrika Rasanjalee

Yapin Qiao (studied in Hyderabad)

Anusha Soni

Shraddha Nigdikar

Anushka halve

Rimjhim Verma

Leslie Price

Anupriya Pandit

Padmapriya Janakiraman

Anshika Abhishek Chetty

Bharath Shenoy

Prachi Jain and gang.

Pradyumna Mohanty

Abhinav Kamal

Garima Shah

Surbhi Mehta Chadha

Rupam Verma

Gowri and Sreeram

Shrabani, Karan and Sunita

Manoharan, SP Kumar

Pooja NM

Tanya Kar Srivastava

Lubna Nafees

Jayanti Ranjan

Pooja Daniel

Vidya TC+Swapna Gurijala

Akansh Khandelwal

Nikita Ray

Music group- Geeta, Dipti, Mohan, Rajni Verma, Milind, Anjalee, Namratha, Lakshmi, Indira, Rajan, Anoop, Naveen, Omprakash, Virender, Ravindra Marghade, Rina Das, Vijji Ganesh, Arpita, Nagendra, Jyothi, Venkates, Venkatrama Subramaniam, Mamta Bansal, Poonam Bhatia, 

IIMB- Prabhakar, Dash, Ramesh (Smoke), Hassled, Manglik, Venkatakrishnan, Shankara Rajan, Bishop, Sardie, Uday Damodaran

Anant Ram

TK Chatterjee

Arun Bhattacharyya

Veronica Thavonat

Jitendra Sharma, Maheswaran

Dhanapal, Vijayakumar, Gadgil, Yashad Gaur

Amit Kumar Gope

Mir Ali Husain

Smita Dabholkar Singh

Osmania- Venugopal Reddy, Phani, Nagarjuna, Suri, 

HPS- Adithya Padala, Kartik, Vinu, Ram Seshu, Nadir Sadruddin, Jameel, 

Quirks of Indian Pronunciation

 Where is prounouncing Pen stretched to become a pain?

Where in India would someone say Bholuputus (real story) and what does it mean?

Where is Mr. Vishwas and Mr. Biswas one and the same?

Where does one hear the 'd' in Bridge pronounced?

Where might Boss and Bus be pronounced the same way?

Where might people say Mani when then they mean money?

Player instead of pleasure?

Lovely Music Show

 Probably my 10th in the last 8 weeks-on July 15th, 2026. But another good one. Dr. Ajit Sant, Onkar Deshpande and Vilas Shinde did well on the male side, with Charuta Apte and Vidula Rao bringing up the female end. Particularly good were the Kishore Kumar numbers sung by each of them.. Chhoti si ye duniya, and Khwab ho tum ya, plus Haal kaisa hai janab ka, in paricular.

Audience Questions

I am talking academic events. Most of these claim they have time for a Q and A, with Q being audience questions. The problem is that speakers don't finish in the time allotted, so the questions remain un-questioned, so to speak.  

To be fair, not all questions that do get asked are great. Most are boringly predictable, and answered with lack of imagination. Anyway, it satisfies the questioner's thirst for knowledge, and the answerer's chance to be all-knowing.. or appear to be.

If there's a panel discussion, you can be sure that most will end up being a series of talks. The setup for the Powerpoints eats up a lot of time, and yes, the Questions are given 5-7 minutes, depending on how far lunch is. 

The Question is, what is the best way to get good questions. Maybe the speaker can build his own questions and answer them too.

Kirloskar Institute Days

 The pic shows us with the Founders/ Board Members. Mr. Rahul and Sanjay are in the top row, along with colleagues Niranjan Swain and Vijayakumar, and Sudhir and Pannerselvam, and KS Bhat.

I am with Mr. Vikram Kirloskar, Atul and Vijay Kirloskar (then Chairman of Kirloskar Group), and Capt. Murukesan, admin. head.

I had my best time working there, with great students (we selected them through CAT and interviews across India), good colleagues-staff and faculty. And of course, an 18-hole Golf course built next door by Mysore Kirloskar Ltd., which we could play on.

We designed the MBA/PGDM program from scratch, and also created ads on Video/Print for admissions. Before the PGDM, we were into training, and did 40 MDPs in a year on an average. Faculty were invited from IIMA and IIMB as well. We had a great library aimed at practitioners, and Harvard cases.

There was also a Cricket ground, Lawn Tennis and Squash court. Small batch sizes meant it was like extended family, and we knew the students closely. Like Achint, who used to miss breakfast regularly, from Batch 1. One student was nicknamed Kotler! One became an actress in Malayalam films post a corporate stint-Padmapriya. Jogeswari started a Golf tours company with a couple of others- Golftripz. I went on their first tour to Thailand for some wonderful Golf. 

Savitha, Nikhil Damle, Shrishail, Smita Mohan, Nishka Kumar/Rathi, Nidhi Kanungo, Vidya TC, Swapna Gurijala, Sudeshna Ray/Srivastava, and a lot of other students are doing extremely well in their chosen fields. Vikas Sethia has launched Mio Pods at airports. Many are in touch, twenty years after they finished MBA. Including staff, like Rajesh Dixit, Veena, Mahboob, Raghavendra, Karibasappa, Rajshekhar, Yuvaraj and Pavan. Sreekumar I met at a Golf course in Bangalore! 

Music Group Hyderabad Meet

 Met a few members of a music group, Mile Sur Mera Tumhara in Hyderabad, and spent time getting to know each other better. Namratha Muralidhar, Lakshmi Rajagopal and Sita Verghese (introduced by Kinnera Murthy to the group), me and my wife-an honorary member-made the party. We met in Begumpet.

Watching Telangana TG20

 The IPL style league in Telangana is on, and our team- mentored by my Brother-in-law, Hari, has reached the Finals after a few league matches and a Playoff. Many teams are named after districts. Khammam Aces, the one he is mentoring, happens to be the district of my birthplace, Kothagudem.

Anyway, Jio carried the matches live, and we also had a chance to discuss the games as we were on a short visit to Hyderabad where the games are being played. Some youngsters were really impressive, like Mickil Jaiswal in batting and Sahendra Mallu and Ved Reddy in the bowling. Saw Ved bowl a lovely googly to bowl one opposition player against Hyderabad.

Some pics-