40th Wedding Anniversary

Neeta and I are grateful to all our friends who have been part of our life. By the grace of God, we have completed forty years together. It has been an exciting journey full of ups and downs, thrills and disappointments, joys and sorrows. But together we have pulled along.
We thank all of you who called, mailed, posted on FB/WhatsApp and those who made it to our small bash in Secunderabad. A short picture story follows.

The Dinner invite 

Glimpses of Ruby Anniversary Dinner at RSI Secunderabad.

In line with our love for outdoors, an 'Olympics' was organised for the guests by Ramya Champion. 

Col and Mrs Tiwari had created a medley of Hindi songs to weave last 40 years of our life. 

 Here is the link to eight minute video on Youtube. Apologies for high background noise due to monthly dance at RSI that night.

The cake

 Special thanks to Ankush and his school buddy Arun, who drove all the way from Chennai to be with us. Both of them shared the camera-- excellent job done Son.

Here is a collage created by Shilpa Bhargava from Jaipur. So creatively done. Thanks Shilpa.

Special thanks are also due to Col and Mrs Tiwari for the medley and Ramya Champion for the 'Olympics'.

We missed other members of our family who could not join us in person. But their blessings and love continues to drive us.
Once again, both of us thank all our friends, well wishers and family for their warmth, affection and blessings. We feel truly overwhelmed.

Thanks for browsing.

  - Harsh-the-Ghumakkad with Neeta Bhargava/ 29th Nov 2016

39th Anniversary

Thirty nine
going to forty
called the Ruby Anniversary.

Ruby is a precious stone.
So is life with the family.
God has been kind
to have given us 
two caring children 
with two equally caring spouses and
four wonderful grand children.
We are grateful to 
our parents
rest of the family
and all the friends
for enriching our lives.

Today
as we complete
39 years of togetherness
we thank each one of you
for being part of our life.
It has been a great journey.
Stay connected.

As we say in the picture below we are truly, 'Feeling blessed together'.

And before we sign off, here is how we looked 39 years ago! Location- Museum Lawns, Pilani 1976. Black and white has its own charm!

Bye for now.

    -Neeta and Harsh Bhargava (the Ghumakkad)/ 25th Nov 2015

Ice Breaker with a cell phone twist

We use ice breakers in the inaugural part of any Workshop or a Course.
'The World of Animals' is a popular ice-breaker with faculties and trainers the world over.

Today, we have introduced a variation using smart phones which all participants/students have.
Instead of picking an 'animal' from paper chits, we have used the web. The participants are assigned a serial number and asked to remember it. Then using their cell phones, they are told to access the web i.e. this blog and 'pick' the animal against their number from an 'Animal Table'. Next, they are to find their team mates by mimicking the animal and not announcing its name. The team assembling the fastest, gets chocolates.

Next, each team is asked to enact the animal/bird on stage in an innovative way. Most innovative enactment gets chocolates too.

How did you like the idea?
Today's generation feels more relaxed and confident with smartphones-- even in a class or workshop!

The table for looking up by the participants is given below:

Number	Team
1	Tiger
2	Koel
3	Cow
4	Peacock
5	Cat
6	Goat
7	Goat
8	Cat
9	Peacock
10	Cow
11	Koel
12	Tiger
13	Tiger
14	Koel
15	Cow
16	Peacock
17	Cat
18	Goat
19	Goat
20	Cat
21	Peacock
22	Cow
23	Koel
24	Tiger
25	Tiger
26	Koel
27	Cow
28	Peacock
29	Cat
30	Goat
31	Goat
32	Cat
33	Peacock
34	Cow
35	Koel
36	Tiger
37	Tiger
38	Koel
39	Cow
40	Peacock
41	Cat
42	Goat
43	Goat
44	Cat
45	Peacock
46	Cow
47	Koel
48	Tiger
49	Tiger
50	Koel
51	Cow
52	Peacock
53	Cat
54	Goat
55	Goat
56	Cat
57	Peacock
58	Cow
59	Koel
60	Tiger

Feel free to use the above idea in your training programs or workshops. Your participants can access the 'Animal' table on their cell phones by typing the URL http://ghumakkadhb.blogspot.in/2015/08/ice-breaker-with-cell-phone-twist.html  .

Happy Ice-breaking!

  Harsh-the-Ghumakkad/ 12th Aug 2015.

Social Entrepreneurship

Dear Fellow Citizen of the World,

This post from Ghumakkad, is not on the usual physical plane of places, flora or fauna but on the cerebral plane.
It is about launching of a new course in the PGDM program where Ghumakkad teaches.

Titled 'Social Entrepreneurship', this core course has the following learning objectives:

1.  Respond to the societal realities and how it can create business value
2.  Identify the challenges of setting up and operating an Enterprise for common good of the society
3. Apply inter-disciplinary management knowledge and practices for sustainability of a social venture 

Being the inaugural batch for this course, the students of PGDM graduating class of 2016 at Vishwa Vishwani School of Business, Hyderabad are all charged up. So am I.

It is after a gap of nine years, that a new course designed by me at MBA/PGDM level has been introduced. You can click to read about previous new courses introduced while I was at IBS Hyderabad.

Purpose of this post is to acknowledge the contribution of following individuals who made it happen.

• Dr Archana Pillai
• Dr Ashok Agarwal
• Prof KL Srivastava
• Dr Sabyasachi Rath
• Ms Shree Ravindranath
• Dr Kinnera Murthy
• Dr Malini Reddy
• Mr Verghese Jacob
• Dr B Ranganayakulu

We would also like to thank the social enterprises and NGOs who have agreed to partner with us in this challenging journey of sensitising tomorrow's business leaders about social responsibility.

Ideas and suggestions to make this program more realistic are welcome. We would be happy to help other institutes to introduce similar programs.

Happy browsing

   -  Harsh-the-Ghumakkad/ 21st July 2015

Suryalanka Where you encounter the Sand Galaxies

After the Pelican Paradise at Kolleru Wild life Sanctuary ( Click here if you missed browsing it), our next stop was Suryalanka Beach. The 170 kms drive from Kolleru through NH-5 goes via Vijayawada, Mangalagiri (known for the famous Mangalagiri sarees and dress material), Ponnur- off NH5 and Bapatla. See map below.

There are huge monolith rocks that jut out of the horizon. See the picture below taken while driving on NH-5 between Vijayawada and Guntur.  

Highway or no highway, local transportation is a rich assortment in India. See this double-decker improvisation in a lorry!

This giant statue of Lord Hanuman towers above the trees and houses along the highway.

Krishna basin is very fertile. The drive from Guntur Junction on NH-5 to Bapatla goes through paddy fields. December is harvesting time. You can see the paddy in various stages of readiness for harvesting.

Time for a photo-break, 6 kms from Bapatla. See the milestone in Telugu along with our car Tata Zest.

The beach road to Suryalanka from Bapatla sees lot of traffic. This tender-coconut vendor makes a killing. Even though located in the heart of coconut growing fields, each coconut costs Rs 35/- (same as in cities like Hyderabad or Chennai). See inset below.

 We stayed with the Air Force. The guest rooms at Surya Kutir are very well furnished and maintained. Here is the view from our room.

The beach sit-outs offer complete relaxation.

Like all beaches, the attractions are the surf, sunrise (or sunset depending on the location) and the solitude. Beaches also help you understand the meaning of horizon. We could experience all of it.

However, being a cloudy and dull day, we were not so lucky to catch the rising sun. Yet we were well rewarded with the magical hues of dawn skies. This is pre-dawn shot.

As the day dawns on the beach, it shows its colours.

 Being a cloudy morning, we could see the Sun only after it came high up!

A stroll on the beach is always most refreshing. That is Neeta and me on the beach. 

And how can it be without a selfie?

While on the beach, we observed some intricate flowery patterns on sand. Close observation revealed that these patters were made up of tiny sand balls. To give you an idea of the size of these patterns, the toe of my shoe is included in the frame at bottom left! Take a look.

Time for a close up shot.

Later research revealed that these sand flowers and sand galaxies are created by tiny sand bubbler crabs.

Sand bubbler crabs (or sand-bubblers) are small crabs, around 1 cm (0.4 in). They look like scorpions and live on sandy beaches in the tropical Indo-Pacific. The picture below is courtesy Shravan Khare from the Net.

Sand bubbler crabs live in burrows in the sand, where they remain during high tide. When the tide is out, they emerge on to the surface of the sand, and scour the sand for food, forming it into inflated pellets, which cover the sand. 

The crabs work radially from the entrance to their burrow, which they re-enter as the tide rises and disintegrates the pellets. (Courtesy Wikipedia).

See some more pictures of sand galaxies created by these tiny marvels of Nature. The intricate patterns form when the tiny crustaceans sift through the sand in search of microscopic food before gathering what's left into a sphere and throwing it behind its legs. 

Here is another sand galaxy

During low tide, the whole beach was covered with thousands of sand galaxies. See the 'dark' picture below with an inset of the sea.



Another eye-catching pattern

You can see these tiny crabs at work  in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XJtq2d_lFs 

We also saw two dead star fish on the beach. Felt sorry. But couldn't help admiring the symmetry in their design.  Nature's marvel indeed. 

After another selfie on the beach, it was time to bid good bye to Suryalanka. 

 Christmas festivities were in full swing. We saw many large size stars put up on the road side as in the picture below.

 On the return log, we wanted to stopover at Vijayawada for a darshan of Kanaka Durga Temple atop the hill. But the traffic snarl and a special darshan day earmarked for devotees by the thousands, dissuaded us from doing so. See the white gopuram of the temple in right half of the next picture. 

We end this travelogue of Suryalanka with a quote from Picasso who had once said, "Without great solitude, no serious work is possible".



Bye till the next travelogue.
Enjoy the holiday season and see you again in the New Year.

Do drop in your comments/feedback.

   - Harsh-the Ghumakkad/ 28th Dec 2014