They Taught Us More Than Lessons

Why do you remember an MBA Prof?

Academic brilliance!

Sure! But do you remember all brilliant Profs?

No. 

Then whom do you remember even after few years and why?

Perhaps, those Profs who listened to us.

All Profs have two ears. What's so special about listening?

I mean we remember those who were empathetic to us.

You mean they tolerated indiscipline in the class?

No, far from it. In fact we remember a Prof who was very strict and would admonish us for disturbing the class and would not tolerate any indiscipline.

But as adults, you don't like to be ticked off.

Yes, that's the point. This teacher would later counsel us and fathom the cause of our immature behaviour.

What about teachers who put up boards for 'visiting' hours? They tried to inculcate time management habit in you.

We hated such Profs. On the other hand, we remember the Prof who had an open-door policy for students.

But a Prof also needs privacy for research and self-study.

Agreed. But we feel students' accessibility should be a higher priority for any Prof.

Any other characteristic of a Prof which you remember?

Oh yes! We paid extra attention to a Prof who narrated real-life stories rather than the boring slides. We also felt valued when a Prof called us by name and helped us improve our self-confidence and the overall personality. A Prof  who taught us more than lessons!

The above conversation is not AI-generated. It is based on the interaction with the students over the years.

Whether you are a teacher or a student past or present, ask yourself where do you fit in? And you will find realism in above conversation. Of course there are many other reasons why we remember a teacher. But we wanted to keep our story short.

Happy Teacher's Day 2026 to all my teachers, students, colleagues, parents, family and friends. Ghumakkad-the-teacher is grateful to each one of you for enriching his life.

Sharing below few pictures and links to our earlier stories on Teacher's Day

Teachers Other Than Teachers - Can Nature, trees, birds, pets, sickness, bereavement also be our teachers? What do we learn from them?

Do Teachers Get Bored? - far from it! There is always action all around. Click the link to browse an outdoor activity with MBA students and lessons from a forest!

A Teacher Keeps Learning - that is the best part! A teacher learns more from the students.

Harsh@IBS - Journey of a different kind. Browse this story for multiple activities which Ghumakkad did along with his students and faculty colleagues at IBS Hyderabad.

A teacher is like an explorer, out in the open!

If the story has triggered some nostalgia about your former teacher, do share. Because 'They Taught Us More Than Lessons'.

Postscript 6th September 2026.

A regular reader, fellow BITSian and an IT-pro all her life wrote the following poem yesterday. Sharing with her permission:

Great composition, straight from the heart. Am sure many readers will relate to it.

Thanks much Radhika.

End of Postscript------ 

Thanks for browsing.

Stay connected and do leave a comment to encourage us.

   --- Harsh-the-Ghumakkad/ 5th Sep 2026/Secunderabad

#TeachersDay2026 #gratitude #impactinglives #MBA #touchinglives #discipline #empathy #student #opendoor #accesstoteachers #approachability #highereducation #ghumakkadharsh #ghumakkadhb #shapingyoungminds #futureofIndia

Op Sindoor - Pride Without Prejudice

Shershah
Uri The Surgical Strike
Lagaan
Ain't these the titles of Hindi feature films?

Yes.

What about them?

These films make excellent teaching and learning aids.

How?

We let the students watch the film and then select few clips/instances for discussions in the class.

What do you discuss?

The lessons that can be drawn from the story. The correlation with relevant concept or theory being taught otherwise.

How does it help?

It helps in understanding the concepts and how is it useful in real life. It helps in internalisation of the concepts and theories as applicable. It makes the learning more experiential.

Sounds cool.

Add to the above list real life incidents or events in real-time. Such real-life events also help in experiential learning. And if done in real-time (immediately after the event), it generates a lot of debate and excitement in the class.

This story is based on a real-life event, Operation Sindoor. Although it happened in 2025, yet it re-surfaced few weeks ago. While teaching a one-semester core course on Project Management(PM), we chose Op Sindoor to bring out many concepts of PM. Sharing below some of the takeaways from the case discussions.

Was Op Sindoor a Project?

In simple terms, a project is one-off, not repeated, has a start and end, a well defined objective and outcome, which demand resources. The MBA class unanimously said yes it was a Project. See the pictures below of the two cohorts of 50 students each. They look energised after the case discussion, right?

Any reader who thinks otherwise, your views are welcome in the comment field.

Similarly, the discussion on following topics saw active participation from the students:

Who was the Project Manager?

What was the Objective of the Project?

How was it achieved?

How was Project Planning done? What were the options?

Who executed the Project?

Were multiple agencies involved in execution? How were they monitored and controlled?

What was the outcome? How was it measured?

Who were the stakeholders?

How was the communication to the stakeholders managed? Was it effective?

What were the risks? How was risk mitigation done?

Was it just a Military Operation? If not, what else and why?

Sharing another picture of the 'live' case discussion steered by Vaishnavi, one of the students.

Another student Vishwashanthi was present in J&K at the time of Pahalgam attack. She wrote, "In April 2025, I went on a trip to Jammu and Kashmir with my friends to explore its beautiful tourist destinations. We had been enjoying our journey and visiting different places. On 22 April 2025, while we were near the Vaishno Devi Temple in Katra, we heard the heartbreaking news about the Pahalgam attack."

"The news came as a complete shock. I felt scared and anxious because we were also in Jammu and Kashmir at that time. The atmosphere suddenly became tense, and everyone around us was talking about the incident and checking for updates. I immediately called my family to let them know that I was safe.Although we were safe, that moment reminded me how quickly situations can change. It was an experience I will never forget, and my thoughts and prayers are with everyone who was affected by the tragedy."

Thank you Shanthi for sharing your memories.

An opeartion like Sindoor has lessons in many other subjects and areas like, Strategy, Leadership, Decision Making under Uncertainty, Team Work, Goal Setting, Contingency Planning, Resource Mobilisation, Technology Adaptation, Media Management, International Relations etc. But we had restricted our discussions to the lessons in Project Management to keep the story short.

Corporate Lessons

While discussing the above questions, we also brought out the corresponding lessons for the corporate world. The whole exercise appeared very meaningful. The students seem to have internalised the Project Management topics with clarity and ease. Thank you the PGDM Class of 2027 at VVISM Hyderabad for your wholehearted participation.

Question for the Reader

Whether you are an MBA grad, student, working professional in any field, home maker, parent, grandparent, veteran or any other netizen, what was the most significant outcome of Op Sindoor? Mail your response to hbindia@gmail.com or leave a comment. Selected responses with names will be included as Postscript.

Postscript 28th July: None of the readers responded to the above query. However, two of the students nailed it! The most significant outcome of Op Sindoor was not the destruction of the terrorist camps but enhancing of the National Pride. Don't you think so?

End of Postscript.

The Title

Did you like the title of this story? The credit for suggesting the title goes to Padma Ramesh, an accomplished journalist and former Dean of a PG Institution of Media Studies. In her own words:

"I thought of Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen's novel! (When I saw the word) --a Literary echo.

There is pride in what we achieved with Op Sindoor. The phrase "without prejudice" implies pride that isn't driven by bias or hatred."

Thanks Padma for creating such a befitting title for our story.

Experiential Learning - Some More

Ghumakkad has been a strong proponent of experiential learning. As a child, most of our learning has been experiential. Learning by doing, simple yet effective. But as we go up the 'education' ladder, experiential learning takes a back seat. It is more of lecturing. Sharing below some of my endeavours at experiential learning for my MBA students. You may click the link to browse the corresponding story.

Uri The Surgical Strike - Many lessons in Management from a feature film

Shershah Beyond The Movie - Based on the real-life story of Capt Batra of Kargil fame, the movie brings out many lessons in Leadership, Team Work, Task Orientation etc

Teachers Also Love Outdoors - Real learning happens outside the classroom.

Real-Time Cases for MBA Teaching - How to design and conduct the classes for enhanced experiential learning. Faculties are free to reach me for details.

Thanks for browsing. Do share your experience of making the teaching and learning more experiential.

We firmly believe that knowledge gets multiplied when shared.

Stay connected.

   - Harsh-the-Ghumakkad/ Secunderabad/ 18th July 2026/ hbindia@gmail.com 

Postscript:

21 July: Vinay Bhargava, an experienced marketeer wrote; "Indeed military operations are very inspirational as it involves clear aim, astute planning, dedicated research, inputs, execution etc.

In our marketing campaigns to inspire sales team we based many on wars and used terms as pincer movement in strategies. Excellent!"

#learning #teaching #ExperientialLearning #VideoCases #CaseMethod #MBA #PGDM #VVISMHyderabad #OpSindoor #Shershah #UriTheSurgicalStrike #LearningFromMovies #ManagementEducation #RealLife #RealTime #PahalgamAttack #ProjectManagement

Learning From Each Other

When a teacher teaches a student, how many are learning?

Not one but two! Because the teacher also learns.

You may have heard or read it before. But Ghumakkad has been a firm believer in above dictum. It came alive earlier this week when I was invited to launch the opening day of a 14-day residential workshop on Project Management for senior officers from Nagaland Civil Service (NCS). It was organised by MCR HRD Institute, Hyderabad under the Capacity Building Program. The participants had travelled all the way from Nagaland to attend the Workshop. It was a privilege to be the opening resource person for the Workshop. Although I had taught at the Institute on many occasions earlier, it was after many years that I was back at the sprawling Jubilee Hills campus.

Project Management

All the five stages of Project Management as listed below are well known:

1. Initiation
2. Planning
3. Execution
4. Monitoring and Control
5. Closure and Evaluation

Experiential Learning

All the above topics were to be convered in detail in the remaining 13-days of the workshop. Therefore, what I decided was to launch the topic with real-life examples and lessons. These examples were shared not only by me but also by the participants themselves. It made the whole learning process more experiential. The real-life examples from their own State added value to our discussions. Experience sharing by the participants consolidated the underlying concepts and helped in internalisation of learning. It made the whole process interactive and worthwhile more so when I had to engage them for six hours on Day-1!

Issues Discussed

Some of the live issues concerning large government projects that were discussed are listed below:

1. Is the project really needed? Who gets benfitted and how?
2. Community buy-in of the project
3. Scope creep- how to deal with changes in project Scope
4. Measuring the Impact
5. Ensuing the quality of project execution
6. Replicability of the Project across other districts and States

Learnings for the Teacher

As I said a teacher also learns in the classroom. I had many takeaways from the interaction with the experienced officers of NCS. Some of the learnings are:

1. Development challenges in Nagaland
2. Cultural diversity across hill tribes
3. Fragile ecological system
4. Rich bio-diversity of the region
5. Excellent communication skills specially in English
6. Regional and national aspirations

Gratitude

I wish to thank all the participants from NCS for their patient listening and active participation. On completion, they surprised me by honouring me with their traditional hand-made stole brought from Nagaland. I felt deeply humbled to receive this honour.  

About the Stole

Called Konyak (or Kongnai in local Ao dialect), these stoles and shawls are iconic traditional handwoven textiles from Nagaland, characterized by their specific tribal motifs and cultural significance.These stoles are more than clothing; they represent tribal identity and ancestral roots. Historically, certain patterns were reserved for warriors or clan leaders. They typically feature bold colors like red (bravery), black (strength), and white (purity). Naga traditional shawls and stoles have received a Geographical Indication (GI) tag, recognizing their unique origin and traditional production methods.

Am reminded of a quote by Calvin Coolidge who said, "No person was ever honoured for what he received. Honour has been the reward for what he gave." Once again thank you all the NCS officers for your gesture.

Other Workshops

Workshops are a great way to learn especially for working professionals. Am sharing below the links to some of the workshops conducted by me on various topics. Just click the link to browse the corresponding story.

Teaching Design Thinking Differently - When your MBA students don't want to recommend the college to others, what do you do? Think differently. Click the link.

How to Empower the Volunteers? - 3Es of volunteering by Ghumakkad

More Than A Prison - A workshop for the officers from the prison department on personality development.

Make In India and Military Systems - A workshop at IIM Indore. Have we gone beyond the rhetoric? 

Workshops if conceived well and designed for 'doing' rather than 'slide-shows', are a great way of learning. The above examples would have given you a taste and flavour. Should you need any help, do reach out to me on email hbindia@gmail.com .

Thanks for browsing. Stay connected and do leave a comment. It encourages us.

   - Harsh-the-Ghumakkad/ Secunderabad/ 14th Feb 2026

#workshops #learningbydoing #educatingtheprofessionals #teaching #learning #interactivity #participants #diversity #internalisation #reallife #ghumakkadhb #ghumakkadharsh #scopecreep

Ghumakkad Enters The Teens

Celebration time again. Ghumakkad's blog, your blog, is thirteen! Ghumakkad too is thirteen but with sixty years of wandering around!

Ghumakkad expresses his gratitude to each one of you for this exciting journey together. Like all life on earth, we the human beings are also dependent upon Nature. Ghumakkad too loves Nature. And that is why my tagline on Insta says  'Forever at Peace Outdoors'. Nature is amazing as well as mysterious. A lifetime is not enough to fathom Nature's mysteries like the picture below. The khoj खोज meaning 'the quest' continues.

With the support of our readers worldwide, we have crossed the milestone of half-a-million page views this year. In fact the count now reads 603,000 page views! Eight years ago when we crossed the 100,000 mark, Radhika Sareen one of our regular readers had commented 'You will soon cross a Million mark!' It did not seem attainable becuse it had taken us five years to reach 100,000. A ten-fold growth meant another 50 years. Not in my life time I thought! But now it seems we are getting there! It is the magic created and continued by the readers!

As we said earlier, numbers don't matter for our blog. Being a non-political, non-religious, non-commercial, non-celebrity blog it has limited readership. We are happy with the readers that we have. Your insights and encouragement keeps us going. In fact our readers have been contributing many guest stories to our blog, your blog.

When Fallen, Get Up and Go

This year Ghumakkad lost his travel companion (and life partner too). But Ghumakkad is trying to retain the spirit of the blog. The posts may have been fewer but the show has gone on. Sharing below the post dedicated to Neeta with eulogies from her near and dear ones.

We Will Miss You Forever 

Last year we had shared a snapshot of our content and its variety. We are re-posting it with suitable uodates. Read on.

The Journey

Ghumakkad started as a travel blog. Our inaugural story was a set of eight posts on picturesque Bhutan. Initially the blog was by invitation. Naturally it had very limited page views in the first three years. Once opened to public, more readers enjoyed browsing it. See the graph below which shows the current page views at 603,000 with more than 5600 comments. This is the 643rd Post of our blog.

As we mentioned, last year saw an increase of 153,000 page views as shown in the graph below.

The Content

Our blog has a variety of content with pictures and videos. Some of the themes are listed below with links to connected stories:

• Travelogues like Huka Falls Taupo New Zealand,  A Train journey in USA, Scuba diving at 65, Hiking up the Tiger's Nest in Bhutan, Toddler on a Hike, Veterans Bash In A Train

• Wildlife including The Big Five of Africa, Tigers of Tadoba, Birds of Ranganathittu, Rescuing a Black Winged Stilt, Lakshmi The Tigress Teacher, Ajgar Dadar Preserving the Pythons

• Environment including Trees (Cherry Blossom Nature's Revival, White Jamun?, Neem Trees Under Attack), plants (Friendship With Plants), insects and flowers (Brahma Kamal)

• Online Contest called Kaun Banega Ghumakkad which has completed 80 editions so far! It is though temporarily suspended.
• Lesser-known India series Tunnel Tourism, Belum Caves, Hindola Toran, Devarakonda Fort and more

• Entrepreneurship and social entrepreneurship stories like Dreams to Reality, Young Entrepreneurs Bootcamp, Startup Fever Grips VVISM

• Teaching and learning (Ghumakkad is a teacher!) Jeevan Vidya Workshop- A Journey Within,  Yoga Mat With A Bandage, Implementing NEP-2020, real-life case studies and Innovations in A Convocation

• Obituaries of leaders like Ratan Tata,  Dr Abdul Kalam and martyrs like Capt Ravi Shankar

• Motivational posts like This Time of the Year and more during Covid

• Guest stories including those written by our grandchildren (Coyote Gulch Hiking in Stream), Covid survivors (I Got A New Life) and Animal Lovers like Rohini

• Picturesque Quotes having one of our pictures with a famous quote like Claude Monet on Nature and another one by a KBG winner.

• Adventure and Endurance like Ankush Does It The Ironman, Women Hiking in Water

The Readership

Thanks to the wider reach of internet, our blog is read globally. Readers from India account for only 45%, balance coming from across the globe. See the colour coded world map below.

Most Viewed Posts (All time)

Our story on 'Brahma Kamal The Queen of Night' has been read by almost 8000 readers. It shows the readers' interest in environment and Nature related posts.

Capt Ravi Shankar's life story has been read more than 7770 times. We salute his supreme sacrifice

.

See the list of most viewed posts below.

Most viewed posts during the last 12 months are shown below. Our readers have shown a wide preference for the blog posts.

Acknowledgements

There are numerous people who have helped us grow. We place on record our appreciation to the following for their unstinted support.

Trixie Asirvatham our content advisor

Chitra Shanker our advisor on plants, trees, insects and birds

Ramya Sriram logo designer of our KBG Contest

Yella Prakash Rao our ornithologist

We also thank each one of you for your continued support without which Ghumakkad wouldn't have been here! Do give us your feedback to help us improve.

Onwards to the 14th Anniversary of Ghumakkad next year!

Thanks for browsing. Stay connected

   - Harsh-the-Ghumakkad / 21st May 2025/ Secunderabad

#GhumakkadHarsh #GhumakkadHB #13thAnniversary #BlogAnniversary #ThrillOfWriting #JourneyOfLife #BringingSmiles #makingadifference #kbgcontest #kaunbanegaghumakkad #wellness #motivation #inspiration #positivity #nature #environment #teachers #learning #india #mysteriesofnature #travelforfun #wildlife #keepgoing #blogger #pictures #photowalks #powerofobservation #students #adventure #lesserknownindia #PQs #picturesquequotes #learningtogether #mangroves #adventure #IronMan #NewZealand #neetabhargava #lifeafterdeath

Teachers Who Give Up Everything - Teacher's Day 2024

Teachers teach. They also:

Inspire

Mould

Instill values

Share their wisdom

Make us better human beings!

We have heard it all before. 

But do teachers give up their most prized possession for their pupils?

This is the story of one such teacher, my athletics coach at BITS Pilani.

The year 1968. One month before the National Games of India at Madras. I was selected to represent Rajasthan in my age group.

Our Director of Physical Education at BITS,  Capt Richpal Singh Shekhawat who was my coach, came down with pleurisy a kind of severe lung infection with fluids inside the lungs. He was advised bed rest and not allowed to come to the sports ground. What about my coaching in the crucial month before the Nationals?

My coach found a solution. 

He got his nicely manicured lawn with the home garden dug up and levelled. He created a run up and a landing pit for me to practice broad jump in front of him in his yard every day. Despite his severe illness, he continued to coach and prepare me for the Nationals.

With his selfless dedication, he motivated me to give off my best. I won the Gold medal in Broad Jump at the National Games of India. It was followed by many more golds at national level in successive years, thanks to him. I was also selected for the Asian Games Probables Camp for the Teheran Games 1974. By then I had already been commissioned into Indian Navy. That's another story for some other day.

How many will dig up a flourishing lawn and garden in their house to create a long jump pit for their trainee? Those who have seen the faculty bungalows in Pilani Campus, will understand it better. Is it a big deal to willingly destroy your lawn and garden? Ask all home gardeners. They won't even part with a potted plant leave aside destroying a manicured lawn. They are so possessive of their plants and the garden. My athletics coach did not hesitate even for a minute and gave up his prized possession for his trainee. A possession having more worth than any materialistic asset. He was a living example of 'Teachers who give up everything!'

On this Teacher's Day, I bow my head in gratitude to Capt RS Shekhawat also known as Guruji by all of us at BITS Pilani. Am sharing a picture of him receiving the Champion Athlete trophy from the then Prime Minister Pt Jawahar Lal Nehru. Guruji passed away few years ago in Jaipur. But his values live on in our hearts and minds.

Thank you Guruji for making me what I am today.

Teacher's Day

Teacher's Day is celebrated in all schools and colleges in India to commemorate the birth anniversary of Dr S Radhakrishnan former President of India and a great teacher and scholar. It is also a day for teachers like me for introspection and reflection. Sharing below some of the earlier stories posted by Ghumakkad on Teacher's Day.

Teachers Other Than Teachers - Can Nature, trees, birds, pets, sickness, bereavement also be our teachers? What do we learn from them? Sample it below.

Teacher	Learnings
Nature	Patience, Steadfastness, Managing Change, Team work
Children	Inquisitiveness, Energy and enthusiasm, Love, Trust, Honesty
Parents	Discipline, Love, Compassion, Care, Respect
Friends	Relationships, Team work, Emotional Stability, Trust
Pets	Loyalty, Trust, Love
Births	Joy, Happiness
Sickness	Patience, Emotional strength, Financial planning, Gratitude
Bereavement	Fortitude, Emotional strength
Successes	Happiness, Fulfilment
Failures	Emotional balance and strength
Covid Pandemic	Patience, Self-discipline, Concern for others
Adventure Sports	Spirit of adventure, Risk taking, Self-confidence, Physical and emotional strength
Painting, Music, Dance, Writing	Introspection, Creativity, Self-confidence, Visualisation
Team Sports	Team work, Conflict resolution, Discipline, Physical and emotional strength

Do Teachers Get Bored? - far from it! There is always action all around. Click the link to browse an outdoor activity with MBA students and lessons from a forest!

Covid Couldn't Deter The Teachers - how teachers in a B-school fought the Covid pandemic

A Teacher Keeps Learning - that is the best part! A teacher learns more from the students.

Who Inspires A Teacher - Teachers plant seeds of knowledge

Learning From Students - who keep the teachers on their toes! Specially if you are teaching post grad students.

Harsh@IBS - Journey of a different kind. Browse this story for multiple activities which Ghumakkad did along with his students and faculty colleagues at IBS Hyderabad.

This Teacher's Day, Ghumakkad thanks all his former teachers, students and former students for enriching his life. Picture below shows the confident and beaming faces of the PGDM cohort of 2026 at VVISM Hyderabad. They are the future of India!

Happy Teacher's Day to all the teachers, parents, students out there!

Thanks for browsing

  Harsh-the-Ghumakkad/ 5th Sep 2024/ Secunderabad

#teachersday #teacher #learner #students #nature #learningneverends #joyoflearning #ghumakkadhb #ghumakkadharsh #teachersotherthanteachers #learning #teaching #gratitude