World Athletics - Upto Day 3

 

The World Athletics Championships 2025 – Up to Day 3 – Some Takeaways

A plus of retirement is being able to watch sports events without having to fake illness, and I have been following the ongoing World Athletics Championships that is now into its fourth day. The highlights thus far, for me, have been –

1. A world record in the pole vault – Mondo Duplantis took it to 6.30m. Most notable, to me, was the way the other finalists supported him in his endeavour – they hung around like a group of friends at a barbecue, with the silver medallist Karalis cooling him with a fan between his world record attempts.

2. Both marathons ended with sprint finishes. In the men’s, the difference between first and second was 0.03s (to compare, in the men’s 100m it was 0.05s), with Alphonse Simbu winning Tanzania’s first ever athletics medal at the Worlds. Those who participate in the Mumbai Marathon may remember him as the winner in 2017.

3. For glamour, nothing beats the women’s 100 hurdles. The final line-up included the Olympic champion (Russel), the world record holder (Amusan), and several athletes who could have been supermodels (Visser and Skrzyszowska come to mind). It was won by the beautiful (and beautifully named) Ditaji Kambundji.

4. Some caught the eye for their youth. The front runner in the 3000-steeplechase final was the 17-year-old Edmund Serem – he ended up with bronze. The race was notable for the multiple Olympic champion and world record holder El Bakkali straggling at last place for most of the race (you would have bet on him being lapped if you didn’t know who he was), changing gears in the last lap and moving through the field, cruising with a huge lead in the last 50m, and then being beaten to the line because he couldn’t see Geordie Beamish closing him down and, by the time he did, it was too late. The other kid who caught the eye was in the women’s hammer throw, where the 18-year-old Jiale Zhang took bronze in a Chinese 2-3.

5. A kid I look forward to seeing is 17-year-old Gout Gout in the 200m. The last kid I had heard about with a strange name and a reputation for running like the wind was in the early 2000s, and he was a certain Usain Bolt. I look forward to the 200m for another reason – our very own Animesh Kujur will be running – he is at #40 the lowest ranked in his heat and will have two-time Olympic silver medallist Kenny Bednarek, who missed a bronze in the 100m by 0.03s, alongside him – but so what. All the best, Animesh!!

Three Games In

THREE GAMES IN – SOME QUESTIONS

By Ajit Chaudhuri

It’s back! The football lover’s equivalent of a long and lonely winter, extending from the whistle that ends the Champions League final in end-May to the ‘here comes the sun’ moment when the EPL kicks off in mid-August, is finally over.

And it’s three games in! What are my thoughts, from three weekends spent doing my favourite thing – putting on a TV, lying on a couch, and switching off from the world?

Here are the six top questions that have come to mind thus far –

1. Will transfer spend translate into trophies?

This has been a record-breaking transfer window in the EPL – GBP 3 billion plus spent (up from GBP 2.36 billion two summers ago), with Liverpool, Arsenal, Chelsea, Man U and Newcastle all spending more than GBP 200 million.

Liverpool is an interesting case because it is rare for a defending champion to revamp its roster to such an extent, but probably necessitated by outwards movements (Alexander-Arnold, Diaz, Nunez) and a death (Jota). Most of its GBP 400 million outlay is on attacking talent (Isak, Wirtz, Ekitike) and flying wingbacks (Kerkez, Frimpong) and, despite the only all-win record thus far, two questions remain unanswered. One, how will Coach Slot adjust Wirtz (who cost GBP 100 million plus, i.e., not the sort of money a club spends for someone destined to warm a bench) into the rock-solid midfield that laid the foundation for their title win last season? And two, will the transfer that did not happen, of the brilliant England defender Guehi (Crystal Palace nixed it at the last moment) define their season (they shipped two goals to Bournemouth and two more to Newcastle, who were on ten men)?

Arsenal bought Eze, who I first saw as a kid operating beside Palace legend Zaha and not being outshone, and I would love to watch him and Saka on opposite flanks except for the man in between, their other major signing Gyokeres, proving a dud thus far. Newcastle had the pulling power of a skunk in a perfumery (Isak didn’t want to stay, and targets Sesko, Joao Pedro, Delap, Ekitike, et al, refused to go there) before shelling out on an unknown German (Woltemade did light up the Euro U-21s last year, and none other than Manny Neuer referred to him as ‘Woltemessi’) and then on Wissa to play up front alongside him. Chelsea did what it always does, getting rid of unwanted players at a significant premium, and more about Man U later in this note.

2. Has Pep lost his mojo?

Last year, we said that a brilliant team had grown old and comfortable together, having already won everything there was to win. Or that Rodri, the reigning Ballon d’Or winner, was out for the season. Or whatever. This year, what will we say? Underwhelming recruitment? Reijnders impressed in one game, leading to an expectation of memes coming up at Christmas, but he’s no De Bruyne. Cherki – already injured. The others – nobodies, other than two signings for the one position that did not require replacement, i.e., goalkeeper, with young Trafford probably wishing he had gone to Old Trafford given the subsequent coming of Donnarumma. Or is it outdated tactics?

EPL coaching standards are the highest in the world, and tiki-taka football has been read and countered. Teams now break a press using one of three methods – through it by beating a defender one-on-one and forcing a readjust of the press, which is now one short; around it by drawing the press to one side of the field and switching play to the other; and over it via route 1. Also, a brilliant defensive midfielder cum deep lying playmaker is key to tiki-taka, and Pep had Yaya and Busquets in his Barcelona teams, Schweinsteiger at Munich, and Fernandinho and then Rodri at Man City.

Will he be able to play another style? Can he? Does he have the necessary personnel?

3. What’s with the analytics?

It happened first in baseball, and some Brad Pitt film was made. It transferred to basketball and made the NBA unwatchable, with all teams operating with the same tactic – reach the three-point line, set up a shield, take a shot – no more Jordanesque sky hooks, no more Shaq dunks. European basketball is more attractive now.

It is now in football. I could handle the first-gen stats, i.e., possession percentage, shots on goal, and shots on target. I managed the move to the second gen, i.e., field tilt, PPDA, progressions, etc., and then to the xG revolution (not to worry, the exact definitions of these are in annexure). I now find something called ‘NPxG + xA’ to judge the creative ability of a player – for those with an interest, Haaland is head and shoulders above the others on this statistic, and the difference between him and no. 2 Semenyo is more than the difference between no. 2 and no. 25; good to see Grealish at no. 12; and the main surprise is no. 7 Estevao, recruited by Chelsea for bench strength, getting game time due to injuries, and now creating the selection dilemma that coaches dream about – who to play when the big boys return.

Where will all this end? Ultimately, statistics is like a bikini, no matter how much it shows, it always covers the critical stuff. And I, for one, like the measure ‘goals scored minus goals conceded’ the most – it has one hundred percent validity.

4. Will Man U regain its lost glory?

Personally, I don’t give a crap, but here is my two-paisa bit given that many readers follow this team. Great teams have great spines, i.e., goalie, central defender, defensive mid, attacking mid, and striker combos. Not good ones, great ones! Like Cech-Terry-Essien-Lampard-Drogba at Mou’s first Chelsea team. Like Casillas-Ramos-Alonso-Xavi/Iniesta-Torres of that Spain side. And my favourite, young Schmeichel-Morgan-Kante-Drinkwater-Vardy, only one of whom would be considered a great of the game and the subject of the saying ‘two-thirds of earth is covered by water; the rest is covered by N’golo Kante’, but who together had a great period of play in 2015-16.

Onana-Maguire-Mainoo-Fernandes-Hjolund/Zirkzee? Bayindir-De Ligt-Casemiro-Fernandes-Sesko? I just don’t see it happening with the current personnel.

An interesting element is Sesko. How will he fit in? I have seen him for Leipzig and Slovenia, and he has all the makings of a top striker. But strikers from the Bundesliga are hit-and-miss in the EPL, and for every Haaland there is a Werner and a Fullkrug. And, if Man U is slowly turning into a graveyard for talent, it would be hard to reverse.

5. What’s going on with VAR?

Having watched football from the early-1980s and seen some awful refereeing decisions – Schumacher’s assault on Battiston in 1982; Lampard’s disallowed goal in 2010 – I am pro VAR because it gets decisions right. It is my experience that referees err on the side of big teams, and that marginal decisions, too, go one way and not the other. VAR is worth the wait, worth the disruption in play, and worth the tentative goal celebrations.

Some events of this weekend shook my belief. I saw a beautiful goal for Fulham against Chelsea overturned (according to the columnist Marcotti, ‘VAR disallowed King’s counter-attacking goal for an imaginary Muniz foul on Chalobah – when you have possession of the ball and step on the foot of the opponent behind you, who you can’t see since you don’t have eyes on the back of your head, it is not a foul’). And I saw Barcelona being awarded a dubious penalty against Rayo Vallecano which the VAR could not review because it was not functional at that time. WTF!! The EPL bosses have acknowledged the error, de-rostered the concerned VAR ref, and reprimanded the on-field ref for changing his original (correct) decision. And it was a home game for Rayo, so their VAR contractor was at fault. But, still, WTF!!

6. Will the EPL-Championship yo-yo continue?

The last two seasons saw all three promoted teams being relegated back into the Championship. Will it happen again this season? The indications are that it won’t, the three promotees have shown signs of fight and have garnered points on the board. My bet is on Sunderland staying up because of one of the most under-the-radar signings of the transfer window, ex-Arsenal and Bayer Leverkusen captain Xhaka, who brings steel onto the field and into the dressing room, and who continues to have a wand of a left foot as seen from his pinpoint assist at the end of their 2-1 win over Brentford.

 

Annexure: Football Analytics

1. Field Tilt (%)  ((Team’s final third passes) / (Total no. of final third passes)) * 100  tells us how much attacking territory a team is controlling.

2. NPxG + xA  non-penalty expected goals plus expected assists  judges a player’s ability to create.

3. PPDA  Passes Per Defensive Action  (Total opponent passes in their defensive and the middle thirds) / (Total defensive actions by the team, including tackles, interceptions, fouls, challenges, in the same thirds)  measures the number of passes a team allows its opponent to make before it attempts a defensive action – this describes the intensity of a press; lower means more aggressive.

4. Progressions  Number of times a player runs with the ball for 5 metres or more.

5. xA  Expected Assists  assesses the likelihood that a given pass will directly lead to a goal  allows us to value the underlying contributions of creative players.

6. xG  Expected Goals  assesses the quality of goal scoring chances in a game and also measures whether a striker is better or worse than expected, whether a team is creating high quality chances, and was a win deserved, based on quality of chances and not just number of goals  takes into account variables such as shot type (header, foot shot, volley, bicycle kick, backheel, etc.), shot location (distance to goal, from the centre or from out wide, etc.), assist type (through ball, cross, cut back, set piece, etc.), defensive pressure, goalkeeper positioning, inter alia.

The Short War Fallacy

The Short War Fallacy

A Two-Pager by Ajit Chaudhuri – July 2025

“It is when a mosquito lands on your testicles that you look for ways to solve problems without using violence” – attributed to Confucius.

Despite being designated a dinosaur, i.e., someone who grew up in the days before mobile telephony and the Internet and therefore doesn’t know one’s pronouns, I am sometimes asked for an opinion. One such occasion was in the aftermath of Operation Sindoor, when there was a clamour to ‘finish them off once and for all’, blah, blah, blah, when I was asked whether we did the right thing by agreeing to a ceasefire.

I sidestepped the question with a “How does it matter what I think?”

But I do have a view – that we were fortunate to extricate ourselves from a situation that we did not want (and were not prepared for) with our dignity (somewhat) intact.

Why?

The primary reason, in my opinion, is that the key assumption underlying the ‘finish them off’ school of thought – that such a war would be short, decisive, and victorious, and that our overwhelming military superiority combined with the speed, direction, and ruthlessness of our initial attack would quickly overwhelm them – is fundamentally flawed. This is because, one, it is known in military circles that audacious surprise attacks usually deliver far less than promised. Two, it is easier to start wars than to end them. Three, our western neighbour may be an economic basket case, but its armed forces are not – it has the same British Indian Army military traditions as ours without the constraints of civilian oversight; it has cheap, high-quality weapons with assured supply lines; and, unlike us, it has powerful all-weather allies. Four, what would victory mean anyway? The very thought of us administrating the frontier agency areas bordering Afghanistan has me not knowing whether to shudder or to laugh, these are, after all, places that the best administrators in history, the British, chose to leave alone.

The chances therefore are that, assuming nukes are not used (and a credible theory of victory in a nuclear war over an adversary who is able to retaliate in kind is yet to be formulated), continued hostilities would have resulted in yet another ‘forever war’.

The article “The Age of Forever Wars: Why Military Strategy No Longer Delivers Victory” by Lawrence D. Freedman in the Foreign Affairs issue of May/June 2025 throws some light upon this term. It says that there was a view in the late 19th century that surprise offensives could produce decisive victories, leading to – European leaders in the summer of 1914 assuring their respective publics that the coming war would be over by Christmas (it went on till 1918); the German blitzkrieg of the early 1940s overrunning western Europe in weeks and rapidly advancing into the USSR; and Japan attacking Pearl Harbour in December 1941 (we know what happened to both countries).

More recently, towards the turn of the century, the contrast between Operation Desert Storm (or the first Iraq war of 1991) and the US’s campaign in Vietnam and the USSR’s in Afghanistan resulted in a theory that an enemy could be defeated with speed, manoeuvrability, and real time intelligence, along with overwhelming force and smart weapons. This too proved short-lived, with the US’s counterinsurgency campaigns of the early decades of this century coming to be labelled as the ‘forever’ wars. In fact, the early successes of most wars since the end of the Cold War have faltered, lost momentum, and transformed into far more intractable conflicts.

Despite this, short wars (i.e., immediate success at a tolerable cost) retain an allure, resulting in – failure to appreciate the limits of military powers; setting of objectives that can be achieved, if at all, only through prolonged struggle; and an emphasis on immediate battlefield results that neglect broader elements necessary for success such as achieving conditions for a durable peace and effectively managing an occupied country where a hostile regime has been toppled – to the extent that, for a politician on the warpath, even admitting to the possibility of protracted conflict is seen as having doubts on one’s armed forces. And when a short war transforms into a ‘forever’ one, it imposes different demands on the military, the economy, and society (see below).

Short Wars

• Are fought with existing resources.

• Present only temporary disruptions to the economy and society.

• Do not require extensive supply lines.

Long Wars

• Require development of capabilities that can adjust to changing operational imperatives.

• Demand strategies for –

o Maintaining popular support

o Re-arming and replenishing troops

o Keeping the economy functional

Some examples of successful short wars –

• Israel v Arabs, the Six-Day War, 1967

• Indo-Pak War, 1971

• Falklands War, 1982

• Operation Desert Storm, 1991

Some examples of short wars that transformed into long wars –

• The US in Afghanistan – the longest military campaign in US history – unsuccessful.

• Russia v Ukraine, 2022 onwards – was meant to overrun Ukraine in days – still on.

Proposals to end a ‘forever’ war in which neither side can impose a victory on the other even if both or one are occasionally able to improve their positions usually take the form of a ceasefire. The problem with them is that the parties to the conflict usually regard them as mere pauses in the fighting, offering both sides the opportunity to recover and reconstitute for the next round – they have little effect on the underlying dispute. Yet, some last – the Korean War ceasefire of 1953 continues to hold despite the conflict remaining unresolved and both sides preparing for a future war.

To conclude, dear fellow Indians, please remember – wars start and end through political decisions. The ones to initiate armed conflict usually assume a short war. The ones that bring fighting to an end usually reflect the cost and consequences of a ‘forever’ war. Do not let politicians and their puppet media houses sell you the allure of a military’s ability to bring conflicts to quick and decisive conclusions – in practise, this is rarely the case. Cut their water supply, shame them in international forums, whatever, but, if you are not prepared for a ‘forever’ war, it is best not to go in for war at all.

Organizational Values, Culture, Behaviour

 Organizational Values, Culture, and Behaviour

Ajit Chaudhuri – October 2024

 

“Culture eats strategy for breakfast” – Peter Drucker

 

I taught strategy earlier this year to a bunch of non-typical management students (i.e., mostly non-engineers, mostly ladies, and mostly prioritizing making the world a better place over becoming masters of the universe). It was interesting for many reasons, including that I had to make a case for quantitative over qualitative methods for project monitoring from first principles (an male-engineer-dominant group would consider this a given) and revert to my PhD reading material on research methods to do so; I was exposed to terms such as ‘girl math’ (see box); and I was subjected to an array of insights that had me questioning my assumptions.

 

Girl Math	Boy Math (the feminist backlash to )
·       It costs under Rs. 500? It’s free. ·       Will not spend Rs. 5,000 on Amazon but will spend Rs. 1,000 five times.	·       Have only three pairs of socks to my name but am afraid of gold diggers. ·       Want a traditional woman who pays the bills

 

One such insight, during a discussion on the soft components of strategy, was on whether an organization should publicly state its values. The counter arguments made were that most stated values are the same everywhere (integrity, excellence, blah, blah, blah, usually articulated as abstract absolute positives); most are unconnected with the organization’s actual values; and actual values are what they are, whether you state them or not. Unless stated values reflect actual values and influence the organization’s culture and the behaviour of employees towards each other and towards external stakeholders, they are just some nice words on a website, much like a Tinder profile.

 

So, should organizational values be articulated? If they are, should they be stated publicly? And how can they influence organizational culture and behaviour?

 

My thinking on these matters is influenced by long stints in two organizations.

 

The first is IRMA, where I spent 2 years (1987-89) working towards a master’s in rural management and then 3 years (2011-14) before flunking out of its doctoral programme. The first of these was interesting because the institution had no stated values but very strong actual ones – and it had most students on board with them from the time we spent 10 weeks in remote corners of rural India (a description of my own stint in north Bihar is available at https://kaaluontheroad.blogspot.com/2007/03/another-world-bihar.html) . The second was interesting because the world had changed – the private sector was much more influential; Dr. Kurien was not at the helm anymore; and IRMA was struggling to distinguish itself from the smorgasbord of management institutes that had sprung up – and it had a website-full of carefully articulated vision, mission, values, etc., statements to communicate what it stood for.

 

The second was in the Tata group (I was there from 2014 to 2023), where the actual values derived from a statement by the group’s founder that ‘the community is not just another stakeholder in business, but is in fact the very purpose of its existence’ (and I know this because I led the group’s disaster response function, where a value system is stress-tested to the extreme) and were different from its stated ones, which were the same old boring corpcomm-concocted stuff cleverly acronym-ed to I-PURE (you can guess what this stands for and I am sure you will be right).

 

So, in my opinion, values are important for many reasons including that, if there is a mismatch between those of the organization and its stakeholders, it is a source of stress and tension (as many Tata employees who leave for competitors discover).

 

An organization should articulate its values only if they are worthy ones, its senior leadership observes and is seen to observe them, and it wishes its employees to use them as a guiding light; and it should publicly state them only if they bear resemblance to its actual ones or it is willing to do what it takes to change actual values to stated ones (which is quite a task, as those dealing with diametrically opposite value systems from, for example, the Tata group’s takeover of Air India, will know).

 

Else, it would be stupid to trumpet values all over the place. Claims of being ‘dedicated’, ‘motivated’, and ‘committed’, acceptable for a young NGO working for the poorest of the poor, would be less so when the same organization transforms into a family business that uses public money for the greater glory of its founder; and you can well imagine my reaction upon discovering that Indian Oil Corporation, who turn a blind eye to its now ex-customers (including me) being scammed at its outlets, includes ‘trust’ among its stated values. Hah!!

 

It is the third question, relating to the relationship between values, culture, and behaviour, that is a little nuanced. Conventional thinking is that values underpin culture, which in turn informs behaviour, and that senior leaders walking the talk and being seen to do so are critical enablers to desirable outcomes on these fronts in an organization.

 

A recent article (“Build a Corporate Culture That Works”, Erin Meyer, HBR of Jul-Aug 2024) claims that managing corporate culture is key to business success, and yet few organizations articulate their culture in a way that it guides employee behaviour. I am not sure I completely agree – I remember a talk on integrity by Dr. Kurien in which he said that honesty was like virginity (or was it pregnancy?), you either are or your aren’t; if you weren’t you did not have a future working with him; and that honesty could not be used as an excuse for poor performance, you had to get your work done AND not pay bribes – as clear an articulation of values, culture and desired behaviour as it gets.

 

The article suggests six guidelines to confront the challenges of culture-building, and I encapsulate five of these (the ones that made sense to me) in tabular form below.

Guideline	Description
#1: Build culture based on real world dilemmas.	·       It is a mistake to focus upon abstract absolute positives (such as integrity, respect, trust, etc.) – they make a statement but are unlikely to drive day-to-day decision-making. ·       Desired culture can come alive using debate and dilemmas – o   Identify tough dilemmas that employees routinely face and debate how they can be resolved. o   When employees face situations with multiple possible responses, they can make a choice based on personal preferences or be guided by organization culture. o   Create value statements that will guide employee responses. o   Encourage vigorous debate of the responses.
#2: Move culture from abstraction to action.	If building culture from scratch, debate it using dilemmas from the beginning. If there is a stated culture with abstract principles, dilemma-test them to determine whether they are actionable and usable in real decision-making situations. And use words carefully.   ·       Amazon – ‘Have backbone. Disagree and commit.’ ·       Airbnb – ‘Make space for introverts’
#3: Paint your culture in full colour.	Once a clear set of values are identified and dilemma-tested, articulate the desired culture using colourful images to get the values to stick.   ·       Amazon’s 2-pizza rule – ‘a team should not be made up of more people than two pizzas can feed’ – not ‘we value small teams’. ·       Airbnb – ‘elephants, dead fish, and vomit’ – leaders should transparently address unpleasant stuff that all are aware of but no one dares mention.
#4: Hire the right people, and they will build the culture.	·       ‘Garbage in, garbage out’ – if you hire people whose personalities don’t align with desired culture, you will not get desired behaviour. o   Patagonia – ‘we’ll take a risk on an itinerant rock climber over a run-of-the-mill MBA’. ·       Look at who you will fire. Should a company have a family ethos? Or should it be like an Olympic team? o   ‘Shopify is not a family. You are born into a family, they can’t un-family you. The danger of family thinking is that it becomes hard to let poor performers go. Shopify is a team’ – CEO, Shopify. ·       Deal with skilled, brilliant, effective but unsuitable employees? o   Netflix – ‘no brilliant jerks, the cost to teamwork is just too high.’ o   Shopify – ‘slack trolling, victimhood, us-vs-them divisiveness, and zero-sum thinking must be seen for the threat they are.’
#5: Don’t be a purist.	Culture should be a north star, not a strait jacket. Identify dilemmas where stated values do not apply; define which situations are over the limit. For e.g., with respect to transparency, should everyone know everyone else’s salary?

 

Retirement Report Card

 Retirement Report Card

Ajit Chaudhuri – September 2023 to September 2024

 

“Someone, give this man a job. I will not have him hanging around the house all day,” rumoured to have been said by Michelle Obama

 

I retired in 2023 and am often asked what I have done since. I usually respond with ‘nothing’, and this invariably elicits exasperation along the lines of ‘how can you do nothing?’, ‘you have a duty to work/earn for as long as you can’ or ‘you are wasting the wealth of skills and experience that you have accumulated’ (ahem). So, for the benefit of the curious, the appended table is a list of what I have done since retirement.

 

A quick analysis reveals 3 cross-country road trips (and some shorter ones), an unsuccessful first attempt to climb a mountain, four foreign trips (including one trek), and several teaching assignments interspersed with some writing.

 

My plans for the near future include –

·      Start a third novel (I’ve done the research and have the necessary masala, I think).

·      Do the Miao – Vijaynagar – Mugafi trek in Arunachal Pradesh.

·      Try and rediscover my love for cricket by watching Ranji Trophy games in stadiums.

·      Avoid all travel (other than the above, and maybe a visit to Dehradun).

·      Sort out the trilemma of using my remaining years of good health and relevance to earn something; doing things that I would like to do; and fading away with dignity.

 

Some things I have learnt about myself are –

·      I am getting old. I tire easily; I forget things (especially the location of my phone and specs); I find intelligence in women attractive; Aunties refer to me as ‘Uncleji’.

·      I am an agoraphobic sociophobe. Hell, for me, is other people (to quote JP Sartre).

·      I am also a bore. People politely wait for me to have my say before getting on with it.

 

 

	Activities Undertaken – September 2023 to September 2024
No.	Type of Activity	Purpose	Comments
I.1	Road Trip – Jamshedpur to Delhi   (19 to 24 September 2023)	To return to Delhi along with my car and personal belongings	·       Done with Rinky (my wife) ·       6 days: JSR – Lohardaga – Netarhaat – Gaya (2 nights at the OTA with Aruna and Gen. Minhas) – Badlapur (somewhere in UP, between Varanasi and Lucknow) – Delhi
I.2	Road Trip – Delhi to Dehradun to Delhi   (1 to 6 October 2023)	To open Rinky’s house in Dhulkot and get it into working order	·       Done with Rinky ·       Planned for two days travel and one day there, ended up spending four days there, loved it. ·       Wouldn’t mind going there again, for a longer time.
I.3	Road Trip – Delhi to Jaipur to Delhi   (30 November to 2 December 2023)	To meet my friends Shivani and Kushy	·       Done solo – my first experience of the new Delhi-Mumbai Expressway ·       Great to see Shivani and Kushy again. Met Viveka Kumari (an old friend of my sister Nomita and mine) again, after many years
I.4	Road Trip – Delhi to Kutch to Jaisalmer to Delhi   (23 January to 12 February 2024)	To Kharoi for time in a fat farm   To Jaisalmer for the Maru Manthan festival	·       Done solo. ·       Spent 13 days (25 Jan to 7 Feb) in Anand Dham (a nature cure centre in Kharoi, Kutch) to detox and lose weight. Have not used pain killer for my knees ever since. And loved it – will go again. ·       Spent two days at the Maru Manthan festival – spoke on women’s issues and nomadic pastoral practices, and on women’s groups in Jharkhand. ·       Done in three stretches; Delhi – Kishangadh – Deesa – Kharoi; Kharoi – Barmer – Jaisalmer; Jaisalmer – Jhunjhunu (via Bikaner) – Delhi
I.5	Road Trip – Delhi to western Rajasthan to Mumbai to Kutch and back to Delhi   (2nd to 28thSeptember 2024)	To research my next novel on the NGO world   To meet my Ma-in-law in Thane and Dad in Mumbai   To attend a Setu Abhiyan board meeting in Bhuj (Kutch)	·       Done solo. ·       Spent time in two NGOs – SWRC Tilonia and Urmul Seemant Bajju. ·       Done in five phases: Delhi – Tilonia (3 nights) – Nagaur (via Kotdi) – Bajju (4 nights); Bajju – Raniwara – Bharuch – Thane; Thane – Mumbai – Thane; Thane – Kutch; Kutch – Delhi ·       2 nights at Ma’s in Thane on the way in, 3 nights on the way out, Rinky was with me for the latter. ·       2 nights in Mumbai at Sea Green Hotel on Marine Drive – lovely hotel, lovely to be in the city again. ·       6 nights in Kutch ·       First experience of the ‘heaven’ road across the rann, Khavda to Dholavira – fantastic
			·
II.1	Foreign Trip – Hong Kong   (3 to 13 November 2023)	To meet the children	·       My first visit to Hong Kong – done with Rinky. ·       Spent time in Repulse Bay and Shek o beaches. ·       Ate too much, drank too much, walked a lot. ·       Met Jia, Reuben’s significant other, for the first time. ·       Loved it
II.2	Foreign Trip – Hong Kong   (11 to 18 December 2023)	To attend the ceremony for Rustam’s admittance into the Hong Kong Bar	·       Done with Rinky and my Dad ·       Really impressive ceremony at the HK High Court, presided over by Justice Johnny Chan – Rustam’s former pupil master Martin Richmond was a star speaker for Rustam, and it was also attended by his current pupil master Nicholas Pirie
II.3	Foreign Trip plus Trek – Nepal   (25th May to 9thJune 2024)	To do the Annapurna Circuit Trek	·       My fourth trek with Boots and Crampons ·       A ladies’ majority trekking group (a first for me) ·       My notes on the trek are at https://kaaluontheroad.blogspot.com/2024/06/circling-mt-annapurna.html .
II.4	Foreign Trip – Malaysia   (13th to 18th August 2024)	To celebrate Somnath Sen’s 60th birthday	·       Done with Rinky ·       We were on Penang Island right through – two nights at the main city George Town (13th and 14th nights) and 15th to 17th nights at a resort in Batu Ferringhi. Both experiences were excellent. ·       My first time in Malaysia, my first time on Singapore Airlines, loved both. ·       We were a group of 24 people, all relatives and friends of Somnath Sen. ·       My own 61st birthday was celebrated with the same group at a party on Batu Ferringhi in Penang.
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III.1	Climbing Expedition – Mount Friendship   (13 to 25 October 2023)	To climb Mt. Friendship, in the Pir Panjal range a little beyond Manali	·       My first climbing expedition, done with Boots and Crampons (third expedition with them, after Gurez valley (Patalwan Lake) and Everest Base Camp. ·       This is a 5,287 m peak outside Manali, considered one of the lowest that requires mountaineering (rather than trekking) skills. ·       My notes on the expedition are at https://kaaluontheroad.blogspot.com/2024/01/on-friendship.html
IV.1	Teaching – IIM Ranchi   (27 December 2023)	To teach students at IIM Ranchi	I forget what this was about, but it was part of a Tata Steel Foundation commitment.
IV.2	Teaching – IIM Raipur   (12 to 15 January 2024)	To teach part of the course ‘Management for Social Impact’ to the PGP students at IIM Raipur	·       This was a Tata Steel Foundation commitment. ·       Took two sessions of the course – Decoding Business Models for Societal Responsibility, and Communities as Rights Holders for Business ·       Found it tiring to take each session three times. ·       Saw a play after many years – Juhi Raj Babbar was performing ‘With Love, Aap Ki Saiyaara’. Brilliant!
IV.3	Teaching – ISDM   (26 Feb to 27 Mar 2024)	To teach strategy to ISDM’s students	This was at the Indian School of Development Management (ISDM); 10 2-hour sessions in Feb and March; done with my old boss Shankar Venkateswaran.
IV.4	Teaching – ISDM   (24 to 28 June 2024)	To teach scaling to ISDM’s students	This was as a follow-up to Prof. Madhukar Shukla’s sessions on scaling with the students; 4 full days hanging around with the same group I had taught strategy. It was a pleasure to be back with them.
IV.5	Teaching – IIM Jammu   (15 to 16 July 2024)	To teach part of a management development programme for JKAS officers	·       I took sessions on Planning for Model Development and Outputs to Outcomes: Measuring for Change ·       The participants were mostly sarpanches and DDOs, and their knowledge was impressive. ·       I think they appreciated my own knowledge of Kashmir and the use of examples from there. ·       Met my old friend Ateeque, now a Prof there.
IV.6	Teaching – XLRI   (24 August 2024)	To teach part of the certificate programme on CSR leadership offered by XLRI and Tata Steel Foundation	·       Took two sessions on Building Institutions for Lasting Social Impact – it was interesting to have to get back to the subject of New Institutional Economics to prepare. ·       This was done on-line – never again.
V.1	Writing	To write fiction	Completed four novelettes, compiled them into a collection called ‘An Exploration of Unintended Consequences’ (still trying to find a publisher for this) – ·       Thick and Thin ·       What Happens in Gurez ·       Second Time for Mr. Nice ·       My Modern Family