A Visit to Amar's Pensieve

Amar called me last week asking me for the Jaico local sales office details. He wanted 15 copies of '50 Not Out'. Now Amar has been the single largest buyer of 'The Men Within' - the book on which our friendship blossomed if I may say so (the book, not the sale) - and has always been a big supporter of my writing pursuits (or any pursuit for that matter). It might not be far from the truth if he did end up buying 500 copies of 'The Men Within' to gift to various people. Amar was also single-handedly responsible for starting two interesting activities I never thought I would do - public speaking and workshop facilitating. As President of Hyderabad Management Association, he forced me to deliver a talk on 'Leadership and Teamwork' which was my first serious public talk and then he made me design and deliver a workshop for CoD. We did several training programs together as well.

Kamath, Vijay, Praveen, Shelina, Me and Pradeep

Amar started this wonderful new place called Amar's Pensieve a couple of year's ago. It was a work of passion because he went about developing the place all by himself. A bit of research into the word Pensieve gives you a peep into his mind. Anyway Amar''s Pensieve is his own training facility in the quiet, rustic lands near Pragathi Resorts. He was doing a program for a company - Invesco and wanted to gift the copies to the participants. And could I, he said, join for dinner and sign the books for him.

Vijay to my right

Well Amar is not a person I would say no to whatever he asks (he is quite thoughtful and considerate when he makes a request) and I instantly agreed  - more so when I have to sign my books away. Though I could not make it yesterday for dinner as originally planned, I made it for lunch today and it was fun discussing some aspects of the book '50 Not Out', sign it and give it to the participants. If I remember right - Vijay Paro, Shelina, Praveen, Pradeep, Abhishek, Arun, Kamath, Ravi unless I missed any. Priyanka and Urvi had left yesterday.

I spoke about why I wrote the book and picked a few chapters to illustrate - Courage (get behind the line of the ball), Creativity (catches win matches) and Preparation and shared my thoughts about them. There were some questions and some answers - and we adjourned for lunch. A lovely home cooked lunch and we bid goodbye to the team. Amar and I played a few songs from each other's playlists before I left too. I enjoyed listening to his choice of a song 'Where The Black Top Ends' by Keith Urban which he wants to be the anthem song for the Pensieve.

 I had a long drive back and I wanted to avoid the traffic. I could not, but the drive was well worth it. Sometime soon we hope to do an all-nighter at the Pensieve, gazing at the stars and listening to our playlists.