It is difficult to say who is the greatest..

I have been pondering about us 59ers.

We have so many outstanding personalities in our midst, that it is very difficult to say who is the greatest amongst our group.

Given below are a few, not in any order - just like scrambled eggs for eggitarians - every morsel is tasty!

Naubir Mohindar revolutionised the subject of Venetian Blinds in India.
Vikram Kamdar set the trend for modern furniture in Mumbai.
The Ruia's - Ashok, Bridge Champion of India, and Anil an outstanding industrialist, like many others as Vijay Nayar and Elijah Elias.
Adi Cooper, besides his work on the race track, was the wizard of computers from when he headed Tata Consultancy Services as the right hand of F C Kholi, vice chairman of Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), the Father of the Computer Revolution of India.
Jangoo Moos ended a wonderful career in the corporate world as Company Secretary of Glaxo, to become a high range environmentalist trekker!
Bashir Currimjee heads the huge corporate group in Mauritius.
Sudhir Anand has written many of the papers along with Amartya Sen who received the Nobel Prize for his work.
Vijay Shivdasani was the Captain of the INS Vikrant after a very honouerable career in the Indian Navy.
Arvind Thadani had a glorious stint ending at the top of the AOL Ladder.
Ashok Kapur had an illustrious career in banking now Chairing the newest Indian success of banking scene in India, the "YES" Bank.
Gita Vaswani is one of India's leading artists.
Armeane Choksi and Peter Miovic had well-documented careers in the World Bank and their treatises on various subjects, from Bangldesh to Africa, can be found everywhere.
And many others out of our 40+ colleague have performed with distinction in their own areas of expertise.
And, finally, despite whatever Naubir may say, Ratan Singara has to be accepted by all of us as one of the Table Tennis greats of our era! :-) )(More on the last individual in a later post as the irrefutable evidence is still coming in!)

I could go on and on, in every field.

(Modesty is my middle name.) I know, however, who is the lowliest - ME! :-)

I was thinking, besides Percy Mistri, who is hitting the high notes in jazz in Mumbai, who else in our crowd has been outstanding in music.

Then Armeane sent me an mp3 called called "What Is This Thing". It was superb - and I found that it featured none other than "drummer boy" 59er Jake Haskell, but, in this, he was playing the bass. I asked Jake whether this was a shot in the blue.

He promptly sent me another mp3 called "Night and Day".

It is also truly melodious.

I have now an Album in my iTunes called "Haskell and friends" - vintage Jazz.

Here is the story about his music in Jake's own words:

Pianist is Wendy Macbain and it was recorded live at an art gallery in Palo Alto called ART 21. You can tell it was live by the loud voice of one of the patrons! In fact I play there again in June and July on the first Friday of the month.

I played drums as a professional while still at school getting my Master's degree in Madison. Switched to bass when I turned up to play at a jam session with Ben Sidran, two drummers and no bassist - and literally picked it up. Ben insisted I play that instead of the drums so I taught myself the instrument. I also taught myself to read music on a Mac Plus and a program called "Practica Musica". I however learned treble clef much better than bass clef!

So who is the greatest of the whole bunch of outstanding 59ers?

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