Outstanding Alumni: Padma Bhushan 54er Rahul Bajaj

My second choice for my Outstanding Alumni Series, Padma Bhushan 54er/58er Rahul Bajaj, is another person who shared two alumni with me - Cathedral and John Connon School in Mumbai and St. Stephen's College in Delhi University.

Rahul was appointed as a Prefect in Standard 10 in school, an honour whim ch two 59ers, late Ashok Kapur and me, share with him. Like me, Rahul was also House Captain - of Savage House! 

Unlike me, he was also brilliant in studies. I was certianly deeply interested in sports but I was a very average student. I was fortunate to do well in my studies. I was no where near becoming 9th rank in the whole of Bombay State, as did Rahul! This is well evident in that Rahul has used his academic brilliance to build his industrial empire and received the Padma Bhushan in  2001 and in 2016 stood 722 in the Forbes List with a wealth of around $2.4 billion!

This is a revealing quote from Rahul which appeared in 2008:

"1946, we shifted for business purposes from Wardha to Mumbai. From then, till I passed out my senior Cambridge, I was in Cathedral School.

I did very well at school and passed out in 1954 with a distinction securing 9th rank in the whole of the then Bombay state. I learnt a great deal at Cathedral. The teaching methods were very good and there was a lot of personal touch.

I became a Prefect in Standard 10 and a Prefect and House Captain in Standard 11 and my classmates always wondered how I could be so good at studying and yet fulfill all these responsibilities. I was also the School Captain in table tennis and boxing. I also debated." (India  Today April 4th 2008.)

When I  arrived in Cathedral School from Bangalore in January 1954, I observed many of my seniors. Being my House Captain, Rahul was an immediate hero in my life. 54ers Antony Ramsinh, Ravi Jaitly and School Captain Sonawala were three others that made a deep impression on this new Cathedralite!

When I joined St.Stephen's College in 1960, when I told the staff, including the then Principal Sircar and Dean Rajpal, that I was from Cathedral School, Bombay, they all told me that I had big footsteps, those of Rahul, to fit into!

Rahul's accomplishments are recorded on the Wikipedia page about him.

I was greatly honoured when I visited Delhi with Annikki in 2009, 64er Deeepak Deshpande organised a get together of Delhi Cathedralites as a token of his respect for me. It was well attended, but what was the greatest tribute was that Rahul, then a Rajya Sabha member, who normally returned to Pune for the weekend, stayed on to attend this evening event. Rahul took the time to ask me a few pertinent questions about my life in Finland and also what India could learn from this small country which was then considered to be the most Innovative in the world!

Budget Battleground Part 2

NDTV seems to have taken a firm place in our home in Finland.

Today I watched the Budget Battleground Part 2 from St. Andrew,s College, Mumbai. (I reported on the panelists in Part 1 in my earlier blog entry.)

One of the reasons I watched was that 54er/58er Rahul Bajaj, 54er from Cathedral School and 58er from St. Stephen's College, Chairman of Bajaj Enterprises and an Independent Rajya Sabha member was among the panelists. In 2009, when Annikki and I visited Delhi, Rahul stayed back one weekend evening so he could meet up with us in a party organized for us by Cathedralites led by 64er Deepak Deshpande.

I was under the impression that Adi Godrej was a Cathedralite, like his nephew 65er Jamshyd Godrej, who passed through Finland last year with his wife 65er Pheroza. Although I could not meet up with Jamshyd, I had a long chat with Pheroza, also a Cathedrtalite.

Adi Godrej was, however, from St. Xavier's School and College in Bombay.

There was another member of the alumni on the panel that was from my alma mater. It was 73er Vikram Singh Mehta, the Chairman of Shell, about 10 years my junior, but known for his bringing the Royal Shell Oil group back to India. I have not had the pleasure or benefit of meeting Vikram. He came into prominence well after I left India in 1984. Being from the same professional area, I did watch his career rise with interest.

The fourth panelist was one who I have not met but am associated with indirectly as he is the brother-in-law of one of my dearest friends, the late 59er Ashok Kapur, former Chairman of YES Bank. Rana Kapur is now in the top spot of the bank. I do not know him personally, so am unable to comment on his  stature.

The discussion was not very memorable in that nothing new was really thrown up. The focus was on the disinvestment of the Government of India from Public Sector companies as well as privatization.

Certainly, as leaders in the Private Sector, as family run companies in the case of Adi and Rahul, and as a leader of a MNC as Royal Dutch Shell, in the case of Vikram, and as the head of an outstanding private bank set up by Ashok in his heyday, the general opinion was that the Government should stick to Governing while industrialists and professional managers should stick to running businesses professionally.

It was one question from the students that really summed up the situation. Is the outsourcing boom was not far away. I am glad that a young student could recognize this as it will not be long before we see this side of the contribution to Indian growth completely dry up as localities as Vietnam, start to cut into our traditional business strongholds.

You can watch this episode in the NDTV archives.  Hope this link works:

http://www.ndtv.com/video/player/ndtv-special-ndtv-24x7/budget-battleground-what-india-expects-from-pranab-babu/226057

Enjoy,

 

 

 

 

 

 

Budget Battleground

This post is made in three of my blogs as it of interest to all my readers of Jacob's Blog, and more specifically the readers of my Mumbai Cathedral and John Connon School Blog, Seventh Heaven, and readers of the Stephanian Blog, Kooler Talk (Web Version).

I apologize for this multi-blog posting, as many of you are readers of all the three blogs!

Budget Battleground was  event that took place against the backdrop of my alma mater, St. Stephen's College, beautifully lit in the background, had a selected audience of young economists from Delhi School of Economics, Shri Ram College and St. Stephen's College, three of the many premier colleges in Delhi.

The anchorman was NDTV Managing Director, Dr. Prannoy Roy, who was connected with another good friend, great economist with tremendous wit, the person who turned around Doordarshan in the late eighties and early nineties and then went on to head Rupert Murdoch's Star TV and then his own channel, Broadcast Worldwide Ltd.,  and also a Stephanian, 61er/63er Rathikant Basu.

This is from the Wikipedia entry for NDTV Managing Director, Prannoy Roy:

Controversy

On 20 January 1998 Central Bureau of Investigation filed cases against New Delhi Television (NDTV) managing director Prannoy Roy, former Director General of Doordarshan R Basu and five other top officials of Doordarshan under Section 120-B of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) for criminal conspiracy and under the Prevention of Corruption Act. According to the CBI charge-sheet, Doordarshan suffered a loss of over Rs 3.52 crore due to the “undue favours” shown to NDTV as its programme The World This Week (TWTW) was put in `A’ category instead of `special A’ category

The two in the hot seats were 63er Montek Singh Alhuwalia, who was very much present in St. Stephen's College during my three years there, and Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen (difficult to say whether he is an Indian or Bangladeshi as both countries have laid claim to him).

One can never forget 63er Montek, not for his knowledge, but for the unique way he wore his turban and certain mannerisms (the nervous laugh when he knows what he is saying is not what he believes), which have not changed, even as of today. The way he argued a point was always from a point that he could not be wrong, although many times, he was and is!

I give below three extract from the autobiography of Amartya Sen (Copyright © The Nobel Foundation 1998). In these extracts you will see the mention of a name - Mumbai Cathedral School 59er Sudhir Anand, my classmate who is Professor of Economics at both Oxford and Harvard, a brilliant economist and undoubtedly a brain who influenced Amartya Sen considerably more than a three time  mention in his autobiography.

59er Sudhir was from our Mumbai Cathedral and John Connon School. Although unable to make it top our 50th year reunion in 2009, he was very much there in spirit.

"I was also fortunate to have colleagues who were working on serious social choice problems, including Peter Hammond, Charles Blackorby, Kotaro Suzumura, Geoffrey Heal, Gracieda Chichilnisky, Ken Binmore, Wulf Gaertner, Eric Maskin, John Muellbauer, Kevin Roberts, Susan Hurley, at LSE or Oxford, or neighbouring British universities. (I also learned greatly from conversations with economists who were in other fields, but whose works were of great interest to me, including Sudhir Anand, Tony Atkinson, Christopher Bliss, Meghnad Desai, Terence Gorman, Frank Hahn, David Hendry, Richard Layard, James Mirrlees, John Muellbauer, Steve Nickel, among others.) I also had the opportunity of collaboration with social choice theorists elsewhere, such as Claude d'Aspremont and Louis Gevers in Belgium, Koichi Hamada and Ken-ichi Inada in Japan (joined later by Suzumura when he returned there), and many others in America, Canada, Israel, Australia, Russia, and elsewhere). There were many new formal results and informal understandings that emerged in these works, and the gloom of "impossibility results" ceased to be the only prominent theme in the field. The 1970s were probably the golden years of social choice theory across the world. Personally, I had the sense of having a ball.

From social choice to inequality and poverty

The constructive possibilities that the new literature on social choice produced directed us immediately to making use of available statistics for a variety of economic and social appraisals: measuring economic inequality, judging poverty, evaluating projects, analyzing unemployment, investigating the principles and implications of liberty and rights, assessing gender inequality, and so on. My work on inequality was much inspired and stimulated by that of Tony Atkinson. I also worked for a while with Partha Dasgupta and David Starrett on measuring inequality (after having worked with Dasgupta and Stephen Marglin on project evaluation), and later, more extensively, with Sudhir Anand and James Foster."

 

Later he says in his autobiography:

"During my Harvard years up to about 1991, I was much involved in analyzing the overall implications of this perspective on welfare economics and political philosophy (this is reported in my book, Inequality Reexamined, published in 1992). But it was also very nice to get involved in some new problems, including the characterization of rationality, the demands of objectivity, and the relation between facts and values. I used the old technique of offering courses on them (sometimes jointly with Robert Nozick) and through that learning as much as I taught. I started taking an interest also in health equity (and in public health in particular, in close collaboration with Sudhir Anand), a challenging field of application for concepts of equity and justice. Harvard's ample strength in an immense variety of subjects gives one scope for much freedom in the choice of work and of colleagues to talk to, and the high quality of the students was a total delight as well. My work on inequality in terms of variables other than incomes was also helped by the collaboration of Angus Deaton and James Foster.

Readers of Seventh Heaven will remember how I have written about Sudhir and the Nobel Prize awarded to Amartya Sen!

The discussion was lack lustre. Montek took the view that he could not discuss the Budget (the whole point of the programme) and gave no real answer for the blazing question how the poor of India had not improved their lot during the time he has been at the head of the Planning Commission. (At one point he says "We have said, the Government has said,…." )

Montek minced  words as only a political chamcha can do!

Roy was not hard-hitting in his position as Anchorman. He was being pleasant to his guests!!

Amartya Sen was his own self and wanted to be nice to everyone.

Not a receipe for a successful  discussion, but for me, being in the setting of our beautiful college was good enough to sit through the 45 minute discussion!

Anyway, it was good to be away from the depressing media coverage of our hallowed institution which has been plaguing us for almost half a decade!

And now there are two again

For many years, from the mid 90s, there were two Cathedralites in Finland, Prof. Ajeet Mathur and myself. Ajeet lived in Tampere, and me in Oulu (from 1984).

We used to hold reunions at my home whenever Ajeet had felt the need for some company or needed Annikki or my advice on something. (We authored a paper on E-Governance together and I read most of his papers before publication as a critique.)

Ajeet left a few years ago and is now a Professor at the Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad.

That left me as the sole Cathedralite on Finland.

After my retirement, I have been running a small service apartment business with apartments in Oulu, Tampere, Espoo and Helsinki.

Oulu is where I live and is a high tech city. Tampere is the industrial hub of Finland in Central South Finland. Helsinki, in South Finland, is the capital city and adjacent to the county of Espoo, which is also famed for higher engineering as it is the home of Otaniemi, the Technical University of Espoo.

The service apartment business is a sort of social service cum hobby. The main clientele are young engineers from various Indian MNCs as Wipro, TCS, Aricent, NSN Bangalore, Hughes Systique and many others.

Recently, I had a request from two engineers from a company I did not recognise. I was able to place them in separate shared apartments in Edpoo.

On my visit to Edpoo, after a hectic schedule, I found my way to the apartment block where I had placed thes guys. It must have been past 10 pm when I reached there.

I found both of them in one of the apartments as they had been dining together. Introductions over, as is customary for me, I pry! Both of them were from Mumbai. "Which school?" I asked, and Ashwin promptly came back with the answer - Carhedral!

I could not believe my ears. Another Cathedralite in Finland. Our Alumni Association was back in buiness.

For the next couple of hours we shared many a topic and I was able to show Ashwin and friends what Cathedral School had meant to me, my association with the school, our fabulous 59er Mother of all Reunions, and much more.

Ashwin has only passed out in 2003, so he probably could not quite fathom how we had kept our spirit so alive. I think he will learn as the yesrs go on.

I have visited Espoo a couple of times siince and made it a point to visit him. He has now moved to his own apartment. I will try to meet up with him on future visits to ensure that our Finnish Alumni Section is kept active.

Great to have you in Finland - Ashwin.

Integration Council members

I read today in the Indian Telegraph about the new "Minority boost to integration council".

Here are the names of people that may be on that council:

The Telegraph has learnt that the proposed names include those of Justice A.M. Ahmadi, Omar Abdullah, Salman Khurshid, Syed Shahabuddin, Asaduddin Owaisi, Shahid Lateef, Shabnam Hashmi, John Dayal, Ramdas M. Pai (president and chancellor, Manipal University), Valsan Thampu (St Stephen’s College principal), Roman Catholic Archbishop Vincent M.C. Concessao, Ratan Tata, Rahul Bajaj, N.R. Narayana Murthy and Kiran Mazumdar Shaw.

Recognise some names in that list?

Shahid Lateef is the wife of 62er Stephanian Sarwar Lateef. John Dayal is a Stephanian, as also present Principal of the College, Rev. Valsan Thampu. Rajya Sabha Member of Parliament, Rahul Bajaj, is both a 58er Stephanian and also a 54er Cathedralite. Ratan Tata was a Cathedralite for a part of his education. I have not had the good fortune to meet him personally, although his younger brother, Jimmy, was a close friend and my hockey mate.

During my recent visit to Delhi I did meet John, Valsan and Rahul.

John broke protocol and came to see me the day I was leaving. He had just got back from Orissa and he came over that morning just to spend a few minutes over breakfast. And I did say a short prayer, holding hands with him, for his devoted work for the people of India. Maybe this is where I show him the meaning for that prayer.

I met Thambu at the St. Stephen's Founder's Day celebration on Monday 7th December, where I took part in the Holy Communion Service in the College Chapel, and then at the proceedings in the College Assembly Hall where former Indian President Abdul Kalam was the Chief Guest.

Sadly I do not see Valsan as a man with much vision at this moment of time. Hopefully God will lead him in the right direction if he gives up his ways of playing politics for power!

And Rahul paid me the greatest tribute by staying on a extra day in Delhi to be present at an event organised by Delhi Cathedrtalite to meet with Annikki and me. Having led an industry to the zenith, he now has a wondeful opportunity to show his fellow men that he has the vision to lead minorities to the centre of Indian society as equals.

Sadly, I did not learn till later that Sarwar and Shahid were in Delhi, as otherwise I would certainly have met up with this very dear couple. Shahid has always been at the forefront of the women's movement as well as a powerful spokesperson for uplifting of Muslim women.

I do hope this Council will stop beating about the bush and get a move on, not on the antiquated model of reservation of seats for the minorities in schools, colleges and jobs, but by uplifting the hearts and minds of these people labelled as minorities, into them thinking that they can compete on equal terms with the best of the world. They are not second class citizens of the world, so let us stop treating them as such.

You treat people as weak and they will be weak. You treat them as human beings and they can outstrip the very best.

Look at the fantastic performance of the black community in sports in the USA and UK (and also Kenya, Ethiopia, Jamaica, Canada, France, etc., etc.). They do not need to be treated as weak and powerless minorities. Given the right role models, they will bring in performances that are better than the best of their more fortunate brothers and sisters.

That itself is the tonic for success, not reservations, which is the sure tonic for failure!

I remember the words of my friend, former Ambassador Niranjan Desai, while we were having lunch together at the International Centre just a few weeks ago. He said that by treating the minorities as we do presently, we will not achieve any improvement in their standards.

I fully agree with his reasoning. This Integration Council should start looking at other ways to uplift the ethnic minorities in India than stupid and unrealistic reservation policies!

Recognise inherent cultural and ethnic talents. Build on successes. Do not force people into streams where they are doomed to fail.

In short, I hope this council will bring forward a new vision to the way we handle the integration of minorities into mainstream society!

Driving 1100 km on the same day

(Also on the Jacob's Blog and the Kooler Talk Blog.)

After a hectic weekend, when I went to Tampere with Sunil, in a van taking materials to set up four apartments and which included a side trip to Helsinki to check on how Raantel apartments were doing there, we left Tampere late on Saturday evening to return to Oulu so that I could speak at the Free Speech Day in Oulu Otto Karhi Park.

We arrived back at Oulu about 6 am on Sunday morning. I had a nap and went with Annikki to the public park, equipped with my speaking stand.

The opening procedure was just taking place and the Chief Editor of Kaleva Newspaper, a new person, was making the welcome remarks.

He ended by saying that each speaker would be given 5 minutes at the mike.

My talk, which this year was about "Justice Delayed is Justice Denied" would have taken the good part of 1 and half hours.

Ii approached the gentleman and asked that I set up my own stand as in previous years and be allowed to speak. He rejected the idea saying he had no powers to allow that. After much persuasion, he pointed me to a lady. She said that I could do that away from the main central area.

But it was clear that they did not want to move away from their prepared script. Annikki and I decided against making a speech this year under these conditions.

In short - this was no copy of Hyde Park Corner as this was a very controlled exercise to make Finns believe that they have Freedom of Speech - which they don't.

I had promised to meet Ajeet on Monday in South Finland. He and Sari are on a flying trip here to take part in a couple of conferences. So our Alumni meets were scheduled for Monday at 10:30 am, and this time in Toijala, wher he was staying.

I left Oulu by car at 3:50 am and because of the GPS Navigator (the cheap one), I did the trip to Tampere in just 5 hours (477 km). After attending to some Raantel work there, I drove on to Toijala to be greeted by Ajeet and his wife, Sari.

Our joyous Cathedralite and Stephanian Finland Chapter Alumni Reunion was a working one. 100 % attendance as usual!

I exploited the combined legal expertese of Ajeet and Sari.

Ajeet confirmed he would be in Bombay for the November 12th Cathedral Founders Day event. After my 50th year Golden Reunion Celebrations are complete, Annikki and I will go to Ahmedabad where I will give a talk at the Indian Institute of Management about the new developments in technology taking place and their implications on world society.

Then we would all spend a few days at Mount Abu, where Annikki and I have never been.

I left at 14:30, stopped at Tampere to attend to some more Raantel Oy work, left Tampere at 16:30 and arrived back in Oulu at 22:30.

A 20 hour round trip of 1100 km - and because of the hectic weekend of travel and work, this one partially knocked me out.

I got a good scolding from Annikki who thought I was on a leisurely train trip to Tampere!!

The ever youthful Rahul is 70

Young and dynamic Rahul Bajaj in 1986
Copyright The Hindu

At the top in 2006, Rahul Bajaj
Copyright The Frontline

“Do whatever you think best, but be best at whatever you do.”
– Member of Rajya Sabha Padma Bhushan Rahul Bajaj

Like a handful of people of the 1950’s as 57er Ashok (Tony) Jaitley, 58er Dr. Peter Philip, 59ers Sujit Bhattacharaya, and myself, 54er Rahul Bajaj was a Mumbai Cathedralite and a Delhi Stephanian. (There is an earlier blog entry on both blogs listing several more who share this common heritage.)

Ashok Jaitley, Tony to most of us, wrote a book about St. Stephen’s College. Rahul released the book where Mani Shankar Aiyar, another Stephanian of our era spoke. Here is a quote from Tony’s book:

"The same spirit of striving for the best was infused in all other activities despite the cultivated air of nonchalance that Stephanians have always sought to project about themselves. But this has not deterred the real achievers from being clear about their own perspective. Rahul Bajaj, one of the most innovative and successful captains of Indian industry, recalls his days in College as the second most powerful influence after his school in Bombay: 'It was the first whiff of freedom...and as the Cat Stevens number goes, "the first cut is the deepest." The notion of a performing elite was imprinted in my mind at College. We are all here to make a difference and we should be very good at something, is the essence of Stephania."

Also like Peter and me, Rahul was a Savageite and also House Captain. There, however, the similarity ends, as Rahul is one of the topmost industrialists in India and also ranks extremely high in the world.

It is reputed that Rahul was a sportsman. He was an outstanding boxer and won his weight most years. He is remembered as being part of the School Table Tennis Team. I also remember him as an long distance athlete. As I was just a newcomer to school in 1954, the year Rahul graduated, I am not fully and personally conversant with all his accomplishments at school.

The Bajaj Enterprise started as a sugar manufacturing factory in 1931. It has now grown to become one of the country’s largest business houses.

Rahul took over the running of the Bajaj Auto company in 1965. Activities encompass the manufacture of a whole range of products.

In 2001 the Bajaj Group had a sales turnover in excess of US$ 1,300 million. The Net Assets were worth US$ 1,333 million and the Net Profit was US$ 58 million. It was ranked as the 5th largest business family in India by the Centre for Monitoring Indian economy (CMIE).

It has under its umbrella over 25 companies and a strength of over 25000 employees.

It’s core strength, however, is the unshakeable foundation based on its tradition of trust.

Rahul's most recent interview with Chris Morris from the BBC was about the small car of Bajaj Auto, in relation to the Tata Nano. It can be found at this link.

The interesting similarity between Ratan Tata and Rahul Bajaj is that when Ratan was Chairman of Air India, Rahul was Chairman of Indian Airlines. (I do not remember Ratan as a Cathedralite but younger brother, Jimmy, was a 57er and played hockey and cricket with us.)

Rahul received the Padma Bhushan in 2001.

Cathedralite 54er and Stephanian 57er, Independent Rajya Sabha member, Chairman of Bajaj Group, Rahul Bajaj will turn 70 this Tuesday.

I hope as many of you that can will wish this outstanding Cathedralite / Stephanian and wish him many many more years of service to our nation.

(Many thanks to Cathedralite 56er HS Uberoi and Cathedralite / Stephanian 57er Ashok Jaitley (and his brother Ravi, Rahul’s classmate) for their valuable contributions when writing this tribute.)

Merry Christmas to all our friends

(Cross-posted on all our major blogs.)

It is Christmas morn. Annikki and my email Inboxes are filled with greetings from all corners of the globe.

63er Stephanian Ajay called me on a Skype video link from his farmhouse in Lund, Sweden. (I was able to see him, but as I am still having a problem finding an economic web camera for my Apple Mac, he could not see me!)

Chaff participant Kannan, who is taking his mother on a pilgrimage called us from Kashi, Varnasi, India.

Chaff participant Tingting checked in from her home town in Northeast China where she reported all the shops were open and brimming with customers.

63er Stephanian Aftab Seth (the twin brother of Roshan Seth who acted as Nehru in the movie "Gandhi") from Japan, 66er NCRTer Christie Robert from Malaysia, 60er Cathedralite Mehfooz Ahmed from Saudi Arabia, 62er Ranko Ivancevic from Cerbia, 95er Oulu University Ramesh Devu from Silicone Valley, California, USA; from India - 57er Cathedralite and 61er Stephanian Ashok (Tony) Jaitly (retired Chief Commissioner in Kashmir) from New Delhi, Cathedralite 59ers Viney Sethi and Vijay Shivdasani from Mumbai, cousin Satish Abraham from Kerala, Catheralites 43er Naval and 54er Armaity Patel from Mysore, etc...., from Finland Rotarian Ville Suomi, Women's Empowerist Ildiko Hamos, Chaff participant Pekka Keranen and family, on and on.... were among those who shared their greetings with both Annikki and me.

This made us feel profoundly humble that so many hundreds of you, of every age group, took the time to share your thoughts of the season with us.

On our part, we have made it a tradition to ask a couple of young foreigners who have no family here in Oulu, to join us for our very simple Christmas meal.

Year-before-last it was a young Tanzanian lady, Christine. Last year it was Kannan. This year we called two youngsters, Benjamen Hayes and Kanchan Gupta.



Benjamin is from Australia. He has been here for a few months. He is all what I call Australian, friendly, outgoing, understanding and a lovely human being.

We have a rule in our home that no gifts are exchanged at Christmas. For us, the time for giving is not one day, but the whole year.

Despite this, Benjamin brought me a CD which he cut of some of really best jazz tunes he has collected. Even as I write this I am listening to the CD "Jazz for Jacob". Forever-lasting melodiies, oldies rendered by many great artistes, as George Benson (Eternally) and Diana Krall's "Cry Me A River".

There is beautiful message on the back cover:

"And promise will come
To those whose kindness,
Leaves you without debt,
And bends the shape
Of things to come,
That haven't happened yet."

These are words of the New Zealand pop star Neil Finn, whose career from 1976 till today has been an inspiration to many, including me.

We had also asked Indian newcomer to Oulu, Bihari Kanchan Gupta, to join us. Unfortunately, he went for a walk on the previous day, fell and hurt his hand. He obviously consumed an overdose of pain-killers, which put him to sleep.

When I rang his doorbell to pick him up, and also rang his mobile several times during the course of the evening, he was in deep sleep and dead to the world.

He woke up after our meal was over, just about midnight, telephoned us, apologetic, but sadly, he missed a feast!



Annikki's mother, now 86, was also in a festive mood wearing the elf's hat, as she enjoyed what delicacies that were on offer.

I prepared the turkey. As I was thinking what filling to make, Annikki, as usual, came up with a most humourous and unusal suggestion. We had a box of chicken wings on the shelf. She suggested I stuff the turkey with that.

We laughed our guts out.

I had fun making a new Christmas dish, roast turkey stuffed with chicken wings beautifully flavoured with herbs and light spices carried in plenty of onions!

The meal was fully traditional Finnish in other ways.

The menu: Apple juice and orange juice to accompany Christmas brown bread made with a trace of molasses syrup, pickled herring, salted salmon slices, freshly tossed salad, potato salad, mushroom salad, turnip casserole, carrot casserole, roast potatoes, and, of course, the roast turkey stuffed with chicken wings! Afters were whipped cream with chocolate swiss roll and Annikki's own Christmas cake, full of all the rich dry fruits. Coffee to end the evening.

Mika, had his fill as well. Annikki's brother, who lives as a hermit in the forest, also landed up on the doorstep. Annikki put him to sleep in the cellar. He slept through the meal but enjoyed it later!

It was a true Christmas spirit as Benjamin had a tour around Annikki's garden and enjoyed the humour and simplistic creativity and beauty of what makes us so happy, day-in and day-out!

We finally thanked our Creator and Maker for all the simple things in life which make us so happy.

But, this year we dearly missed our grandchildren, Daniel, Asha and Samuel, who are holidaying in Florida with their parents!