SUMA at the nets, Opp Devi Temple, Koivila Post, Perumanseri, Thevalakara Panchayat, Kollam (2026)

07/03/2026

Had a fabulous four days hosting IIM Bangalore friends Anupam Srivastava and Shashi Munjal and Shashi’s wife Kavitha at SUMA at the Nets.

Anupam and Shashi (IIMB 1984-86) and Suma and I spent countless hours on campus during those two years together doing nothing, and doing everything. The last pic is from 1985, and shows us resting after a strenuous session of tennis ball cricket; I was way ahead of times, playing in my pyjamas much before pyjama cricket became popular.

Fast forward to 2026 and here are some pics (1-6) of their first days in Pavumba. The lakeside pic (1) is special because it was taken by our man Friday Raju under the tutelage of Shashi; it is the first (and till now only) pic clicked by Raju.

I took Shashi and Kavitha on a morning walk thru the village (7-13) and they were offered jackfruit (8) fish (9) and mangos (12-13) by the villagers. They even dared walking the nets (10-11) leaving me holding my breath.

24/02/2026

On a lazy summer afternnoon, Pavumba stirred to life as the beautiful deep growl of two ancient machines rose above the prayers streaming over the loudspeakers hooked up by the village temple. Two exquisitely designed and beautifully maintained 100-year old Bentley Speed Sixes (6-7), led by a hulky support vehicle Landcruiser, glided in to the mud path leading to our home. And following them were a bunch of village kids, running barefeet and open-mouthed. And Arya was dressed in her summer best to receive them too (4-5). They had announced their arrival! Robert Wilkinson and John Walton from UK have been going around the world in their Bentleys, and we hosted them at Suma At The Nets for the night of 21 February . And till the next morning there was a steady stream of villagers coming to click pictures of these machines!

I got connected with Daniel Sequeira, who rode the support vehicle, on a roading group and had invited them to stay with us for a day. By the time they left (1-3) Daniel, Robert, John and we were good friends . They packed a lot of things into the half-day: Robert organised a swimming race among the village kids (8), met my friend Christopher (9), met villagers (10), took a boat cruise (11), came back and had an adda (12-13), and then walked past our village mosque and temple (14-15) and joined friend Nizar Roomy and family for iftar, as they broke fast on the second day of the holy month of Ramadan, at their very beautiful lakeside home; a thunderstorm ensured a candlelit dinner (16)

For more on Robert and John’s adventure read this nice piece on Manorama…

Some engines hum. Some purr. A 100-year-old Bentley does neither, it announces itself by growling low and deep before rising into a thunderous rhythm that feels less like machinery and more like a mechanical heart forged in an age when cars were shaped by craftsmen and speed was an act of courage.

Read more at: https://www.onmanorama.com/news/kerala/2026/02/18/bentley-world-tour-england-natives-kochi.html #

16/02/2026

Fifty years.
F.I.F.T.Y. Years!

Ajesh Sharma and I were class-section B classmates at Don Bosco Park Circus (DBPC), Calcutta. And last we met was in 1973. So make it 53.

One of the things we feel blessed about, is that setting up SUMA at the Nets has given us the opportunity to meet up with friends who we would never ever have met up with otherwise.

Having Rita and Ajesh at home felt like having family at home. We had a very goid time together . And Arya had a ball (I guess she thinks that for sure Rita and Ajesh are family!)

Ajesh is the first friend that I can call a playwright: he is the author of a play and a book of collected short stories (3)

We went to eating places, lighthouses, lazy drives, boat rides! (5-11)
And Ajesh played badminton with the village kids (4)

21/12/2025

We were thrilled to have got a chance to host one our favourite friend-couples Sweta and Rajesh. Rajesh was our colleague at IIM Udaipur, the popular Accounting Prof!

They were with us on a (too) short 2 day stay. But we managed to pack quite a bit into those two days. And traded stories 2x24x7 !

We went on our lake cruise (pics 1 and 2), visited our favourite ancient Dutch Church (pic 3, but the pic is of the not-as-ancient ladies), lunched on Munroe Island (pic 4; again pic is not of the lunch itself as is obvious) , experienced the Christmasy feel at our neighbourhood Church (pics 5 and 6), went on our village walk (pics 7-9). And then Rajesh and Sweta got to spend some time with our village kids, teaching, and dancing !

09/12/2025

How do we describe Payal?

Definitely not ‘our student’ though she happened to be a PhD student at XLRI while we were Faculty Members there.

Because, even before she joined the PhD Program we knew her as the one who was helping Faculty publish books, in her avatar as Vice President Sage India . And now she is the author of numerous research papers and 18 books. 18! ‘Our student’? Na!

During her nearly week long stay at SUMA at the Nets she met some of our friends from Kollam City (pic 2) met our village kids (see the trophy the little fella earned as recognition of his soccer skill?) (pics 3 and 4), our neighbour’s buffaloes(pic 5) . And I suspect she was working on her 19th book and beyond, sandwiched between our chai guppa sessions ! Was happy to have had her here, relating her truly fascinating life experiences around the globe!

19/10/2025

Lazy Sunday, boats on shore.
SUMA at the Nets, Pavumba

16/10/2025

Great fun hosting IIM Bangalore friends Navneeta and Nalinaksha Bhattacharya for a week at SUMA at the Nets. Over the week we/they visited the Jatayu Earth Centre, Azheekal Beach, Kollam Lighthouse, Varkala Beach, Neendakarra Fishing Harbour. And…. I joined them on the Shikara ride on the Ashtamudi 🙂🙂 Here is a collection of pics

19/09/2025

East Africa. Tanzania. Dar es Salaam. 1950s and 1980s. Exotic places, exotic times. And she was telling me about her life as a teacher. 70 years ago.
In turn I dug out pics of her school from the 1960s from the internet. And was showing it to her when pic 1 was clicked by friend Venky. Her eyes lit up as she recognised a couple of people! What a feeling it must have been; wonder what thoughts ran through her mind.

I have always loved travelling back in time, and across space, riding on the memories of folk much older than me. However, that space is shrinking as I grow older: I cannot be the recipient as often as I wish; instead more and more I have to be the source! 😃

So it was that I was very thrilled when I got one such rare opportunity this Monday . IIMB friend Mumbaikar Raman Venkatakrishnan (Venky) had came over for a second visit to Pavumba. And then we decided to drive 60 kms up to Central Kerala to visit yet another IIMB batchmate , Robin. The drive was beautiful . Dark clouds. And then blue skies. Clean, washed roads. Thick greenery everywhere. Beautiful homes. Minimal honking. Unfortunately I could not - due to some ‘technical issues- take pics. So most pics you see are clicked by Venky.

Meeting Robin’s mother was the highlight of the trip. And both for city-dweller Venky, and for neo-villagers Suma and me, Robin’s backyard was as exotic as his mother’s stories: jathika (nutmeg) trees (pics 2 and 3), giant colocasia (4), pineapples (5), mango (6), papaya and coconut and blue sky (7). And us (8,9).

01/09/2025

Shannon Fernandez and Justin Fernandez sneaked in through the temporary‘embargo’ on visitors at SUMA at the Nets that was in place due to Suma’s tight (online) teaching schedule.

But then these two guys have every right to do so; they have known us, literally, all their lives. Embargos thus are meant to be sneaked thru!

“Hey Uday, we were looking at the Kerala map and Jatayu Earth Centre is near your place” Shannon says over the phone. “Ya” I say. “OK then we are riding down from Goa to your place on our bikes” “Oh, when?” I ask. “Tomorrow we start”!!!!

So they rode down. The ride back from Pavumba to Panjim was far quicker, easier and enjoyable for thrm than the Panjim to Pavumba ride. A steep learning curve. So their next ride here (they have to come again!) will hopefully be a breeze.

We enjoyed their stay here. Suma even tried getting Shannon to help in cooking. But that plan backfired (or rather sidefired; I was the target and not Suma) because this guy made me fetch him all the ingredients , prep the food, wash the dishes. Meanwhile Justin was… well, the over-seer (pic 5)

They were lucky to get a rain-free day when they could ride a route curated for them by me: Pavumba - Jatayu- Varkala - Thangaserry- Pavumba . And, on our village walk our neighbour Johnson operated his Chinese Fishing net for them against a beautiful evening setting. (Pic 6)

Videos 1 and 2 and pics 3 and 4 are their preparations for riding back from Pavumba to Panjim. The last pic is our village kiddo Ambadi welcoming them to Pavumba as the brothers rode in from Goa.

04/08/2025

IIM Udaipur came home to Pavumba in the form of Y Shekar, Head of the Digital Enterprise Management of IIM Udaipur. Shekar’s wife Meenu, his cousin Vengidi and Vengidi’s wife Jyothi completed the group.

Because this was a one-night visit that was squeezed into a family trip of theirs to Kerala, we could only visit spots around home; a longer visit is planned!

Left, right, and centre Pics 1,2,3 are all around Ashtamudi. Pics 4 and 5 are us at home and at Chef Pillai’s Sasya. In video 6 I demonstrate my puppetry skills on my Rajasthani string puppets; I think I impressed the group!

29/07/2025

A gap finally got plugged when my Indian Statistical Institute Delhi (ISI) Delhi, Sasikumar came visiting witto Pavumba.

Whereas we have had guests from almost all my bio place-markers (Boarding School, IIMB, XIMB, GIM, IIMK, XLRI, IIMU) we haven’t as yet had guests from my Calcutta School, Kochi College, ISI, and TCS. With Sasi coming ISI is now represented🙂.

Sasi is currently a Professor at Malardalen University, Sweden. I was meeting him after 15 years; Suma was meeting him for the first time in her life. But when Sasi came home with his adorable sons Abhinav and Ajay it was like family. We sat around at home (pics 1 and 2) and also made a dash to the lake in the rain (pic 3).

Sasi’s kids- especially Ajay- loved the lake, the birds, the spirit of adventure in the village. They also ended up creating a chain of connections across our various networks when Sasi and the boys unsuccessfully tried completing the puzzle that had been gifted to the village kids the previous week by my cousin Ranjit. Finally, our village whiz kid Xavier (his success rate till now with puzzles is 100%) did a demo on how it has to be done (video 5)

SUMA at the nets

07/03/2026

24/02/2026

16/02/2026

21/12/2025

09/12/2025

19/10/2025

16/10/2025

19/09/2025

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04/08/2025

29/07/2025

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