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Kaushik Thakkar,
Board Member,
Syntensia
He neither chanted slogans nor did he slit his wrists nor attempt suicide. Instead he was all smiles, unlike the now-famous starlet Jahnvi who created a furor amidst the wedding ceremony of Abhishek Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai.
“Well, I knew that this was my last chance to woo Aishwarya,” says the Uganda-born, Sweden-based Thakkar as he picks up his mobile phone and tells me to have a look while acknowledging that apart from the Syntensia conference this was the other reason for his visit to India.
Now this wasn’t expected. A wallpaper of Aishwarya Bachchan nee Rai dressed in blue. And before I could look at more, he snatched the phone from my hand and burst into laughter.
Thakkar ‘discloses’ that he had a pre-nuptial agreement with his wife (who is also an Indian) that “if, by any chance, the blue-green eyed lady decided to take the seven holy steps around the fire with him it would be farewell to their marriage.”
The first time he visited India was in 1988 as an 18- year-old. So how has the country changed since then? “I am excited about how India has evolved, about the recognition it has achieved globally,” he says with pride.
He continues, with a smile, that Sweden wants to ensure good relations with the Indian IT fraternity, “besides trading in guns.” (Remember the Bofors scam?)
As a Swedish national, Thakkar has undergone a 10-month military service training which is mandatory for all that country’s nationals since 1902. “The training was fine. But the freezing temperature of minus-20 degrees centigrade was too tough to endure,” he recollects.
Thakkar says that he is a gym freak (though his colleagues beg to differ and his plump stature says it all). But he insists that despite frequent business trips he finds time to make a date with the gym.
And the man likes playing golf although he says that the golf courses in Sweden are too crowded these days. Prior to golf he played soccer and ice hockey which are considered to be the most popular spectator sports
in Sweden.
Ask him to name his favorite book and back comes the reply: “Funky Business. The book is crazy,” says Thakkar about the book which has been authored by two Swedes, Kjell Nordstrom and Jonas Ridderstrale. The book speaks about how enterprises need to do business in an unusual and unpredictable manner. Currently Thakkar is reading Banker to the Poor, an autobiography of the Bangladeshi Nobel laureate Dr Muhammad Yunus.
The other thing he is passionate about is Hindi music, specially remixes. “All the numbers in my car are Indian,” he boasts. His favorite singer? “Himesh Reshammiya is good,” he declares. Thakkar is a vegetarian and freaks out on paneer and dal makhani when he is in India. “However, the first thing I do when I am in any city in the country is hire an auto-rickshaw and take off.”
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