“Can we call it ‘K’?” The next obvious look on my face came with an obvious curiosity, “Does ‘K’ have any significant meaning in your life?” Like I said earlier, it was an obvious question. Initially, his reply was, “Nah… Just……!” But after repeating my question, thrice, he finally blurts it out, “My name actually is Kunwar Vikram Bawa. By lineage, my great-grandfather was a big zamindar in his days. So I am a Kunwar, you know, the Prince, before partition and all. And when I was born, my name originally was Kunwar Bawa, based on our holy book, Guru Granth Sahib, and then came Vikram Singh Bawa, and then the ‘Singh’ dropped off from there, and it became the popular version that it is today, Vikram Bawa. So I have been toying with the idea of using ‘K’.”

This wasn’t the end though. For those of you who don’t know this, when our boss walks into his office, he bows his head in front of the small mandir, does one parikrama with the ghanti in his hands, and then suddenly turns into a workaholic, with an incessant need for chai and food. That reminds me of Brad Pitt from the movie Ocean’s Eleven.

And then another conversation kicked off, definitely not about the marketing plan, but about names, numerology, astrology, followed by a long discussion on “What’s in a name?” (Vikram will elaborate on this later).

Vikram Bawa is a conversationalist, and loves to talk and debate about anything and everything. Like we have ‘connect the dots’, Vikram Bawa has ‘connecting thoughts’. With another thoughtful smile, yet another profound conversation starts, about God, spirituality, and the things he likes to do apart from holding the camera. And if you haven’t guessed it yet, his second love is driving. It is his second love because it took him 30 thoughtful seconds to answer this one. His wish list includes being an F1 driver, the oldest maybe.

Vikram Bawa on the driving seat reminds me of the popular song by Billy Joel, “Downeaster Alexa”. Well, minus the wife and children part, nonetheless. And if you have been in his car, with him on the driver’s seat, you know his speedometer never shows anything lower than 140! That’s Vikram Bawa, the Speedoholic!!

A meeting is how the conversation started, discussing the marketing plans, strategies and action items… Oh! We were actually discussing Twisted Heads, a quarterly coffee table book by Vikram Bawa!!!

So now you know how our conversations in office are: one thought, and another one, and then, yet another one, exactly like this blog post.

Think I’ve forgotten what we were discussing, and what I’m supposed to be writing about…

– Surabhi Pratap, Sr. Manager – Marketing & Communication, Vikram Bawa