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    Blast from the past: Anand Mahindra reveals he wanted to be a film-maker, but opted for an MBA

    Synopsis

    The billionaire shared that he was popular director Mira Nair’s senior at Harvard.

    Anand Mahindra surprised his followers after he informed that he has always been a backbencher.Agencies
    Anand Mahindra surprised his followers after he informed that he has always been a backbencher.
    Anand Mahindra took a trip down the memory lane on Thursday. He revealed that he wanted to be a film-maker when he was young.

    The billionaire makes it a point to regularly interact with his 8.7 million followers on Twitter. Time and again, he has shared his human-side with his fans.

    Last week on National Youth Day, the floodgates of questions opened on the micro-blogging site when the 66-year-old posted a picture of himself sitting in a classroom with young students.

    Curious fans flooded the comments section with questions from his school and college days. One user asked him if he ever felt the void of not pursuing one particular career.

    Replying to the old post, the Mahindra Group Chairman shared a 1977 picture of himself holding a hand-wound camera. He said that he was an aspiring film-maker, and was working on a thesis of a film he made during the 1977 Kumbh Mela.

    "I wanted to be a filmmaker & studied film in college," he wrote.


    According to reports, the business tycoon pursued film making and architecture from Harvard University after completing his education at Lawrence School, Lovedale. In 1977, he graduated magna cum laude from Harvard. Later, he went on to study MBA from the Harvard Business School in 1981.

    A curious user asked if famous director Mira Nair clicked his picture, and Mahindra immediately replied, "No." He revealed that the film-maker was a year junior to him and studied in his college's film-making department.

    "She’s (Nair has) always kidded me that I 'sold out to the establishment' when I left film behind and went to Business School," Mahindra wrote.


    Sharing details about the picture, he said it was clicked when he was shooting a documentary in a remote village, named 'Dahi', near Indore.

    The documentary was on the Bhagoria festival celebrated by tribal youth Khaniya Lal Bhil in Madhya Pradesh's Jhabua District.


    Mahindra also asked his fans to guess the name of the hand-held 16mm camera that featured in the picture. One user promptly replied, "It was the Bolex hand wound camera - we were given this in 1990 at MCRC to shoot our first round of silent films."


    Last week, the businessman also surprised his followers by revealing that he has always been a backbencher because it gives the 'widest possible view' of the class and the Universe.


    And, history was Mahindra's favourite subject.

    "For those who will retort that they don’t like living in the past, I say that you can’t invent the future without learning lessons from the past," he added.


    SP Shukla, Group President of Agri, Defence & Aero Sectors, Chairman- Group Sustainability Council, Chairman-Mahindra CIE Auto & Mahindra EPC Irrigation, praised Mahindra's candid image. He said that he had also travelled from Varanasi to Kumbh Mela in 1977 with a group of engineering classmates.


    It would be interesting to know what kind of a movie director Mahindra would've turned out to be had he continued his passion for films.
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