Every time Tejpavan Gandhok sits down to watch an India-Australia match, it just wrenches him. As an Indian-born Australian, Gandhok, Country Manager of EVA pioneers Stern Stewart (India), can never figure out which side to support. The upside: No matter which side wins, he gets to celebrate. And these days he's got a reason to cheer that has nothing to do with the battle of willows Down Under. The 35-year-old Gandhok, who still loves to backslap once in a while in Punjabi, has just been moved up as Regional Director for India and South East Asia. "That's not surprising given the growing prominence of India," says Gandhok, an alumnus of UCLA's Anderson School of Business. Gandhok, who's also written a couple of short stories on Indian immigrants in Australia, will now divide time between Bangkok and Singapore, besides Mumbai. It seems his boss Joel Stern may finally have found a way to put Gandhok out of his cricketing misery. After all, more work means less of cricket.

Birthday Boy

On the first of this month, Meleveetil Damodaran cut a 30-kg cake. No, the 57-year-old wasn't celebrating his birthday, but that of his born-again baby, UTI Mutual Fund. A year to the day, Damodaran, Chairman of UTI, had overseen the carving of the country's biggest mutual fund in two: UTI 1, which got all the guaranteed-return schemes, and UTI Mutual Fund. The guest list that packed the Jamshed Bhabha auditorium in south Mumbai included the who's who of corporate India, including Kumar Mangalam Birla, Anil Ambani, and A.M. Naik of L&T. That despite Mumbai's popular Derby being staged the same day. Picking up the metaphor, Damodaran told BT: "People now realise that UTI is a true Indian thoroughbred. That it's a lambi race ka ghoda." Clearly, the jockey is enjoying his ride.

Take-off Trouble

Last fortnight, Naresh Goyal's dreams of flying regional international routes crashlanded after Cabinet ministers, particularly Arun Shourie, clipped the young and enthusiastic Civil Aviation Minister Rajiv Pratap Rudy's plans to implement the Naresh Chandra Committee's recommendations on open skies. The snag: Shourie raised questions about the ownership of Goyal's Jet Airways and cited that as a potential threat to national security. With the Cabinet yielding to Shourie, India's open skies may have shut for another six months or so. Goyal, on his part, is maintaining his mysterious silence on the issue of ownership.

Software Doctor

Five years ago, Radha Basu quit her employer of two decades, Hewlett-Packard, to join a start-up that would offer real-time troubleshooting of software glitches. Today, the California-based SupportSoft, where she is the Chairman and CEO, pulls in $55 million in revenues, with a market cap of $442 million on Nasdaq. If that seems like an awfully quick climb, Basu, 53, may have one of her hobbies to thank for it. Basu-an engineer from the Universities of Madras and Southern California-is an avid trekker. She has twice trekked to the base camp of Mount Everest (some 18,000 feet). Last September she was all set for one to the base camp of Kanchenjunga but work overtook. "Being the CEO of a fairly large company doesn't leave me with much time to indulge my passion," says Basu. That's a climb just the same.

CEO Marathoners

Anil Ambani	Ashok Wadhwa

On February 15, standard chartered will kick off Asia's largest marathon event in Mumbai. Broken up into three distances of 7, 21 and 42 kms, the marathon will have more than 10,000 people running, including Ashok Wadhwa (right) of Ambit Advisory. But one man to watch is Reliance Industries' Anil Ambani. For, the 62-kg Ambani is a dead serious runner. He clocks 14 kms an hour and an astonishing 100 kms a week. When BT spoke to Ambani, he still hadn't made up his mind on the distance (21 or 42 kms), and Wadhwa said he would "attempt" the half marathon (21 kms). The total prize money is $210,000, with the highest prize at $25,000. Don't make the mistake of thinking that the millionaire Ambani (or for that matter Wadhwa) doesn't have his eye on the prize.

-Contributed by R. Sridharan, Roshni Jayakar, Venkatesha Babu and Dipayan Baishya