'PAUSE BEFORE YOU PUNCH....': ANAND MAHINDRA TO EX-CEO JET AIRWAYS SANJIV KAPOOR ON DUBAI RAINS

The UAE recently experienced the heaviest rains ever recorded in the history of the country. The "historic weather event" was subject to heavy media coverage. Many social media users, all over the world, shared pictures and commented on the situation. Anand Mahindra, the chairman of the Mahindra group, and Sanjiv Kapoor, Ex-CEO of Jet Airways, engaged in an exchange of posts on X, formerly Twitter. The weather situation of Dubai was the subject of their social media posts, which sparked a discussion.

In an X post on April 17, Sanjiv Kapoor commented on an earlier post by Anand Mahindra, wherein the latter had written, "Nope. Not Mumbai. Dubai…", and shared a video of the Dubai rains, which has since been removed.

Sanjiv Kapoor, in his response to the post, wrote, "Incorrect analogy. Dubai was not built for such heavy rains - rains that would flood most cities. A better analogy would be if it suddenly snowed heavily in Bombay, which was obviously not built to handle snow at all. Would people in snowy Oslo mock Bombay?"

However, he later clarified while replying to the post and said, "Ok, upon re-reading the post, maybe it is not mocking Dubai. However the point remains Dubai was not built for heavy rains, no matter what the source of the rain (seeding etc). It would be impractical to build cities to handle any extreme weather scenario, however unlikely."

Anand Mahindra decided to responded to Kapoor's post and wrote, "I’m glad you subsequently retracted your comment implying that I was mocking Dubai, Sanjiv. In fact, the only purpose of my post was to highlight how atypical this weather was for Dubai."

He went on to the explain his initial post by saying, "For example—to use your own analogy—if it had ever snowed in Mumbai, I might well have said: Nope Not Oslo Mumbai For the very same purpose of highlighting how atypical this weather was for Mumbai; Not to mock Mumbai."

"I recommend that it’s always good to: PAUSE before you PUNCH REFLECT before you REACT," he added.

Their exchanges were subject to some discussion amongst observers on X.

In a final response which ended the exchange, Sanjiv Kapoor wrote, "Absolutely. My initial reaction was triggered by, and directed to, the responses by others to your comment, many of which were mocking / gloating. Which is why I subsequently went back and added my follow-up comment."

To which Anand Mahindra replied, "I understand…"

2024-04-18T19:02:25Z dg43tfdfdgfd