Karl Slym, an interesting persona on Twitter

Some of his most interesting tweets were of his road journeys, and what I call his 'Slym quizzes'

How do you pay a tribute to someone who you only knew through Twitter? I will try to do so in this post, although I know a social medium allows and enables us to reveal only a part of our personalities.

Karl Slym, Tata Motors managing director who died in Bangkok, gave a glimpse of an interesting persona through his tweets. His tweet on the quadricycle, of course, was what triggered the interest of the reporting fraternity (and mine) on what he was doing on this very public medium.

I was writing a series on public transport for Business Standard, and wondered if any more tweets would follow. People involved in Delhi’s public transport said putting a multitude of vehicles on the city’s roads – all of varying speed – will cause traffic to slow down further, thereby in a way endorsing Slym’s view.  There was much less awareness than I had hoped of the quadricycle, though, among all stakeholders in transport in the city's transport system.

Slym became more circumspect on competition after that, especially as his quadricycle tweet was picked up by the media. The Economic Times has reported today he met Rajiv Bajaj, managing director of Bajaj Auto, and the two had an interesting conversation about transforming their respective companies.  

The Slym quiz

Some of Karl Slym’s most interesting tweets were of his road journeys. He would post an intriguing photograph of a road, a park, or a historical place, and invite his followers to guess what they were. Sometimes you had to identify a road near London, or a park in Delhi. I called them ‘Slym quizzez’ in my head and participated enthusiastically but rarely got anything right.

I did get a ‘thank you’ from Mr Slym for another Twitter invitation he had sent out. This time he had invited school bus memories, after I guess, participating in a Tata Motors event on buses – the company, along with Ashok Leyland is a big player in Delhi’s bus public transport.

I sent mine in, and got a reply.