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Choose life over death
On a vacation near the Gujarat frontier, I went for a morning run with a BSF (Border Security Force) company commander. He was so fast that running with this former commando literally took my breath away! In fact, every morning, I would see him...
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Breaking the limits
On the top floor of my building, lived my friend and junior from IPS and IIT - Sunil Asnani. In the evenings, we would often hang out on the...
Overcoming language barriers
For most of my life, I went to English-medium schools where nobody spoke English. However, from grades 1-4, I attended a government school in...
The key to success lies in focus
In the first semester at IIT Kanpur, I noticed this guy whose class notes would just be half a page of tiny scrawl, scribbled with a ball-point...
Finding meaning beyond luxury
I realized the beauty as well as the futility of luxury during my job at a private equity fund. In that company, every few months, we had offsites...
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Start every day as a beginner
At an investors’ conference in Mumbai, I once asked a guy, “So, what do you do?” He was so stunned that for a few seconds he was speechless. Then, he turned to others and said, “You know, once, everyone knew me. Now I am asked what I do!” Realizing...
Unseen side of human nature
On 31st Oct 2002, a bloody riot on the roads of Trivandrum showed me an unseen side of human nature. That morning, a protest march of 20,000 people was demanding the release of an extremist political leader, arrested in a bomb blast case. As the...
Acknowledging small wins on the journey to success
When I got into the Civil Services, my mind did not go ‘Wow, this is great news.’ It was more like -- ‘Ok, this is done. Now, what next?’ All my life, I have chased the next mountain to climb. As a result, I ended up trying a lot of different...
Commitment is the key to learning
At the fag end of my MBA, having had enough of finance courses and the hyper-competitive MBA crowd, I wanted a short break from the rat race. So I signed up for ‘History of Western Classical Music’, a course outside Wharton, offered by the music...