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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...
Recent Posts
Defending your time and attention
When my wife was the District Collector, Trivandrum, she was heading 200 odd committees. If the average committee met twice a year, you end up with...
Improving systems from the inside out
During my stint with the Indian Police Service, a top police official once said this to me with immense pride: 'I only travel to countries where I...
The Power of Social Contagion
A few years ago, I was attending a dreadfully boring conference, where we were listlessly sitting around a table. During a break, out of sheer...
Fix your day
Two years ago, one evening, a team member called me and said, “Today, we are going to work the whole night.” He was leading a team of 5-6 people and...
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Aim before you shoot
Once a renowned fund manager told me that for two years, he made no investments at all. The US markets were overpriced and good deals were hard to come by. For those two years, every day, he would dress up in the morning and go to office. He would...
The Magic of the Present Moment
As a kid, every summer, we would visit my native village in UP. In the burning June month, without electricity or amenities, it was a veritable hell. But come evening, things would cool down. At night, lying on an elevated cot-like bamboo structure...
Excellence is not perfection
In 2009, when I moved back to India, the first thing I did was to buy a car. And in the very first week, in the parking area, a big coconut fell on its bonnet, putting a crater-sized dent. When I saw it in the morning, I was really heartbroken....
The Lessons of Struggle
In 3rd grade, once our Social Studies teacher gave us a project to build a model of an object that helped humans survive. I built a really ugly model of a cave using stones and cardboard, painted with grotesque colors. The next day, when I reached...