20 years after we first met, I ran into Mr. Michael Siromani, a retired IAS officer, under curious circumstances -- he was collecting roadside weeds in a plastic pouch. After the initial greetings, seeing a quizzical look on my face, he explained, “These are medicinal...

It was an unequal race -- not fair. During my 6th grade, our sports teacher announced an impromptu bike race to celebrate the end of the annual sports day. The near-certain winner was the son of the Commanding Officer of the local air force station, who had an...

Years ago, when I was heading Trivandrum City Police, a horse in our mounted police unit got seriously ill and was in severe pain. Since it was cruel to let the horse suffer, the veterinary doctor had to sadly seek my approval to euthanize the horse. But as per rules,...

My good friend and first boss in the IPS, Vinod Thomas, was a cop on a particular Friday. The next Monday he was a private equity investor. He probably made the world’s most dramatic overnight career transition, going on to manage more than a billion dollars in...

The clock is ticking. Once out of college, you have to be ‘30 under 30.’ God forbid, if you miss it, ‘40 under 40’ is your absolute last chance. If you miss that as well, shame on you. If you are in a job, you are wasting your life -- look at all your classmates doing...

I recently heard that 17 kids got 100 percentile in IITJEE Mains. I wasn’t sure if we should celebrate or feel sad. Here is why. About half of these toppers (8 out of 17) came from the erstwhile Andhra Pradesh (now AP and Telangana). What is so special about these...

Day 1 of IPS training. When the whistle went off at around 5 am, we ran down the stairs of the IPS Mess for the morning PT, terrified of being even 5 seconds late. Over the next 10 months, the grueling physical training made us fit and taut like racehorses. And then,...

After my father dropped me off at the IIT Kanpur hostel, for the next 4 years, my parents did not even once ask about my grades. Nor did they bother about my career plans, until one day I told them that I would be joining the IPS. And when I quit the IPS, they were...

Early in my tenure at McKinsey, I once committed a terrifying blunder. In those days, every BlackBerry notification would make us stop all work and check our email. Superfast email response was fast becoming a religion. But one day, due to some technical glitch, my...

I was racing a 2:30 am deadline to submit my Wharton MBA application in Round 1. Post midnight, in the frantic rush, as I was giving the final touches to my application, the Microsoft Word document crashed. When I tried recovering the changes, I messed up and lost all...

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 rooftop, talking about his plan to quit the IPS and do an MBA from a US business school. The plan sounded crazy -- nobody we...

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 Bangalore where kids used English even for social conversations. That is the only real exposure I had to the language. Yet, it...

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 refill. In the hostel, he would usually be playing cricket or doing bull sessions with friends. Clearly, not a recipe for...

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 at the most exclusive luxury resorts in India, some of which had suites costing a few lacs a night. Undeniably, luxury...

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 that I had...