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 boredom, I picked up a bottle of water to drink. As soon as I did that, 2-3 other people on the table also picked up the...

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 intended to work overnight to fix a problem. Here was the problem: Our startup had created thousands of science/math...

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 sit and read...

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 (‘machan’), we...

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. Fast forward a decade...

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 our school carrying...

About three times a week, I run 10 km in the morning. The distance feels just right to me -- long enough to give a huge endorphin rush, but not so much as to cause any injury or pain. And I have happily been at this ‘10 km plateau’ for a long time. Not that I can’t...

Before my MBA program started, Wharton sent us a self-assessment test on business and finance to see if we needed some extra classes to handle the course-load. While taking the test, I realized I didn't even know the difference between revenue and profit -- I was...

Years ago, one Saturday evening, I went to Rockefeller University in New York City to witness a piano competition. To my untrained ears, each of the half-a-dozen performances I listened to, were equally mesmerizing. And yet, from all these virtuosos, only a few would...

When I and some of my friends got into the Civil Services, many of us said, "Now, our life is all set." But this was not the first time I was hearing this. Years earlier, when I got into IIT, my teachers also had said the same thing -- "Now your life is all set." Here...

Right from 1st grade, I was the most non-athletic kid in my class. Thin and emaciated, I never participated in any athletic events or sports. In IIT, I flunked the first-year compulsory physical activity course because I hated the morning ‘walk and run’ and ended up...

During my IPS training, one day, a fellow trainee who was also a college-mate, told me: “In my last job (before IPS), I once wrote a software simulator for Intel’s 386 processor. And now I am doing this stupidity.” He was a brilliant guy even by IIT standards, and...

In 2017, my startup was burning cash and time was running out. Changing the direction of the company was like trying to move a gigantic ship -- it was hard and required immense grit and energy. And ironically, this was also the time when I felt my inner strength going...

In my 2nd year at IIT, I started learning Taekwondo. I somehow took fancy to the idea of becoming a black-belt. Maybe, I saw too many martial arts movies. But when the training started, it was really intense. The warm-up itself used to practically kill us, even before...

In my life, the only major career goal for which I had to truly struggle was getting into IIT. IIT made getting into Civil Services so much more doable -- most of my classmates who aimed for it also made it. Once in the IPS, the exposure and confidence made it...