I’ve always believed in this. Though, in my case, the guru turned out to be a group of children between the ages of 10 and 15!

For a long time, I had wanted to give back. It was something Lakshmi and I believed we should do, but we hadn’t quite figured out how, where or in what form.

This one comes with an ask: we’re raising funds to educate 300 girls through Enabling Leadership. I’ll come back to that. But first, the story of how I got here.

When we returned to India in 2013, we were still figuring things out. I had stepped away from corporate life, we were raising a family and generally trying to get our act together.

Giving back was always on the agenda, but our approach was rather random. Some friend would introduce us to a cause, and we would support it. Another request would come along, and we would respond. There is always a child who needs help, a treatment someone can’t afford or a school that needs to fixing!

There was genuine intent, but very little method. We were giving, but without a particular plan.

That began to change through conversations with my friend Ravi, the CEO of Enabling Leadership (EL).

Ravi had been nudging me for some time to take a more active role in the organisation. He was persistent. I suspect he had decided that I needed some direction, and this was as good a way as any to provide it!

Eventually, we sat down and I agreed to take an active role. Well, as active as a Board member can be! More importantly, we decided to focus our giving on an organisation whose work we believed in, contributing not just money but also our time and involvement.

EL works with children between the ages of 10 and 15, using three rather interesting tools — music, football and LEGO — to develop leadership and life skills.

I went in wanting to understand the organisation and see how I could contribute.

What I hadn’t bargained for was how much I would learn myself. And, more interestingly, how much my children would learn.

Some stories stay with you

Over the years, I have heard many stories of children whose lives have been touched by these programmes. Two, in particular, have stayed with me.

There was a young boy who lost his father to suicide.

Imagine the trauma, confusion and anger a child must carry after an experience like that. It would have been very easy for that anger to consume him and take him down a very different path.

But through the intervention and support he received through Enabling Leadership’s Play programme, he found an environment where he could channel his emotions, develop relationships and discover a different version of himself.

Today, he has grown into a responsible young citizen. I often wonder what might have happened had someone not intervened at the right time.

Then there is the story of a young girl who fractured her right arm while playing football. Most of us would probably have taken a break, rested the arm and waited for the doctor to give us the all-clear.

Not this girl.

She turned up for the programme with her arm in a cast. Her message was simple: a broken arm wasn’t going to stop her from playing. She wanted the boys, and everyone else, to know that girls were just as capable.

I thought that was quite something.

Here we are, adults, discussing gender equality in conferences and boardrooms, while a young girl is demonstrating it on a football field with one arm in a cast!

These stories remind me that leadership isn’t always about being the captain, making speeches or having a fancy designation. Sometimes, it is about resilience, courage, standing up for yourself and helping others along the way.

When the lessons travelled home

It is perhaps easy to understand how an organisation like Enabling Leadership can influence someone like me. I’m a little older, hopefully a little wiser, and have had enough life experiences to appreciate different perspectives.

But watching the impact it had on my own children has been fascinating.

During COVID, my boys realised that many of the children in the programme didn’t have proper football shoes. They decided to do something about it and initiated a campaign to raise funds to buy shoes for them.

It wasn’t something Lakshmi or I had suggested. They had seen a need and wanted to address it.

Another moment I look back on with immense pride was during their Sacred thread (Upanayanam) ceremony. Instead of keeping the gifts they received, the boys decided to donate the entire collection to charity.

They were just 15 and 12 at the time.

Now, as parents, we spend a lot of time trying to convince our children to part with their old toys, clothes and gadgets. Here were two boys voluntarily giving away their gifts! I was, needless to say, rather pleased.

But the most interesting development came later, when both boys actually turned up to coach the children.

They would come back and tell me how amazed they were by the enthusiasm and hunger of these children. How eagerly they participated, how much they wanted to learn and how much they valued the opportunity.

It is one thing to tell our children that they are privileged. It is quite another for them to see it, experience it and understand what that privilege means.

We spend enormous amounts of time worrying about our children’s education, universities, careers and future. We compare grades, track applications and occasionally behave as if a 95% mark is a matter of national importance!

But perhaps we should spend just as much time exposing them to experiences outside their immediate world.

Children should not just be the beneficiaries of our philanthropy or hear us talk about giving back. They should be participants in it. They should experience it, contribute their time, volunteer and, where possible, take ownership of causes they believe in.

Because generosity is not something we can simply teach. It is something each one of us has to practise.

Paying it forward

As I write this, we are once again raising funds for children through Enabling Leadership.

🎯To educate 300 girls from under-resourced communities.

Our campaign, 300 Dreams. 300 Girls. One Future., is about creating opportunities for 300 girls through the organisation’s programmes.

Each girl’s education costs ₹10,500 (or US$120) per year — about the price of a weekend dinner for four, or if you’re a golfer like me, two sleeves of Pro V1s that inevitably end up in the lake.

If you can support 10 girls — ₹105,000 (US$1,200) — you’re not just helping a classroom; you’re investing in a generation.

Whether you sponsor one girl or many, thank you for helping make her dream a little more possible.

So, what did I learn about leadership?

Quite a bit, actually.

Watching these children has changed how I think about leadership.

I’ve learnt that the best player isn’t necessarily the best leader. Sometimes, it is the child who passes the ball rather than taking the shot.

I’ve learnt that resilience isn’t always about doing something extraordinary. Sometimes, it is about turning up for football with a broken arm.

And I’ve learnt that the right environment can change the trajectory of a child’s life.

Perhaps the biggest lesson is that leadership isn’t about getting people to follow you. It is about creating an environment where people can discover what they are capable of.

Today, Enabling Leadership has reached more than 10,000 children across India, Cambodia, Kenya and Singapore. The numbers are impressive. But it is the individual stories that make me want to keep coming back.

Watching my boys grow through this experience has probably been the most rewarding part. There is something quite satisfying about discovering that your children have learnt a few things without you having to lecture them!

I went into this journey thinking about what I could give. I stayed because of what I was learning.

The shishya was ready. The gurus just turned up with a football and a LEGO box.

I arrived in 1999 with an admission letter and no idea what lay ahead. This time, I stayed near Briarwood Mall, right next to my old apartment on Signature Boulevard. Same mall, same roads, a lot more grey hair behind the wheel!

The fall colours didn’t hurt either. Ann Arbor in October is showing off.

As I turn 54 this year, I realised something rather strange: I’ve now spent almost as many years after my MBA as I did before it.

And yet, walking around Ann Arbor, 1999 didn’t feel quite so long ago.

Night one: Dominick’s

I started the first evening with the customary drink at Dominick’s. I’d spent many evenings there, and walking in felt like clocking back into a job I’d quit 25 years ago. A rather nostalgic start.

Then on to another bar, with hugs, photographs, and shouting across the room.

And, of course, the physical audit. Someone told me I looked healthier than I did at Ross. I was thrilled. Fit for Reunion was working!

Then came the clarification. “Not that you were fat then...”

Right. I’ll take the compliment and ignore the footnote. Heheh.

Day two: The building

The next morning started with a campus tour.

Our old Ross building is gone. It was in those classrooms that I learnt so many things: skills like negotiation, and technicals like options and futures. I learnt what it meant to work with people from 25+ countries, cultures and backgrounds. I learnt to ask how and why, question assumptions, and think through a problem rather than simply arrive at an answer. And, just as importantly, to ask myself whether I had really understood what I was saying.

The new building is gleaming, with glass, light, modern classrooms, and meeting spaces everywhere.

I wondered how we would have done with all these facilities in 1999. Then again, I’m not sure a nicer building would have improved our case study answers!

I also went looking for the library. I used to sit there until they closed at midnight. It’s gone. Apparently, it’s all digital now. Hmm. Where is a student supposed to go when they want to avoid the dark winters?

Ann Arbor is a college town, and when winter arrives, you’d better like the people you’re studying with! Coming back years later, I realise the setting was part of the education too.

That evening, we had an alumni event. We met the Dean and a few very accomplished alumni who made me briefly wonder whether my LinkedIn profile was up to date. Then I realised I don’t use LinkedIn anymore!

The Dean talked about how high the GPA requirements have become and how difficult admission is now. Which made me even more thrilled for my son, who is coming here as an exchange student for one term, from January to June 2027.

Then dinner. Then, naturally, a new bar beckoned. Lot more people, many I hadn’t seen in decades. Louder stories.

I was also rather proud of myself for staying until the end. Come on, I’d travelled 8,500 miles (almost 13,700 km). I wasn’t going to call it a night early!

Day three: The Big House

We started the day with the customary tailgate, only this time it was at the B School. During our student days, we’d meet at the Big House, eat, drink beer and get ourselves ready for the game. We walked to the stadium then, so we did the same this time.

About the game... hmmm. Michigan won, and the crowd was in better form than the players. The weather held, which in Michigan is a small miracle.

After the game, a small bunch of the desi gang headed for Indian food. I know. I’d travelled all this way to eat Indian food! But this was another tradition. Back in our student days, we’d eat at the only Indian restaurant in town, then called Raja Rani. I even ate there on graduation day! The company once again made up for the food.

Final stop: Conor O’Neill’s for another Ross tradition, car bombs. One became two. Two became three. You know how these things go.

At some point, you have to wonder whether the tradition is really about the drink or simply our collective inability to say, “That’s enough.”

Twenty-five years later, some things clearly haven’t changed.

The people who came back

What struck me was how different our lives had turned out. A few stayed in the same company since graduation. Others had been to five countries in the same period. Married, divorced, never married, still in the same house. We started at roughly the same place, and the paths since had been anything but similar.

Social media had kept most of us reasonably current. People knew about the travels, the golf, and the family. Some of them probably knew my golf handicap better than I did (I know!).

But seeing someone online isn’t quite the same as sitting across from them with a drink after 25 years. You get the stories behind the updates but the details never make it into a post. And the jokes that probably make sense only to the people who were there.

I hadn’t expected to enjoy the simple act of catching up quite so much. For a few days, we had the time to talk. Properly.

When I came to Ross, I thought I was there to get an education. It didn’t take long to realise that getting a job was just as important, if not more. Jobs were scarce. Education, in comparison, was abundant. We were all competing for the same openings, even as we learnt together.

Funny how that works out. The same people who once fought me for the same interview slot were now buying me drinks. We still want more from life, of course. Who doesn’t? But nobody was chasing the same opening this time.

The part I didn’t plan for

My son, Aniketh will be here from January to June 2027.

So I was looking at Ann Arbor through two lenses: a student who arrived in 1999, and a parent whose son is about to arrive.

He’ll never know the old building the way I do. He’ll find his own favourite places, his own streets, and his own people. Probably a library too, if he can find one.

He’ll experience a very different university, in a town that has grown and changed. I just hope he enjoys it as much as I did, and that Ann Arbor gives him what it gave me: room to learn, people who challenge his thinking, and an experience that stays with him long after he leaves.

I came back to revisit a chapter of my life. I didn’t expect to spend quite so much time imagining the chapter my son is about to begin.

I’m glad I made the long trip.

Although, given the state of the hairlines, the next reunion should probably be sooner rather than later.

Go Blue!

February 1999. I was working at Schlumberger in Abu Dhabi when my phone rang. An unfamiliar number, but a US one. In those days, an international call wasn’t an everyday thing, so I picked it up.

“Hello?”

The man said he was from the University of Michigan and that I had been admitted to their MBA programme.

I don’t remember what I said next. I am sure I tried to sound calm and sophisticated. Inside, I was jumping up and down.

I was 27. An top American MBA I had dreamed about for years…was suddenly real. Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA here I come.

I went to Ross to learn business. What I didn’t realise was that I would come out with a much bigger world.

I was an accountant by training. In accounting, there is exactly one answer. The books balance or they don’t. Nobody ever walked into a trial balance meeting and said, “Well, there are five ways to look at this.”

Ann Arbor was different. People from everywhere. Industries I knew nothing about. Finance, consulting, marketing, trading, banking. Basically everything except accounting.

Suddenly, there wasn’t one right answer. Sometimes there were five, and the person next to you had a completely different one because they came from a different part of the world. For someone trained to tie everything to the last decimal, this was either a liberation or a nervous breakdown. I’m still deciding!

But there was something else about Ann Arbor that made the experience special.

It is a cold place. Really cold. And when you live in a small university town where much of your life revolves around the campus and the neighbourhood around it, you spend a lot of time with the same people. You can’t exactly escape to the beach when someone annoys you. In winter, even going out for a coffee requires a certain amount of commitment.

In a place like that, the people make all the difference. If they aren’t warm, affectionate and caring, you’re going to have a pretty miserable time. The weather is already doing its best to make you miserable.

Thankfully, Ann Arbor got the people part spectacularly right.

There was a warmth to the place that had very little to do with the temperature. People looked out for each other. Friendships formed quickly. There was a genuine sense of community, even among people who had come from completely different parts of the world.

For someone experiencing the Western world for the first time, that mattered enormously.

It was my biggest education at Michigan. And it carried on long after I left.

Since then, I have lived in a few countries and collected a few more, almost as enthusiastically as I collect golf courses. And wherever I went, there was usually a Ross alum.

Often someone I had never met. I would find them through the alumni network and write, “Hi. We don’t know each other, but we’re both Ross alums. I’m going to be in your city.”

Somehow, that was enough. Coffee. Lunch. Dinner. A tour of the city. Sometimes help with something totally unrelated.

My wife and kids stopped finding this charming a long time ago. Whenever we land somewhere new, I say, “Actually, there’s a Ross alum here,” and they say, “Of course there is.”

But isn’t that a wonderful thing to have? You can travel halfway around the world and never quite be a stranger.

GO BLUE!

This Friday is our 25th reunion. I am in the US, just a few days out, and I keep going back to that classroom.

We were so sure of ourselves. Everyone had a plan, and the plans were remarkably clear. We were going to crack finance, consulting or banking or whatever we chose. After all we had made it into one of the best business schools in the world. The world was waiting for us. (Perhaps it was.)

But 25 years later, I don’t define success the way I did then. I walked away from that version at 41. The 27-year-old on that phone call would have found that decision rather confusing. Hmm.

Which is why I can’t wait to see where everybody is.

Who stuck to the plan? Who changed it? Who got everything they wanted? And who got it and found out it wasn’t what they wanted?

I honestly don’t know. That’s the fun of it. Twenty-five years is long enough to build things, lose things, move countries and change your mind a few times.

Some of us will have less hair. Some, more money. Some, hopefully, less money but more hair!

I keep thinking about August, too, when a WhatsApp group of old classmates woke up because someone had died. We all started talking again. That is a sad way to find each other.

This time, we are meeting because we chose to.

And perhaps that is what makes this reunion different. Back in business school, we were competing for the same limited opportunities. We didn’t necessarily share everything. Today, most of us have built our own lives. The world is a huge place, and 400 people from one MBA class is a very small number.

There is no job to compete for, no promotion to chase, no need to impress. We can simply be curious about each other. What happened? What changed? What matters now? How are you doing?

We come together not because we need something from each other, but because we care.

I will admit I’m a little nervous. I have been training for this reunion. Yes, training. For a reunion. And no, sadly, it doesn’t show! Because this time, people will see me, not my profile photo. I expect the group photograph to need very generous lighting.

But mostly, I’m excited. I want to hear the stories, discover what became of those ambitions, and find out how much of the people we were… is still there.

Looking back got me this far. Over the weekend, I get to look forward.

P.S. — Is there one person from your own class you’d love to run into again? And have you ever told them?

You found a job. You moved. Simple.

How else do you explain India-UAE-Iran-USA-Peru-Russia-Netherlands-India-Hong Kong-India? Russia is not the first country you think of after Peru! And no, you don’t need a map to check that.

We love Hong Kong. Yes, we loved every place we lived in, but Hong Kong was special. Exciting, international, safe, efficient. The kind of place where a young family could build a great life.

And then I did something slightly unusual. I quit corporate life at 41.

I called it a sabbatical, which sounded much better than “I have no idea what I’m going to do next.” Unemployment, with better PR.

We had been married ten years. We had three children - Seven, four and one. So this was not the stage of life for backpacking around the world to figure things out. Although, knowing me, I considered it!

For the first time, we had to answer a question our jobs had always answered for us.

Where next?

No company deciding. No boss. No relocation package. No next role that came with a next city. Exciting and terrifying, in equal parts.

The obvious choices were USA and India.

Lakshmi and I had studied in USA. Siblings there. Good schools, good infrastructure, plenty of opportunity.

India was home for me. For Lakshmi, it was a place you visited and left quickly. Our 2008 to 2010 stint was the first time she had actually lived here.

We didn’t start with “where would we like to live?” We started with a more practical one. Where do we want to raise three young children? What will help decide?

Safety. Education. Healthcare.

Nothing sophisticated. No 47-variable decision matrix. I did open Excel. I closed it. Yes you can call it Growth.

Then two more factors barged in. Family. Money.

America had siblings. India had everyone else. Parents, relatives, friends. People who knew us. People we didn’t have to schedule three weeks in advance to see.

And money. When you have a salary, you think about income. When you don’t, you start thinking about runway. Hong Kong was beautiful. But Hong Kong was also very expensive.

That’s when I started thinking about life as a simple 2×2. Yes, I have an MBA. Even where to live had to become a 2×2.

One axis: how rich is the country? The other: how rich is your life?

The dream is the top-right corner. Rich country, rich life. Who wouldn’t want that? But a rich country doesn’t automatically give you a rich life. You can live in a very wealthy country and spend most of it working, commuting and paying for the house, the schools, the hospital.

Rich country. Are you actually living rich?

India is not a rich country. Far from it. But our money would go further, and our life could feel richer. Family around us. Help at home. Experiences for the children. A comfortable life without everything costing a fortune.

We weren't looking for the richest country. We were looking for the place where our family could live the richest life.

A place where our children could grow up learning things that mattered to us — empathy, patience, gratitude.

A place where they would understand that the life they had was a privilege, not an entitlement. And perhaps, most importantly, a place where they would see enough of the real world to understand that not everyone gets the same starting point.

That mattered to us as much as good schools and good healthcare.

And Chennai in India kept coming out ahead. Not because it’s perfect (is there such a place?). It’s October and it’s 35°C, not exactly golf weather. Imagine Summer. In May, Chennai doesn’t have weather. It has a grudge.

And nobody has ever put Chennai on a bucket list. No one says, “Let’s do a long weekend in Chennai, it’ll be fun!” It’s a city you live in, not one you visit.

But it felt like home. And there’s a difference between a great place to live and your place.

Thirteen years on, I realise we weren’t really choosing a city. We were choosing a childhood we wanted for our children.

Where they would go to school. Who they would grow up with. Where the grandparents would be. Where the weddings, festivals, birthdays and all the ordinary things that eventually become the important things would happen.

And perhaps we were choosing something for ourselves too. Until then, every move had been about my career. This was the first time we asked: what do we want our life to look like? Not my next designation. Not the next country.

Our life.

I sometimes wonder what America would have been like. Maybe wonderful. Maybe even better in some ways. We’ll never know. You don’t get to run the alternative version. You only get to live the one you chose.

Then life happened. The children grew up. We made friends, built businesses, had good years and difficult ones. Weddings and funerals. School runs and airport runs. Sunday lunches and late-night conversations.

Somewhere along the way, Chennai stopped being the place we had chosen. It simply became home.

I’m writing this at Chennai airport, on my way to the US. My 25th reunion at Ross is two weeks away. Time flies.

Twenty-five years. Classmates now in New York, London, Singapore, and places I’d need a map for. (See: Russia, after Peru.)

For 20 years, I went where the job sent me. Then, at 41, I picked a place and stayed.

In two weeks, I’ll be in a room with people who took very different roads. Some followed the job. Some may have chosen. I’m curious to find out which. A little nervous too.

I do know what I’ll say about mine.

The best test of a decision isn’t whether you got everything right. It isn’t whether there was a better option somewhere else. It’s whether, years later, you can look around and say:

I’m glad we chose this.

I am.

And when the reunion is over, I’ll be flying home to the city we picked.

You are no longer just building your own life. But you are not quite at the stage of looking back on it either.

You are somewhere in between - in what I think of as a “long middle”

I’m a Chartered Accountant by training, so when life gets confusing, my natural instinct is to make a spreadsheet. I know. Not exactly a personality trait to be proud of.

But I’ve been thinking about this one for a while.

This book of accounts has only one account. 24 hours a day with whatever energy I have. At 54, the hours are still reasonably generous. However, the energy is becoming considerably less so (even for me).

And against this one account, there are five very demanding claimants: Work, Kids, parents, marriage and health.

And of course, none of them thinks they should share the account.

Work, for example, is very good at reminding you it exists. There is always a meeting, a call, a deadline, a client who needs something, or something at the Office that simply can’t wait until tomorrow.
Not necessarily because it is the most important thing. But mostly because it is the loudest.

The children are different. They don’t send reminders. They just grow and maan do they grow quickly!!
When they were five, it was messy but easy. You knew when they needed you. Lunch boxes. Homework. School functions. Bedtime stories. You got hugs and kisses every day - morning and night and sometimes even out of the blue!! I miss those hugs and kisses.

Now they are older. They don’t necessarily need you in the same obvious ways - but they still need you. And I’m increasingly conscious that this doesn’t last forever. They won’t always be living at home. They won’t always want to tell you about their day. One day, you may actually have to ask before they make time for you.

Nobody tells you when that window is closing until suddenly you have had the last of these “ordinary” moments.

Parents are a bit different. My mother still takes the bus and does things on her own. I know that sounds like a completely ordinary sentence but she is 76!
And that’s exactly why it gets to me. Because one day she won’t be doing these things.

Marriage is a strange one.
We spend years building it and then, somewhere along the way, we start treating it like a fixed asset on the balance sheet. Purchased. Fully paid for. No further investment required.
I’m fairly sure Lakshmi would disagree with that accounting treatment. And probably has several supporting documents!

Health is the creditor I have been particularly good at ignoring. For years, your body is remarkably accommodating. You eat badly, skip sleep, sit too much, travel all the time, work non-stop — and it mostly keeps quiet.
Then, sometime in your fifties, it starts sending reminders. The knees. The back. The blood reports. The waistline. You can ignore them.

But eventually the body sends the invoice. With interest.

Somewhere in all of this is me too…usually at the bottom of the list.

The places I want to see. The golf I want to play. The friends I keep saying I must call. The things I want to learn. The completely unnecessary things I want to do simply because they sound like fun.

For a long time, those things got whatever was left over.

If there was any.

And I don’t think I’m alone in that.

For most of our lives, the problem is actually quite simple. There is always a next thing.

Study well, then undergrad in a good college, an international masters to get the job that needs promotion so that you can buy the house...Make money...build the corpus...you get the drift!!

We keep telling ourselves that once we get through this particular phase, things will become easier.

I’m beginning to suspect that “later” is one of the most expensive words in the English language.

Then somewhere in the middle, you realise money isn’t really the problem anymore.

Money can buy things. But increasingly, what we want it to buy is freedom.

The freedom to take a trip, to spend a morning golfing, to sit with a friend over a long lunch, to say no to something (anything), to have control over my calendar (just because)!

Because you can make more money. You can’t make another Tuesday.

I’ve also stopped thinking that balance means giving everything equal time.

That sounds good on paper. Twenty percent work. Twenty percent family. Twenty percent health. Twenty percent friends. Twenty percent me.

Perfectly balanced. Completely impossible.

Occasionally, you need to disappear for three days and play golf with your friends. I consider that preventive healthcare!

I don’t think the answer is to give everything equal time. It is to notice when something important has been getting none.

In my 20s and 30s, I didn’t really make those decisions consciously. I paid the loudest invoice - usually work. Sometimes whatever was immediately in front of me.

I am still upset that I did NOT go to my best friend’s wedding - because of some important work that I can’t ever remember now!! Go figure.

That’s probably the biggest shift I’ve been making over the past decade. Not from work to retirement. Not from ambition to giving up. I stopped automatically paying whoever shouts loudest and started actually deciding where my time goes.

What’s important will keep changing and that’s fine. I just want it to be my answer. Not whoever called last!

Because there is always another Monday. Another meeting. Another school event. Another doctor’s appointment. Another trip. Another round of golf. Another dinner you said you’d make time for.

Until one day you realise that these aren’t interruptions to your life.

They are your life.

The children will eventually leave home. The business will eventually need less of me. Retirement will eventually happen. But this version of life won’t come back.

Maybe there is no perfect balance. Maybe it’s simply about being a little more conscious about what gets paid. And a little less willing to put your own life at the bottom of the statement.

This is it.

And I’m beginning to think the trick isn’t to get through the long middle. It’s to actually be here for it.

₹5 crores? ₹10 crores? God forbid ₹25 crores or even more?

Sorry to disappoint. There was no number. No spreadsheet cell that turned green and said Congratulations, you may now retire and annoy people at dinner parties.

I’ve spent the better part of the last decade helping people figure out how much is enough. Retirement corpus, savings rate, safe withdrawal — I have opinions, I have Excel sheets, I have strong Excel models.

And after all that, here’s what I have realised: enough is not a number. It’s a state of mind.

Which is deeply unhelpful, because state of mind doesn’t have a formula. Believe me, I’ve tried. I once tried to build a model for “peace of mind per rupee.” It didn’t work. Turns out contentment doesn’t compound.

Take cars.

The first one i wanted, was an Ambassador — the only car anyone in my childhood seemed to own, apart from the neighbor whose Fiat we all silently resented. My father got his own Maruti 800 at 55. I got my Ford Probe in Ann Arbor, and it felt like arriving.

Then you want a better one. Then a bigger one. Then, God help you, you think: maybe a German car. So you get the German car, and for eleven glorious months life is complete — until someone parks an Italian one next to you, and suddenly your German car is “perfectly respectable” the way a silver medal is “still a medal.”

I genuinely don’t know what comes after the Italian car. I assume a chauffeur in white gloves and a general sense of disappointment in me.

Golf clubs are no different, if I’m honest. You start with a beginner set. Then you need “just one better driver.” Then, before you’ve noticed, you’ve replaced the entire bag every three years, one club at a time, each purchase individually reasonable and collectively insane. I hope Lakshmi doesn’t read this one!!

Houses are the same.

A cozy apartment isn’t enough because a friend has a bigger one. Then a house. Then a house with a lawn. Then so much lawn you hire a gardener — a man you will now spend the next decade in a cold war with over the correct height of grass. Hmm

More felt like progress. Bigger felt like success. Better felt like winning.

When you’re young, maybe it is.

Then, somewhere past fifty, the equation quietly flips on you, like a phone update you didn’t ask for.

I see it in my mother and also in my in-laws. I catch it happening in myself, mid-sentence, ordering something online I don’t need and closing the tab out of sheer shame.

You start wanting less. A smaller house sounds like relief. An empty shelf feels like an achievement. You look at something you bought a decade ago and think: why do I own this.

Every time I open my cupboard, there it is. The jet spray car wash thing. I was going to use it every sunday. Used it twice. TWICE. Seemed essential at the time — some late-night scroll convinced me my life would be incomplete without it.

And the watches. I own watches that have seen less daylight than a Bangalore gardener’s tan line. Bought because a friend had one, or because it was “on sale,” or because at the time it felt like I’d finally arrived somewhere.

I have no idea where I thought I was arriving.

Ten-years-ago-me was an idiot with a credit card and no supervision.

This is one of the great, cruel jokes of getting older: you finally get good at knowing what you don’t need — right after spending thirty years accumulating it.

I think this is what happens!

When you’re young, you have more time than money, so you spend money to buy time — someone else’s labor, someone else’s convenience. As you get older, the ratio flips. You might have more money. But time is now the asset you can’t print more of. And suddenly everything you own comes with a tax you didn’t read the fine print on.

A bigger house isn’t a bigger house. It’s more rooms to maintain and more things to break in the middle of the night. A bigger garden isn’t just a garden, it’s a hostage negotiation about who will water the plants when you are travelling. A bigger car isn’t a bigger car, it’s a weekly referendum on your ability to reverse-park in Chennai traffic without a small crowd gathering to watch.

Every acquisition comes with a subscription called responsibility. Nobody mentions this at the showroom.

My definition of wealth has quietly changed shape.

It used to be the ability to buy more. Now it’s more about the ability to not bother.

Not upgrade the car. Not add the extension. Not say yes to every meeting because the WhatsApp group is enthusiastic about it.

Every yes spends something — money, sure, but more expensively, time and energy, and those two don’t come with an EMI option.

So — how much is enough? You still want that number?

I could hand you a number. I have the spreadsheet. I built the spreadsheet. But that’s not actually the question.

There’s always a better car. A bigger house. A holiday one notch fancier than the last one. There is no ceiling on wanting things.

When you’re young, you’re adding things to your life. If you’re lucky, at some point you start editing instead. More time for your self …maybe more golf. More time to sit around doing absolutely nothing and not feel guilty about it — which, quietly, might be the most expensive thing I’ve ever learned to afford.

So next time someone asks what number let me retire at 41, I’ll tell them the truth: there isn’t one.

I had enough to make the decision. Then I had to make peace with the decision. That took longer than the decision itself.

I tried explaining all this to Lakshmi once — the state-of-mind thing, the editing-not-adding thing. She listened, nodded, and said, “That’s nice. Can you fix the geyser.”

Which, if you think about it, is also the whole point. Enough isn’t a number. It’s a working geyser and someone willing to tell you to go fix it instead of writing an essay about it.

Hmm. Nothing. Maybe another round.

But jokes apart, I actually don’t have a “next” work goal.

I manage people’s money, I do coaching for startups, I help educate children and enjoy every bit of work that I do.

Clients come because they think I add value. I hope they are right. There are no targets hanging over my head, no sales numbers I need to chase and no boss asking me what my plan is for the next quarter.

If a client comes, I work with them. If nobody comes, I still have plenty to do.

It is a rather nice place to be after spending most of my working life having some version of a target in front of me. There was always something next. The next promotion, the next job, the next assignment, the next country, the next business target.

You finish one thing and almost immediately start thinking about the next one. Many times I was planning for my next move as I was making a move. That is how some careers are built.

I never thought there was anything wrong with that. In fact, I probably thought that was what life was supposed to look like.

You worked hard, you achieved something, you moved forward and then you set yourself another goal. And I was pretty good at it too.

Looking back, I don’t think I ever really stopped to ask myself what I was actually chasing. There was always another goal waiting, so I never really had to ask the question.

It is also how you can spend years constantly preparing for a future that never quite arrives. Now before you get any wrong ideas, let me be clear.…I don’t regret that phase of my life.

Work has given me a lot.

It gave me financial security, confidence and the ability to make choices.

It gave me experiences that I could never have imagined when I started working.

I have lived and worked in places I would probably never have otherwise seen, met people who became friends, and collected enough stories to keep me going for many more bottles of single malt!

More than anything, work gave me independence.

There is something very liberating about knowing that you can look after yourself and your family and make choices without having to worry about every rupee.

So I am not going to sit here and tell you that ambition was a mistake. It wasn’t.

But work also leaves you with certain habits. You learn to be useful, solve problems and take responsibility.

You learn that if something needs doing, you should probably be the person who gets it done.

Those habits are wonderful at work. They are not always quite as useful in life.

I still have the instinct to solve things.

Someone tells me about a problem and my immediate reaction is to think about how to fix it. Sometimes they don’t want me to fix it. Oh yeah, ask my wife how all she wants is someone to listen to her and here I am solving it for her!!

Hmmm… I know I’m a slow learner!! I am still figuring that one out.

At work, there was always a next milestone. You could measure progress. Revenue was up or down. The business was growing or not growing. You had a target and you knew whether you had hit it.

Life doesn’t give you that convenience.

There is no target for being a good husband. There is no quarterly review for being a good father. There is no visible bonus for spending more time with your friends.

There isn’t even a sensible definition of “enough”.

And I think I am slowly discovering that I don’t need one.

I do have checklists…. Of course I do…. years of having one doesn’t just go away.

But they are life checklists now. Travel to 100 countries, get to a single digit handicap (of course in golf), learn more languages, drive across more countries…. people I want to spend time with, reconnect with old friends….

The list is still there. It’s just that earlier, most of it was about getting somewhere. Now, it’s about experiencing something.

That’s probably a bigger change than I realised.

And quite a few things I keep saying I will do “sometime.” Those are the ones I need to worry about. Sometime is a dangerous word — the one you reach for when you don’t want to say no but also don’t want to commit. “We should meet sometime.” “We should take that trip sometime.”

At some point, sometime becomes never. I’m increasingly conscious of that.

I still want things, still get excited about them, still make lists. I just don’t need everything on the list to lead to something else. I don’t need another target, definitely don’t care about a title, not trying to prove to anyone that I grew something by 50%…. that life is behind me.

What I need now is a list of things that make me want to get out of bed. Some will be big. Some will be completely insignificant.

A trip. A round of golf. A meal with an old friend.
A book. A conversation. A glass of single malt with my near and dear.

So when my brother asks me again, “What next?”, I suspect I’ll give him the same answer.

Nothing…. I have a life to get on with.

Three years ago, four of us started taking an annual international golf trip. It started as a one-off…we were tired of going to nearby Bengaluru all the time. Just a few of us getting together, playing golf, eating, drinking, laughing and generally getting away from everything else for a few days.

We did it again the next year. And then again this year. Except this time, four more people joined us. Golf has a wonderful way of bringing people together.

You don’t really need much of an introduction when you are standing on the first tee. You have four hours ahead of you. Someone hits a great shot...most don’t. Some shank, some hook and, God forbid, someone doesn’t even cross the ladies’ tee.

There is usually a little competition and, of course, betting money. It’s more pride than anything else. The money doesn’t even cover a cup of coffee. And there is a lot of advice that nobody asked for as well!

By the time we finish the 18th hole, people who didn’t really know each other before the round are sitting together having a drink.

That’s what golf does….It gives people a reason to spend time together.

I honestly think Bangkok may be the golf capital of Asia. Everything just works.

The cars arrive when they are supposed to..and they are clean. The drivers are courteous. You don’t spend half your holiday wondering whether the car is actually going to turn up. In a fully jam-packed road, they drive in a civil manner - no honking, no cutting, no cursing…just like it should be.

Everyone knows that the Thai are friendly and their food absolutely yummy!!! What most don’t know is that there are close to 50 championship-level golf courses within and around Bangkok.

So for a bunch of guys who want to play golf, eat well, have a few drinks and generally have a good time, what more do you really need? Add Thai hospitality to that and it becomes almost unfair.

You finish 18 holes, refresh at the fabulous clubhouses, get into a clean car that is waiting for you, head out for some great Thai food, have a foot massage and start talking about the round you just played.

Then someone asks...“Where are we playing tomorrow?” And you’re back at it.

The plan was supposed to be a slow step-up in course condition. Start good, then get better and finish spectacular.

Except we were struggling to find anything wrong with the first one. Muang Kaew was our first golf course. And we were already wondering how it was going to get better than this. Then came Riverdale followed by Nikanti.

Each one somehow took the experience to another level. And finally, Thai Country Club….just spectacular.

It wasn’t just the golf courses either. It was everything around them. The service, the caddies, the pace, the attention to detail.

You start to realise why Bangkok works so well for a boys’ golf trip.

The golf is world-class. The logistics are easy. The food is brilliant. The hospitality is hard to beat.

And most importantly, nobody is in a hurry to go home.

How can it be balanced if we don’t talk about the economics?

We had four golf courses to book. We booked them via credit cards; yes Indian credit cards also allow international golf. Effectively, the golf was free and in some places that included the buggy and caddy fees too.

We stayed at Club Mahindra, where some of us are members, so the accommodation worked out considerably cheaper as well.

What did we really have to pay for? Food, drinks and massages!
And the occasional expense that somehow appears on every golf trip. My friends joke that I must have a way of making points even on these spends!! Hmm..maybe I am!

I don’t need to save money at every opportunity, but there is something satisfying about using things you have already paid for.

Credit cards have benefits. Hotel memberships have benefits. And sometimes, if you actually use them smartly, they turn into experiences.

This trip was slightly different for me because it wasn’t all about golf with friends alone. Four of the rounds were our usual golf with buddies.

The other two were the Indian finals being held in Bangkok, conducted by Porsche.

So there was some proper golf in there as well. Or at least, that was the plan. Don’t ask me how I played. I made new friends. Isn’t that why I was there?

The plan was to play six rounds. By day 5, I had a sore throat and body pains, wasn’t feeling particularly great and spent parts of the day taking medicines and convincing myself I was okay. The body was clearly suggesting otherwise…but I kept playing.

That’s because of something I’ve always believed in. When you start something, you finish it. When my kids compete in any competition or start any venture or activity, I tell them …don’t worry about the results…but if you started it (say, a 5 km race) you finish it.

I also felt I owed it to my four-ball to turn up. It doesn’t mean you ignore your body or keep going for the sake of proving something.

But when you’ve committed to something, there is a certain satisfaction in showing up and seeing it through.

So I played….108 holes in six days.

My throat is sore and so is my back. But hey, I was quite happy I played all six days.

Looking back, the number of rounds isn’t the only thing that I’ll remember.

I’ll remember the banter...the laughter...the never-ending jibes...and also the pressure to play well.

The good shots that will probably get better every time we tell the story. The bad shots that definitely will.

Every day we headed to a Thai food joint, and closed with massages… foot massages and Zandu balm massages for the adventurous!

And that strange feeling that happens on a golf trip where, for a few days, your only real concern is where you’re playing tomorrow. That’s a pretty good way to spend a few days.

We spend so much of our lives being serious about things that matter. Work...Money...Family...Responsibilities. There is nothing wrong with that.

But I think we also need things that don’t have to accomplish anything. Things we look forward to simply because they are fun.

For me, this has become one of those things. An annual ritual.

And another set of memories that will probably keep getting better every time we talk about them.

Next year, we’ll probably do it again. And hopefully, I’ll learn not to play six! Although after this trip, I’m not making any promises.

What about you? What’s your annual ritual?

Because somebody needed it done, and she was that somebody who did things.

That was her. The rock. You called, she came. Nobody ever had to ask twice.

I grew up watching that, and — this is the part I didn’t clock until much later — I picked it up like a language you absorb before you know you’re learning it.

In college, if someone said “I need help with this,” we helped. Didn’t matter what “this” was. There was no internal committee meeting about whether it was convenient, or ours to fix, or a good use of a Tuesday.

It followed me everywhere after that. New country, new job, new set of strangers who became friends — same reflex. During my MBA, this guy seemed genuinely shocked that I just made myself available. Fair point, as we were in a college full of people optimizing their calendars down to fifteen-minute blocks.

Looking back, that’s probably how these things start — not as a conscious decision. There’s something genuinely satisfying about being the person people can count on. You feel useful. Needed. Like you’re contributing to something larger than your own to-do list. For a long time, I never once asked what it was costing me.

Then in 2013 I quit my corporate job. Suddenly I had — or thought I had — all this time. Naturally, the reflex didn’t quit with the job. X called, needed help with a driving trip. I was there. Y called, needed help moving furniture. I was there. Nobody was forcing my hand. I just had the time, so I gave it. Freely, and — I now realize — a little automatically.

The people around you get used to that.

Which is where my mother comes back into this.

I’ve started wondering, lately: did she actually want to do all of that? Or did she just never learn how to say no? Did other people’s needs simply always outrank her own, in some ledger she never got to audit?

I don’t know. I want to be clear this isn’t a criticism — I admire the hell out of her for it. But the question sits with me differently now than it used to.

Where is the line between being there for people and being there for yourself?

I got a clearer answer than I expected at a Vipassana retreat. A week of nothing — no phone, no talking, no fixing anyone’s problem but the one in your own head. Just you, a mat, and roughly fourteen hours a day with nowhere to go and nobody to help. Perhaps that was exactly what I needed.

Somewhere around day four, a question surfaced that I probably should have asked myself decades earlier: what do I actually want to do? Not what can I do. Not what does this person need. What do I want.

That week changed something. Having time, I realized, doesn’t obligate you to give it away. And being capable of helping doesn’t mean you owe help to everyone who asks.

So I started drawing lines. The harder part wasn’t drawing them — it was holding them. Saying no, after forty-odd years of saying yes, feels close to indecent. You worry people will think you’ve changed. (They have.) You worry they’ll be disappointed. (Some are.) You worry the thing simply won’t get done. (Sometimes it doesn’t.)

But here’s what I came around to: saying no to a task is not the same as saying no to a person. It’s saying your time has a price too — even if you’re not in the habit of charging for it.

It wasn’t just time, either. I used to give to whatever cause showed up — a colleague’s marathon, a temple renovation, a fundraiser forwarded on WhatsApp. Not because I’d thought about any of them. Because people assume that if you have, you give, and I’d never once checked if that assumption was true. The first no I said out loud didn’t feel like discipline — it felt a little cheap, and the friend on the other end of that WhatsApp thread went quiet for a week. I consolidated anyway. Fewer causes, chosen on purpose, more behind each one — instead of a little bit of yes scattered everywhere. It’s still not entirely comfortable!

At 54, the question isn’t “what can I do” anymore. It is “what is actually worth my time?” I have built a filter for it - half formula, half life motto - mostly because I got tired of finding out the answer three commitments too late.

If something doesn’t tick at least two of those, I say, “Sorry, I’m not available.” Last month that sentence saved me an entire Saturday I'd otherwise have spent helping someone move. I spent it playing board games with my kids instead. Somehow that still feels like the selfish choice. It isn't!

Being available used to be part of my identity, not a choice I made each time. I still want to be the person people call. I still show up. Just not for everything, and not automatically.

Because money lost can be earned back. Work delayed can be finished later. Someone else can often solve the problem you were about to drop everything for. But the hour you already gave away — that one’s gone. There is no getting it back.

I suspect I’m not the only one who has confused being needed with being useful.

I still find it hard to say no. But now, at least, I stop first and ask myself the question my mother probably never got to ask: Is this something I really want to say yes to?

Sometimes, absolutely. And sometimes — finally — no.

I think my mother would understand that answer, even if she never quite got there herself. I should probably tell her that, next time I talk to her….before someone asks her to go start their car!

P.S. — I’m curious where you land on this. Do you respond to people intentionally, or is it still mostly a reflex? And if it changed for you at some point — what changed it?

I was actually a little wary of opening it. These groups generally have a predictable life cycle - Politics, Cricket or Movies - like a 75 year old still acting as a lead character (hmm).

Someone forwards something nobody asked for only for someone to comment and offend another! And 47 messages later, you wonder why you joined the group in the first place.

But this time, it was different. This wasn’t a forward but a condolence message - a classmate had died.

54 years old. Gone.

I didn’t know him particularly well. We knew each other, spoke occasionally, probably had a few laughs together and even a few arguments - come on we were college mates.

And yet, the moment we heard he had died, something changed. People who hadn’t chatted in the group started posting - what caused the death? who had spoken to him recently? Then we moved to stories about college - “Do you remember when...” Someone shared photos!

And then, slowly, the conversation moved from him to all of us. Who had kept in touch with whom? We should all meet soon, said another. Another meeting is being planned as I write this.

It struck me how strange death is.

One person leaves, and suddenly a whole bunch of people who had quietly disappeared from each other’s lives start talking again. Everyone starts thinking about how impermanent life is!!

It’s almost as if death sends out a very badly timed reunion invitation.

And then something else happened. Another classmate died.

This one hit differently. He died alone. His body was only claimed two weeks after his death. Two weeks.

I found myself thinking about that more than anything else.

Not how he died. Not what happened. Just the thought of someone dying and nobody knowing.

Someone who had once sat in the same classroom as 80 of us. Someone who had friends, classmates, siblings….people who knew him. And yet, at the end, he was alone.

Then a comment in our WhatsApp group really made me stop.

We had lost 6 friends from our class of 1992 and 4 of them had financial problems. Hmm. Four out of six. Obviously, I don’t know enough to say their financial problems caused what happened. Life is rarely that simple.

The number stayed with me. Why don’t we talk about these things?

Why is it so difficult to say: “I’m struggling.” “I’ve made a mess of my finances.” “I need help.” It's not like you'd be reaching out to strangers — these are people who already know you!

We ask each other, “How are you?” “Good, good.” “How’s work?” “Great.” “Family?” “All good.” Try getting deeper into “sensitive” topics and people get squeamish. You can talk about your back ache or knee pain (I know my classmates are 50+ you see) but your financial problems? God forbid. And sex life or the lack of one. They will definitely unfriend you!!

But I think we are particularly good at pretending everything is fine. And half the time, nobody has a clue what’s actually going on. We spend our whole lives being told, directly or indirectly, that we’re supposed to have things figured out. Get a good education. Get a stable job. Make money. Get married. Buy a house. Have children. And then you are officially “well settled” and successful!!!

And then one day, something goes wrong.

The business doesn’t work. You lose money. The job disappears. The marriage runs into trouble. Maybe the debt becomes too much.
And suddenly the person who was supposed to have all the answers doesn’t know what to do.

So what do we do?

Don’t tell anyone. We hide it, we borrow, we worry alone and we pretend!!

And sometimes, apparently, we disappear completely.

That is the part I find really difficult to get my head around.

We had 80 people in our class — all boys, which meant nicknames nobody could shake, ragging stories that still get retold, and crushes on girls we only ever saw from across the road, never up close. There were rivalries, fights, shared notes, shared secrets, and probably a few people who were just waiting for college to end so they never had to see the rest of us again.

Yet 34 years later, there are people in that same group who are complete strangers to each other!

We assume people will reach out if they need us. But sometimes they don’t. During my college days, I was very close to a person — let’s call him X.

We used to sit together at the class. I used to go to his house. We did many things together. We even joined the same CA firm.

I passed my Inter and Final exams at the first attempt. He didn’t. And slowly, he stopped talking to me.

I didn’t really understand it at the time. We were friends. I wasn’t judging him. But the calls became fewer, then stopped. And over the next five years, he just disappeared from my life.

Twenty years later, we reconnected. And he told me why.

He'd pulled into a shell. He was embarrassed. He'd failed, I hadn't.

Think about that - One stupid exam. One exam that I happened to clear and he didn’t.

And somehow, that was enough for a friendship to disappear for 20 years.

Not because I had stopped caring about him. Not because he didn’t care about me. He was just embarrassed about what he thought I would think of him.

That conversation has stayed with me.

Because sometimes the problem isn’t that people don’t have anyone to talk to. They have people. They just don’t want those people to see them when they think they’ve failed.

But there is another side to this too.

Another classmate told us about a different friend — one of the six we'd lost. Each time, he tried to ask about his financial situation. And every time, the answer was either silence or, “Sorry, losing signal.” My friend got the signal = I don’t want to talk about it!

He was quite desolate when he told us this. “I don’t know if I failed as a friend.”

That stayed with me too.

Because what are you supposed to do when someone doesn’t want to tell you?

You can call. You can ask. You can offer to help. But you can’t force someone to open the door.

X didn’t tell me he was struggling. He disappeared. I had no idea what was going on.

So yes, perhaps there is a responsibility on the person going through the problem too.

Let someone in. Tell someone you’re struggling. You don’t have to have the answer. You don’t even have to know what you need. And trust me, the person you tell may not have the answer either. But isn’t 2 or 5 better than 1?

Just don’t make everyone guess.

It also got me thinking about my own life.

If I disappeared tomorrow, who would actually miss me? I even asked my wife this as we were going to bed …she said calmly “Go to Sleep”! I know!

Not the people who would put up a nice WhatsApp status. Not the people who would write, “Shocking. Too young.”

I’m thinking about the people who would genuinely feel my absence. The people who would have a story. The people who would laugh at something I did 20 years ago. The people who would say, “That’s so Ramkey.”

And then I started wondering something else.

How many of those people am I still in touch with?

Because we spend an enormous amount of time worrying about our health, our money, our careers, our children’s futures.

All important.

But relationships need maintenance too. And unlike a mutual fund, you can’t just set up an SIP and assume it will compound.

You actually have to call people, meet them, send the stupid message, have the unnecessary coffee. Stay in touch. And most importantly, be there in their hour of need.

Maybe that’s what these two deaths have made me think about - not about dying.

But about the people I have lost touch with, the conversations I have postponed. The things I am too embarrassed to ask help about.

Maybe we should call someone we haven’t spoken to in a while.

Maybe we should go first. Open up before we're asked to. Listen without judging when someone else finally does. And the next time we ask 'How are you?' — actually wait for the answer. And when it's just 'fine' — ask a second time.

As for my own mortality, I’ll leave that conversation for another day. My wife has already given me her view “Go to sleep.”

Friends assume we’re off to Europe…Again. Some clients think I’ve sneaked away for a golf holiday…I know!

The truth is far less glamorous.

We go to Jindal Naturecure Institute. Voluntarily!

This year was our fifth visit.

Every time I tell someone that, the conversation goes something like this.

“You paid to spend a week in a hospital?” Yes.

“And you go back every year?” Yes.

“You must really enjoy getting tortured.”

Now we’re getting somewhere.

It’s funny how things work out, but somehow July turned into my month for focusing on health, and it wasn’t even something I had planned.

I go for a full body health check every year. This time, I went to NURA. I thought it would be the same old routine - they'd take some blood, I'd wait for a while, and then they'd give me a report that's hard to understand unless you're a doctor.

Instead, I found myself genuinely impressed - it was smooth and easy to follow. The technology they used was top-notch, and the report I got at the end was amazing. It had all the details my doctor needed, but it was written in a way that made sense to me, not just a bunch of technical jargon.

That last part matters.

Most medical reports read like doctors writing to other doctors... and copying you by accident. This one didn’t.

If you're over 40, it's time to stop putting off that health check. Don't keep saying you'll do it this year - just book it. I've got a referral coupon for NURA that I'd be happy to share with you, so send me a message if you're planning to go.

The report also reminded me of something I’d rather not admit.

My mind still thinks I’m thirty-five.

My body has other opinions. Vitamin D could be better. B12 needs work. More fibre. And yes, watch the cholesterol.

It’s not like I had any major scares or anything that kept me up at night. But it was enough to make me think about how taking care of my health now is way better and cheaper than repairing it later on.

Which is where Jindal comes in.

People often ask me what we actually do there. Honestly... very little.

You start your day at 5:30 AM with a 90-minute routine that’s all about loosening up and getting energized. This morning ritual includes laughter, stretching, and deep breathing exercises. Believe it or not, laughter is actually a scheduled part of this routine. And, as you can probably guess, trying to laugh on command at 6:00 AM can be pretty awkward - it’s not always easy to just switch on the laughter, especially when you’re still waking up.

It’s a whole routine - doctors, treatments, massages, mud packs, steam treatments, walks, eating healthy food, and even more treatments. If you’re feeling tired, you might get to take an afternoon nap, which is a nice bonus. Then it’s an early dinner and off to bed, trying to get plenty of rest to help your body recover.

There are things we all want to try in life, and then there are things like colon cleanses and enemas - they’re not exactly the kind of experiences you dream about having, but somehow they end up being something you consider anyway.

No meetings. No endless WhatsApp messages. No “I’ll just quickly check my email.”

For seven days your only full-time job is looking after yourself.

It’s amazing how unfamiliar that feels.

We spend eleven months looking after clients, businesses, children, parents and everyone else.

One week looking after ourselves somehow feels indulgent.

At first, Lakshmi wasn’t sure about it. She had a lot of people to take care of - it was a long list, like the number of guests you’d see at a big Indian wedding. And to her, taking care of herself seemed like a selfish thing to do.

Now she’s the one who reminds me, always asking if I’ve booked Jindal. I don’t even have to bring it up anymore, she’s on top of it.

The other thing I love about Jindal is the people watching. It’s probably better than any airport lounge I’ve ever sat in.

This year there was a software engineer, probably in his late twenties sitting outside the doctor’s room with his laptop bag still hanging off one shoulder.

I asked him what brought him there.

“Burnout,” he said.

“My cardiologist sent me.”

“I’m twenty-eight.”

Twenty-eight (Hmmm)

For a moment I wanted to tell him he was far too young to be worrying about these things. But then it hit me - I’m fifty-four years old myself, and here I was, standing right behind him in the same line, waiting for the exact same treatment.

So I kept quiet.

That’s the wonderful thing about Jindal. Nobody cares what you do for a living.

The person sitting next to you could be running a listed company. Or retired after thirty years in government. Or a young entrepreneur. Or a homemaker.

Everyone wears the same cotton tee. Everyone eats the same under-seasoned soup. Everyone waits for the same doctor.

It’s probably the only place in India where a billionaire and a bureaucrat can become friends over the shared trauma of colon cleansing.

Of course, there are sacrifices.

Coffee becomes a rumour. Dessert becomes a story you tell your grandchildren.

And then there’s the real challenge.

Seven days. One room. Twenty-four hours a day. With your spouse. No office. No children. No “I’ve just got one quick call.” I genuinely wasn’t sure married couples were designed for this.

The good news is that Lakshmi and I survived. And who knows, we might have even had a good time - but don’t go telling her I said that, okay?

Driving home, I realised something.

I schedule client reviews months in advance. I never miss my annual financial review. Even my car gets serviced every year whether it needs it or not.

For a long time, I treated health like an afterthought, something I would get to when I had a spare moment.

Now it has a permanent place in my calendar.

July is my Health Month.

One week to understand where my health stands. One week to reset a few habits.

One week to remember that everything else I care about—my family, my charity, my clients, golf, travel, and even writing this Substack—depends on waking up healthy enough to enjoy it.

I hope July stays in my calendar for a very long time.

P.S. I have exactly eleven months before July comes around again. Which, based on past experience, is just enough time to undo everything Jindal fixed.

If you noticed there wasn’t a Substack article last week, thank you.

I had switched off. I spent a week at a health retreat. No laptop. Very little phone. And absolutely no doom scrolling! Just long walks, healthy food, conversations and a lot of time to think.

Ironically, while I was trying to disconnect from my phone, students across India were using theirs to organise one of the biggest movements we’ve seen in years.

And it made me question something I’d been saying for years...

I must have said it a hundred times. “These kids are always on their phones.” “They spend their lives on Instagram.” “Most have not seen failures and they will falter at the first misstep”.

Then I watched what has been happening across India over the past few weeks.

They went from being ignored, to being mocked — “Cockroach Janta Party,” a name meant to shrink them, which they wore instead like a badge — to being lathicharged, and some even shot with pellets. Instead of buckling, they came back in strength, using the exact phones we blame for their attention spans. They kept coming back. Weeks in, the government finally responded.

Whether you agree with every demand or not isn’t the point.

What struck me was something else.

The very generation we dismiss as “phone addicts” used those same phones to organise, communicate, mobilise and persist. The technology we thought was making them passive became their biggest strength.

That made me think about my own student days. I never joined a protest. Not once.

When there was a college strike, I stayed at my hostel. Yet someone forged my signature and I ended up losing my hostel room. The irony wasn’t lost on me. I had stayed away from the strike, but was punished anyway. If anything, it reinforced my belief that staying away from protests was the safer path.

When the Mandal Commission became a huge issue, I debated it endlessly with friends. I had strong opinions. And I expressed it in various college debates - successfully.

But protest? Never.

For a while I told myself this was a generational thing — that my batch was simply built more cautious. But that doesn’t hold up. Mandal alone pulled thousands of students onto the streets. My generation protested plenty. My circle didn’t.

Coming from a middle-class family, we had a simple default setting: follow the rules, be a good student, don’t get into trouble. Looking back, I don’t remember knowing anyone who actively protested — not in my family, not among my close friends. That wasn’t the times. That was us.

A particular bargain middle-class households like mine made with the world: keep your head down and the world will let you get ahead.

A few years ago, when Aniketh left for university in Hong Kong, one conversation kept repeating itself.

“Whatever happens, don’t join any protests in your college town.” “If you get arrested, we won’t even know where to find you.”

It wasn’t political advice. It was the same bargain, one generation down. Play it safe.

Watching these students today, I wonder if it was something else. Maybe it was my own lifelong belief that staying away from trouble was always the wiser choice — a belief I inherited and then handed forward without ever really examining it.

I’m still not sure I’d join a protest even today. Fifty-four years of believing that rules exist to be followed doesn’t disappear overnight.

But I have changed my mind about something. I no longer confuse obedience with courage.

And I certainly won’t dismiss an entire generation because they’re always staring at their phones. Sometimes they’re not scrolling. Sometimes they’re organising.

It was never really a generation gap. It was a circle gap — mine, built to play it safe, mistaking other people’s caution for the norm and other people’s courage for recklessness.

I don’t know if I’ve fully closed that gap. But at least now I can see it.

That doesn’t mean I now believe protesting is the only way to create change.

Over the years, we’ve found our own ways of contributing.

When we moved back to Chennai after years abroad, we joined a new community. There were plenty of things that could have been better. Like most people, I could have complained. Or simply assumed someone else would fix them. Instead, I became the association treasurer, helped get things running, and handed over when my job was done.

It has been the same at my children’s schools, at non-profits I’ve been involved with, and in many other small corners of life.

None of it made the news. None of it involved placards or slogans. But it matters.

Maybe that’s the real lesson I’m taking away.

A society doesn’t become better because everyone protests.

And it doesn’t become better because nobody does.

It becomes better when enough people care to participate.

Some participate by raising their voices. Others participate by rolling up their sleeves. Most of us, if we’re honest, probably need to do a little more of both.

My mother had a simple way of saying it.

“Leave every place a little better than you found it.”

I think that’s still some of the best advice I’ve ever received. Watching these students reminded me of that advice.

However you do it — speaking up, quietly building, just showing up — I’d genuinely love to know how you leave your corner a little better.

Because perhaps the real question isn’t whether we protest or not. It’s whether we participate.

Which college. Which degree. Which company. Which city.

As if this one decision will decide the next 60 years of our lives. No pressure. None at all. Just your entire future resting on a choice made by a brain that isn't even fully cooked yet.

The funny thing is, at 54, looking back, I can't think of many decisions that were actually permanent. Most were simply... the next step.

I became a Chartered Accountant and Cost Accountant. Not because I'd always dreamt of Balance sheets but there were engineers all around me, and I thought I'd be different. Very original. A CA among Engineers, like a meat eater in a Tambrahm family.

Did I use my CA? For about four years. Then came the MBA, and after that my career had less to do with my qualifications and far more to do with the people I met and the opportunities that came my way. Looking back my CA wasn’t the destination but simply a bridge to what came next.

We got married in July 2003. I told my wife that we would be in Peru for a few years. The Peruvian economy had other plans. Six weeks into married life, my wife and I were contemplating next city to live in and packing boxes instead of unpacking wedding gifts. Great start to a marriage — "till death do us part, but the market's a bit soft right now."

From Peru we landed in Moscow. I figured two, three years, minimum. Opportunity knocked at sixteen months. We answered, because apparently that's what you do when opportunity knocks — you don't ask if it could come back at a more convenient time.

Then Amsterdam. We loved it. No caveats, no jokes here — we actually loved it. But life doesn't check your calendar before it throws a curveball. My father was diagnosed with cancer. We wanted to be home. So we went home.

Two years in India. Opportunity knocked again. We moved….again.

When I look back now, Peru, Moscow, Amsterdam, India and Hong Kong all felt like career-defining decisions at the time. None of them turned out to be permanent. Each posting ended for reasons I couldn’t have predicted, and each one prepared me for the one that followed. Life wasn’t unfolding according to a master plan. It was simply one opportunity leading to the next.

So what is permanent? Not the jobs. Not the "few years" I promised my wife. Turns out the only constant was the suitcase, and even that's been replaced twice.

Then came the decision everyone thought was truly irreversible: leaving JP Morgan at 41. Good career, good salary, comfortable life — the kind of comfortable where you complain about work-life balance from the business class lounge.

I didnt know what I was going to do but financial advisory was never part of that.

I knew I wanted a break, to spend more time with my family, tick off my bucket list and definitely didnt want another corporate job immediately. Beyond that I had no plan. Banconus wasnt plan A; it wasnt even in the same pin code.

And yet, few years after leaving JP Morgan, partnered with a friend and now run Banconus. Looking back, it was simply another experiment. Had it not worked, I would have done something else. Fortunately, it did work, and ten years later I still enjoy what I do and my old JP Morgan business cards make excellent bookmarks!

Over the past year, Lakshmi and I have spent far too many hours discussing universities with our children. Everywhere we went, they were asked the same question.

“So...what do you want to do?”

They’re 18.

How on earth are they supposed to know?

I didn’t. Did you?

The irony isn’t lost on me. During my MBA, at the age of 29, I was quite sure I didn’t want to be a banker. A few years later, I was climbing the corporate ladder in banks around the world. Clearly, career planning wasn’t one of my strengths.

Maybe we’re asking the wrong question.

Instead of asking an 18-year-old, “What do you want to do for the rest of your life?”, perhaps we should ask, “What would you like to try first?”

Looking back, that’s all I’ve ever done.

CA was the first experiment.

Moving overseas was another.

Leaving JP Morgan was probably the biggest one.

Banconus wasn’t even on the list. It just happened because one experiment led to another.

If you’d asked me at 18 where I’d end up, I’d have got almost everything wrong.

Actually, if you’d asked me at 29, I wouldn’t have done much better!

Maybe that’s the point.

Life isn’t an exam where there’s one right answer. It’s a series of experiments - some work and some don’t. Every one of them teach you something.

So perhaps the greatest gift we can give our children isn’t helping them make the perfect decision.

It’s reminding them that very few decisions are permanent.

After all, if a Chartered Accountant who didn’t want to be a banker can somehow end up running a wealth advisory firm...there’s hope for all of us.

I’d love to hear from you.

Which decision did you think was permanent, only to realise it was just another stepping stone?

That got me thinking about how my brother and I went about choosing ours.

Framework?

Of course we had one. It just had one question. Can we afford it?

My younger brother wanted to become a doctor. He missed the cut-off by a few marks. He was heartbroken, as was my mother who always wanted a doctor in the family.

The obvious thing today would have been to take a gap year and try again.Back then? That wasn’t even a consideration.

He wanted to get his papers revalued and when that did not work, he wanted to write the exam again. But my parents and the rest of the family couldn’t understand why anyone would “waste” a whole year. And to be fair, what if his marks didn’t improve the second time?

So Engineering became the obvious second choice. Not because anyone loved it. Because it was Plan B, C and D rolled into one. By then we’d quietly accepted that Plan A wasn’t happening.

He got into one of the top private engineering colleges in India. We were all thrilled. Then my parents looked at the fees. And that was the end of that.

He joined a government engineering college instead. Not because he liked it more, but because that was the one we could afford.

You know what’s interesting? He has gone on to have a wonderful career.

Which makes me wonder... does the name of the college matter as much as we think it does? I’m sure it matters sometimes. I’m just not convinced it matters as much as some parents think it does.

When it came to me, my career planning wasn’t exactly sophisticated either.

Almost everyone in my family was an engineer. I remember thinking, “Nah... I’m not going to do that.”

So I became an accountant.

There you go. That was my framework! Somewhere, a career counsellor (btw we didn’t have one) is still weeping.

To be fair to my parents, they never questioned it. They didn’t know much about Chartered Accountancy either. My father had worked with a few Chartered Accountants in his company and knew it was a respectable profession. That was enough for him.

More importantly, they trusted me. Looking back, that trust probably mattered more than any career advice they could have given me.

Choosing a college was even simpler.

There was no question of comparing universities or even cities. Studying abroad? My parents hadn’t even stepped outside India then. I don’t think I even had a passport! We didn’t know anyone who had gone overseas …forget for an undergraduate degree. It simply wasn’t part of our world.

So I joined a college in Chennai. The total fees for three years was around ₹3,000 (US$30), and I don’t remember anyone thinking there was another way.

That’s just how life was.

After college, I started my CA articleship at Price Waterhouse. I got there the way many things happened in those days. Someone knew someone, I got introduced, attended the interview and got in.

I never once thought of applying in Mumbai or Delhi or Bangalore. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to. It honestly never occurred to me.

Looking back, I never felt deprived. I didn't know any different.

Between college, articleship and classes, I thought I had a pretty big world. It took me years to realise how small it actually was — and that’s really what this piece is about. Not colleges but how every generation quietly expands the world for the next.

My grandparents pushed hard to give their children an education they never had.

My father left home to study engineering in another state. That was a big deal in those days.

I became a Chartered Accountant in Chennai and, years later, found myself doing my master’s in the USA & UK. If you’d told my 18-year old me that would happen, I would have laughed.

Today, my kids are looking at undergraduate programmes overseas as though it’s the most normal thing in the world.

Just writing that makes me pause.

Four generations. Somewhere my grandfather is probably looking down saying, “You’re welcome.” And somewhere my son is googling “best pizza near campus.”

People often think privilege is only about money.

Money still matters. It always will. We still discuss costs. We still ask whether something is worth it.

We may have left the middle class, but the middle class hasn’t quite left us!

The difference is that money no longer ends the conversation before it even begins. Today we talk about aspirations, strengths, interests, culture, opportunities and fit.

Money still has a seat at the table. It just doesn’t sit at the head of the table anymore.

Maybe that’s what progress has looked like in our family over four generations. Not that life became easier. Just that the world became a little bigger each time.

And with every generation, there were a few more choices than the one before.

I hope my children notice that someday. And more importantly, I hope one day they do the same for theirs.

P.S. My son’s college shortlist starts with fit. Mine started with fees. Progress, in one sentence.

It’s the question every parent of a teenager eventually gets asked and we are no exception to that.

The answers are usually predictable. US and UK top the list. Maybe Canada or Australia if someone’s feeling adventurous. Then the conversation does its usual lap around university rankings, Ivy League names, acceptance rates, scholarships, campus tours with a tour guide walking backwards.

We took a different route.

Not because we wanted to be different. Because we wanted to be deliberate.

Three years ago we ran this exercise with our older son, Aniketh. He's now happily completed his second year at university.

Now we’re back at the dining table with Eshaan.

Different child. Different interests. Completely different world.

Same framework. Turns out good frameworks, unlike teenagers, don't need reinventing every three years!

We Started With a Blank Sheet of Paper

One evening, we sat around the dining table with nothing more than a blank sheet of paper.

No university rankings. No glossy brochures. No YouTube reviews. No, “But my friends are applying there!” (I know!)

Just two questions.

“If you could design your ideal undergraduate experience, what would it look like?”

And perhaps even more importantly,

“At the end of four years, what would make you look back and say, ‘That was absolutely worth it’?”

Notice what we didn’t ask. We didn’t ask where he wanted to study. We didn’t ask which university had the shiniest ranking. We didn’t ask what everyone else was doing.

We started with the outcome.

The conversation lasted hours. We debated and challenged each other’s assumptions. We spoke about careers, friendships, finances, independence, learning, travel and life beyond the classroom. My wife and I shared our experiences and by the end of the evening, he had identified five priorities.

Then we nudged him to rank them. Because every meaningful decision involves trade-offs. After all, if everything is important, then nothing really is.

Notice something interesting. Not a single country appears on that list.

Looking back, I realised something. We weren’t really choosing a university but were choosing the next chapter of our son’s life. Universities were simply one input into that decision.

We Didn’t Compare Universities. We Compared the World.

Once we had priorities, we resisted the urge to compare universities directly — that's how you end up in a rankings rabbit hole at 1am arguing about a three-spot difference that means nothing!

Instead, we zoomed out. Six regions: USA, Europe (minus UK), UK, Australia, Asia (minus India), India. (Apologies to the rest of the world. You didn’t make the shortlist. It’s not personal.)

We scored each region against our five priorities and let the numbers do the arguing instead of us.

1. Where could international students realistically find internships and jobs?

2. Which regions offered the best value for money?

3. Where were the strongest programmes?

4. Where would our son be surrounded by people from different cultures?

5. Where would he genuinely enjoy spending four years?

For decades, US and UK have been the default for Indian families — the academic equivalent of ordering butter chicken because you don’t want to read the rest of the menu. But defaults aren’t always right.

On our number one priority—career opportunities—the US and the UK didn't score as highly as we had expected. Not because the universities aren't world-class. They absolutely are. But increasing visa uncertainty meant the path from graduation to that all-important first job felt more like a lottery than a plan.

Return on investment? They slipped further.

Singapore and Hong Kong, meanwhile, kept climbing: excellent universities, global financial and tech hubs, genuinely international classrooms, strong internship and job pipelines, safe, well-run cities. We weren’t trying to prove Asia beats the West. We just followed the framework wherever it led — and it kept landing in the same two zip codes!

Two years ago, it led Aniketh to Hong Kong.

Today, as we repeat the exercise with Eshaan, Singapore and Hong Kong once again feature prominently—not because his brother studied there, but because the math still checks out.

The answers may ultimately be different. The process won’t.

Then Reality Took Over

Building a framework is easy. Using it when the decision gets real, with actual feelings involved? Different sport entirely.

Aniketh didn’t apply to a single university in the US or UK. That raised eyebrows — especially since seven people in our immediate family, including me, studied in the US. My brother lives there. So does my wife’s brother. If anyone had an excuse to default to America, it was us. Which is exactly why we’d built the framework in the first place — so we wouldn’t need an excuse.

He applied to four universities. Got offers from three.

Then came the hard part: choosing.

On paper, the framework had the answer. In reality, emotions crashed the party uninvited. Vibrant city or quiet campus? Friends had opinions. Family had opinions. Suddenly criteria that never made the original top five were demanding a seat at the table.

For a while, Aniketh drifted from the very framework he’d built. Which is normal — big decisions are emotional, not spreadsheets with feelings.

This was the moment my wife and I realized our job wasn’t to decide for him. It was to gently point back at the paper. We just asked: “Has anything changed in your top five?”

No.

Once he saw that, the fog cleared.

Today, Aniketh is thriving in every aspect - academically, socially, personally.

When we visited Hong Kong in April, we asked him to invite a few friends for dinner. A few turned out to be fifteen. What struck us wasn’t the number. It was the diversity.

Almost every student around the table came from a different country.

As Lakshmi and I watched them laugh, tease each other and share stories from around the world, we smiled.

Three years earlier, we’d written “international exposure” on a blank sheet of paper. That evening, it came alive.

As we headed to our hotel, I turned to Lakshmi and said, “I think he’s found friends for life.” For me, that was one of the clearest signs that we’d made the right decision.

Could he have been equally happy somewhere else? Maybe. We’ll never know.

What I do know is this. He isn’t lying awake wondering, “What if?” because the decision wasn’t driven by peer pressure or prestige. It was driven by a process he trusted and built.

That brings a kind of peace no ranking chart ever will.

The Passport Problem

I’ve been talking to friends whose kids graduated from big-name US/UK universities. Bright, hardworking, excellent degrees. And almost all of them have struggled to land a first job — not for lack of talent, but because employers won’t sponsor a visa.

As a parent, that’s brutal to watch. Imagine doing everything right — good grades, prestigious school, four years of genuine effort — and discovering your biggest obstacle isn’t your resume. It’s your passport.

Families spend $400,000–$500,000 on this. The financial hit is enormous. The dent to a 22-year-old’s confidence after months of silent rejections is even worse.

This is exactly why career opportunities sat at the top of our list. A degree isn’t the finish line. It’s the starting gun — and it’s a rough sport if you’re not allowed to actually run the race.

Does the Name Even Matter?

My undergraduate college?
Almost nobody has heard of it.

My MBA?
Ross, Michigan. People nod.

Here’s the funny thing.
Neither has mattered nearly as much as I thought.

Nobody’s ever asked me to choose between them. Nobody’s built an opinion of me off one over the other. What actually built my career — CFO for Asia Pacific at one of the world’s largest investment banks, then building my own company — wasn’t the name on either degree. It was what I did after both of them.

I can’t remember the last time someone asked where I went to undergrad. I also can’t remember the last time anyone cared that my MBA came from a “name” school versus my college that had no name at all. People cared about the work, the problems solved, the people led, the values I stood for.

So here’s the real question: if even the good name on your degree stops mattering the moment your career actually starts, why are we spending half a million dollars chasing prestige for four undergraduate years?

I’m not saying no. I’m just saying it’s worth asking before you write the check.

The Real Education

This piece was never really about Hong Kong, or Singapore, or the US, or the UK. Those answers expire. The world changes. Immigration policy changes. Universities rise and fall like startup valuations.

Twenty years ago, our framework might have pointed somewhere else entirely. Twenty years from now, it probably will again.

The lesson was never where to study. It’s how to decide.

Our kids will face hundred more decisions like this one — where to work, where to live, whether to start something risky, who to spend a life with. I hope they don’t start by asking “what’s everyone else doing.” I hope they start by asking “what actually matters to me.”

If this framework helps them answer that — not just for university, but for everything after — we’ve handed them something more useful than a degree.

We’ve taught them how to decide. Everything else is just paperwork.

I had just returned from an unforgettable father-son trip with my older son, Aniketh.

Last year, we explored Iceland. This year, another part of the world beckoned.

From the turquoise beaches of Cancún to the history and heat of Mexico City. From the electric atmosphere of the FIFA World Cup in Dallas and Houston to standing inside Mission Control at NASA.

Twenty days. Four cities. One new country - Mexico #94.

On paper, it had everything I love in a trip — history, culture, golf, football, beaches, great food, and just enough adventure.

But somewhere between the pyramids of Chichén Itzá, the roar of 80,000 football fans, and the rockets at NASA, something unexpected happened.

The trip quietly turned into a reunion tour.

As we travelled, Aniketh met friends from almost every chapter of my life.

Friends from my childhood in Kamalapuram. School friends I hadn’t seen in nearly forty years. College friends. Colleagues from my PwC years in Chennai. Friends from my SLB days in Abu Dhabi.

Each group knew a different version of me.

The mischievous schoolboy. The awkward teenager. The ambitious professional trying to find his place in the world.

To my son, I’ve always been just one person. Appa.

This trip reminded both of us that a life isn’t built all at once. It’s built chapter by chapter, with different people shaping who we become along the way.

One reunion made me a little nervous.

A school junior from Kamalapuram drove almost an hour to meet us in Dallas.

As I waited, I found myself wondering — which version of Ramkey is he going to remember?

Because if I’m honest, I’m not sure I would have enjoyed sixteen-year-old Ramkey.

Fiercely competitive. Completely obsessed with results. Always organising, always expecting everyone to perform. Not exactly known for diplomacy.

I probably took myself a little too seriously.

Thankfully, he didn’t remember any of that.

He remembered the cricket matches. How we’d walk nearly five kilometres in forty-five-degree heat just to play. How we’d spend hours preparing our own pitch because there wasn’t one. How everyone somehow ended up at our house.

He remembered the friendships. Not the flaws.

It struck me that people often remember us far more generously than we remember ourselves.

The conversations changed depending on which friends we met.

With my Kamalapuram friends, we laughed about cricket, bicycles, school, and the wonderful simplicity of growing up in a small village.

With my SLB friends, we laughed about something completely different. Thirty years ago, we’d spent evenings discussing promotions and overseas postings. Now we were discussing university admissions, ageing parents, and parenting teenagers.

The topics had changed. The friendships hadn’t.

A few friends said something that stayed with me. “You’ve mellowed.”

They’re absolutely right. The drive is still there. But somewhere along the way, life softened the edges. My wife probably deserves the credit.

Either way, I’m grateful.

Success often rewards ambition. Life eventually teaches humility.

One evening, after another reunion, Aniketh smiled and said:

“Dad, it’s amazing how you’ve stayed friends with people from every stage of your life, all over the world.”

Then he added:

“It’s also hilarious. Every one of them first tells me how amazing you are — and then immediately starts telling me embarrassing stories about you.”

I couldn’t stop laughing. He was right.

One minute they were introducing me as though I’d conquered the world. The next, they were happily informing my son that I wasn’t nearly as impressive at fourteen.

Old friends have a wonderful way of keeping your ego in check.

They don’t care about your designation. They remember when you didn’t have one.

Every visit ended the same way.

“You’re leaving already?”
“Stay another day.”
“Why are you NOT staying with us?”

Nobody asked where I worked. Nobody mentioned titles or achievements.

They were simply glad we’d come.

The World Cup was spectacular. Eighty thousand people in one stadium. Flags, anthems, noise, energy.

Unforgettable.

But some of my favourite memories came from much quieter places.

A living room. A dining table. A cup of coffee or whiskey. Old photographs. Stories that had grown funnier with every passing decade.

One experience reminded me how exciting the world can be. The other reminded me what really lasts.

As parents, we spend a lot of time teaching our children about success.

Study hard. Work hard. Save well. Invest wisely.

Important lessons. All of them.

But I hope Aniketh took something even more valuable from this trip.

Relationships are life’s greatest investment.

People often say, “Your network is your net worth.” I don’t agree.

Your network knows your title. Your friends know your story.

Your network respects you for what you’ve become. Your old friends make fun of you because they remember when you were nobody.

That’s not networking. That’s friendship.

And friendships like these don’t survive by accident.

Someone makes the call. Someone remembers the birthday. Someone books the ticket. Someone says, “I’m in town. Can we meet?”

Relationships compound — but only if you keep investing in them.

At the end of the trip, I realised we’d both brought something home.

I came back with another passport stamp. Aniketh came back with something far more valuable.

He discovered that before I became Appa, I was a son, a friend, a classmate, a colleague and, occasionally, a complete nuisance.

More importantly, he saw that the richest thing I’ve built over the last forty years isn’t a career.

It’s a collection of friendships.

If that’s the legacy I leave my children, I’ll consider it the best investment I ever made.

When was the last time you travelled — not to see a place, but simply to see a person?

Every stamp tells a story. Every question reveals an assumption.

The unpredictable part of travel isn’t the airline, the weather or even the local taxi driver. It’s the immigration officer (I know!) The same passport can get completely different reactions depending on which side of the counter you’re standing.

Sometimes you get a smile and a stamp. Sometimes you get an interrogation. And sometimes a story.

Israel

By the time I landed in Amsterdam enroute Jerusalem and Tel Aviv in 2000, my passport had already accumulated a rather unusual collection of stamps: Iran, the UAE, Yemen, Oman, Bahrain, Qatar — just chapters of my life.

To the Israeli immigration officer, they appeared to be several reasons for concern…obviously.

As he flipped through the pages, I could almost see his blood pressure rising.

The questions started. Then came more questions. Then came questions about the previous questions.

After 45 minutes, I was escorted to a supervisor. This could not be good.

A stern looking supervisor studied my passport, looked at me, and asked a single question.

“Why are you the only Indian getting into Israel?” I was part of a UofM business school project and everyone else was from the USA or Canada.

By this point, after what felt like an extended job interview, I was exhausted.

So I replied: “Well, somebody has to do the job.”

There was a brief silence. Then he smiled.

A stamp appeared. And just like that, I was in.

I’ve often thought about that encounter since.

To me, those stamps represented places I’d lived, worked and made friends. To him, they represented a complicated geopolitical puzzle.

Same passport. Completely different story.

America

I was landing in the United States just six days after September 11, 2001.

As our aircraft descended into New Jersey, I remember looking out of the window and seeing smoke still rising in the distance.

The country was grieving. The world was nervous. And if I’m being honest, so was I.

By then, my passport already looked suspiciously international. I had lived in many countries…and traveled to many. And to make matters worse, I was sporting a rather impressive beard.

My friends had prepared me for the worst.

“You’re definitely getting pulled aside.” “You’ll be questioned for hours.”

By the time I reached immigration, I had rehearsed a dozen possible answers.

The officer looked at my passport. Looked at me. Looked at the passport again.

Then she asked one question.“Why are you here?”

“Work.” Thump. The stamp landed on the passport.

“Next.”

That was it.

The entire interaction lasted less time than it took me to walk to the counter.

After all the warnings, all the assumptions and all the anxiety, nothing had happened.

It was a useful reminder.

Sometimes reality is kinder than the stories we tell ourselves.

United Kingdom

My most unlikely immigration success story happened in London.

I was flying from China to the United States with a 16-hour layover in the UK. I wanted to visit my uncle in London.

There was only one small problem.

I didn’t have a visa….to enter UK. Now before you judge me, let me assure you that I was fully aware of this fact (Duh).

I joined the immigration queue anyway.

When my turn came, I handed over my passport and opened my mouth to explain.

The officer immediately raised his hand. Not a word. Fair enough.

He started flipping through my passport.

One page. Two pages. Ten pages….Twenty pages….Thirty pages.

This was before e-visas. My passport resembled a small travel encyclopedia.

Eventually he reached the end. He looked up. “You don’t have a visa.”

“You do need a visa. I hope you know that.”

“Not only do I know that,” I replied, “I used to live here.”

I showed him my old student visa.

He looked at me with the expression usually reserved for people who voluntarily make life difficult.

“Look, I have fifteen hours to kill. If you let me in, I’ll go meet my uncle and come back to the airport. If you don’t let me in, I’ll spend that time in the lounge, finishing a bottle of whiskey. Either way, I’m getting on the same flight to America.”

He stared at me while I stared at him. The queue behind me stared at both of us.

After a brief pause, he picked up his stamp. Thump. He handed back my passport.

I looked down. A 24-hour entry stamp.

I thanked him, met my uncle, had a wonderful afternoon in London and made my flight.

To this day, I’m still not entirely sure whether that was immigration policy, common sense or British generosity.

Possibly all three.

The Caucasus

Some of the most interesting immigration experiences happen in places where history is never very far away.

The Caucasus was one of those places. I crossed into Armenia by road from Georgia.

The immigration officer took my passport and immediately started flipping through it.

Page after page. Then he started again.

A few minutes later, he looked up and said something in Armenian.

I had no idea what he was saying.

But one word sounded familiar. “Azerbaijan?” I looked at him quizzically and said “Yes”.

He returned to the passport and began another thorough search.

Every page. Every visa. Every stamp.

I watched him conduct what appeared to be a determined hunt for evidence.

I think he was looking to see if I had been to Azerbaijan. I had driven through Azerbaijan in 2018 but that stamp wasn’t in that passport. It was in my previous passport.

After several minutes of searching, he looked up again.

I decided to help.

“Turkey.” He nodded.

“Georgia.” Another nod.

“And now here.” More nodding.

Neither of us seemed entirely sure where the conversation was going, but somehow we were communicating.

Eventually I concluded that discussing geopolitics at an immigration counter was unlikely to improve the situation.

So I changed the subject. “Do you watch Indian movies?” He did not understand.

And then, in what may be the least sophisticated diplomatic initiative in history, I started singing: “Jimmy Jimmy Jimmy... Aaja Aaja Aaja...”

To my amazement, he smiled. The atmosphere changed immediately.

The passport was stamped. Bollywood had succeeded where language had failed.

A few days later, Georgia taught me a completely different lesson.

Before travelling, I had spent far too much time reading internet forums. Bad idea!

The internet was full of stories about Indians being denied entry.

People described interrogations, missing hotel bookings, insufficient cash, suspicious immigration officers and ruined holidays.

Naturally, we prepared for the worst.

By the time we reached immigration, we were mentally ready for a courtroom cross-examination.

The officer looked at our passports and then looked at us.

Stamped one passport, then another and all 4 were stamped.

“Welcome to Georgia.”

That was it. No questions. No interrogation. No drama.

The entire interaction lasted less time than it took me to worry about it.

As we walked away, I couldn’t help laughing.

In Armenia, I had expected a straightforward border crossing and ended up singing Bollywood songs.

In Georgia, I had expected a major interrogation and received four stamps and a smile.

The Real Border

One of the unexpected gifts of travel has been moving between worlds that many people think should never overlap.

I’ve lived in Shia country.

I’ve spent time in Sunni countries.

I’ve visited Israel.

I’ve crossed borders where history books tell you people should dislike one another.

Yet my strongest memories are not of conflict.

They’re of kindness.

The Israeli officer who eventually smiled.

The British officer who chose common sense over bureaucracy.

The American immigration officer who asked one question when I expected twenty.

Governments have disagreements. Ordinary people offer directions or Tea …though I prefer coffee!

The older I get, the more I think immigration counters are miniature classrooms.

You arrive carrying assumptions. Sometimes theirs. Sometimes your own.

A few minutes later, those assumptions are challenged.

My goal is still 100 countries. Maybe one day it will become 193.

Not because I need more stamps in my passport.

But because every new border crossing seems to teach the same lesson.

The world is far larger than we imagine.

And the people in it are far less different than we’ve been told.

Pakistanis.

It was wonderfully simple.

Cricket matches confirmed it. News channels confirmed it. Patriotic movies definitely confirmed it.

Then I went abroad. And something deeply inconvenient happened.

I met Pakistanis. Not the theoretical Pakistanis who appear on television screens or Indian movies.

Actual Pakistanis. The kind who invite you home for dinner, insist on paying the bill, complain about their governments, worry about their children, and argue endlessly about cricket.

To my great surprise, many of them became friends. Some remain friends even today.

This has been a recurring problem throughout my travels.

Every time I become convinced that a group of people can be neatly placed into a box, real life interferes.

And real life has terrible respect for stereotypes.

Many years ago, I visited Jerusalem.

There are few places on Earth where people disagree so passionately about the same small piece of land.

I spent time listening to Israelis.

Then I spent time listening to Palestinians.

Both had stories….painful stories.

Both were completely convinced that history supported their side.

The fascinating part was not that they disagreed. The fascinating part was that each side sounded entirely reasonable when speaking only to them.

Same conflict. Same streets. Same events.

Completely different stories.

---

Then there was Kashmir.

After driving five days from Chennai to Srinagar, I was getting my car serviced when the mechanic looked at me and announced:

"I hate ‘your’ government." Last time I checked Srinagar and Kashmir were part of India. But this did not seem like the right moment for a geography lesson!

And not the icebreaker recommended by most travel guides either! For a moment, we sat in silence.

Then I said, "Let's talk about movies."

So we did. About Salman Khan, who may be the closest thing India has to a bipartisan institution. (I know)

By the end of my visit, we still disagreed on politics. But we no longer disagreed on each other's humanity.

In Nagaland, someone was surprised why many locals opposed new highways.

As an outsider, I was confused. Surely roads are always good!

Then a local asked a question that stopped me. "For whom?"

Two words. An entire worldview.

The road that creates opportunity for one person may bring disruption to another.

Progress, I learned, depends heavily on where you are standing.

I lived in Iran for a while.

The warnings before I arrived were impressive.

People spoke as if I was relocating to a planet populated entirely by extremists.

Instead, I found some of the warmest, most educated, most hospitable people I have ever met.

People proud of their history, their culture, and their poetry. The stereotype I had been handed bore little resemblance to the people I met.

And remarkably curious about the rest of the world.

The country I was told to fear looked very different when viewed through conversations rather than headlines.

Then there was El Salvador.

The advice was unanimous. "Don't go." "Too dangerous." "Especially with children."

Naturally, we had to go…I know! This may explain why my wife occasionally questions my judgment.

One evening, my kids and I found ourselves walking through central San Salvador at 11 p.m. No I am not recommending this as a parenting strategy.

But I remember thinking that I felt safer there than in some cities with far better reputations.

Reality, once again, refused to cooperate with the general assumptions.

Travel doesn’t automatically make you wiser, kinder, or more enlightened.

What it does do is repeatedly expose you to an uncomfortable truth:

Most people are far more complicated than the labels we assign them.

The Pakistani becomes a friend.

The Kashmiri becomes a movie buff.

The Iranian becomes a host.

The stranger becomes a person.

And once that happens, prejudice has a much harder time surviving.

Labels are efficient. Stories are accurate.

And stories have a nasty habit of destroying prejudice.

"Sir, I am a Mohammedan."

This was December 2016. Demonetization had just happened. India was arguing with itself on television every night. WhatsApp universities were running triple shifts.

We had booked a two-week holiday and were not going to cancel.

Three families. Three Innovas. Delhi, Agra, Jaipur, Udaipur, and hopefully a tiger or two who had not received the memo about demonetization.

I looked at him. "I'm sorry?" I said.

"Sir, I am a Muslim." Well, that explained the "Mohammedan" part.

He continued.

"Your name sounds Hindu, so I wanted to tell you."

I was tempted to explain that I am not particularly religious, that my relationship with organized religion is best described as "it's complicated."

Instead, I asked the only question that seemed relevant. "Do you know how to drive?"

He smiled. "Of course, sir."

"Excellent. Then we have no problem as my most precious cargo - my family is in this car”

That broke the ice.

Over the next two weeks, somewhere between highway dhabas, palace hotels, chai stops, and endless kilometres of Rajasthan roads, we talked….A lot.

He told me about growing up with very little. About working impossible hours. About saving every rupee so his children could have opportunities he never had. About worrying whether people would judge him before they knew him.

About the small slights that accumulate over a lifetime.

The kind that never make headlines. The kind that quietly shape how you see the world.

I told him about my upbringing and introduced him to my family. He asked questions to my children.

He proudly showed us photographs of his own.

By the end of the trip, we were no longer a Hindu family and a Muslim driver. We were just two fathers comparing notes.

Both worried about our kids. Both trying to build a better future. Both wondering whether we were getting any of it right.

Funny thing about human beings. The moment you learn someone's story, it becomes much harder to squeeze them into a stereotype.

Labels are efficient. Stories are accurate.

And stories have a nasty habit of destroying prejudice.

Perhaps that is why his introduction felt so odd to me.

I grew up in a deeply religious household. Gods occupied prime real estate in our home. Festivals were celebrated enthusiastically. Prayers were never optional.

But being religious never came with instructions to dislike someone else's religion.

Our Christian neighbours walked in and out of our house as freely as anyone else. My Muslim friends were simply friends.

No one questioned where I went, whom I met, or what god they prayed to.

I was taught to respect my faith. I was never taught to fear someone else's.

Looking back, I realize what a gift that was.

Not because it made me more tolerant. But because it allowed me to meet people before meeting their labels.

Perhaps that is why, when my driver introduced himself as a Muslim, I was genuinely puzzled.

It felt a little like a doctor introducing himself as left-handed.

Interesting, perhaps.

But no more relevant to the journey ahead than whether he preferred tea or coffee.

Somewhere along those Rajasthan highways, I was reminded of something simple:

Most people are not ideologies.

Most people are not headlines.

Most people are not hashtags.

They are fathers, mothers, sons, daughters….

They are trying to work, to save, to raise good children, to get through the day with a little dignity intact.

The rest is often noise.

And sometimes all it takes to discover that is a long car ride with someone who thought he was different from you.

And very rarely, it gives you a human being who quietly changes the way you look at life forever.

I met one such person in Kigali, Rwanda in September 2017.

Not in a grand setting or at some profound planned conversation. In the front seat of a vehicle, while driving through one of the most beautiful countries I have seen.

His name was Ndahiro and he was our driver.

And he was a survivor of the Rwandan Genocide.

In 1994, over the course of roughly 100 days, around 500,000 to 1 million people were killed in Rwanda. Most were Tutsis, along with moderate Hutus who opposed the killings.

In such situations, numbers usually do a poor job of explaining the horror.

Afterall this was not some distant battlefield where soldiers fought strangers.

Neighbours killed neighbours. Friends turned on friends. People hid from those they had grown up with.

Churches where you prayed with neighbours -places people ran to for safety — became massacre sites.

And somehow, humanity still found ways to become even darker.

Ndahiro was 19 years old during the genocide.

He lost 57 family members…Fifty seven.

His father. His mother. His 14-year-old sister. His brothers, aged 15 and 10…

Even today, decades later, most of their bodies have never been found.

He survived by hiding in bushes, coming out each day praying he would live another night.

He saw killings, rapes and a few hacked to death.

And the people responsible were not strangers. They were his neighbours….People he knew.

As we drove through the city, Ndahiro looked at me and smiled.

"You have a long nose," he said. I laughed.

Then he added quietly:

"If you were here in 1994, you would have been cut into a hundred pieces."

I didn't know what to say.

He wasn't being dramatic. He was stating a fact.

During the genocide, physical features were often used to identify people. A nose, height, a face, an identity card—sometimes that was enough.

For a few moments, I stopped thinking about history and started thinking about myself.

What if I had been born here?

What if the accident of my birthplace had determined whether I lived or died?

Travel occasionally teaches us facts. Sometimes it teaches us something far more uncomfortable.

How much of our lives is simply chance.

The country we are born in. The time we are born in. The religion we inherit. The language we speak. The surname we carry. The side of a border we happen to be standing on.

In Rwanda, a nose could become a death sentence!

Take a moment and truly think about that.

What would you do if the people who murdered your family were people you had shared meals with? People whose children played with you growing up?

What words would even remain in your vocabulary?

Forgiveness would certainly not be the first one that comes to ones mind.

And yet, that was exactly the word Ndahiro spoke about.

Not revenge. Not hatred. Not retribution.

But Forgiveness.

He told me how difficult it was in the beginning. How anger consumed him. How grief sat heavily inside him. How he wakes up shivering with nightmares even now…23 years later.

But slowly, over time, he realized something.

Hatred was keeping him imprisoned long after the genocide had ended.

He said he became lighter when he forgave…..Lighter. Hmm.

“If I didn't forgive, I couldn't love”

These words have stayed with me ever since.

And then he told me something that completely shattered me.

When he visits his village, he feeds his neighbour, the very person who killed his family.

I genuinely did not know how to process that. Even now, years later, I still don’t.

That day, we visited churches where massacres had taken place. We saw blood-stained clothes and mass graves.

Photographs of children who never grew up. Stories of women and young children who were raped and killed. Stories of people burnt alive.

And all this happened in a country that follow the same religion, where people look similar and have lived together for centuries.

None of this made sense….

At one point, most of us were in tears.

Our minds could not fully absorb what human beings are capable of doing to one another.

But strangely, when I left Rwanda, the feeling I carried back was not hopelessness.

It was humility.

Because in a world where outrage has become a lifestyle, where hatred spreads faster than facts, where entire groups of people are casually blamed for the actions of a few, Rwanda showed me both the absolute worst and the absolute best of humanity.

Hatred is easy. It needs no courage or sacrifice or emotional effort. Anyone can hate.

But forgiveness? Real forgiveness — not the Instagram quote variety — is unimaginably difficult.

Forgiving someone for being rude to you is easy…some of us struggle with even this! Forgiving someone who murdered your parents and siblings is something else entirely.

And yet, somehow, people like Ndahiro chose not to spend the rest of their lives carrying this poison inside them.

That does not mean forgetting. It does not mean justice no longer matters. It certainly does not erase trauma. Those scars remain.

But Rwanda taught me that reconciliation is not weakness. Sometimes, it may be the bravest thing a human being can do.

Travel has taught me many things over the years….

How little I actually know.

How privileged I am.

How similar human beings are despite borders and politics.

But Rwanda taught me something deeper.

And honestly, I still don’t know if I have that strength.

I’m just grateful life gave me the opportunity to meet someone who did.