When Chandrakant Parulekar turned fifty-three, his boss of ten years laid him off. The boss said the store wasn’t doing well and needed to cut costs. Chandrakant regretted tolerating this profligate boss for so long. He liked the father more. The late father had been the original smart businessman. Chandrakant had learnt everything from him. … Read more
“On our trip to Meghalaya earlier this year, we went to Krang Suri Falls. It is a trek down the hill in the middle of lush green mountains,” Swami told us the other day when we met for coffee. “You can see the falls from a distance even at the start of that trek,” Jigneshbhai … Read more
“An error of omission is a mistake that happens when something that ought to be done isn’t done,” Jigneshbhai read aloud from a book that he was carrying. It drew my and Swami’s attention from our coffee. “But are they errors always? The things that you miss. The stuff that you omit?” he asked us. … Read more
Binita, 16, squatted by the open doorway of her family’s modest village home, pretending to grind spices with a pestle. Her eyes, however, were fixed on the jagged peaks of the Himalayas, visible in the distance between the rooftops. The late afternoon sun painted the snow-capped giants in hues of orange and purple. Her younger … Read more
Swami was worried last evening. I realized it by seeing the way he walked into the cafe. “The next few months are going to be bad for the markets,” he said. “But I think it is a good time to buy mid-cap stocks now for my retirement corpus.” Jigneshbhai was unperturbed sipping his coffee, neglecting … Read more
At 12.40 am, the watchman at the security gate of Keshav Kunj apartment woke up with a phone call on the intercom. “A bunch of people are making noise outside the gate. I am unable to sleep. Can you check who it is?” the voice on the other side said. The watchman instantly recognised it … Read more
“In my apartment, the parking is in the basement,” Jigneshbhai said when we met last weekend for coffee. “Nothing new in that. Most apartments in urban areas have that,” Swami cast him off with a ‘what’s the big deal’ look. But I knew our wise friend wasn’t done, so I waited for him to say … Read more
A few years ago, I had read The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel and quietly fallen in love with it. It was a book for builders — for those in the phase of accumulation, discipline, compounding, patience. It spoke to the long game. To restraint. To the power of staying the course. This new … Read more
“I think I made a big mistake by buying this endowment policy twenty years back,” Swami said, peeping into a piece of paper, over coffee when we met at the café the other day. “At that time, no one knew, least of all me, that term insurance is the only insurance we need. And this … Read more