“Choose enemies that give you energy, not drain your energy,” Jigneshbhai said as we met for our coffee last weekend. He was reading from a book that he seemed to have picked up. It said ‘Choose Your Enemies Wisely: Business Planning for the Audacious Few’. Swami and I peered into the title with curiosity as he … Read more
On 15th March 2047, Jack and Jill sat on the two ends of a big table. It was awkward. They tried hard, but they were not able to talk to each other. No words spilled out of either of their mouths. They had met at a dating site a month back and they had never … Read more
It was one of those evenings last weekend when Swami arrived at our café table looking as though he’d wrestled with a tiger. Except the tiger was invisible, and possibly digital. “I wasted an entire hour last night,” he began, even before ordering his coffee. Jigneshbhai did not take Swami’s exhaustion seriously. I thought Raichand … Read more
“Can we move to the next slide?” Swami yelled while sipping his coffee the other day. Jigneshbhai and I could see that he was in a bad mood. We didn’t stop him. “Let us get straight to the insights!” Swami howled. “Come on, who is the time-keeper? We don’t have all day,” he shouted. “Was … Read more
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