Not a blog. Not content. Essays written when something is worth saying — on leadership, intentional living, FIRE, and the questions nobody asks out loud.
There is one question I ask every person who tells me they have hit their FIRE number and still can’t stop. I call it the FIRE Tuesday Test.…
A self-funded pilgrimage India is not often heard about. At the gate of Rudranath I met someone who undid me in under two minutes, one quiet fact at…
Two posts appeared on r/FatFIREIndia on the same Sunday morning. Different people, different cities, different corpus sizes. Opposite complaints. The same missing thing. This essay is about what…
The Rudranath temple trek is the toughest of the Panch Kedars. I had been wanting to go since Kedarnath. When I finally sat in the temple for ninety…
Deliberate living India does not always look like what you expect. On the return from a Rudranath trek, a twenty-year-old from Bijnor asked me to click his picture.…
In twenty-two years of HR, the fear of leaving corporate job was not something people named. They called it prudence. Responsibility. Bad timing. This is what it actually…
A year of intentional living in Dehradun began in a house built in 1945. No AC. No geyser. Immersion rods for hot water. Workers who leave the mess…
How much is enough in India is a question that gets asked constantly in financial planning conversations. What almost nobody asks is the version that actually matters: enough…
What I did not know, joining those Sunday morning treks, is that I would find in Dehradun the most honest answer I have seen to a question I…
22 years. Four organizations. Cognizant, Wipro, Synechron, and Intelliswift, where I served as CHRO. Hundreds of exit interviews. Thousands of appraisal conversations. Performance reviews, restructurings, hiring decisions, and…
Most intentional living in India content will tell you to slow down, spend less, and choose experiences over things. A wedding photographer’s post last week showed me how…
Slow living in India is not just about pace—it is about who you end up sharing that slower life with. The first Cuppa Convos was a big hit.…
Career transition after 40 in India is one of the most searched and least honestly answered questions I encounter in my coaching work. AA called me because of…
“My financial advisor gave me a FIRE number of ₹8 crore,” AG told me. “The moment I heard it, my happiness turned into worry. Will I ever get…
The FIRE movement India has 65,000 members on Reddit asking the same question. I was not one of them—until I realized I had already answered it. I joined…
Living in Dehradun is a dream many Delhi professionals carry quietly. Most never act on it. This is the story of one who almost didn’t—and why the reason…
“What would your career advice be?” He asked it directly, which I appreciated. No preamble, no softening. Just the question. His name was S. Engineer, from a good…
Most people chasing financial independence in India are also, without realizing it, building the structures that make it impossible. Not because they are bad at math. Not because…
Viram is a four-day executive retreat in India for senior professionals who have been carrying a question they haven’t had space to ask. I want to tell you…
The Sunday Scaries is what most people call it. But that phrase flattens something that deserves more precision. Sunday evening has a particular quality that no other time…
I want to tell you about a weekend in Rishikesh. And what the two days I spent in silence for clarity revealed to me, that twenty-two years in…
Most people who write about FIRE don’t tell you their actual number. They tell you principles. Frameworks. Multipliers. They tell you to save 25 times your annual expenses,…
Leaving corporate job after twenty-two years is not what the clean version of the story suggests. I have told the story of leaving corporate many times now. The…
Why good employees leave is one of the most expensive questions organizations consistently fail to answer honestly. In twenty-two years of HR leadership, I sat across from roughly…
The hollow feeling after success is one of the most common and least talked-about experiences among high-performing professionals I want to tell you about a Monday morning. Not…
In 1974, Steve Jobs was 19 years old, had recently dropped out of Reed College, and was looking for something he couldn’t name. He traveled to India. Not…
A leadership retreat in Dehradun is not what most people expect when they arrive. I am going to tell you what actually happens at Viram. Not the brochure…
The best career advice for senior professionals helps them climb faster. My 2020 book was built on exactly that premise. I now disagree with it.” It is a…
A friend of mine (let’s call him Maddy) hit his FIRE number four years ago. His number was ₹5 Cr. in liquid assets. He had decided on this…
In 2013, I painted my future. A lousy picture, actually. I am not an artist. But that picture changed my life more than any degree, any promotion, or…