Career:

Chequered. First job Citibank. Last job Citibank. Several others in the interlude. Didn't enjoy being a corporate honcho except for a while in the early 2000s when I headed Citi's private equity business in India. 

 

Happiest Career Moment:

18th July 2008 when I kicked corporate servitude and became an entrepreneur. Founded my own private equity firm styled as CX Partners. Claimed my freedom but intriguingly gave it up the same day by tying the knot to Radhika my beautiful wife. 

 

Life Journey:

Seeking happiness. Finding it in sport – middling tennis, good bridge, bad golf, disciplined swimming – and in hanging out with friends, in reading, in a lot of listening, in philosophical enquiry and yet struck now and then by inner existential crises which muddy the waters of happiness. 

 

Things I know:

Retiring from work is not an option. Middle age spread is stubborn and exercise resistant. Detachment, as defined by the Gita, is difficult to achieve. So is subjugation of the ego. For example my receding hairline is a cause of angst. Yet there are far too many things to be grateful for. Among them a wife who sings like a nightingale and loves me to death despite my dodgy bathroom habits and dreadful table manners; and four kids none of whom smokes. 

 

Most importantly, though I am an atheist, God has been kind. Just one regret:

Don't have a musical bone in my body. Wish I could have been just good enough to sing a duet with Radhika. Is that asking for too much?