Four Days, Five Conversations, One Very Full Cup

Some weeks pass by. Some weeks happen to you. The period starting 7th August 2026 belonged firmly to the second category. i am eternally thankful for fullness of experiences that life affords for me.

I want to put it down here — partly for memory, partly because I think the sheer range of it says something about the kind of life I keep choosing to live.

Friday | Bengaluru | Tax, Trusts, and the Architecture of Wealth

It started with a conversation I'd been looking forward to for a while — sitting across a well-known senior tax practitioner - Shri P V Srinivasan in Bengaluru, talking through the maze that is India's business taxation regime, and more specifically, how family offices and generational wealth get structured within it. Not a textbook conversation. A real, layered one — the kind where every answer opens three new questions.

I walked out with more questions than I walked in with. That's usually the sign of a good conversation. I also walked out to a copy of his book signed by him.

Saturday Morning | Aurika Hotel, Mumbai | Four Hours With IOD

By Saturday morning I was in Mumbai, at Aurika, for four unbroken hours of exchange with the IOD forum — board governance, financial literacy, the usual terrain I've spent over a decade in, except never usual, because the room changes and the questions sharpen every single time.

I've written more on this one separately — the full reflection is here.

Saturday Evening | Chinmaya Vibhooti, Lonavla | Parents, and Then Kids

Same evening, different world entirely. I drove out to the serene grounds of Chinmaya Vibhooti near Lonavla for an hour with the parents of Proof's Camp — talking through a parenting philosophy I'd been sitting with for a while, borrowing rather unapologetically from Krishna's own playbook with the Pandavas.

Full thoughts on that one are here.

And then, almost without a breath in between, an hour with the kids themselves — grades 6 through 12, an informal, unscripted session on travel, money, and the choices that shape a life. Their questions were sharper than most adults', their scepticism refreshing, and their takes on my own life decisions occasionally more amusing than I'd like to admit. Nothing keeps you honest quite like a room full of gifted twelve-year-olds cross-examining your career choices.

Sunday Morning | Chinmaya Vibhooti | Swanubhuti Vatika

I stayed on to experience Swanubhuti Vatika — Swami Tejomayanandaji's vision, brought to life across these grounds. I won't attempt to summarise it; some things resist summary and simply ask to be walked through, slowly, in silence. It was exploratory in the truest sense — personally exhilarating, and honestly, something I'd urge every thinking person to experience at least once.

Monday | Bandraa kurla complex  | LIC of India | Back to Governance

The period closed the way much of my professional life has run for the past 25 years — in conversation with senior management at LIC of India, on corporate governance and financial governance at the board level. Familiar terrain, and yet never quite the same conversation twice.

More on that here.

The Thread Running Through It

A tax practitioner's office. A boardroom forum. A parenting circle. A room of curious teenagers. A silent ashram walk. A senior leadership dialogue. Four days, and barely a straight line connecting any of them — except that I was in the room for all of it, fully, by choice.

I'll admit it plainly: I'm grateful. Grateful for a life that keeps handing me rooms this different from each other, and grateful for the people who keep inviting me into them.

But gratitude alone feels incomplete without the punchline: my life has never really had a single lane. It's been governance one hour and gita the next, tax law at breakfast and twelve-year-olds heckling my life choices by evening. I don't think I'd have it any other way — I thrive in the width of it, not the depth of any one groove.

So here's an open invitation, to everyone who knows me and everyone who's just met me on this page: if you're building something, questioning something, or simply want to talk — reach out. Let's enlarge this rather small tribe of explorers. There's always room for one more varied conversation.