Extract from letter written by Abraham Lincoln to headmaster of his old school: "He will have to learn, I know that all men are not just, all men are not true. But teach him also that for every scoundrel there is a hero, that for every selfish politician , there is a dedicated leader.... Teach him that for every enemy there is a true friend. It will take time. I know; but teach him, if you can, that a dollar earned is of far more value than five found...teach him to learn to loose.... and also to enjoy winning. Steer him away from envy, if you can teach him the secret of quiet laughter. Let him learn early that bullies are the earliest to lick... teach him, if you can, the wonder of books... but also give him quiet time to ponder... the eternal mystery of birds in the sky. Bees in the sun, and flowers of a green hillside." "In school. Teach him it is far more honorable to fail than to cheat... teach him to have faith in his own ideas. Even if everyone tells him they are wrong... teach him to be gentle with gentle people, and tough with the tough. Try to give my son the strength not to follow the crowd when everyone else is getting on the band wagon. Teach him to listen to all men...but teach him also to filter all he hears on a screen of truth and take on the good that come through." "Teach him, if you can, how to laugh when he is sad... teach him there is no shame in tears. Teach him to scoff at cynics and to beware of too much sweetness... teach him to sell his brawn and brain to the highest bidders, but never to put a price tag on his heart and soul. Teach him to close his ears to a howling mob... and to stand and fight if he thinks he's right." "Treat him gently. But to not cuddle him, because only the test of fire make fine steel. Let him have the courage to be impatient. Let him have the impatience to be brave. Teach him always to have sublime faith in himself, because then he will always have sublime faith in mankind."

Summary of address delivered on 11 March, 2000 to the graduating classof the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta. For me, it is a matter of great honour to be here today, in the role that I have been asked to play. It is undeserved honour, because I have neither the accomplishments nor the wisdom the role demands, but it feels wonderful never the less. It is a pleasure and a privilege to be with all of you, on this day of joy and fulfillment. This is, above all, an occasion for celebration. Let us, together, celebrate the journey that all of you are completing today. And, let us also jointly cheer the new voyage that all of you are about to embark upon. The last two years have, in all likelihood, been demanding, perhaps even exhausting. You have learnt a lot, about calculating NPV’s and about developing competitive strategy, about creating brands and about building teams. If intellectual capital is the currency of the future, all of you have built bulging bank balances. That is what the journey over the last two years was about – developing both the knowledge and the judgement that leadership of busi8ness demands – and you have completed that journey in an institution that commends enormous respect all over the world. But, over the last two years, intellectual capital is not the only form of capital you have accumulated. You have also built social capital, another highly valuable resource. The friendships that you have established with your cohorts and others will help you identify opportunities and will provide support in times of need in ways that you cannot even begin to imagine. Long after you have forgotten the formulae and the little jokes in Breely and Mayers, you will still enjoy the fruits of these relationships. Over the last two years, you have been exhausted by both the mid-term exams and the mid-night parties. Let us today cherish the memories of both because together they have given you two critical resources for the future: your specialized knowledge of business and management and your treasure of lasting friendships. But today is also the starting point of a new journey, as all of you prepare to take up your first assignments – whether it is as an entrepreneur starting up a dot.com company, as a consultant or investment banker, or as a management trainee in an established organization. You have built the knowledge and the relationships that will be vital for success in this new journey, but they will not be enough. You will need something more. You will need emotional capital to convert your intellectual and social capitals into effective action. Management – and, in that term I include both entrepreneurship and leadership – is all about action. What you have learnt through your work here will help you identify what to do, but you have to have the courage and the will to translate that knowing into actual doing. Some of you, even some of the brightest of you, may fumble this test of action. You may procrastinate. You may suffer from learned helplessness, paralyzed by analysis, or because of the fear of failure. Some others among you will excel in the domain of action, willing and able to do what they believe in, and taking the consequences – profiting from the successes, learning from the failures. What will distinguish these two groups? What does it take to combine the knowledge And relationships you have built over the last two years with the courage and resilience you will need for sustained, purposive action-taking in the future? The French writer, Antoine de Saint-Exupery, created a striking metaphor: "If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to go to the forest to gather wood, saw it, and nail the planks together. Instead, teach them the desire for the sea". That is what you will need: a desire for the sea. For most of you, even if not for all, the sea will be the sea of business and management. Do you have a desire for that sea? Yes, some of the rewards of sailing in that sea are obvious. You will make money; in all likelihood, more money than you today believe to be possible. You will have power in your organizations. You will have a high status in society. Irrespective of whether you value these things or not, they are going to be yours. But, are they enough to sustain a desire for the sea over the next forty or more years that you will spend sailing in it? For remember, the sea will be choppy. Times will be good and bad. There will be failures. There will be occasions when you will need to do things that are very hard to do: closing a business, jeopardizing the lives of people you have known and cared about and being called a butcher or worse; firing a well-meaning subordinate who is both a decent person and a family friend but who is manifestly unsuitable for the job’ having to go away when your child is ill or when your spouse needs you the most. Management involves cooking sweet and sour, and while the joys of the sweet – the building, the growing, the giving – have a short half-life, the pains of the sour – the closing, the pruning, the taking away – linger for much longer. Do you really have a desire for that choppy sea? And this is where I have a discovery to share with you. Over the last twenty years, while I have not sailed in that sea, I have hovered over it, watching others do the sailing. I have seen both corporate and individual failures and successes, both in India and abroad. But more than the fates of individual sailors, I have seen what the sea looks like. There is much, much more in that sea than personal wealth or status. There is, above all, the excitement of creation. You will have so many resources – money, technology, people – to do so much with! Thank – how many people in the world have the ability that you will have, to take initiative, to try out new things, to create new products, to build organizations, to develop people! A very senior manager in Reliance told me the following story. One day, over fifteen years ago, he was having lunch with Dhirubhai Ambani in the company’s Patalganga guest house. Dhirubhai ordered a soup and a papad. He himself asked for a single-egg omelette. And then Dhirubhai said, " This is all we need, right! This is all we can consume … but the excitement is to build … us me nasha hai". Do you have that excitement? Then you have the desire for the sea. Then you will be able to marshal the amazing power of human will to convert what you have learnt over the last two years into effective entrepreneurial and managerial action. But there is more to the sea than even this excitement of building or further developing a single institution. What you will do over your own careers will affect not just you, your family and your company; it will influence the lives of hundreds, perhaps thousands of people, and it will influence the overall development of the society in which you will live and work. And that, I suggest to you, is the most wonderful and the most satisfying aspect of the profession you have today qualified to join. It is a profession that, perhaps more than any other, contributes to improving the quality of life of people and to the economic prosperity of nations. For good or far worse, we live at a time when business is the primary engine of social and economic progress. It is business, not abstract economic forces or governments, that create and distribute most of an economy’s wealth. It is companies, big and small, that innovate, trade and raise the living standards of people. That is why, amid the decay of influence and legitimacy of other institutions – think of the state, political parties, even the joint family – business firms have emerged as perhaps the most important economic institutions in practically every society around the world, including here in India. Beyond this economic role, business firms have also become the primary institutions for socializing individuals. Increasingly, people look to them for community and identity as well as for their economic well-being. Yet, this value creating role of business and, by implication, of the management profession, often remains obscure to most people, including to the managers themselves. That is why we see a peculiar paradox. At the same time that society is inviting business into sectors such as health, education and infrastructure that were historically managed by the State, there is simultaneously a growing ambivalence among people about companies and their managers. Hero-worshipped by the few, they are deeply distrusted by the many. In India, in particular, this distrust of business firms is pervasive. In movies and TV serials in any language, an entrepreneur or a manager rarely appears in any role other than the villain’s. In public opinion polls about the integrity and trustworthiness of professions, managers are rated the lowest of the low – below even politicians and journalists. I grew up in a middle-class Bengali family, and experienced the full force of this distrust. Anything, any profession, any job would be better than business, which was the last refuge for scoundrels. There are good historical reasons for this distrust. In India’s highly regulated economy, business, with some notable exceptions, had indeed fallen victim to a profound corrosion of its soul. Amid pervasive scarcity, procurement of monopoly rights was far more lucrative than the creation of new value through efficiency and innovation."Managing the environment" was more important than managing the firm. Access to politicians and bureaucrats was more rewarding than intimacy with customers. In that environment, business had largely become focussed on appropriating value – from employees, from employees, from suppliers, from customers, from the public exchequer – rather than on creating value. But those days are now over. In the emerging liberalized economy, yesterday’s value appropriators have been on the retreat everywhere. A new class of entrepreneurs and managers have come to the fore in India, who look and act very differently. A die-hard socialist in his heart, N.R. Narayan Murthy recognized that wealth creation must precede wealth distribution. That was the goal behind his founding of Infosys – to create a hundred rupee millionaires in India, via the establishment of an ethical business firm, based on a highly competent and skilled workforce, in the area of software development technology. He believed that by making Indians rich, he would make India rich. Similarly, H.T. Parekh, the founder of HDFC, believed that business must create value for society, and that a wholesome business, meeting an important social need, could also be highly profitable. It was very difficult for a middle-class Indian to build a home, and he wanted to solve that social problem. It is companies like Infosys and HDFC that are the most valued in India today, both in the capital markets and in public minds, and collectively they illustrate the profoundly important role of companies and managers as the primary value creating institutions of modern economies. They are the role models demonstrating the spirit, passion and moral commitment of which entrepreneurs and managers are capable, and the enormous contributions they can make to a society. What they have done, you can do. It does not always need the starting up of a new company; people like Ashok Ganguly, Sushim Dutta and Keki Dadiseth have shown the same passion, the same moral commitment to integrity and the same spirit of value creation in an established company like Hindustan Lever. As they have shown, management can be much more than a profession; it can be a calling. And it is this excitement – of creating value, of contributing to a broader goal than just personal wealth or even company prosperity – that is so exciting about the voyage that you are about to embark upon. While India’s achievements since independence have been many, we all know that the country has not reached its economic potential. Politicians and government officials cannot make India achieve this potential; all they can do is to help by creating a facilitative and supportive context. Ultimately, it is only business that can achieve India’s economic potential, and whether it does so will depend, above all else, on the quality of Indian management. In other words, you will have the steering wheel. That is the excitement. If you can feel that excitement – if you can visualize it, not as an abstraction or a lofty rhetoric but as a concrete goal – then you can develop and sustain not just a desire but a passion for the sea. Graduating doctors take the hippocratic oath. This is the hippocratic oath for the profession of business management: it exists to create value: value for employees, by giving them the freedom and the opportunity to become the best they can be; value for customers, by creating new products and services and by constantly improving the existing one’s; value for suppliers and collaborators, by developing partnership relationships of mutual benefit; value for the investors of capital, not just through superior returns but also through transparency, effective governance and honest communication; and value for society at large, by efficient use of society’s resources, both tangible such as land, capital and people, and intangible such as the natural environment, the social values and the cultural norms. If this sounds overly idealistic to some of you, I say yes, but idealism matters. In a practical discipline like management, it matters even more. The historical delegitimization of industry and management in India was caused by a moral vacuum. You are the products of a world-class professional institution, and you owe this to your last journey as you transition to the next: to counter this delegitimization of your own profession by committing to the moral philosophy of value creation. This is both your obligation to the last two years, and your responsibility for the next forty. A few exceptions apart, the ancient seafarers were motivated not by the lure of plunder but by the passion for discovery, for extending the horizon, and for expanding the reaches of their own societies. To develop a desire for the sea of commerce and management, you need the same passion for discovery, the same commitment to extending the horizon for Indians, Indian companies and India. That, I believe, must be your joy and your duty. So, let us once again cheer the successful completion of your short journey of learning and building relationships at IIMC. But, more than that, let us also heartily celebrate the commencement of your long journey of discovery and of creating value, for yourself, your company and your society. I wish you all the very best of luck.

Keep the Spark  Good Morning everyone and thank you for giving me this chance to speak to you. This day is about you. You, who have come to this college, leaving the comfort of your homes (or in some cases discomfort), to become something in your life. I am sure you are excited. There are few days in human life when one is truly elated.  The first day in college is one of them.  When you were getting ready today, you felt a tingling in your stomach. What would the auditorium be like, what would the teachers be like, who are my new classmates - there is so much to be curious about. I call this excitement, the spark within you that makes you feel truly alive today. Today I am going to talk about keeping the spark shining. Or to put it another way, how to be happy most, if not all the time. Where do these sparks start? I think we are born with them. My 3-year old twin boys  have a million sparks. A little Spiderman toy can make them jump on the bed. They get thrills from creaky swings in the park. A story from daddy gets them excited. They do a daily countdown for birthday party – several months in advance – just for the day they will cut their own birthday cake. I see students like you, and I still see some sparks. But when  I see older people,  the spark is difficult to find. That means as we age, the spark fades. People whose spark has faded too much are dull, dejected, aimless and bitter. Remember Kareena in the first half of Jab We Met vs the second half? That is what happens when the spark is lost.   So how to save the spark? Imagine the spark to be a lamp's flame. The first aspect is nurturing - to give your spark the fuel, continuously. The second is to guard against storms. To nurture, always have goals. It is human nature to strive, improve and achieve full potential. In fact, that is success. It is what is possible for you. It isn't any external measure - a certain cost to company pay package, a particular car or house. Most of us are from middle class families. To us, having material landmarks is success and rightly so. When you have grown up where money constraints force everyday choices, financial freedom is a big achievement. But it isn't the purpose of life. If that was the case, Mr Ambani would not show up for work. Shah Rukh Khan would stay at home and not dance anymore. Steve Jobs won't be working hard to make a better iPhone, as he sold Pixar for billions of dollars already. Why do they do it? What makes them come to work everyday? They do it because it makes them happy. They do it because it makes them feel alive. Just getting better from current levels feels good. If you study hard, you can improve your rank. If you make an effort to  interact with people, you will do better in interviews. If you practice, your cricket will get better. You may also know that you cannot become Tendulkar, yet. But you can get to the next level. Striving for that next level is important. Nature designed  with a random set of genes and circumstances in which we were born. To be happy, we have to accept it and make the most of nature's design. Are you? Goals will help you do that. I must add, don't just have career or academic goals. Set goals to give you a balanced, successful life. I use the word balanced before successful. Balanced means ensuring your health, relationships, mental peace are all in good order. There is no point of getting a promotion on the day of your breakup. There is no fun in driving a car if your back hurts. Shopping is not enjoyable if your mind is full of tensions.  You must have read some quotes -  Life is a  tough race, it is a marathon or whatever. No, from what I have seen so far, life is one of those races in nursery school. Where you have to run with a marble in a spoon kept in your mouth. If the marble falls, there is no point coming first. Same with life, where health and relationships are the marble. Your striving is only worth it if there is harmony in your life. Else, you may achieve the success, but this spark, this feeling of being excited and alive, will start to die. One last thing about nurturing the spark - don't take life seriously. One of my yoga teachers used to make students laugh during classes. One student asked him if these jokes would take away something from the yoga practice. The teacher said  - don't be serious, be sincere. This quote has defined my work ever since. Whether its my writing, my job, my relationships or any of my goals. I get thousands of opinions on my writing everyday. There is heaps of praise, there is intense criticism. If I take it all seriously, how will I write? Or rather, how will I live? Life is not to be taken seriously, as we are really temporary here. We are like a pre-paid card with limited validity. If we are lucky, we may last another 50 years. And 50 years is just 2,500 weekends. Do we really need to get so worked up? It's ok, bunk a few classes, goof up a few interviews, fall in love. We are people, not programmed devices. I've told you three things - reasonable goals, balance and not taking it too seriously that will nurture the spark. However, there are four storms in life that will threaten to completely put out the flame. These must be guarded against. These are disappointment, frustration, unfairness and loneliness of purpose. Disappointment will come when your effort does not give you the expected return. If things don't go as planned or if you face failure. Failure is extremely difficult to handle, but those that do come out stronger. What did this failure teach me? is the question you will need to ask. You will feel miserable. You will want to quit, like I wanted to when nine publishers rejected my first book. Some IITians kill themselves over low grades – how silly is that? But that is how much failure can hurt you. But it's life. If challenges could always be overcome, they would cease to be a challenge. And remember - if you are failing at something, that means you are at your limit or potential. And that's where you want to be. Disappointment's cousin is  frustration, the second storm.  Have you ever been frustrated? It happens when things are stuck. This is especially relevant in India. From traffic jams to getting that job you deserve, sometimes things take so long that you don't know if you chose the right goal. After books, I set the goal of writing for Bollywood, as I thought they needed writers. I am called extremely lucky, but it took me five years to get close to  a release. Frustration saps excitement, and turns your initial energy into something negative, making you a bitter person. How did I deal with it? A realistic assessment of the time involved – movies take a long time to make even though they are watched quickly, seeking a certain enjoyment in the process rather than the end result – at least I was learning how to write scripts  , having a side plan – I had my third book to write and even something as simple as pleasurable distractions in your life  - friends, food, travel can help you overcome it. Remember, nothing is to be taken seriously. Frustration is a sign somewhere, you took it too seriously. Unfairness - this is hardest to deal with, but unfortunately that is how our country works. People with connections, rich dads, beautiful faces, pedigree find it easier to make it – not just in Bollywood, but everywhere. And sometimes it is just plain luck. There are so few opportunities in India, so many stars need to be aligned for you to make it happen. Merit and hard work is not always linked to achievement in the short term, but the long term correlation is high, and ultimately things do work out. But realize, there will be some people luckier than you. In fact, to have an opportunity to go to college and understand this speech in English means you are pretty darn lucky by Indian standards. Let's be grateful for what we have and get the strength to accept what we don't. I have so much love from my readers that other writers cannot even imagine it. However, I don't get literary praise. It's ok. I don't look like Aishwarya Rai, but I have two boys who I think are more beautiful than her. It's ok. Don't let unfairness kill your spark. Finally, the last point that can kill your spark is isolation. As you grow older you will realize you are unique. When you are little, all kids want Ice cream and Spiderman. As you grow older to college, you still are a lot like your friends. But ten years later and you realize you are unique. What you want, what you believe in, what makes you feel, may be different from even the people closest to you. This can create conflict as your goals may not match with others. . And you may drop some of them. Basketball captains in college invariably stop playing basketball by the time they have their second child. They give up something that meant so much to them. They do it for their family. But in doing that, the spark dies. Never, ever make that compromise. Love yourself first, and then others. There you go. I've told you the four thunderstorms - disappointment, frustration, unfairness and isolation. You cannot avoid them, as like the monsoon they will come into your life at regular intervals. You just need to keep the raincoat handy to not let the spark die. I welcome you again to the most wonderful  years of your life. If someone gave me the choice to go back in time, I will surely choose college. But I also hope that ten years later as well, you eyes will shine the same way as they do today. That you will Keep the Spark alive, not only through college, but through the next 2,500 weekends. And I hope not just you, but my whole country will keep that spark alive, as we really need it now more than any moment in history. And there is something cool about saying - I come from the land of a billion sparks. Thank You.