Just when I thought the market had started showing strength, Nifty decided to lose around 4% over the last month. Indian equity markets have really tested the patience of participants over the last couple of years. In last month’s note, I wrote that even though the index didn’t seem to be doing much, there…
One of the questions I have been thinking about increasingly over the last few months is what exactly we need to know in a world where AI seems to know everything. The question sounds slightly silly when put like that, but I think it is an important one. If I want to understand a…
The fourth season of The Lincoln Lawyer opens with Mickey Haller being arrested for the murder of Sam Scales, one of his long-time clients. Haller knows he didn’t kill Sam. The problem, as every defence lawyer knows, is that knowing you are innocent and proving you are innocent are two very different things. This…
The index is largely still in the same range as in previous months, but a stock picker like Shekhar lives for months such as these. After languishing in third place for more than a year, his portfolio has finally beaten the index investing plan. Last month I wrote that it was still difficult to…
The last two Penguin Little Black Classics gave me two very different love stories. In Jason and Medea, Medea went against her world for love. In Olalla, Olalla chose to let love go. And then we arrive at Penguin Little Black Classics 20 – The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Quite…
In the previous Penguin Little Black Classic, Medea went against her world for love. In this one, by Robert Louis Stevenson, Olalla chooses to let love go. I found the story of Olalla engaging. Stevenson creates an atmosphere that is at once intriguing and engrossing. The blurb on the back cover promised decaying aristocracy,…
After the world and times of Caligula, the next Penguin Little Black Classic took me to ancient Greece. This one is a selection from the story of Jason and the Argonauts. At the risk of sounding silly, my acquaintance with Jason and the Argonauts so far had consisted largely of random videos I had…
After visiting the India of the thirteenth century with Marco Polo, the next Penguin Little Black Classic takes us back by twelve centuries and to another part of the world. Number 17 is Suetonius’s biography of Caligula, taken from The Twelve Caesars. Suetonius begins his Twelve Caesars with Julius Caesar, followed by Augustus and…
When I approached Penguin Little Black Classics number 16, there was a particular sense of excitement. Marco Polo and his famous travels had been part of our schoolbooks, but I had never actually read him. And this selection, Travels in the Land of Serpents and Pearls, was about something even more intriguing: his experience…
A long time ago, I appeared for the pre-medical entrance examination required to get into medical school in India. I didn’t clear it, but a friend did. She is a successful doctor today, though there was a time when she stood on the brink of a nervous breakdown. A few decades ago, ragging was…