My first recollection in life is of a large dog with wonderfully kind eyes. I was to later learn that Tony the Alsatian and I were inseparable — if not watched hawkishly by my mother, we would even eat from the same plate. Animals observe. They live entirely in the present, acutely aware of their surroundings and their place within them. I would like to think it started there.
Schooling was at Rishi Valley, a boarding school built on the philosophy of J Krishnamurti, set in a valley in rural South India, surrounded by hills, villages, and fields. Three hundred and fifty of us, ages eight to eighteen, living and studying together. Every few years JK would come and stay a few months, and we would be asked to sit and listen. Kids never do. Philosophy of the JK kind could never hope to compete with the world outside the window. But I realise now that we absorbed an awful lot without meaning to.
My brother Ravi was there too, and we were close in the way only brothers manage — closely, distantly, without needing to say so. He fell in love with birdlife and the natural world; I found myself pulled toward development, equity, and progress, and later toward Schumacher’s Small Is Beautiful. Same valley, same years, different eyes. We grew up happy.
Degrees in economics followed, and then three decades in project finance, infrastructure, structured finance, and public policy.
Writing has run alongside all of it. I still enjoy the physicality of pen on paper, though the keyboard has become a serious competitor. More recently, AI has joined as a constant companion — less a tool than an extraordinarily accomplished sounding board and polisher of ideas.
Whatever comes of it, Tony would probably say: stay present, keep watching.
- Hari Sankaran