I've always wanted to write, but coming from a small-town background - I was born and brought up in Ludhiana - you think you're not the kind of literary person who will write books that will sell. There was always a kind of defensiveness in me.

My understanding is that a book becomes a best seller only when it is pirated, sold on footpaths and at traffic lights.

I look at every book as a new learning opportunity.

While a lot of management development books try to teach you a lesson or give you a scenario of what corporate culture and work practices are about, they're theoretical and written in a sermonizing way. Most people don't get past the first chapter, and they just look nice on the bookshelf.

My mother is chairman of a bank called the Indo-Zambia Bank. It's a joint venture between Zambia and India. My father runs Integrity Foundation, an anticorruption organization.

I think Dad didn't really treat us like children; he treated us more like little adults. We were good kids.

My parents both had Oxford degrees, they read important books, spoke foreign languages, drank real coffee and went to museums for pleasure. People like that don't have fat kids: they were cut out to be winners and winners don't have children who are overweight.

Parents are the bones on which children cut their teeth.