FOOD
for thought
We are an opinionated group. From time to time we publish articles & opinions on a variety of topics. You can see a collection of these writings in the Bento Blog.
The Bento blog
What Makes a Champion?
What goes into making a champion? Are they born that way? Or are they forged? Is it talent that they are born with? Skills they acquire over countless hours of mindful practice? Is it sheer luck? Just being in the right place at the right time? Perhaps it’s some strange mystical combination of all of these factors and more. The life of a competitive swimmer is grueling. The countless hours in the pool, lap
Riding Out the Storm: Lessons in Trust from the Tour de France
When I lived in Brussels, I made a personal pilgrimage to the Eddy Merckx Metro Station. Merckx, nicknamed “The Cannibal” for his refusal to let anyone else win, is the greatest rider the Tour de France has ever seen. I got a great surprise when I arrived. One of his actual racing bikes is right there in a glass display case inside the station! That’s the kind of reverence this sport commands, even decades
The Courage to Think Differently
In India cricket isn’t just a sport it’s a religion. Every child grows up with a bat in hand, and every parent at some point has imagined their child hitting the winning runs for India. Then my son decided he wanted to be a footballer. You don’t expect to get schooled in how to think differently by a 7-year old, but that’s exactly what happened to us. At first, it felt unusual. Football is
Show Up: What a Rained-Out Match in the Himalayas Taught Me
I spent my summer staring at a grey sky, waiting for the rain to stop. It was also the first time I’d watch a cricket match live, in a stadium, and I’d picked possibly the worst weekend for it. Every sensible instinct said to stay home, save the four-hour drive, watch it on a screen where the weather doesn’t matter. I went anyway. This is the story of what happens when we show up.
Tech Investment Not Paying Off? The Mindset REWIRE You Need
Remember that “IT Project” that was meant to solve all your problems? Months later, the system has gone live. The consultants have left, the money has been spent. But the problems still remain. What happened to you is not unique. Over the course of three decades working with organisations across industries, I began to notice a pattern. Teams invest in new technology and then, months later, are puzzled about why the promised gains hadn’t
The Career REWIRE I Did Not See Coming
What if the most important career move you ever make is the one that has no title, no resignation letter, and no LinkedIn announcement? We are taught that career growth is about fighting your way into the right rooms. But this is the story of my career rewire and the deep transformation that happened when I willingly stepped out of those rooms. The Pause By most measures that matter in a corporate career, things
From Dubai to Dushanbe: My life REWIRED
If Dubai taught us what comfort looks like, Dushanbe taught us what comfort costs. And somewhere in that gap, I rewired my outlook on life. In 2008, I swapped the keys to a Jaguar for a pair of walking shoes. I went from a salary that gave me options to one that gave me very few. From a city that ran like clockwork, to one where the tap water was brown, the gas pipeline
A Personal Letter on Survival, Surrender and Becoming Antifragile
This blog is a record of my kidney transplant journey. I have attempted to journal the chaos of my sudden diagnosis, the surgery and recovery process. As I have learnt, rebuilding of resilience is a slow process, and I am cautiously learning what it means to become antifragile. During this process I have used the Antifragility framework by Anjani Gandhi, and was inspired by Dr. Nassim Taleb and his book Antifragile: Things That Gain
The Leadership Paradox
Authenticity is not possible without embracing the “and” within us. Our minds like to categorize things into neatly labelled boxes. Am I right, or is she right? Let’s stretch our minds to I can be right and so can she. Embracing the “and” is like yoga for the brain. When we train ourselves to hold paradoxes by stretching ourselves out of the boxes our minds create, we stretch into new possibilities and adapt more
