Friends, while every day of life is a blessing the last few days of a calendar year become even more special as it gives us the golden window of reflecting upon our learnings from the world around us in the year going by. These lessons from the University of Life have the power to become the foundation for us to improve the quality of our life. One of the measures of quality of life could be prosperity with peace. One without the other could make life meaningless and dull. There is prosperity in the western world but perhaps peace eludes them while in the eastern part of the world life is simpler and peaceful but with much less prosperity. Is there a way which can make the western world more at peace with itself without loosing its prosperity and is there a way which can make the eastern world more prosperous without loosing its peace. Are prosperity and peace mutually exclusive or they can co-exist? The answer is gratefully YES and comes from the wisdom of the Indian civilization which has stood the test of its times. Let’s examine it especially in the context of the world as it was in 2025.
If you have grown up in India you wouldn’t have missed out on the age old wisdom from our ancient scriptures about focusing only on our duty towards what we are supposed to do and not on the right on the rewards of what we do. This is the law of Karmic Action which is always at play. It tells us that the path to any output comes from our input. It helps us to differentiate hunger from greed. It gives us the clarity to live a life driven by a purpose instead of numbers. Isaac Newton much later in the modern world called it the law of Action and Reaction. The golden secret to having a prosperous and a peaceful life then is to imbibe this law into our lives in letter and spirit. When we are focused only on the input we are richer by two things – one, we enjoy the process and two, we save ourselves from the anxiety of the outcomes. When we enjoy the process then there is a higher probability that we may excel in that and excellence in any form gets valued and appreciated which could manifest in the form of material prosperity. Similarly, when the choice of our actions isn’t driven by the outcomes that we desire we deny access to any form of stress intruding into our lives.
In 2025 we saw Law of Karmic Action at play in so many ways. The most recent one is Dhurandhar which is on its way to become Bollywood’s biggest gross earner ever. It’s a brilliant case study where the focus on content and characters has attracted audience back to the cinemas despite the OTTs. It’s a validation that the audience doesn’t care about the source of good quality content – anybody who creates it shall get rewarded. Akshaye Khanna’s surreal portrayal of the character tells us that stellar output can follow if you do justice to your role in any project. Even if you aren’t in the lead role you can still end up leading and lifting the entire project. We see this often in the world of team sports. Everybody wants to listen to compelling stories whether they come from Grandparents, Ruskin Bond, Disney, Aditya Dhar or Netflix. Marvel has created block busters out of super heroes and not super stars.
Second brilliant case study of the Law of Karmic Action that we were so fortunate to witness was the Indian Women Cricket team becoming world champions. While they got noticed by the whole country by this one event they have been at it for years to get here. Despite the game being dominated by the male version and rewards of their labour no way close to what the boys get it didn’t deter from their belief in themselves. They played for dignity and not rewards. But when one does that rewards do follow with 3 of them becoming DSP’s in Police, getting hosted on popular OTT shows, better compensation from BCCI, brand endorsements offers and above all these the awe and respect of the entire nation.
The above two are inspiring case studies of positive outcomes driven by input of what one is supposed to do, hunger for creating something path breaking and the larger purpose of leaving a lasting impact which can lift the entire eco-system. Now let us examine if 2025 gave us an opportunity to also learn from case studies where participants were driven by output, greed for the rewards and no purpose other than self-enrichment.
First one which has been much speculated about throughout 2025 has been the ever growing bubble around Generative AI. Ever since Open AI came to be known to the world in the November of 2022 the frenzy around not being left behind in the emerging world driven by AI has only grown. This is most visible amongst the top tech players – Nvidia, Google, Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple and Oracle – who wish to dominate and therefore control the emerging AI ecosystem by controlling the production of AI Infrastructure in terms of chips and data centers. So much so that they have channelized hundreds of billions of dollars of their cash reserves towards this. Some like Oracle have gone many steps ahead to borrow and aggressively build for their partnership with Open AI. While 2026 will tell us when the AI bubble shall burst we are getting to see some early signs of it. Oracle’s stock has corrected by almost 30% in this quarter which happens to be its steepest quarterly drop since 2001 triggered by concerns of investors around its ability to service its debt especially when the bet is on a single horse – Open AI. Facebook’s celebrated offer of 100 million to top AI researchers tells you that something is wrong with the intent. A generational tectonic shift like AI should help to lift the entire humanity and not just a few individuals. Instead of hoarding if there is a hunger for leveraging the power of AI to lift the productivity of every human by making education and preventive healthcare accessible to everyone the rewards could be limitless since no one can beat the scale of that target audience.
Second case study I can share is from my own industry of wealth management which happens to be one of the fastest growing ones in India driven by the ever growing wealth effect in India. There are some participants who seem to be choosing their actions driven by the potential material outputs or rewards which this industry offers. At times I come across people who have chosen to be driven by some these variables to make informed career choices – title, internal and external positioning and compensation. These choices are even more surprising for an industry whose foundations are built on credibility and trust. They have consciously chosen to run the marathon at the speed of a sprint. Every marathon begins with hundreds or perhaps thousands but only a few who have the endurance make it to the finishing line. At the same time there are players which continue to stay patiently focused on doing what they are supposed to do – keep adding value to their customers, platforms and the partners that they work with. These are the people that I see, whether individuals or organizations, which continue to compound since for compounding you need to remain in the game and not get burnt out. They have consciously chosen to compound their credibility and trust with their stakeholders. Tactical trades can get you short term profits but long term compounding gets you wealth and that too without loosing your peace of mind.
So friends, pursuing what you must do peacefully leads us to prosperity. We enjoy the process while we are at it and at the same time get rewarded by prosperity as well. It’s a complete package to make our life the best deal.
As I end my yearend note I must confess that I had thought that I don’t have much meaningful reflections to share this year. However, life is best when you are surrounded by people who are better than you. My colleagues @ CA motivated me to pen my thoughts this year too for which am much grateful to them. On my own I could have done only that much but together with them I get closer to a better version of myself.
So Friends, Input over Output, Hunger over Greed and Purpose over numbers is what matters to have a rewarding life blessed with prosperity and peace. I have spoken at length about them in my book – Unlocking Wealth that got published an year back and since then it has grown organically to be counted amongst the best sellers. It has become a bridge of my conversation with the world around me and I look forward to meeting some of you at the conversations around the book in the forthcoming Jaipur Literature Festival and Hindu Literature Festival at Chennai.
Thank you Friends for all that I could learn from you in 2025 as much as for your love and affection that I received. I wish you a relaxed closure to another fabulous year around your loved ones.
Singing off for 2025 with my warmest wishes for 2026 to be another year for you with continued good health, prosperity and peace.