Ruchir Sharma on his new book, home and why he’s still single

Ruchir Sharma’s day job makes him one of the world’s largest investors with Morgan Stanley—he’s also a regular columnist, bestselling author and competitive sprinter, and is currently hopping around the country promoting his latest book Democracy On The Road (Penguin Random House). The 44-year-old’s latest book takes you on a 25-year-old long political travelogue, where Sharma leads a team of what has now grown to 20 of India’s leading journalists on an annual trip to experience India’s electoral trail. Over the years they have travelled to various states witnessing the most talked about and sometimes, controversial election battles, grumbled about no-electricity at rundown guesthouses and feasted with the powerful in palace hotels. Tagged the ‘limousine liberals’, they’ve met with political leaders, studied vote banks, and argued their way through India’s tumultuous political landscape. The book is packed with nuance and detail of the many India’s that make India, written over weekends and in transit, this global investor tells me how he almost does it all. Extracts from our conversation…

Shahnaz Siganporia: How do you find the time for it all?

Ruchir Sharma: I think most of what I do is interconnected. For instance, a lot of my writing is very connected to what I do as an investor. As an investor your job is to go and research in terms of what’s happening in the world and come up with ideas. And how you come up with these ‘ideas’ is something which is a bit of a mystery. For me, it is about reading a lot, but also travelling and being on the road.

SS: Sure, there are a lot of investors out there but they’re not writing best-sellers or sprinting competitively.

RS: Yeah, I guess, well writing has always been my first passion, to be honest with you. That’s how I started my career at the age of 17, as a journalist. And I’ve been writing since then. It’s my hobby. The difference is this, I think, for most people hobbies are private, mine is just more public. I spend my free time—be it weekends or flight-time writing. Sprinting, however, is more like meditation for me. I work out and try and do this regime every day for 60 to 90 minutes—wherever I’m in the world. The first 20 minutes your mind is almost in overdrive, you can almost feel your thoughts rising to the surface. And then after that it escapes you, and then you emerge at the other end of it, reenergised, calmer even destressed. And also, for me, my best ideas come through after a good sprint.

SS: With your travel schedule, you’re in a different time zone weekly if not daily. Does the routine ground you, give you a sense of home?

RS: Yeah, that’s right. I think at a very young age I figured out that it’s important to have anchors in life. And sprinting is one of them. I’ve always liked running, since I was a kid. Honestly, I’ve never been much good at playing cricket or golf or most other sport. I just didn’t feel the same focus and passion as I did when I was sprinting. I guess, it’s about being very clear about what you want to do and just focusing on that.

SS: So where is home for you?

RS: India! I was born in Wellington, near Ooty. I went to school in Delhi, Bombay and Singapore. And New York has been my base for the last 17 years. My mother is from Bijnor and my father from Jaipur. Our ancestors are supposed to be from Kashmir. I’m from all over the place—but India remains home. You know I also see the way my social calendar is organised. Like, when I come to India, my priority is who do I want to meet, and where I meet them is almost incidental. In New York it’s the opposite. I’m always obsessed with which is the cool, new restaurant that has opened or the good movie to catch. For instance, Misi is the hottest Italian restaurant and very difficult to get a reservation. So say, I get the reservations done like, maybe three weeks in advance and then I figure out who I want take to take with me.

SS: And Democracy On The Road, while it is a political travelogue, it’s also your journey. Is this your most personal book yet in that sense?

RS: Undoubtedly. As I said it’s a political travelogue of India and I couldn’t have written this about any other country. My first book was like an economical travelogue of the world. And that you could see because I was comparing countries cross-sectionally, and I know the politics of those countries but to write a political travelogue of the country, the understanding of that country should have to be deeply personal. Otherwise, it’s not going to happen. The reason I begin the book in a place like Bijnor, which is my mother’s hometown is because I spent my formative years visiting there. And that forms my understanding of politics.

SS: So, why this story, now?

RS: I think, the first seed of the idea began to take place when we were in Varanasi, in February 2017 to see the UP election campaign. It was our 25th year of following the elections. And it occurred to me at that point of time that this is something special which has happened, that I was told by both my American editors and here in India that they’ve never seen something of this scale being done before ever in any country.

SS: Your book is also a sort of idea of India book. How do you catch on to the nuances?

RS: I think it’s because I spend so much time travelling. A lot of people travel, but I also write about it constantly. So it’s like a symbiotic exercise. I think that there’s no better discipline than writing to both clarify your thought-process and also to document and research. And the moment you’re doing that, you go deeper and deeper into a subject. That’s the reality of India, it is diverse and that’s how it functions, that’s how it is. The challenge of writing this book, is that you had to understand each state very deeply because each state is different, and the politics is so different. What’s also interesting is the rise of the “single” politician in India, that my book looks at quite in detail.

SS: Talking about the single politician, you’re also single. Women are constantly questioned on their single status, but what are the pressures you face being a single man?

RS: Yes, I am. My relationship status is accidental, because my relationships didn’t work out. It may be that or that I’ve been too busy working to spare time enough to emotionally invest. I agree that women get a much harder time on the single question, but when men are concerned people make assumptions about your sexual leanings or they assume you’re a commitment-phobe. The problem is that it is said as a slur. So, it’s a different kind of pressure. I’d say that I totally agree that women get a harder time but also cut single men some slack. It’s just so deeply wired in people’s mind that there’s something off if you’re not married—it’s quite ridiculous.

SS: Your writing be it on economics or politics is so accessible. Yet, you’re not on social media?

RS: I feel that there’s no end to social media, in terms of what you can do out there. And also because of the abuse which goes on social media. It’s just become so polarising as a figure, as a medium. Let’s go back to the first question. You asked me how many things can you do. And that point is about prioritising what I can do. Which is that if I would be on social media, I wouldn’t be happy just doing it in a cursory way. The thing is that I can’t do anything half-heartedly. So, if I do get on social media at some point, I would then be involved with it completely. I’ll be conscious about what people are saying, how am I responding, who’s following, who’s being followed. I’d play the game in a full holistic way. Until I’m ready to go all in, I think I’ll stay away.