A Chemical Career

A memoir of forty years in the Indian chemical industry.

A Chemical Career is the working title of a memoir in progress. The book covers forty years inside Imperial Chemical Industries in India, from a graduate-trainee posting in 1965 through senior leadership in the years on either side of liberalization. It is a book about decisions taken inside a colonial-legacy multinational as the country changed around it, and about the kind of working life that was possible there and may not be possible again in quite the same form.

Prakash Tandon’s Beyond Punjab is a kindred volume — the closest model in voice and form, if not in subject. The broader question both books pose is what an Indian executive’s career across this period actually looked like from inside an institution that was itself changing as fast as the country was. The companies were different; the era was the same.

The book grows out of the columns and excerpts published on this site, organised into a memoir that braids one career with the company’s arc and the country’s. Some of what appears here will end up in the book in revised form; some will not. The site is the workshop, and the book is what eventually walks out of it.

The book is expected in late 2027. Inquiries from booksellers, reviewers, and event organisers are welcome via the Contact page.