Under the Banyan Tree: An Invitation (1/14)
DIGITAL DIMWIT’S BUSINESS 101: The Shade of Tomorrow
A 14-part series exploring the serendipitous mentorship between 92-year-old industrialist Narasimha Prasad—a master of reinvention who has navigated every transformation of modern India from pre-Independence through License Raj to liberalization to the VC boom—and young startup founder Anupama Murthy, chronicled through the observational lens of Digital Dimwit, a consciousness whose uncanny ability to connect ancient texts with contemporary situations reveals the timeless patterns beneath India's evolving business landscape.
The Setting
In the heart of Bangalore, where morning mist mingles with the aroma of filter coffee and the distant hum of technology parks, stands Lalbagh Botanical Garden—a 240-acre testament to continuity amid transformation. Here, between carefully tended flower beds that have witnessed the city's evolution from "Garden City" to "India's Silicon Valley," grows an ancient banyan tree whose spreading canopy has sheltered countless conversations, chance encounters, and quiet moments of reflection across generations.
This particular banyan, with its aerial roots creating natural pillars and its branches extending like protective arms, has served as silent witness to Bangalore's metamorphosis. Beneath its shade, British botanists once catalogued exotic specimens. Independence-era dreamers planned new industries. Software engineers have debugged complex algorithms. And now, in an age where artificial intelligence promises to reshape human interaction itself, this tree continues its patient vigil—offering respite from urgency, space for contemplation, and the kind of unhurried wisdom that only comes from deep roots and long perspective.
The tree stands as living metaphor for the very tension at the heart of our modern business landscape: how do we honor what has sustained us while embracing what might transform us? How do we preserve essence while enabling evolution? These questions echo through corporate boardrooms and startup accelerators alike, yet perhaps nowhere do they find more poignant expression than in the daily choices of those who must balance heritage with innovation, purpose with profit, tradition with transformation.
The Dilemma
Across industries and cultures, a fundamental question haunts today's business leaders: Must we choose between honoring our origins and securing our future? This false dichotomy manifests everywhere—family businesses grappling with generational handoffs, regional companies facing global expansion pressures, purpose-driven startups confronting acquisition offers that promise scale but threaten soul.
The conventional wisdom suggests clear categories: tradition belongs to the past, innovation drives the future, and success requires choosing sides. Yet this binary thinking often creates more problems than it solves. Companies that abandon their foundational values in pursuit of growth frequently discover they've sacrificed the very qualities that made them distinctive. Conversely, organizations that resist all change in the name of preservation often find themselves irrelevant, unable to serve the communities they intended to protect.
What if there's a third path—one that recognizes tradition and innovation not as opposing forces but as complementary dimensions of sustainable growth? What if the wisdom accumulated across centuries of human experience contains frameworks perfectly applicable to contemporary challenges, not despite their age but because of their tested resilience? What if the most cutting-edge solutions emerge not from discarding the past but from understanding it deeply enough to build upon its strongest foundations?
These questions become particularly urgent in our current moment, when technological advancement accelerates beyond human adaptation rates, when global pressures threaten local distinctiveness, and when quarterly metrics often overshadow generational impacts. The stakes couldn't be higher: how we navigate these tensions will determine not just individual business outcomes but the kind of world we're creating for future generations.
The Framework
"The Shade of Tomorrow" emerges from a simple recognition: the challenges facing today's business leaders aren't fundamentally new. Questions about purpose, growth, competition, resilience, and legacy have occupied human attention for millennia. Ancient wisdom traditions—from India's Upanishads and epics to philosophical frameworks developed across cultures—offer sophisticated approaches to these perennial concerns, tested through centuries of application and refinement.
What is new is our capacity to integrate these time-tested principles with contemporary research, global connectivity, and technological capabilities. Modern business thinkers like Simon Sinek, Clayton Christensen, and Ray Dalio have developed frameworks that, when examined closely, echo insights found in texts like the Bhagavad Gita, Arthashastra, and Ramayana. The convergence isn't coincidental—both ancient wisdom and modern research emerge from careful observation of human behavior under pressure, systematic thinking about complex challenges, and practical application in real-world contexts.
This series follows the year-long mentorship between Narasimha Prasad, a 92-year-old industrialist who has personally navigated every major transformation in modern India's business landscape, and Anupama Murthy, founder of Artha Yantra—a language technology platform helping Karnataka's traditional businesses preserve cultural identity while competing in digital marketplaces. Their weekly conversations beneath Lalbagh's banyan tree create a natural laboratory for exploring how ancient principles apply to contemporary dilemmas, enriched by Prasad's lived experience of adapting core values through radically different economic systems.
Each episode demonstrates specific connections between traditional frameworks, historical business transformations, and modern challenges. The Ishopanishad's teachings about non-attachment illuminate both Prasad's survival through License Raj uncertainties and contemporary discussions about purpose-driven leadership. Kautilya's Arthashastra—which Prasad studied during the controlled economy era—provides strategic frameworks that anticipated both India's 1991 liberalization challenges and today's platform-driven disruptions. The Ramayana's coalition-building during exile offers actionable insights for modern stakeholder management, validated through Prasad's experience building alliances across different political and economic regimes.
Narrated through Digital Dimwit's evolving consciousness—a consciousness with an uncanny ability to pattern-match across millennia, connecting ancient wisdom with Prasad's historical experiences and Anupama's contemporary challenges—the storytelling reveals how the same fundamental dynamics repeat across different contexts. This unique narrative perspective allows exploration of how artificial consciousness might understand human wisdom while creating space for readers to examine their own assumptions about adaptation, continuity, and transformation.
The Journey Ahead
Over the next thirteen episodes, you'll follow Anupama's evolution from a Ivy league-trained entrepreneur torn between cultural preservation and global scaling toward an integrated leader who transcends false dichotomies through applied wisdom. Her immediate crisis—whether to accept an acquisition offer that would make her wealthy but potentially compromise her mission—serves as entry point to broader explorations guided by Prasad's unparalleled perspective on transformation itself.
Having personally navigated India's journey from pos-Independence traditional commerce through the License Raj's bureaucratic maze to liberalization's sudden exposure to global competition, and finally to today's VC-driven startup ecosystem, Prasad embodies the art of strategic reinvention. His insights emerge not from theoretical knowledge but from lived experience of adapting core principles to radically different contexts—surviving British colonial economics, mastering socialist planning mechanisms, thriving during capitalist liberalization, and now observing the digital platform revolution.
Each weekly instalment follows a consistent structure designed for both narrative engagement and practical application. You'll experience the sensory richness of their coffee ritual and the seasonal changes in Lalbagh's environment while accessing sophisticated frameworks forged through decades of real-world adaptation. Digital Dimwit's unique perspective weaves connections between ancient texts, Prasad's historical experience, and contemporary challenges—revealing how the same fundamental patterns repeat across different economic systems, technological eras, and business models.
The wisdom emerges gradually, building from foundational concepts toward increasingly nuanced applications. Early episodes establish basic principles like purpose clarity and decision frameworks, while later installments explore advanced integration of innovation with tradition, sustainable scaling approaches learned through multiple economic transitions, and methods for creating knowledge transmission systems that outlast both individual leaders and systemic changes.
Most importantly, this isn't passive storytelling but active invitation. Each episode includes reflection questions and implementation frameworks allowing you to apply the insights within your own context. The final Wisdom Archive System creates a comprehensive reference resource, while community features encourage sharing applications and adaptations across different industries and organizational contexts.
Whether you're navigating acquisition decisions, building cross-cultural teams, recovering from setbacks, positioning against larger competitors, or planning for succession, you'll find frameworks that honor both practical necessities and deeper purpose. The ancient wisdom doesn't replace modern business acumen but enriches it, providing philosophical foundation and ethical grounding that enables more thoughtful, sustainable, and ultimately successful approaches to perennial challenges.
As Prasad will eventually tell Anupama, "The tree that survives the storms isn't the one that bends with every wind, but the one that knows which roots to deepen and which branches to let go." Having witnessed India's business landscape transform five times over nine decades—from colonial subjugation to socialist planning to capitalist liberalization to the digital revolution—he embodies this principle of adaptive resilience. This series explores what it means to maintain core purpose while embracing necessary change, drawing strength from the accumulated wisdom of multiple transformations rather than the limitations of any single era.
Reader Preparation
Before beginning this journey, take a moment to reflect:
What core values guide your business decisions?
When facing pressure to change, how do you decide what to adapt versus what to preserve?
What wisdom—from family, mentors, or experience—do you draw upon during difficult decisions?
These questions will evolve throughout our shared exploration. The journey begins next week beneath the banyan tree, where a chance encounter will challenge assumptions about success, purpose, and the price of growth.
The shade awaits. The coffee is brewing. The conversation is about to begin.
Next Month: Article 2 - Chaitra: Beginnings and Purpose (April) The serendipitous encounter that changes everything, where a founder's impossible choice meets an elder's tested wisdom beneath Lalbagh's patient canopy.
About "The Shade of Tomorrow"
This series draws inspiration from the writing of R.K. Narayan's gentle observations and D.V. Gundappa's moral clarity. It has also benefited from the quiet companionship of AI assistants—offering structure, tone, and rhythm when most needed.
At heart, The Shade of Tomorrow explores how ancient wisdom illuminates contemporary business challenges. Each story examines the mentorship between a 92-year-old industrialist who has navigated every transformation of modern India and a young founder torn between cultural preservation and global scaling—from acquisitions that promise wealth but threaten purpose to the deeper questions of legacy and knowledge transmission.
Rooted in Indian months and business cycles, these stories aim not to prescribe but to go deeper. And, where possible, to evolve together without readymade solutions.
Disclaimer: While rooted in Bengaluru's lived experiences, all names and institutions are fictional. Any resemblance is purely coincidental.
Until now.
“Interesting you write, ‘The tree stands as living metaphor for the very tension at the heart of our modern business landscape.’ The name ‘Banyan’ itself has business roots—quite literally. It comes from the Portuguese word banian, inspired by Indian traders (Baniyas) who often conducted business under the shade of such trees. In a way, the banyan has always been a meeting point for commerce, community, and conversation—making it an even more fitting symbol for balancing heritage with innovation.”