On Poila Boishakh, the first day of the Bengali year, traders close their old ledgers and open new ones. The custom is called haal khata. Customers are invited to settle old debts and start fresh. “Seeking to improve their relationship with customers, traders give sweets, snacks, or gifts to them,” Wikipedia notes. It is kept in West Bengal, Tripura and the Barak Valley of Assam, and in Bangladesh.
The Big Meal
Bada khana, the big meal, is a long-standing custom of the Indian Army and the other armed forces. Officers, soldiers and their families sit down to share a meal. Senior officers are served the first portion. In October 2025, Prime Minister Narendra Modi celebrated Diwali with naval personnel on board the aircraft carrier INS Vikrant and shared a bada khana with them.
The Nurturant Task Leader
In 1980 the Indian psychologist Jai B.P. Sinha described a type of leader he called the nurturant task leader. In his words, this leader “cares for his subordinates, shows affection, takes personal interest in their well-being.”
The care comes with a condition. A summary by the psychologist Ansari puts it this way: the leader “makes his or her nurturance contingent on the subordinate’s task accomplishment.”
Ten People
On November 8, 2016, at 8:15 p.m., Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced on television that 500 and 1,000 rupee notes would no longer be legal tender. According to Business Standard, “only 10 people in the system were aware of the plan in its entirety.”
The board of the Reserve Bank of India met at 5:30 that afternoon. The cabinet was informed that evening, and ministers were told to keep their mobile phones outside the room. “When I went to the cabinet meeting, I had no idea such a big move would be announced,” said the minister Piyush Goyal.
The Towel on the Chair
In government offices in Uttar Pradesh, a towel on the senior official’s chair is a usual sight. “You won’t find it on any other chair but the one intended for the most important person,” the Hindustan Times wrote in 2017.
On October 7, 2024, J.P. Singh, principal secretary of the parliamentary affairs department of Uttar Pradesh, issued an order on how officials should receive visiting legislators. It noted that “the officials sit on bigger and ‘towelled’ chairs than the one offered to the lawmakers.” If an official has a towel on his chair, ThePrint explained, “the same has to be ensured for the visiting lawmaker.”
Three Calls to Go Around
On May 22, 2010, Air India Express Flight 812 crashed while landing at Mangalore. The Court of Inquiry found that the captain continued an unstable approach “despite three calls from the First Officer (H S Ahluwalia) to ‘go around’.” The first call was a question: “Go around?” The last was: “Go around captain…We don’t have runway left.”
The first officer did not take over the controls. The report noted “ambiguity in various instructions empowering the ‘copilot’ to initiate a ‘go around’.”
The Slip of Paper
On December 12, 2023, the BJP’s newly elected legislators in Rajasthan met to choose the Chief Minister. Their choice was Bhajan Lal Sharma, a first-time member of the assembly. His name was proposed by the former Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje.
According to Newslaundry, the party’s observer, Union minister Rajnath Singh, had handed Raje a slip of paper that allegedly carried the new Chief Minister’s name.
Approved at Six in the Morning
On the night of June 25, 1975, President Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed signed the proclamation of the Emergency. The Shah Commission later described the “stratagem adopted by Smt Indira Gandhi to get the Proclamation signed by President Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed without informing the Cabinet.” The next morning, “the Cabinet met at 6 a.m. and approved the Promulgation of Emergency.”
Indira Gandhi had used Rule 12 of the Transaction of Business Rules, ThePrint reports. It states: “The Prime Minister may, in any case or classes of cases, permit or condone a departure from these rules.”
Spoken Honestly
In the Yuddha Kanda of the Valmiki Ramayana, Vibhishana advises his brother Ravana, in the presence of the ministers, to return Sita to Rama. Ravana is enraged and dismisses him. The text says that Ravana “sent away Vibhishana, who had spoken honestly.”
Vibhishana goes over to Rama. He explains: “Reviled by him and humiliated as a slave, I, leaving my sons and my wife, have come to take refuge with Rama.”
Not in Front of the Boss
ValueNotes, an Indian research firm, gives foreign partners ten tips for doing business with Indians. One of them reads: “In a meeting, we don’t like to contradict the boss, especially if he’s wrong!”
The tip continues: “The flip side is that those in powerful positions expect deference, and consensus.”