India, Aug. 30 -- Dear Reader,

I started telling my brother stories when he was about five. He was a picky eater, and as the eldest girl in the family, I was sometimes assigned the job of feeding him lunch or dinner. I soon discovered that the job became much easier if I told him a story he liked.

This was my first training in pleasing an audience, and it would stand me in good stead decades later, when I stood before MBA classes teaching Storytelling in Business and Persuasive Communications.

The winning stories were always about the Second World War. If I could spin a yarn about a German Messerschmitt getting into a dogfight with a Spitfire, ducking anti-aircraft guns, spoonfuls of dal, rice and bhindi would be rapidly consumed. And ...