Nikhil Maheshwari
Author of The Race Never Ends
“I Retired at 40 and Discovered That Freedom Is Far More Complicated Than a Number.”
From Ajmer to Investment Banking and Beyond
A conversation with Nikhil Maheshwari on ambition, success, retirement at forty and the making of The Race Never Ends.
After more than fifteen years in investment banking, Nikhil Maheshwari stepped away from corporate life at forty. His forthcoming memoir, The Race Never Ends, is not a victory speech about early retirement. It is a candid examination of ambition, achievement, grief, identity and the difficult freedom that begins when a long-held goal is finally reached. In this conversation, he reflects on the childhood beliefs, family experiences and unanswered questions that eventually became a book.
Twelve Lines That Define The Race Never Ends
Reflections on ambition, work, family, time, freedom and the difficult task of learning how to live beyond achievement.
“One can remain functional long after one has stopped being present.”The Race Never Ends
“Time with people did not return under a revised deadline.”The Race Never Ends
“Perhaps I did not need a more efficient way to survive my life. Perhaps I needed to find my way back into it.”The Race Never Ends
“I might be offering them a protected future in exchange for an absent present.”The Race Never Ends
“The better the life became, the more alert I remained to losing it.”The Race Never Ends
“Later was the problem.”The Race Never Ends
“The race may shape you, but it does not have to define you. Sometimes, the moment you stop running is the moment you finally begin to live.”The Race Never Ends
“I began asking whether the career still belonged to the life I wanted.”The Race Never Ends
“The work had not become meaningless. I had become less willing to let it provide the whole meaning.”The Race Never Ends
“I had confused freedom with the absence of demand when what I wanted was the right to choose the demand.”The Race Never Ends
“She would not need me like this forever. That was not a reason to fear the future. It was a reason to inhabit the present without asking it to become permanent.”The Race Never Ends
“Freedom had not given me a map. It had given me permission to draw one badly, correct it and continue.”The Race Never Ends
TGEP: Your memoir opens with its central line: “I Retired at 40 and Discovered That Freedom Is Far More Complicated Than a Number.” Most people would see retiring at forty as the end of a dream. Why did it become the beginning of your story?
Nikhil Maheshwari: Retiring early solved a financial problem, but it did not answer the questions I had been carrying for years. I realised that freedom is not something you arrive at through numbers alone. Once work no longer defined my days, I had to confront a more difficult question: who was I without the next goal to chase? That question became the real beginning of the memoir.
TGEP: You grew up in a middle-class family in Ajmer. How much of that childhood still lives within the person you are today?
Nikhil Maheshwari: Almost all of it. My childhood taught me that security had to be earned and that education was the surest path to a better life. Those values gave me discipline and purpose, but they also shaped the way I measured success for many years. Writing this memoir helped me see that while those lessons built my career, they did not have to define my entire life.
TGEP: You write that many middle-class children inherit a formula: study hard, build a career, earn well, and everything else will fall into place. When did you begin to question that formula?
Nikhil Maheshwari: Not after one event, but after many years of living it. Every milestone brought satisfaction, but only briefly. There was always another target waiting. Gradually I realised that I had become very good at achieving and very poor at pausing. That was when I began asking whether I was living intentionally or simply following a script I had inherited.
TGEP: For years, success meant moving forward. What happened when you finally stopped?
Nikhil Maheshwari: At first, stopping felt like success. I had reached the number I had worked towards for years. Then the noise became quiet, and I had to face a harder question: who was I without the next promotion, target or professional label? Retirement gave me time, but it did not automatically give me meaning.
TGEP: Why did you decide to turn that experience into a book?
Nikhil Maheshwari: Financial freedom is discussed constantly, but its emotional consequences are rarely examined with the same honesty. I wanted to write about what happens after the spreadsheet says you are free and the mind is still searching for direction.
TGEP: You spent years analysing markets and managing risk. Did the analytical mind ever come into conflict with the emotional honesty memoir demands?
Nikhil Maheshwari: Quite often. My professional life trained me to value certainty, evidence and logic. Memoir asks for something different. It asks you to acknowledge ambiguity, vulnerability and emotions that cannot always be explained. In many ways, writing the book taught me that not everything meaningful can be measured.
TGEP: The book speaks with unusual honesty about grief. Did writing those chapters change your relationship with loss?
Nikhil Maheshwari: Yes. Grief never disappears, but writing gave it language. Some experiences remain buried until you find the courage to revisit them. Putting those memories on paper did not erase the pain, but it helped me understand how profoundly they had shaped my choices, my priorities and the person I was becoming.
TGEP: Your dedication to Kanika, Aahana and Naysha is deeply moving. Was your family always present in your mind while writing?
Nikhil Maheshwari: Absolutely. This book would not exist without them. My family gave me both the happiest moments of my life and the experiences that changed me most deeply. Every chapter carries something of them, whether directly or indirectly. They are not simply part of my story. They are the reason I understand life differently today.
TGEP: What was hardest to write about?
Nikhil Maheshwari: The private cost of outward success. It is easy to list milestones. It is harder to examine the relationships, moments and parts of yourself that may have been neglected while you were moving quickly.
TGEP: Is the book against ambition?
Nikhil Maheshwari: Not at all. Ambition gave structure to my life and helped me achieve things I value. The problem begins when achievement becomes the only language through which we understand ourselves.
TGEP: What does freedom mean to you now?
Nikhil Maheshwari: Freedom is not simply having no office to report to. It is having the courage to decide what deserves your time, attention and energy, and accepting responsibility for that choice.
TGEP: Who should read this memoir?
Nikhil Maheshwari: Anyone who has spent years chasing a goal and quietly wondered what will remain after it is achieved. It is also for people in transition, whether they are changing careers, questioning an old definition of success or beginning again.
TGEP: After reading the memoir, what do you hope readers understand about success that they perhaps did not before?
Nikhil Maheshwari: That success and fulfilment are not the same thing. Achievement has its place, and I remain grateful for everything my career gave me. But if we allow external milestones alone to define our worth, we risk postponing the life we are trying so hard to build. I hope readers feel encouraged to define success for themselves, rather than inherit someone else’s definition.
TGEP: Does the race ever really end?
Nikhil Maheshwari: The external race may end, but life continues to ask things of us. The difference is that we can choose which race is worth running and which one we are finally ready to leave.