For a country that has lived and breathed the stock market for two centuries, Adil Rustomjee’s Running Behind Lakshmi: The Search for Wealth in India’s Stock Market is a long-overdue act of economic remembrance. India is the world’s oldest emerging market, with equity trading recorded as early as the 1820s. Yet, the book highlights that there has been a “remarkable ahistoricity” in how we treat this legacy—too busy chasing Lakshmi to pause and ask where she came from.
Rustomjee, a participant-observer who spent years in Room 1014 of the Phiroze Jeejeebhoy Towers at the Bombay Stock Exchange, turns that omission into an opportunity, crafting a determined chronicle of how India’s financial modernity evolved—one boom and bust at a time. Beginning under a banyan tree in 1875 and ending in the age of mutual funds and mobile apps, Running Behind Lakshmi offers a perspective India’s economy rarely gets: historical without nostalgia, technical without pretence, and sceptical without cynicism.
The book’s early sections are written with the authority of someone who has lived through cycles. Rustomjee’s retelling of the Cotton and Share Mania of the 1860s feels eerily familiar—its mix of speculative frenzy, sudden displacement, and moral aftermath could just as well describe the Harshad Mehta episode or the crypto bubble. His recounting of the 1991 reforms, the dot-com euphoria, and the global financial crisis is equally restrained, treating these events as part of a longer rhythm of risk, regulation, and reinvention. He compares that “the stock market is modern India’s Golconda,” a place where ordinary people continue to search for their diamonds—Reliance, Infosys, HDFC Bank—just as earlier generations once searched for the Kohinoor.
Rustomjee’s greatest strength lies in his ability to humanise an abstract system. He notes: “Every day, many of the traders pouring into the BSE will genuflect and say a little prayer before the portrait of Lakshmi in the lobby.” The image is both literal and allegorical—faith and finance, divine and digital, coexisting without contradiction. Through such moments, Rustomjee reminds readers that markets are not just economic institutions but cultural ones, repositories of belief and behaviour. He captures this duality without romanticising it, showing how India’s capitalism remains as spiritual as it is statistical.
Rustomjee reminds readers that markets are not just economic institutions but cultural ones. He shows how India’s capitalism remains as spiritual as it is statistical
The language throughout is elegant and deliberate. Rustomjee writes as if he were addressing a curious reader. Even his metaphors, such as the banyan tree, the Golconda, and the image of Lakshmi, are disciplined and never overused. When he turns to technical discussions—of derivatives, the efficient-market hypothesis, or behavioural finance—he does so with pedagogic clarity, ensuring that the non-specialist reader stays afloat. He admits early on that his training is in finance, but not in history, and so his “perspective is of the historically literate participant rather than the financially literate historian.”
Where the book falters, it does so by virtue of its excess of honesty. In places, the historical detailing stretches longer than needed, and the meticulous sourcing—committee reports, archival quotations, market data—sometimes dilutes the narrative momentum. His tone may seem academic, but the intent is democratic: to make the stock market’s story belong to its people. Rustomjee’s treatment of investors and institutions is balanced—the government, SEBI, foreign funds, and retail investors all appear as parts of a larger ecosystem, each with their virtues and flaws. His reflections on the rise of SIPs as a cultural habit—middle-class India’s quiet revolution in savings—are among the most insightful passages.
What sets Running Behind Lakshmi apart from most financial writing is its tone of moral patience. Rustomjee insists that there is “no central message”, perhaps because he distrusts the very idea of one. Instead, the book’s unspoken lesson is about self-knowledge: every participant must find a method that aligns with their temperament. It is this humility that gives the work its philosophical depth.
By the final pages, it becomes clear that this is not just a history of the stock market but a meditation on the Indian imagination—how a society of savers and speculators continues to dream of prosperity under the watch of its goddess of wealth. It is also a subtle reminder that wealth itself is not the end, but a reflection of values, patience, and trust. Finally, Running Behind Lakshmi is that rare work of economic storytelling which manages to be erudite without being inaccessible. It restores to India’s financial history the clarity and grace it has long deserved.