Karishma Vaswani is the first Mumbai-based business correspondent to report for BBC World and presents India Business Report, BBC World’s business programme dedicated to examining the issues of trade, business and economics in India. She studied English and American Literature at Warwick University in England. Before joining BBC World in 2003, she worked at CNBC Asia, as an assistant producer for three years. Here’s her take on four questions from Business Line:

Two things that my education/ training taught me:

Never stop learning — be it a professor or a child in the playground!

There’s always more than one side to a story and life is not black or white.

Two things I learnt from my work/ real life:

My training here at the BBC has taught me that there is no substitute for hard work, discipline, tenacity and perseverance.

The best lessons have come from some major failures in my life — but the biggest lesson has been that make a mistake once, and you can blame life/situations. Make that same mistake again — and you only have yourself to blame.

One quality I look for the most in a new recruit:

Enthusiasm and honesty.

A book that I read recently:

Atonement by Ian McEwan and The Elephant Paradigm by Gurcharan Das.

© Copyright 2000 - 2009 The Hindu Business Line