India, July 25 -- There are, wrote F Scott Fitzgerald, no second acts in American lives. I was reminded of this and about how it clearly did not apply to Indian lives when I had lunch recently with Ranjit Mathrani at Amaya, one of the many successful restaurants he runs in London.

Mathrani has had many acts in his distinguished career. After he got his degree in Physics and Mechanical Engineering at Cambridge, he decided not to come back to India, joined the British civil service and then moved to the City of London, where he became the first person of Indian origin to become a director of a merchant bank.

That's a distinguished resume to begin with. But everything changed when he met Namita Panjabi on a visit to Mumbai. They married an...