Born in an Islamabad village, Ehsan Bukhari went to a local government school. Then nobody knew he would end up living in Japan, where he is the director of credit analysis firm, Fitch Ratings Japan, since July 2007. Prior to that, he worked as a credit analyst at HSBC in Tokyo. At the age of ten, in 1980, Ehsan Bukhari got admission in Sainik School Nagrota. Later he graduated in science from Boys College, Islamabad and later went for masters in Modern History from Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi in 1991, with an aim to sit in the civil services exams.
But interaction with a friend at JNU changed his direction. The JNU student convinced Ehsan that an IAS officer was bound by the bureaucracy and politicians, and cannot solve people`s problems.
Ehsan joined MFC course at AMU, Aligarh and while he was in the first term, he was selected as a Probationary Officer in State Bank of India, and became the first Kashmiri Muslim PO in SBI`s history. In 1997, SBI sent him on a coveted overseas assignment of IBTO (India-Based Trainee Officer) to Japan, and was appointed as the Assistant Vice-President, Credit, at SBI, Osaka.
Immediately after completing his overseas assignment in 1999, Ehsan went to do a specialised Master’s business degree at the ICMA Centre, Henley Business School in Reading University, UK and left SBI.
Ehsan moved to US, where he lived in Los Angeles and in New York, but within a year, he realized he had left behind something in Japan. His love Syed Sheerin/Yuko. They visited his Kashmir home and a few months later got married at the Hira Masjid, Gyotoku, Japan.
Ehsan lives in central Tokyo, with his wife and two young daughters, who speak almost fluent Kashmiri and surprise the relatives and general people back in Kashmir, where children are discouraged from speaking in their mother tongue.
