Mother Pious Lady

I have always believed that India has had two landmark events that continues to impact where we are headed as a nation. Political independence happened in 1947 and then economic independence happened – at least for the middle class in 1991 when India took the big bold step towards liberalization. I think we had to achieve political independence to make way for economic independence. I believe that political and economic freedom will clear the way for India to build an inclusive society that will help us to say that we have achieved social freedom as well. There are many ways to understand a society. When societal shifts take place, they show up in many places because the expected traditional behavior gets replaced or gets reflected in a new idiom. While some things change, at least at the surface, they tend to show up in mysterious ways. You need a sharp eye to observe these, decode them and then hold up a mirror so that others understand it too. Santosh Desai’s book Mother Pious Lady tends to offer these priceless nuggets of insight about contemporary India by leveraging the insights that he has of Indian consumers thanks to his years of experience in advertising. Add to it his insightful, entertaining and pungent style of writing. Mother Pious Lady is all that. Read more

Interview with Samit Basu

“Let us imagine that you had bought, in secret, the world’s most precious jewel, the Eye of Empire, a massive ruby known to have left a trail of lives—violently lost—behind it as it journeyed across harsh lands in the care of desperate men.” So begins Samit Basu’s new book Terror on the Titanic – his first Young Adult novel.

Meet Samit, India’s first fantasy novelist and the first well-known Indian author to cross over into comics. He is the author of an extremely popular trilogy of fantasy novels, the GameWorld Trilogy, comprising The Simoqin Prophecies (2004) The Manticore’s Secret (2005) and The Unwaba Revelations (2007). He has written comics for Marvel Comics in India. Outlook featured him as one of the Indians under 25 to watch for along with Shreya Ghoshal – India’s top playback singer and Konkona Sen Sharma the brilliant actress. He got inspired to start a career as an author during a dull class at IIM (Ahmedabad) while pursuing his MBA. Read on what this talented writer is all about. Read more

Mass Market Novels at Two Dollars

Pricing does matter. Especially when it comes to books. It is probably a sign of the times that Harper Collins (Full disclosure: They publish my novel Married But Available) has decided to price Karan Bajaj’s upcoming second book at Rs 99/- almost $2 for a paperback version. That I think is the sweet spot for pricing as Chetan Bhagat has showed us with his novels. The yet-to-be released thriller ‘Johnny Gone Down’ by Karan Bajaj is set to make publishing history with a first print run of 50,000 books, billed as one of the biggest ever in India for a work of fiction. Read more

Corporate Novels: Mixing Business with Pleasure

Mr R Gopalakrishnan of the Tata Group recently did this story on Corporate Novels for the Economic Times. The article is a great recall of all the “Corporate Novels” that have been written in recent times.  In this story called Mixing Business With Pleasure, they have traced authors from corporate India who have penned their novels with stories that somewhere resonate with their experiences.  While it is fiction, almost all of them have perhaps been triggered off by some incident or character(s) they have encountered for real. This probably is the formula for realistic fiction that the readers have appreciated generously as well as the sales figures of all these novels will vouch for.  I feel honored that Mr Gopalakrishnan is aware of my novels – but I will feel better if I know that he read them as well.

Only one correction – in my case the article mentions my previous employer and designation.  I currently work for Wipro Ltd as the group’s  Chief Learning Officer. Over to the actual article. Read more

The McKinsey Way

Some books never lose their relevance. This is one such book. This book written in Feb ‘99 continues to be relevant even today. Ethan Rasiel, an ex-employee of McKinsey, gave us a peek behind the curtains of McKinsey, arguably the world’s most high profile consultant. Like all things high profile, there are myths and legends that are borne out of such larger than life reputations. More than 18,000 of their alumni work across every sector in 80 countries – they have no central office! They boast of alumni (see list here) like Kenichi Ohmae, Tom Peters, Helmut Kohl to name a few. At Business School campuses across the world they remain a coveted (and controversial) employer. They So what makes The Firm (as they like to call themselves) special?

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