Master of Life Skills
The participants sit on the floor waiting, curious to know what going through a "life skills" lab may mean. They are all here to gain self awareness.The facilitator Vipul is a charismatic, diminutive man. His piercing eyes seem to be able to look through every facade of yours to hone in on your deepest darkest secrets. The participants squirm at the heavy silence in the room. Some decide to be flippant but decide against it. The expert is the only one who is comfortable with the silence. Is this what a "process lab" is supposed to be? The facilitator speaks finally. His language is cryptic. Somewhat strange and ambiguous. Yet that seems to do something to the participants and spurs them to open up their life history for the group of strangers who are sitting around. They hear the voice float across:Speak what is left unspokenHear what can't be heardSketch what cannot be sketchedAct from all that has been containedThe participants also learn more lab-speak. "The community is the sum total of the participants and facilitators in the program." Or the other cryptic "Being has to do with self and becoming with ambition."Master of Life Skills is a thinly disguised story of Vipul, the diabolical professor from a Management Institute in Ahmedabad (wonder which one that could be LOL...) who runs these Personal Growth Labs to help people discover their identity. Charisma, intellect and tantric power to manipulate the people and create a coterie of followers that runs the labs. Despite his invincible exterior, Vipul is as flawed as any of the participants who return willingly to be dissected year after year. So are the other facilitators - each one is battling their own demons.With a Postgraduate Diploma in Personnel Management and Industrial Relations from XLRI, Jamshedpur, author Vijay Nair brings a sense of authenticity to the story. Vijay draws upon his multiple roles of Organization Coach and Consultant, Fiction Writer/ Critic, Columnist and Theater Director to create this story that is engaging and insightful.The characters are real. If you have had even passing familiarity with some of these personal growth lab experts, you will recognize the archetypes and perhaps even the actual individuals. If you have participated in a personal growth lab, you will be fascinated to go back-stage and see that the drama that goes on there is far more complex and dark than what you have experienced in the lab. Vijay Nair's debut novel Master of Life Skills attempts a subject that is the first one by an Indian novelist. The mystic of the facilitators fascinates the participants. The facilitator while seeming mortal seems to possess the ability to rip off some of the masks that we wear and reveal our identity to ourselves. In this case, Vijay rips off the mask of the facilitator and reveals the dark side of these life skill experts. Think of it as the equivalent of someone writing about the secret groups like Freemasons. For three centuries people have tried to find out about them and their symbols - and have failed.The only bit of the book Master of Life Skills that I did not care for was the somewhat over the top last chapter. It is tough to end a story that has built up so well without making it sound flat. That is the flaw in this otherwise well done novel. If you have been part of the growth labs conducted by ISABS, ISISD, Sumedha, Flame etc. you must read it. If you haven't been for a growth lab or life skills lab as Vijay puts it, this book will help you gain an interesting perspective about it.---------