Crisp Reviews of Books On My Nightstand

Che Guevara.. I am damn sure that you have heard this name but I am also quite sure that most of you, reading this article right now, don't know what he stands for. Most people don't know anything beyond this name, in spite of the often encounter with his legendary picture of above. For all those, here is a little piece of trivia to start with.  Ernesto  " Che "  Guevara  was an Argentine  Marxist   revolutionar y.  A major figure of the  Cuban Revolution , physician, author,  guerrilla  leader, diplomat, and military theorist. But the book I am going to tell you about is not about revolutionary Che. Its about a a 23 year old Ernesto Guevara, who along with his friend Granado, went on a long trip across Latin America. Before this trip, he empathized about the people around him, but this trip radicalized his thought process completely. In retrospection, this can be considered as a spark which turned in a wild fire that ...

Economics seems like a subject to be studied and discussed only by scholars and is taught in schools just to torture children. As a kid, I hated economics ( though my father who has PhD in Economics has tried everything to reverse this fact) and college studies of macro/micro economics boosted my hatred further. According to me, the major connection a common man had with economics is when finmin announces the budget and for that entire month all you could read in newspaper front page is budget and its implications. In the quest of ignoring economics, we tend to keep those orange colored?? !! newspapers as far as possible and life is so relaxed without caring for increase in base rates of banks or bear/bull run of stock market. All of us are affected by its ups and downs of global and local economy via global recession, rise in interest rates, or hike in food prices. But we don’t understand the principles at work and how and why they really affect us. Here is a book named “IIM A...

Inspiration is just a feeling that is ignited in your mind when you see someone like you have achieved what you had dreamt for. The dream is now achievable to you but the hardest part is to convince your own self that this is reachable to you too. The distance between ‘I can’ and ‘I will’ takes further thousand steps. Inspiration can convert in action only when you feel yourself reaching the dream. Most people spend their life inspired by the stories of successful persons but never feel that they too have to ability to do the same. Only thing missing is faith that they are special too and they can reach the dream too. ‘Jonathan Livingston Seagull’, yet another beautiful book by Richard Bach, brings the same essence through a story of a gull that thinks beyond simply eating and surviving, and seeks higher purpose in life to become the best at what he loves. This is a story of people who dare to follow their dreams and make their own rules; even if they run contrary to the no...

After series of non-fictional dose, I decided to read something different and took a shot at criminal stories. After much digging, I landed on couple of books but could not really enjoy reading them. Finally, with half mind about reading crime non-fiction, I started reading a book called "Mafia Queens of Mumbai" by S. Hussain Zaidi and to my surprise, I could not stop myself from finishing it in a day. "Women are never stronger than when they arm themselves with their weakness." Marie de Vichy-Chamrond from Letters to Voltaire, this quote rightly explains the strength a woman can have when she decides to face her worst fear. This book brings together a such a set of stories about interesting and powerful female leaders of the Mumbai underworld and their conquest to face their fears. The Mumbai underworld, or the Mumbai Mafia has seen many legends like Haji Mastan, Dawood Ibrahim, Varadarajan Mudaliar, and Karim Lala, to name a few. But, there were ...

I am quite sure that every Indian is aware of the story of the Ramayana that had been told to us innumerable times since we are young kids. Diwali, the festival of lights, is based on the theme of same story i.e. the victory of Rama over Ravana claiming victory of good over evil. The enthralling story of Rama, the incarnation of God, who slew Ravana, the evil demon of darkness, is an epic story heard by every child in an Indian family. But have you ever wondered that there would have been another version of story, from the voice of the vanquished that remained lost in silence for so long? What if Ravana and his people had a different story to tell? The story of the Ravanayana, a tale of the vanquished Asura people, a story that has been cherished by the oppressed outcastes of India for 3000 years. Anand Neelakantan has gave a way to the voice of Ravana, who has been vilified and whose death is celebrated year after year in every corner of India. Time has come to he...

“Stay Hungry, stay foolish”, the famous quote from the speech by Steve Jobs at Stanford University Commencement 2002, has a lot deeper meaning than it may sound. The message behind the quote was to always be hungry to learn more and to keep an open mind to know more. Rashmi Bansal has caught the same spirit in 25 IIM Ahmedabad graduates who chose to trade path of their own making. They are from different backgrounds, different beliefs in life and different industries they made a mark in. But they all had one thing in common: they believed in the power of their dreams. As a personal experience, it feels a lot safer to start working for someone else when you are recently graduated from MBA College than to start your own venture. Entrepreneurship needs a strong passion for your dream and a firm belief that you will reach your dream, no matter what. Rashmi Bansal has done a great job in capturing these awe inspiring, motivating, sometimes unbelievable yet simple stories of th...

There is a quote in Srimad Bhagavad-Gita in Sanskrit which says “Jatasya Maranam Dhruvam”. It literally means that the star called Dhruv which rise in night has to set but the implied meaning of the saying is “That which is born shall die”. We know that our life is not eternal and there is an end for our life too, but we don’t want to think about our end or even the journey called life. We keep ourselves too busy in our goals and fight so hard to reach those goals that we forget to give time to the most important things in life.  Here is a story by Mitch Albom where he shares the lessons of life he learnt from his long-lost professor. In his last days, Professor Morrie, or what he would like to be called ‘Coach’, would act as a mentor for the writer and answer the questions which were bothering writer from long time. The questions which our generation doesn’t want to think about, may be because we are too scared to know the answer. The writer and his professor takes us ...