Work Is A Paid Holiday 20/07/2009 How many of us go to work everyday, hit the work station and get soaked in the same schedule day in and day out? Meetings, calls, mails, gossip, coffee and work related travel — that’s work life for most of us! Some of our more expressive brethren even have a sticker on their desk screaming ‘Same old stuff…everyday!’ Now, all that’s going to change if you read Alain de Botton’s The Pleasures And Sorrows Of Work. You will start looking at your work as a journey to something more fruitful...Read Article
Plan A City, Don’t Just Build 20/07/2009 Jeb Brugmann need only visit Mumbai to see everything he has written in his book spring to life. Indeed, the author has spent some time in Mumbai, categorising it as a City in Crisis. And what better illustration of that than to watch the hysteria over a beautiful new sea link that connects two parts of the city but solves no problems, neither for those who prefer to drive to work nor for the majority who depend entirely on public transport. The City of Crisis remains in permanent gridlock...Read Article
Inside The Digital Township 13/07/2009 Impatience is the new life’, the punch line of the latest campaign by a leading telecom player aptly summarises the preferences of the new generation. With technology penetrating deep into every aspect of our lives, sometimes we do not even notice its presence. Mobile phones, social networking sites, search engines are so ubiquitous it almost appears as if life descended on Earth with them...Read Article
Connecting The Dots 13/07/2009 She rages, she rants, she performs a marvellous Tandava with words. In this slim volume, Vandana Shiva vents her fury on the globalised fossil-fuel addicted haves who have orchestrated the dance of destruction that is making the earth miserable for the have-nots. The attention grabbing environmentalist's take on the hottest topic of discussion in international forums these days...Read Article
Of Incredible Campaigning 08/07/2009 Tourism is a foe of terrorism”, author Amitabh Kant quotes the former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. Terrorism divides while tourism unites, so what can be a nobler endeavour than to promote travel and tourism?It is indeed challenging to promote a country as diverse as India. But the ‘Incredible India’ and the ‘Atithi Devo Bhava’ campaigns...Read Article
Keeping An Ear To The Ground 07/07/2009 Wired To Care is an unusual business book by an unusual person. Author Dev Patnaik teaches a course called Needfinding to design and business school students as an adjunct faculty member at Stanford University and is also a founder and principal of Jump Associates, an innovation strategy firm. The book, co-written by Peter Mortensen, is an ode to empathy and makes a case for its role in business...Read Article
Acceptance Is The Key 30/06/2009 The newest addition to gay writing in India is a collection of 21 queer interviews. Both the editors are academics and writers based in Pune; both are open about their gay identity.
Most of the 20 gay men and one woman interviewed are from in and around Pune. There is fair representation in terms of age, socioeconomic background and ethnicity. The interviewees range from 20-something to the 60-plus...Read Article
A Tale Of Two Sisters 30/06/2009 It’s difficult to describe Tania James’ debut novel. Not because it’s a complex novel filled with eccentric characters but because it’s one of the most engaging literary reads of 2009.
Spread over lush green terrains of Kerala and the multi-faceted soul of New York, Atlas Of Unknows (Simon and Schuster) is the story of sisters Linno and Anju, who are raised in Kerala by their father Melvin after their mother commits suicide...Read Article
Of Dragons And Tigers 30/06/2009 I do not like books which covertly try to promote an agenda. At least that is the impression that I got as I started out with this book. Primarily because the foreword to the book written by Heidrick & Struggles International’s CEO flaunted the competencies of the firm than what the reader is in store for. However, I was soon to change my opinion. Because the book indeed gives a perspective in to the world of corporate leadership, specifically focused on the Asia Pacific region...Read Article
How The Wall Was Broken 30/06/2009 About nine decades ago, John Reed, a US journalist, wrote the famous Ten Days That Shook The World. The book described the last 10 days of the Czarist empire in Russia and the Bolshevik revolution that ushered communism in that country. Communism disappeared since then, not only in Russia but also in large parts of the world. By the 1990s, capitalism dominated economic policy across the globe, and finance and capital became the drivers of market economy...Read Article
