Manoj's Review on Books

The first thing that strikes when someone picks up this book is the question, what’s the connect with a technocrat billionaire and climate change? Isn’t this supposed to be the topic of some nerd scientist who would potentially display abstract mathematical models to elucidate the impact of climate change? Well, this point of view drastically changes when we realize the catastrophe of what just 1 degree Celsius (33.8F) increase in temperatures can do at a global scale. Let me throw some light on an impending apocalypse like scenario, northern ice caps could melt down submerging coastal cities, hurricane, heat waves, floods, droughts and a range of other unforeseen disasters that can regress human life by centuries. This can result in unprecedented economic depressions, massive levels of immigration, dearth of energy along with food supply and the worst of all a potential world war. Before I go any further, let’s understand that climate change is a critical aspect every human should b...

Having picked up this book after knowing that Sheryl Sandberg was a COO of Facebook, I was expecting a lot of references from her career experience of having worked in a leadership role. However, the entire book is focused on post trauma growth and the factors that lead to a positive change despite a major setback. The narrative begins with Sheryl finding her husband Dave lying dead over a treadmill back in 2015, she is shell shocked on the hard event and goes about describing the impact of her deepest trench in life. She refers to 3P’s - Personalization, Pervasiveness and Permanence as a core emotional pattern exhibited by individuals post a trauma. Let me throw some light on each of them, Personalization – it’s feeling of guilt that the individual is fully responsible for the trauma, Pervasiveness – the individual feels that the negativity will spread across or impact all areas of life and Permanence – it’s a belief that the trauma will have a life long negative impact. A high pe...

  The intent of the title ‘Elephant Paradigm’ is to convey the idea that India possesses immense strength but can only move in a slow pace, comparing with the attributes of a Chinese Tiger, our nation is unlikely to run at fast pace to reach economic superiority. Being the only nation wherein democracy preceded capitalism, we lost over 4 decades being immersed in socialistic policies. GD points out that its clear that communism or socialism is now an established failure model and capitalism with all it’s flaws is the only one that improves the quality of life while pulling millions out of poverty. Some of the events are interesting to note, like in 1993, the seventy third amendment led to local elections being held for the first time across all Indian villages and municipalities. This resulted in three million legislators being elected out of which close to 1 million were women. Such a massive local democratic exercise is a record on a global front and it was believed that a lot ...

The premise of the entire narrative by Gurcharan Das is explicit in the title of his book – ‘India grows at night’. He is referring to India’s growth story despite the lack of a strong state. The private institutions have found a way to explosive growth ever since India’s liberalization in 1991, a policy change which can be attributed to lack of options rather than a conscious or deliberate choice. Broadly, GD covers India’s story from Independence till about two decades post liberalization. This means touching upon Nehru’s socialist policies, Indira Gandhi’s insistence on building a command based economy to the two decades of post liberal India which is marked by crony capitalism and corruption. I was wondering what would have been GD’s stand had he chosen to narrate India’s story in 2022 which also marks 8 years of Modi’s central governance.   The economic success in India has taken it’s own share of time but the most amazing aspect that goes unrecognized is India’s democrati...

Almost everyone of us choose to be ignorant of the biggest truth of our lives – death. It is a fact that we act in ways that suggest as though death is a far fetched reality until we are drawn upon the day which brings us to it within touching distance. Morrie is a professor who has taken a special liking towards one of his students named ‘Mitch’. Apparently, Morrie has also left a deep impression in Mitch’s mind to such an extent that when he happens to catch a glimpse of Morrie in one of the TV show two decades later, Mitch makes up his mind to meet Morrie. Little did he know that for the next 14 weeks he would be travelling from Detroit to Massachusetts every Tuesday to meet his professor Morrie who is one his final voyage. At the age of 78, Morrie had been diagnosed with ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis) which is a rare form of neurodegenerative disease, which in simple terms mean that the body will degenerate to a point of being a vegetative state leading to death. The time ...

My funda of life is not meant to be a gyaan rather an expression of how I learnt to deal with life. I would suggest to quickly read all the points once and then dwell over each point, am sure you will find depth in each of them.  Listing out: 1. Never complain. You don't have that privilege. Look at ways to overcome the hurdles.  2. If you are high on energy then you are living. Life is meant to be lived with full enthusiasm.  3. Keep expanding your circle of friends or acquaintance. Never choose to be confined in a small circle.  4. Consciously choose the hard path. It can be as low key as taking stairs instead of lift. It brings a shift in mindset.  5. Never settle in a comfort zone. Life is meant to live out of it.  6. Choose a healthy lifestyle and aim for supreme fitness.  7. It's alright to fail or be humiliated or be bad in something. Don't live by societies standard of success or failure. Choose to live on your own terms.  8. You are bound...

  Bachelors in electrical engineering, a decent job in HP and life in a vibrant metropolitan city like Pune, these are sufficient enticing factors for any young adult to pick the well-defined regular path of     However, at the age of 23 Gaur Gopal Das had a different inner calling and choose to become a monk. Since then he has practiced celibacy and over the last 2.5 decades travelled across the globe sharing his wisdom to professionals in Google, Salesforce, EY, CII and UK Parliament to name a few. The sheer length and breadth of his travel is enough to provide a solid testimony on the value of his discourse.   Coming to the book, the narrative is woven around a married couple who are having an extraordinary life of wealth and progress which indicates happiness on the surface but deep within are struggling to stay together. How did a pure love affair that gravitated towards marriage and wealth have so much of shallowness deep within? Can fulfillment be acquired...