Manoj's Review on Books

It was an interesting title that made me pick the book, more in anticipation of a funny novel that’s bound to showcase comical interplay of events between a couple and their relatives. However, once I dipped into the first few pages, it dawned on me that Oliver Sacks was a neurologist and am about to read interesting titbits of true stories cherry picked from the long list of the author’s patients. A curious case was brought in for Oliver’s diagnosis of the problem and identify a solution. The gentleman came in for a session with Oliver and exhibited remarkable expression of intelligence while having displayed noticeable competence towards his associated domain of work. Even after a long conversation no issues emerged to the surface until he was asked to recognize personalities. The gentleman was completely at sea and the idea of a face recognition seemed far fetched to him, a neurological condition named Prosopagnosia. As he turned to retreat back home after the session, he strangely...

  Chris Voss had spent 24 years in the FBI with a predominant role of negotiating life threatening hostage situations. Contrary to negotiation involving a business deal or even a low stake rental agreement, a ransom demand in return for release of hostages is a different ball game altogether. However, Chris having negotiated countless hostage situations, picks up the nuances learnt during those tense encounters and draws a framework that can be applied in non hostile environments as well.  In the 1980’s, business schools even with the likes of Harvard proposed the theory that humans are rational actors and try to gain maximum value for themselves during a negotiation. However, research during subsequent decades proved to be contrary for the following reasons (i) Framing Effect - Depending on how a proposal is framed, the response evoked from the recipient can be different (ii) Loss Aversion - An inclination towards unwarranted risk for the sake of avoiding a loss (iii) Cogniti...

Whenever a group of Giraffes feed on the leaves of acacia trees, scientists observe an interesting response, they release toxic substances into their leaves to ward off the feeding animal. An appropriate response to save oneself but the sequence of response doesn’t stop at that point, the respective acacia tree emits a scent called pheromones. It’s meant to alert the neighbouring acacia trees of an upcoming danger in the form of Giraffe and the community soon begins to release toxins in their leaves. It’s a classic example of a synchronised community at work, leading to a flip in our understanding that trees are sentient beings after all.  When a caterpillar takes a hearty bite of a leaf, the damaged tissues around the leaf sends electrical signals on the negative impact. However, the signals are sent at the rate of a third an inch per minute which establishes the fact that they live on a really slow lane. More aligned towards Satyajit Ray’s mode of unhurried film making rather tha...

A look at a few of Brianna Wiest interviews makes one wonder how such a young individual who has barely crossed her thirties can exhibit calm demeanor to a stream of questions posed against her. A deeper dive into her writing journey stuns us with the fact she has already authored ten books, with a clear focus on the self help section.   'The Mountain is You’ can be broadly split into two parts, the first one deals with an individual's inclination towards self sabotage and the latter part narrates on ways towards self mastery. Now, what’s self-sabotage, if there is an ongoing gap between current and desired state while the respective individual’s effort to close it is consistently met with their own resistance, pain or discomfort, it means self-sabotage is a dominant function of mind. Brianna provides the bridge towards mastery in a three step process which leads to a transparent emotions assessment. (i) Be clear with what happened (ii) Validate your feeling (iii) Determi...

The clouds aspire to cover the entire mountain range and accomplish a wholesome deflection of sunshine. A glory that calls for all the fragmented floating cloud formations to come together. Umpteen times the pack of clouds are just able to patch over the mountains while the sun comfortably shines through. An united front on the troposhere proves to be elusive for month's together but the clouds perseveres through the separation.   Eventually, the clouds succeeds to roof over the mountains providing a seamless shield from the rays of the sun. Our fellow human beings refer to such an act as gloomy conditions, quiet an irony when even a little retrospection could lead us to understand the cloud cover is anything but gloomy.  Millions of positive and negative ions interact to strike a lightening horizontally establishing an united cloud formation. While a vertical strike signifies that the floodgates are open for trillions of tiny droplets to fall over the landmass bringing a...

Dear Professors / Evaluators, A review of my work profile will give clear indications that I am a professional who has scaled from the lower to middle management rungs of the corporate ladder. I would recollect myself as a green horn back in 2014-15 when I had stepped into the IT services industry, those were the days when I would read through corporate slide decks and abruptly disconnect client calls under the fear of being questioned. As I push forward a decade, having interacted and negotiated with countless CXO designates, won marque million dollar accounts, strategized on conducive market segments, resolved dozens of professional relationships under conflict, the feedback that attracted many brickbats followed up by laurels, I paused to reflect upon my journey. A simple question popped up, “Since when did I stop reading from the slides?” My second paragraph is enough to validate the fact that my professional experience has certainly refined my character and capabilities in profoun...

A stream of drainage can be converted to a free flowing river, a muck of stench producing stagnant pool of water can be converted to a beautiful lake or even a garbage filled section of landmass transformed to a beautiful garden. It's a transition from an point of undesirable and problematic state of affairs to a blissfully desirable one, an act all of us deeply long for. Apparently, the reverse is also true, all of us have been witness to a deteriorating environmental conditions to a place once recognized as garden city, our own Bengaluru. A beautiful landscape that was dotted with gardens, sported clean roads merged with sidewalk on both sides, wells that swelled with water and importantly possessed an efficient rainwater drainage system that seamlessly collected in low lying areas that formed large sections of waterbodies or even extended itself as a lake. Today, we have regressed ourselves in a steep downward spiral wherein water shortage is widespread and sadly created chemic...