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Tag: nonfiction

Six Survival Mantras for Senior Managers From The Book ‘Crash’

Posted on by Penguin India

While many people talk about the path to the top of organizations, very few are honest about how difficult it is to stay at that position. R. Gopalakrishnan analyses the ‘software’ challenges, which leaders confront every day, and shares the insights he has gained developing, managing, investing in and supervising a variety of companies.

Here are a few tips for budding leaders on surviving in the B-game –

You are completely accountable

“ Leaders operate in an environment, and their actions and judgements cannot be separated from their environment. So the totality of the event and the leader’s role in the event might offer more valid lessons than anything else.”

∼

Experiential learning is the best teacher

“The model of three worlds indicates that leaders learn and develop in their inner world, the world of people, and the world of getting things done.Managers learn lessons through their insights and experiences. By definition, insight is experiential and cannot be taught or preached.”

 ∼

Absorb the surrounding culture around you

“Each leader described has been a professional of considerable accomplishment and flair, each of them had built a career which was exemplary. Each of them rose in the world of business during my own times, each was noticed by me as part of my readings, and each of them exited his/her position of power in spite of being acclaimed as a ‘terrific find’. These leaders did not part on ethical grounds or corruption, but because of ‘cultural differences’. They were all top-quality leaders, rose very impressively and exited, in most cases, due to some perception of the lack of the cultural fit of the candidate.”

 ∼

Don’t be surprised if your friend circle shrinks

“It’s lonely at the top is a popular adage. However, a leader should not make such a big deal out of it that he or she becomes isolated. Deep suspicions about the motives of your colleagues, silence when you should be speaking up and keeping your ears tuned to whispers and murmurs—these are all symptoms of a derailing leader.”

∼

Always seek advice on difficult matters

“Don’t hesitate to show that you need advice or that you are unsure about which option you should pursue while addressing a particular problem. CEOs should not feel that they have to present themselves as the great, all-knowing leader. After all, deep inside, they know that they do not match that description.”

Filled with anecdotes, analysis of various situations CEOs may find themselves in and unconventional advice to help them, Crash: Lessons from the Entry and Exit of CEOs is for veteran leaders as well as for those who aspire to start their own ventures.

 

The 108 Upanishads – An Excerpt

Posted on by Penguin India

The Upanishads contain the most crystallized bits of wisdom gleaned from Hinduism.In The 108 Upanishads, Professor Dalal explains the concepts at the core of each Upanishad clearly and lucidly. Moreover, her vast, diverse philosophical and theological readings add priceless scholarly context, making this volume indispensable for students of religious studies.

Here is an enlightening excerpt from the introduction.

“The Upanishads are a series of Sanskrit texts which contain a profound philosophy. They form part of the literature of the Vedas, the most sacred texts of Hinduism. The term ‘upanishad’ is often interpreted as ‘sitting near the feet of a master’, the word being broken up into ‘upa’ (near) and ‘nishad’ (sitting down).

However, different interpretations arise when ‘ni’ and ‘shad’ are separated. ‘Ni’ means ‘totality’, and one of the meanings of ‘shad’ is destruction’, and ‘upanishad’ therefore, is ‘that which destroys ignorance’. Shankara (Adi Shankaracharya), the eighth- to ninth century philosopher and the greatest exponent of the Upanishads, suggests this meaning. However, the original meaning of the word, provided in early texts, is ‘secret doctrine’. Yet another meaning of Upanishad is ‘a connection’ or ‘equivalence’; thus, the texts discover and reveal the connections between different topics.

Vedic Literature

How do the Upanishads fit in with the rest of Vedic literature? ‘Veda’ comes from the Sanskrit root ‘vid’, to know, and the word implies ‘divine knowledge’. The main texts of Vedic literature are the four Vedic Samhitas, that is, the Rig Veda, Yajur Veda, Sama Veda and Atharva Veda, along with the Brahmanas, Aranyakas and Upanishads. All these texts are said to be ‘shruti’ or ‘heard’, and are believed to be directly revealed from a divine source. These four categories of texts are broadly divided into two parts, the first consisting of the Samhitas, and the second of the rest. These texts are interrelated, yet different. Even the four Samhitas differ. The Rig Veda is the earliest text, usually dated between 1500 and 1000 BCE, though it could be earlier.”

The 108 Upanishads is a thoroughly researched primer on the 108 Upanishads, philosophical treatises that form a part of the Vedas, the revered Hindu texts.

 

Start 2019 Right with These Business Books

Posted on by Penguin India

Nothing says a fresh start like the New Year. Whether your is business is booming, could do with a little push, or is yet to take off, we’ve got books that are sure to pique your interest.

Take a look at our business bookshelf for the month, and tell us which book you’re going to pick up first!

Get Better at Getting Better

To achieve extraordinary success, you need something other than core capabilities like analytical skills, people skills, conceptual and intuitive skills, hard work and hunger for success. Chandramouli Venkatesan identifies this as developing the capability to succeed and continuously improve that capability. He calls this the Get Better Model, or GBM-your model to continuously improve how good you are.

 

The Age of Awakening

The Age of Awakening tells India’s economic story since the country gained independence. It unfolds a tale of titanic figures, colossal failures, triumphant breakthroughs and great moral shortcomings. Weaving together vivid history and economic analysis, this book makes for a gripping narrative.

 

Game India

The book aims to unearth India’s strategic advantages; explore what has been done (or not done) to exploit them; what potential they hold out for people; and how they could redefine the game for this country.

Very well-researched, backed by personal anecdotes and industry lore which Bhaskar has been privy to for many years, Game India is essential reading for every Indian looking ahead.

Seven Examples From ‘Crash’ In Which Your Emotional Competence Affects Your Work Life

Posted on by Penguin India

While many people talk about the path to the top of organizations, very few are honest about how difficult it is to stay at that position. Filled with anecdotes, analysis of various situations CEOs may find themselves in and unconventional advice to help them, Crash: Lessons from the Entry and Exit of CEOs is for veteran leaders as well as for those who aspire to start their own ventures.

Here are some crucial examples from the book that you should make note of –

“It is a common trap for us to overestimate our strengths and to underestimate our weaknesses. This is the root cause of indignation on being passed over for a promotion, and it also triggers the perception that the boss is giving you less attention when compared to a colleague. It is a universal bonsai trap. Associated with this basic trap are a number of other traps: arrogance, insensitivity, envy and many more. A deep sense of self-realization is required to appreciate your weaknesses. You learn about your behavioural bonsai traps (when a person ceases to grow mentally and experientially) all by yourself. Nobody tells you about them.”

∼

“Unfortunately successful and ambitious business leaders feel convinced that they have no competent successor. Even if they don’t feel so, sycophants persuade them to believe it. Management academics point out that this is the result of that ambitious leader’s failure. To quote two academics, James Champy and Nitin Nohria, ‘To feel threatened by one’s successor is a futile but remarkably common reaction to inevitable departure.’”

∼

“To be successful, a CEO requires cognitive intelligence as well as an intuitive emotional intelligence—which means he or she must have a responsive sense of empathy for the views of various stakeholders. In my experience, once a person gets into a leadership role, there are forces that cause his or her emotional intelligence or sense of empathy to shrink. This poses the real and hidden challenge.”

∼

“Leaders tend to be self-assured, they need to be so if they have to lead their people, and the line that divides self-assuredness and overconfidence is a thin one. The leader’s confidence can be rooted in logic and data, or it can be rooted in feelings and emotions. If his/her confidence is based on the best-available data, then the leader comes across as authentic. It is a positive form of self-confidence. If the leader’s confidence is not data-based, the leader may seem impetuous or someone who is not rooted in reality.”

∼

“Differences will always come up in an organization. If the boss has consulted many and taken a different course of action than the one suggested by a person, he is likely to feel ignored. Ignoring some colleagues is unavoidable when the boss has to choose from differing viewpoints. Though this might lead to differences, leaders should not let them linger or persist. They should patch up so that the difference is an anecdote of history, much like tiffs between couples.”

∼

“Any rising leader is prone to the dangers of hubris, ego and loss of emotional intelligence. This danger applies not only to CEOs, but also to chairmen and independent directors. These dangers are called derailers.Everybody has his or her set of derailers, distinctive and peculiarly individual. Our individual derailers are visible day in and day out to colleagues, observers and those close to the leader, but not to the leader. In fact, more often than not, the person might not be aware of the fact that the derailers exist in his or her personality and manifest in his or her behaviour; for example, egotism, excessive pride, arrogance, shifting the blame, poor communication skills and so on.”

∼

“The ‘software of skills’ refers to the skills required to be effective. It’s just not the operating leader who undergoes brain damage but also the chairman and the board members, who too occupy important positions of power, who experience it. The fault may be with the candidate or the system in which he or she is operating. The cracks widen and develop a shape and size of their own. In many cases, the relationship between the newly appointed leader and the system in which he operates—directors, colleagues, shareholders—suffers irreparable tears, resulting in a parting of ways.”

 

In Crash: Lessons from the Entry and Exit of CEOs , the author shows that great leaders continue to excel not just because of their skills and intelligence but also by connecting with others using emotional competencies like empathy and self-awareness.

 

 

 

Wisdom from The Puranas

Posted on by Penguin India

The word ‘purana’ means old, ancient. The Puranas are old texts, usually referred to in conjunction with Itihasa (the Ramayana and the Mahabharata).The  corpus of the Puranas is immense, in scope, as well as in length. Taken together, the eighteen Puranas are four times the size of the Mahabharata.

From Bibek Debroy’s translated volumes of the Bhagavata Purana, we extract the following quotes of wisdom.

A seamless blend of fable and philosophy, the Bhagavata Purana is perhaps the most revered text in the Vaishnava tradition.

New Year, New Books!

Posted on by Penguin India

What better way to start the new year than with some new books? This year, let’s all aspire to read more and encourage others to, too! Penguin presents a list of new books for the month of January. Which one of these will you start your year with?

Democracy on the Road

On the eve of a landmark general election, Ruchir Sharma offers an unrivalled portrait of how India and its democracy work, drawn from his two decades on the road chasing election campaigns across every major state, travelling the equivalent of a lap around the earth.

 

Jallianwala Bagh: An Empire of Fear and the Making of the Amritsar Massacre

The Amritsar Massacre of 1919 was a seminal moment in the history of the Indo-British encounter, and it had a profound impact on the colonial relationship between the two countries. In this dramatic telling, which takes the perspectives of ordinary people into account, the event and its aftermath are strikingly detailed.

 

Ganga: The Many Pasts of a River

The Ganga enjoys a special place in the hearts of millions. In this unprecedented work, historian Sudipta Sen tells the fascinating story of the world’s third-largest river from prehistoric times to the present. Seamlessly weaving together geography, ecology and religious history, this lavishly illustrated volume paints a remarkable portrait of India’s most sacred and beloved river.

 

The Begum: A Portrait of Ra’ana Liaquat Ali Khan, Pakistan’s Pioneering First Lady

Begum Ra’ana Liaquat Ali Khan was the wife of Pakistan’s first prime minister. Three religions-Hinduism, Christianity and Islam-had an immense impact on her life, and she participated actively in all the major movements of her time-the freedom struggle, the Pakistani movement and the fight for women’s empowerment. She occasionally met with opposition, but she never gave up. It is this spirit that The Begum captures.

 

Kaifiyat: Verses on Women and Love

Kaifi Azmi’s literary legacy remains a bright star in the firmament of Urdu poetry. His poetic temperament-ranging from timeless lyrics in films like Kagaz Ke Phool to soaring revolutionary verses that denounced tyranny-seamlessly combined the radical and the progressive with the lyrical and the romantic.

 

Little book of Comfort

”So I went out into the night, walked up the hill, discovered new things about the night and myself, and came home refreshed. For just as the night has the moon and the stars, so the darkness of the soul can be lit up by small fireflies – such as these calm and comforting thoughts that I have jotted down for you…’ Ruskin Bond

 

Living Hell

All Nadeem Sayed Khatib, aka Nadeem Chipkali, wants to do is stay in his apartment all day, watch some TV and ignore his mounting worries. He is not in the best shape, cash-wise and otherwise, but let’s be honest: people seriously have it out for him. Sometimes, dangerous people. Set against the backdrop of a low-life Bombay that comes alive at night, Living Hell is a fast-paced noir murder mystery with dark humour and an accidental hero.

 

The Great March of Democracy: Seven Decades of India’s Elections

This book celebrates seven decades of India’s vibrant democracy and the Election Commission’s excellence and rigour, with a remarkable collection of essays written by those who have studied India’s unique experiment in electoral democracy, as well as analysts, politicians, social workers, activists, businesspersons and public servants.

 

Sitayana

Majmudar tells the story of one of the world’s most popular epics through multiple perspectives, presented in rapid sequence-from Hanuman and Ravana, down to even the squirrel helping Rama’s army build the bridge.
However, above all, Majmudar focuses on the fierce resistance of Sita, letting us hear her voice as we have never heard it before.

 

Get Better at Getting Better

To achieve extraordinary success, you need something other than core capabilities like analytical skills, people skills, conceptual and intuitive skills, hard work and hunger for success. Chandramouli Venkatesan identifies this as developing the capability to succeed and continuously improve that capability. He calls this the Get Better Model, or GBM-your model to continuously improve how good you are.

 

The 108 Upanishads: An Introduction

This book is a thoroughly researched primer on the 108 Upanishads, philosophical treatises that form a part of the Vedas, the revered Hindu texts. These Upanishads contain the most crystallized bits of wisdom gleaned from Hinduism. Professor Dalal explains the concepts at the core of each Upanishad clearly and lucidly.

 

The Age of Awakening

The Age of Awakening tells India’s economic story since the country gained independence. It unfolds a tale of titanic figures, colossal failures, triumphant breakthroughs and great moral shortcomings. Weaving together vivid history and economic analysis, this book makes for a gripping narrative.

 

Bhagwaan ke Pakwaan

The rice beer bellies of a Christian village in Meghalaya; food fed to departed Zoroastrian souls; a Kolkata-based Jewish community in decline; Tibetan monks who first serve Preta, the hungry ghost; and fifty-six-course feasts of the Jagannath temple-these are the stories in Bhagwan Ke Pakwaan (or, food of the gods), a cookbook-cum-travelogue exploring the connection between food and faith through the communities of India. There are legends and lore, angsty perspectives, tangential anecdotes, a couple of life lessons and a whole lot of food.

In the City a Mirror Wandering

Unfolding over the course of a single day, Ashk’s sweeping sequel to Falling Wallsexplores the inner struggles of Chetan, an aspiring young writer, as he roams the labyrinthine streets of 1930s’ Jalandhar, haunted by his thwarted ambitions but intent on fulfilling his dreams. Intensely poignant and vividly evocative, In the City a Mirror Wandering is an exploration of not only a dynamic, bustling city but also the rich tapestry of human emotion that consumes us all.

 

Sweet Shop

Arising from visits to sweet shops in the by-lanes of Calcutta, these poems brim with the excitement of what it means to discover, marvel at, and taste the universe. As the first line of the book states, ‘The whole universe is here’. Showcasing the edible, the intimate, and the singular, this collection, like the sweet-shop shelf, is characterized by ‘an unnoticed balance of gravity and play’.

 

 

Belt and Road: A Chinese World Order

China’s Belt and Road strategy is acknowledged to be the most ambitious geopolitical initiative of the age. Bruno Macaes traces this extraordinary initiative’s history, highlighting its achievements to date and its staggering complexity. He asks whether Belt and Road is about more than power projection and profit. Will it herald a new set of universal political values, to rival those of the West? Is it, in fact, the story of the century?

 

Doab Dil

Employing a philosopher’s mind and an artist’s eye, Banerjee takes us to still places in a moving world, the place where two rivers (do ab) meet and forests write themselves into history.

Everything You Need to Know About Conducting a Sting Operation : The Anatomy of a Sting

Posted on by Penguin India

Bhupen Patel has conducted many undercover operations over the course of his career. He’s exposed all sorts of rackets, from asylums admitting patients without proper medical examinations to discovering an illegal network of agents that arrange ‘temporary’ wives for Arab men looking to have a short fling.

Here are a few helpful lessons from The Anatomy of a Sting to give you a better insight!

A Sting is a Thorough Investigation

“A sting operation is nothing less than a police investigation. The difference is that reporters learn on the job without any specific training. Also, we rarely have backup and definitely don’t have arms for self-defence.”

∼

Importance of a Spy Camera

“One can buy spy cameras for Rs 1500–2000, hidden in buttons, spectacles, watches, ties, etc. The ‘Made in China’ cameras can easily pull off three or four assignments without any glitches.”

∼

It’s Essential to Cross-Check Every Detail

“I decided to do some groundwork first and stepped out to check if the address provided in the classified ad was legitimate. Since I would be accompanied by a female colleague and it would just be the two of us, it was important to have an idea of the surroundings, the number of people there and the escape routes.”

∼

Be Prepared for the Worst-case Scenario

“As a team, it was important for Ruhi and me to be on the same page. All our research was in place but we had to be prepared for the worst. It was important that we discussed the characters we were about to play—the names, backgrounds, families, experiences, qualifications, likes and dislikes, all of it.“

∼

Form a Personal Equation

“On the final day of the operation, there was not much to do. By now, the guards and I were friendly enough to greet each other with a smile and even exchange a word or two. Their dialect clearly revealed that they belonged to the remote districts of Maharashtra. It is always easiest and most helpful to strike up a conversation if you show interest in their hometown.“

The Anatomy of A Sting recounts in detail some of Bhupen’s most dramatic and hard-hitting operations.

 

 

 

 

 

Kannur: Inside India's Bloodiest Revenge Politics by Ullekh N.P. – An Excerpt

Posted on by Penguin India

Kannur, a sleepy coastal district in the scenic south Indian state of Kerala, has metamorphosed into a hotbed of political bloodshed in the past few decades. Even as India heaves into the age of technology and economic growth, the town has been making it to the national news for horrific crimes and brutal murders with sickening regularity. Ullekh N.P.’s latest book, Kannur: Inside India’s Bloodiest Revenge Politics draws a modern-day graph that charts out the reasons, motivations and the local lore behind the turmoil. 
As Sumantra Bose, Professor of international and comparative politics, London School of Economics and Political Science, mentions in his foreword for the book, “Ullekh N.P. is uniquely placed to write this chronicle of Kannur, both as a native of the place and as the son of the late Marxist leader Pattiam Gopalan. Being an ‘insider’— and a politically connected insider…Ullekh tells the story of unending horror with deadpan factuality, tinged with compassion in his latest book, Kannur: Inside India’s Bloodiest Revenge Politics.”
Let’s read an excerpt from the book-
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The news that hits headlines from Kannur these days is mostly about its law-and-order situation. TV scrolls announce items such as these with great frequency: ‘One killed in Muslim League–CPI(M) clashes’; ‘Two hurt in RSS–CPI(M) fracas’; ‘CPI(M) man killed, RSS men nabbed’; ‘RSS youth hacked, 7 CPI(M) men held’; ‘PFI [Popular Front of India] activists attacked’; ‘District Collector calls all-party peace meeting’, and so on.
The crime bureau statistics, as of November 2016, show that forty-five CPI(M) activists, forty-four BJP–RSS workers, fifteen Congressmen and four Muslim League followers have been killed since 1991 in Kannur, besides a few other murders of the cadres of parties such as the PFI. Between November 2000 and 2016, the number of party workers killed in Kannur was thirty-one from the RSS and BJP, and thirty from the CPI(M), according to data obtained from the police by the independent news website 101reporters.com through a right-to-information request. While the RSS leaders claim that the CPI(M) are now doing to them what the Congress had done to the communists in the past, the CPI(M) leaders contest it, reeling off stats, and claiming that they have been forced to resist because the Hindu nationalists are hoping to effect a religious polarization through the politics of violence in order to reap electoral gains that have eluded them for long.
The latest numbers do not endorse the RSS’s claims of being a victim in this Left stronghold. Regardless, the Sangh has actively pursued a campaign, spiffily titled Redtrocity(short for Red Atrocity, referring to the reported high-handedness by the Marxists), as a counterweight to the series of accusations hurled against it for allegedly sowing religious hatred, perpetuating violence against non-conformists, triggering riots and deliberately aiding a mission to heighten communal hostilities.
Police records show that the RSS and the BJP have been at loggerheads not with the CPI(M)alone, but also with other parties, including the PFI and the Congress. Yet, equally laughable is the contention by the CPI(M) that it is portrayed as a villain without reason because it has only been engaging in acts of resistance and seldom in violent aggression.
Recent data show that from 1972 to December 2017, of  the 200 who died in political violence in Kannur district—which accounted for the highest number of political crimes
in the state during the period, far ahead of other districts—seventy-eight were from the CPI(M), sixty-eight from the RSS–BJP, thirty-six from the Congress, eight from the Indian
Union Muslim League (IUML), two each from the CPI and the National Development Front (now called the PFI), while the rest were from other parties. Notably, of the total 193 political murder cases that took place in Kannur during the period, 112 of the accused were from the Sangh Parivar and 110 from the CPI(M).
The RSS–BJP argue that the escalation of hostilities started with the killing of an RSS worker on 28 April 1969, but the Marxists aver that the death was a denouement to a series of clashes stemming from the RSS’s support to a beedi baron who refused his workers a justified hike in salary and shut his business before floating two new companies. Media reports often show that more communist workers have died in Kannur than those belonging to any other party. The greatest irony in the RSS–CPI(M) fights is that the pro-Hindu Sangh Parivar has had no qualms about targeting CPI(M)-dependent Hindus, while the Marxists, the much-touted saviours of the proletariat, vehemently, so the story goes, go after the working classes who happen to be aligned with the Hindu nationalists.
Along Payyambalam beach, not far from the grave of K.G. Marar, one of the RSS’s topmost leaders in the state, is a grave of a twenty-one-year old man. Too young to die, that’s what visitors to the place would say. Sachin Gopalan died from sword injuries in July 2012. Allegedly, he was hacked by members of the radical Islamist Campus Front, a feeder organization of the PFI against which the National Investigation Agency (NIA) has now sought a ban for its anti-India activities. Gopal died at a hospital in Mangalore where he had arrived after shifting from one hospital to another in Kannur for want of better facilities. A student of a technical institute in the district, he was attacked when he had gone to a school for political work.
In the darkness of a late windswept evening, standing alone in the forbidding graveyard at Payyambalam, one is filled with evocative visions from the region’s chequered past and a violent present caught in the vortex of vendetta politics.
When I studied in a boarding school in Thiruvananthapuram, my classmates looked down on my hometown as Kerala’s Naples, a thuggish backwater; but then the district had
contributed two chief ministers (and one more later) as well as several luminaries to the state’s cultural, social, professional and political spheres.
I also came to be known as someone from the ‘Bihar of Kerala’. Later, I invented a rather self-deprecating phrase of my own: ‘the Sicily of Kerala’, factoring in the local omertà-
like code the Italian region was once known for. Poking fun at oneself does make sense, as it’s an effort to tide over the mental fatigue that sets in on being judged as a violent people, who are puritanical and foolish. Deep within, however, it hurts like a migraine.
The waves keep breaking hard on the shore like smooth knives on raw flesh.
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