The Story of a Book

If there is one thing on which I spend lot of money, that is books.  Buying books (not necessarily reading) has always been my passion right from my college days.  I have a reasonably big collection of books (mostly non-fiction) which is stacked away in cupboards at home and in the book shelf in my office.  Frustrated by the space that my books were occupying at home, my wife once told me that I should not bring any more books home, till I finished reading all the books that were stacked in the cupboards. From then on, I started accumulating books in my office!

But, today, I am about to narrate an interesting incident about one of my books.  Recently I was driving to Bangalore and a senior professor of my Institute, Dr. P Venkataramana accompanied me in my car.  We kept discussing about many things during the journey and in the process he also mentioned about his experience of interacting with Prof. Pradeep Khandwala, the ex-director of IIMA and an expert in the field of Organisational Development.  He also told me that a book written by Prof. Khandwala on Organisational Designs was an international best seller few years ago and he had been searching for a copy of the same.  He could not get it anywhere.  When I was a research staff at IIMA during 1996-98, I had the opportunity of meeting Prof. Khandwala.  Mr. Ram Mohan Rao, who was a member of the research team of Prof. Khandwala was a close friend of mine at IIMA.  He had once gifted me a book, which I had kept among many other books in a corner of my shelf.  Since my area is not Organisational Development, I never read that book, except for reading first few pages. But, since it was a gift from my friend, I kept that book safely in my shelf.  When Prof. Venkataramana mentioned about the book by Prof. Khandwala, I was not sure whether he was referring to the same book, because I had almost forgotten the title of the book.

The next day, I searched for that particular book gifted by Mr. Ram Mohan Rao among my old books and found the same.  The title of the book is 'Organisational Designs for Excellence', written by Prof. Khandwala.  I was really thrilled to realise that this was the same book that my colleague was searching for.  Next morning, when I gave this book to Prof. Venkataramana, I could see a glow on his face and he immediately grabbed that book, promising that he would return it after reading.   I was wondering, this book remained in my cupboard for 17 long years without being read or even touched by anyone, finally to reach the hands of an individual who has been longing for years to read the same..!!! Can we say that every book is destined to be read by someone, some day?

A Search for you, Dr. Kalam

My dear readers, It has been a long time since I wrote something here.  It is also a sheer coincidence that this post is in memory of a legend (Dr. A P J Abdul Kalam), whereas my last post was also a tribute to another legend (Sri. Dakshinamurthy Swamy).  The news of Dr. Kalam's death came as a shock as nobody had even an iota of expectation.  I have had the good fortune of listening to him twice during his visit to my Institute.  He always exhibited high level of energy and enthusiasm.  He was constantly thinking of taking this country to greater heights and busy in preparing the next generation to take up this daunting task.  He occupied the highest office in the country and was honoured with the highest civilian award.  But none of this had any impact on him - he remained the same humble human being, caring for the people around him.  Today the print and electronic media is full of stories and instances to narrate the simplicity of Dr. Kalam, a man for whom, the saying "simple living and high thinking" was true till his last moment.  During the last three days, whenever I was free from my work, I was reading and thinking about Dr. Kalam, his life, his work and his contributions.  Based on all that I read and thought, I decided to jot down four qualities of him that made him stand apart.

1. Thirst for knowledge: He was always a student.  His curiosity to learn was not confined only to his area of expertise and research.  He believed in holistic learning.
2. Dedication and discipline: He exhibited complete dedication to whatever task he performed and was highly disciplined in executing the same.
3. Passion to disseminate knowledge: Mere acquisition of knowledge was not his aim, rather, he believed in passing it on to others.  Moreover, his interactions with children and youngsters is a classic example of how a highly learned man can come down to the level of the audience and explain things to them using simple examples and layman's language.
4. Compassion to humankind: He was always compassionate to the people around him.  He tried to understand the difficulties that people go through and tried to console them, even if he couldn't do anything more.

One can list many more qualities of Dr. Kalam.  But I feel, if we are able to inculcate at least the above qualities, we can go a long way in our life.  I believe that the above four qualities come naturally to a human being.  But, since we do not exercise enough care to nurture them on a continuous basis, these qualities remain subdued in us.  They surface once in a while in one form or the other, but are not sustained over long time.  Conscious and continuous efforts to practice these qualities is the only way to sustain them.  All these days we had Dr. Abdul Kalam as a living example, but now that he is gone, we need to keep searching for him within us.  When we start inculcating his qualities, when we start identifying ourselves with him and when we start exhibiting more and more dedication to our mission, discipline in our lives and compassion to others, Dr. Kalam would live through each one of us.  Let the search for him within us begin.