Review of ‘India Unbound’ by Gurcharan Das

In order to see the picture, it is said, one ought to get out of the frame. This possibly holds true for Gurcharan Das, the former CEO of Procter and Gamble India who spent many years in P&G’s worldwide HQ in Cincinnati, Ohio as part of their Strategic Planning group. The perspective he brings into [...]

Review of ‘Good to Great’ by Jim Collins

Jim Collins is a teacher and researcher based in Boulder, Colorado. Five years ago he coauthored an international bestseller called ‘Built To Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies’ with Jerry Porras. In it the authors identified 18 visionary companies and set out to determine what is special about them. All the companies were at least [...]

Review of movie ‘Mangal Pandey: The Rising’ by Ketan Mehta

My own Ketan Mehta favorite is the 1980 work Bhavni Bhavai. Mehta’s most celebrated work may have been the later opus, Mirch Masala (1986). Both of these had Naseer Shah, Om Puri and Smita Patil in key roles.
Now in 2005, as the maturity of a committed craftsman in Mehta reaches its pinnacle with The [...]

Review of ‘The Argumentative Indian’ by Amartya Sen

India’s only surviving Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen is a man of many parts. The great Indian litterateur and nationalist Rabindranath Tagore once wrote of Gandhi, ‘Great as he is as a politician, as an organizer, as a leader of men, as a moral reformer, he is greater than all these as a man, because none [...]

Review of ‘Out of My Comfort Zone’ by Steve Waugh

With the Ashes series around the corner and tickets for the traditional Boxing Day Test match already sold out here in Melbourne, I took to indulging some cricket nostalgia.
Many years ago, in the 1984-‘85 season to be precise, the University stadium in Trivandrum was witness to a historic moment in Kerala’s sporting history. The [...]