I am one of those species who can’t stay without printed matter. I invariably need a book to give me company- whether to act as a lullaby for my daily sleep, travel through the myriad Indian road stretches or survive the pitfall events of life. Did I tell you how reading Calvin-Hobbes for the entire night of India’s defeat to Sri-Lanka at the ongoing Cricket World cup actually made me smile and be happy? Maybe all of you need to try that sometimes.

Suddenly the selection of books from a best seller list has become a tad so simple and straight forward. . I had always been ad advocate of maintaining my distance from all these self help books whole claims transcend from how to improve one’s will power to how to make friends and more ludicrously how to become a millionaire. I always thought of them as a convenient Uncle Sam ploy of making money and taking over your life.
These days whichever book shop I go to, invariably there are certain of these self-help books which I avoid with panache normally reserved for rabied dogs or nagging Mother-in-laws. Not surprisingly the trend from the west has been suitably aped by not so smart Indians. Right from any of the malls to the books being sold over the pavements all over the city, self help books actually look like the most sought-after ones. I dislike them so much, I call them ‘Selfies’ (don’t bother if it rhymes too much with thinking for yourself).

All these books start with a simple anatomy where the Author claims to know me better than I do myself. He doesn’t only point out the deficiencies we have – whether in mental make up, attitude or our actions; but is also kind enough to offer us a ready-made solution to that. I just wonder why people do go for them. Maybe someone can really help us pointing out the stuff these books have, which we never realize in our daily life. Specially, in an Asiatic civilization our elders have been trying to drill that to us forever. In simple story telling sessions, our grandparents had given us the basis for all these thought process marketed by the Selfies. God, if we just had been attentive enough to listen to those during our formative years, we needn’t have people actually telling us what to do and how to lead our lives.

But not so surprisingly, these books are quite a fad with the west-looking forward type like us; who all we do is rush from one moment of the life to another. We are so constrained with time that we seldom have time to think about ourselves any more. Maybe that’s where these books come in, and infact all they are doing is taking us farther and farther from our own selves. And however fast we, it always looks playing Catch-up. Its no wonder at sudden surges, we have a feeling of just going in with the flow without any real impact to the world around.

Anyway, as a smart man would say ‘All to himself’ and just get on.
Did I tell you a novel idea that I thought about to improve my life? I attended a corporate training session on Planning, prioritization and generally how to lead a happy life. But that’s a separate blog all together.