Book Review

A role model for wannabe winners

By

Bhawani Cheerath Rajagopalan

Go Kiss the World by Subroto Bagchi, Penguin Portfolio, 240pages, Rs 399

An alluring title for a book and a cover design that beckons; aren’t these two reasons inviting enough to pick up the book?  I would any day pick up an autobiography. And, Subroto Bagchi has not disappointed. The COO turned ‘Gardener’ of Mindtree Consulting, where he tends young professionals, has packed a lot of simple and straightforward everyday experiences with a sensitivity that tells us, ‘Yes, you can’.

The beginnings of this book lie in the inaugural address he made to the batch of 2004 at the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore. The ‘Other India’ is also the young India with aspirations, which really deserves the positive energy from this genre of writing, that of a professional whose career graph would be the envy of any newbie in the corporate world.

Readers, be warned, Bagchi makes it very clear, “I want to clarify that I did not struggle during my childhood. It was a life of simplicity, not struggle. My story is not one of deprivation and poverty. My life is about contentment, about the possibility that ordinary people can aim to do extraordinary things.”

Life’s journey here has everything that can inspire any aspirant from the remote rural areas of our country to take positive strides into the world of multinational corporations and IT majors. Beginning with Patnagarh in the Bolangir district of Orissa to Rayaguda and Nabarangpur, Bagchi paints a picture of the unspoilt, uncorrupted countryside.  What is the childhood and growing years you see? ‘Half our time atop trees, building dams across rivulets that formed as easily as they vanished, spent hours following ants to find out where they ultimately went and their eternal busyness remains a fascination for me even today, … the government jeep with its portable projector and screen.’

Brick by brick, the author reconstructs a way of life that is fast receding from our cumulative memories. For the generation that is more in the Tofflerian ‘use and dispose’ mode, the descriptions of the family’s frequent shifts from one town to another and how the mother would make a hearth with three bricks to start cooking the meal, are really examples of coping with change and taking it in the stride.

The chapters are short and each chapter carries the imprint of a person or event that has been carried all along by the author.  One does not have to read tomes to understand the dynamics of a marketplace, nor the drift of ‘diminishing utility’. As the youngest of four sons, young Subroto learns such things through example and explanations related to daily happenings coming from his elder brothers.

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 Since I do not have the patience to read the book , I am happy reading a nice review

jcmenon | June 27, 2010

 A detailed, incisive and interesting book review. Has kindled my interest to read the book.

Govindaraghavan S | June 27, 2010