Soul Curry for You and Me - An Empowering Philosophy that can Enrich Your Life

Author:       Amitabh Bachchan
Published:   2002
Publisher:    Popular Prakashan
Paperback: 128 pages
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Readers in India



This book is a compilation of more than 150 nuggets of knowledge and wisdom on a wide variety of subjects which Amitabh Bachchan -  the legend of Indian Cinema, used to utter in his captivating baritone voice at the beginning of every episode of  the TV show Kaun Banega Crorepati (KBC) in 2000-2001. 
 Initially I thought  these were actually written by a scriptwriter and all Amitabh was to do was to mouth them as he does in films.
But my doubts were dispelled when I read the preface of this book. Here Amitabh says " What I have written in this book is entirely my handiwork. I have expressed my own views, thoughts and opinions. I have penned it myself. It may be right or wrong, complicated or simple. But it is mine. I am happy".
Amitabh  is an a very good writer too having inherited the writing genes of Harvanshrai Bachchan his father who was a literary giant in Hindi literature. 


A good , simple and inspirational read !  Also read Amitabh's  blog at  http://bigb.bigadda.com/  for his daily musings.


Sample Quotes:

• Sometimes loosing can be profitable too. It is so when we shake off our egos, ignorance, fear of criticism, dullness, jealousy and anger.
• Appreciate the smiles of small children, notice only the good points of others. Your life will always be full of sweetness, peace and satisfaction.
• To make others happy we need to be happy ourselves.
• Forgiveness is the best gift you could give to your enemy and for a friend, gift a place in your heart.
• A vehicle called willpower has valor for wheels, sweat and blood for fuel, duty for engine and faith at the steering.
• Success comes to those who work hard. Those who wander along the beach find conches and shells. But those who dare to venture into the depth of the ocean discover precious pearls.
• Knowledge is like a well that will never dry up.
• In this world no man is so wealthy that he can live without laughter and smiles, and no man is so poor that he does not have the wealth of laughter and smiles.
• You can call two people a couple only when the two are combined to form one 'we'. When we shed our ego what remains behind is the 'us' factor.
• The road to success is a crooked and bumpy one - One wonders,  was this road also created by a government contractor ?

I Saved the best one for the last !

• If a child asks for a chocolate to do something, then he will definitely become a government employee.
• If the child eats the chocolate but refuses to do work, turns around and causes trouble for you, he is bound to enroll in the police force.
• If  the child complicates the matter for which he has taken the chocolate, he will become a lawyer.
• If a child asks you for a chocolate, grabs money from your pocket and yet delays performing the task, he will definitely become a political leader of the nation.
• If the child eats the chocolate in front of you and yet insists that he has not eaten the chocolate, he will definitely become not just a political leader, but a minister as well !

Buy.Ology - How Everything We Believe About Why We Buy Is Wrong

Author:       Martin Lindstrom
Published:   2009
Publisher:    Random House Business Books
Paperback: 256 pages
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The sales figures are indicators of the effectiveness of an advertising campaign or a brand. But they don't tell us why they are effective. Market surveys are also not reliable in answering this question since the buyer responses and their buying patterns don't match. The terabytes of consumer demographics and buying pattern data collected  and mined using sophisticated software at the best will spew out correlations like for e.g. a young man aged between 30 and 35, driving a SUV and living in a suburb is twice likely to prefer brand X over brand Y. This may help in identifying a target market but  the question what is it that triggers the buying decision remains unanswered.


Neuromarketing is an emerging field where sophisticated techniques like fMRI and EEG are used to study the responses of the brain cells to the marketing stimuli. This will help us to learn why a buyer bought what he bought and what part of the brain told him to take that decision.  Thus neuromarketing may help in creation of Purple Cow (remarkable) products and services and advertisements that will entice the buyers and make money for the producers.


This book describes  the author's pioneering three‐year, $7 million dollar neuromarketing study conducted on over 2000 people from around the world using fMRI and EEG. The results of this study reveals  why so much of what we thought we knew about why we buy is wrong. It shatters several advertising myths and unearths some interesting facts. 


A very interesting read with lots of fascinating examples !
Visit the author's website for more stuff.


Key Takeaways:

• Product placements in TV shows and movies will be effective only if they form an integral part of the storyline.
• Everything we observe (or read about) someone else (especially a celebrity)  buying or using, we want to imitate as well. This is due to mirror neurons firing up in our brain.
• Purchasing decisions are driven by dopamine one of the chemicals in brain which produces short spurts of seductive pleasure sensation.
• Subliminal advertising which are designed to appeal to our dreams, fears, wants and desires, are more effective as compared to logo or brand images in stimulating our interest in a product or compelling us to buy. 
• Rituals, superstitions and religion can exert a potent influence on how and what we buy.
• Impulse buying is in reality built on a lifetime of associations - some positive, some negative - that we are not consciously aware of. When we make an instinctive decision about what to buy our brain summons and scans incredible amount of memories, facts and emotions and squeezes them  into a rapid response (called somatic marker) that dictates what you put inside your shopping cart.
• Visual images are far more effective and more memorable when they are coupled with another sense - like sound or smell. (Sensory Branding)
• Sex, beauty and celebrities do not necessarily sell products since they hijack the consumer's attention away  from the informative content in the advertisements.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Author:        Stieg Larsson

Translator:   Reg Keeland
Published:   2008
Publisher:   Maclehose Press 

Paperback: 554 pages
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Readers in India

This is the first book in the Millennium Trilogy . The other two books are "The Girl who Played with Fire" and "The Girl who Kicked the Hornets' Nest". All the three books are translations from Swedish and have been in Amazons' Top 100 Bestseller lists for several months.
I happened to read the second book in this trilogy "The Girl who Played with Fire" first and had posted my summary in this blog a couple of months ago. 
See http://bookwormsrecos.blogspot.com/2010/10/girl-who-played-with-fire.html.
I liked this book better. It is  gripping and quite a page-turner  till the main mystery regarding a missing woman Harriet Vanger is solved by the main characters Blomkvist and Salander. However after that it drags on for another 100 pages dealing with Wennerstorm affair, in which Blomkvist was implicated in the beginning of the book. Here I lost interest.
Though a fairly good book for light reading and passing time, it has hardly any re-read value and certainly not worth buying in my opinion. However this should not discourage you to click the Buy Button in this post (so that I get my commission from Flipkart) ! Besides Opinions differ !
But I do plan to borrow  the final book (.....Hornets' Nest) in the trilogy  from a library and read it sometime later this year. 
And if you plan to read the complete trilogy, please start with this book. You will be in a better position to understand and appreciate its sequels.

Periya Puranam - The Story of 63 Saivite Saints

Author:        Saint Sekkizhar
Translator:    R. Rangachari
Published:    2008
Publisher:    Sri Ramanasramam
Paperback: 358 Pages
Readers in India:



This book is a translation of the original Tamil compilation of the lives of sixty three Saivite Saints, written in 12th century by Saint Sekkizhar.


Like Alwars (Saints who worshipped  Lord Vishnu) these saints called Nayanars were deeply immersed in their devotion for Lord Shiva . The lives of more prominent among them - Sundarar, Kannappa, Appar, Sambandhar- are described at length.


Sometime in 1895 a 16 year old boy happened to read the original Tamil version of this book. This was one of the first religious books he read. It had a tremendous impact on him. A great sense of admiration, awe, reverence and a strong desire to emulate these saints engulfed him. Later this boy went on to become one of the most revered modern-day saints. He was Sri Ramana Maharshi.


This book is a masterpiece in Tamil literature, unfortunately I don't know enough Tamil to enjoy it in original. However in my view the translator R.Rangachari has done an excellent job. You don't get an impression that you are reading a translation. I liked the picturesque descriptions of the towns ( names of  most of them are tongue twisters !)  in this book. 
For e.g.
"The glorious town of Kadavoor, high walled,......is situated in the country of Ponni (Chozha region), famed for its plentiful waters and fertility. The fields abounded in crops of red rice; on the bunds were heaped pearls yielded by conches; in the neighborhood were sacrificial grounds; water lilies bloomed profusely in the water held by dams; forests of arecapalms rose to the clouds;....................She buffaloes with high and long horns wallowed in the water, and dripped sweet milk on the lotus flowers when their teats were hit by flashing fish; clouds which rested in a corner of the sky-kissing mansions poured their water on the sacrificial oblations, raising a fragrant smoke"


Highly recommended read for devout people, however it will be of great interest to others who are interested in good literature and vivid stories.


A different translation of Periya Puranam can be read online at http://www.shaivam.org/periintr.html


A Trivia: The Kannada film icon Dr. Rajkumar portrayed Kannappa Nayanar (one of the saints whose story appears in Periapuranam) in Bedara Kannappa . This marked his film debut in 1954. He also won the National Film Award for Best Actor.

Purple Cow - Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable

Author:       Seth Godin
Published:   2002
Publisher:    Penguin Group
Hardcover: 144 pages




More than a year after being disappointed with the author Seth Godin's book Tribes (See my review of this book in an earlier post ), I decided to give his books another try as I picked up and borrowed  this book Purple Cow , from the library since it seemed interesting in the first browse.
Well in my view this is a much better book than Tribes though they deal with different themes. This one is about niche marketing, whereas Tribes is  about network leadership.


Seth Godin offers rather a common sense insight into niche marketing in a very simple and conversational style. Nothing new or profound here. It may have been so when this book was first published in 2002, though I am not sure about it.


In this book also he sounds rather repetitive and keeps flogging the same horse, but the tone is less evangelistic, more subtle and thereby more tolerable as compared to his Tribes (which is comparatively his more recent book. Deteriorating Quality  over the years ??/!!)


A plus point of this book is this. Nearly 20 case studies and examples drawn from more than 250 brands/companies packed in this small book (less than 150 pages) to illustrate the Purple Cow Concept. 


Here is my take on Seth Godin's books, now having read two of them. 
They are OK for a quick, light read to pass time if you don't have anything better in hands. 
I would rather Beg, Borrow or Steal his Books rather than buying them. But of course he has a considerable fan following which keeps him going.


I have also decided to pay him a tribute by posting this blog in Purple Color Font in Bold !


Purple Cow Concept - Key Points 

• The conventional marketing wisdom is to play safe by creating ordinary products (or services) and advertise to the masses. However these are the days of information-overload and plethora of choices.

• Your prospects are too busy to pay attention to mass advertisements. They have too many options, but there is less and less time to understand them and go out of way to spread the word.

• Therefore your product or service must be truly exceptional, remarkable and unusual like a mythical Purple Cow which will stand out among the mundane brown & white colored cows. Only then it will garner enough attention, spread through word of mouth and bring in profits.

• Purple Cow approach is to create remarkable products by building marketing element into its creation process vs the traditional approach of add-on marketing after an average product has been created.

• Such a remarkable product should be created first for a small under-served niche market in which there exist an otaku (an overwhelming desire that gets someone to go out of way to try out new things that interest them). It will be much easier to sell something that people are already in the mood to buy.

• You need to discover the limits that make the product remarkable. Try to be the cheapest/costliest, the fastest/ slowest, biggest/smallest (in other words the most…) in a given market. Don’t play safe. Safe is Boring & Risky in long term.

• Purple Cow products (i.e Remarkable products) are created by the ones who can get inside the heads of the people who do care deeply about this product and making them something they will love and want to share.

• The product you design should be remarkable enough to attract the early adopters – but also be  flexible enough and attractive enough for these adopters to easily spread the idea to the majority.

• Differentiate your customers. Find the group that is most profitable. Find the group that is most likely to sneeze (spread the word). Figure out how to develop/advertise/reward either group. Ignore the rest.

• Your ads (and your products!) should not cater to the masses. Your ads (and your products) should cater to the customers you would choose if you could choose your customers. Your slogan or positioning statement must be concise, true, consistent and worth passing on.

• Get permission from people you impressed the first time to alert them next time when you create another Purple Cow product or service for them.

• Once you create a Purple Cow, milk the Cow for everything it’s worth. Figure out how to extend it and profit from it for as long as possible. Once the Purple Cow evolves into a Safe and run-of-the-mill product REINVEST! Launch another Purple Cow (to the same audience). Assume that what was remarkable last time won’t be remarkable this time. Build a discipline of repeatedly launching products, watching, measuring, learning and doing it again.

• The Purple Cow is just part of the product lifecycle. You can’t live it all the time (too risky, too expensive, too tiring), but when you need to grow or need to introduce something new, it is your best shot.

• You don’t need passion to create a Purple Cow. Nor do you need an awful lot of creativity. What you need is the insight to realize that you have no other choice but to grow your business or launch your product with Purple Cow thinking.

A Discipline for Software Engineering

Author:      Watts S. Humphrey

Published:   1995

Publisher:    Pearson Education, Inc.

Paperback: 816 Pages

Readers in India:

The author Watts Humphrey needs no introduction to the software engineering community. He was a real "process innovator" whose pioneering work led to the development of the widely known and implemented Capability Maturity Model (CMM/ CMMI). While this model helped in instilling some discipline to the chaotic way of developing software  which existed in the organizations, Watts Humphrey believed in catching the software engineers young in their schools itself  and  teach them a disciplined  way of developing software.

Thus Personal Software Process (PSP) was born and this book is a complete guide to this process.

In Watts Humphrey's own words in the preface to this book:

"The principal goal of this book is to guide you in developing personal software engineering skills that you will need for large-scale software work. You will learn how to make accurate plans, how to estimate the accuracy of these plans, and how to track your performance against them. You will use defect management, design and code reviews, design templates and process analysis. You will do this with a defined and measured personal software process. These measurement and analysis disciplines will then help you to evaluate your performance, to understand your strengths, and to see where you should try to improve. From all of this you will develop the tools to continue your personal improvement throughout your professional career"

PSP is taught in this book through a series of 10 programming exercises, requiring progressively higher levels of process discipline. All the required forms, templates,checklists, process scripts  for this purpose are made available in the appendices (which forms almost 40 % of the book's bulk !).

This book is almost a text book and definitely not for light reading. At the same time it is not too difficult to grasp for any software engineer.

In my view this book should form a mandatory part of  any software engineering curriculum. 

A must read for all software engineers and proponents of Agile  too (since I could sense the principles of  agile development throughout the process) !

However it  needs to be revisited and overhauled to fit  the current scenario of software development (this book was written 1995 !). It requires too much of a discipline which while is nice to have is rather difficult to inculcate for e.g. 

a) the recommended practice of reviewing the code before compiling (Temptation to compile first is impossible to curb !).

b) recording time to the accuracy of 1 minute (Going back to Time and Motion studies of Taylorian era ! In my view an accuracy of  5-15 minutes is quite acceptable. )

c) rigorous statistical analysis (Good to do; but a software engineer should focus more on the requirements, architecture, implementation. Statistical analysis can be delegated to a specialist or to an appropriate tool)

But all said and done hats off to Watts Humphrey for such a pioneering work. 

May his soul rest in peace.

(He passed away this year (2010) in October).

The Divine World of the Alvars

Author: Pravrajika Shuddhatmamata (Cecile Guenther)

Published: 2003

Publisher: The Ramakrishna Mission Institute of Culture, Kolkata

Paperback:  128 Pages

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Between sixth and ninth centuries there lived in South India ,Vaishnava saints known as Alvars. They were well known for their deep devotion and ecstatic love towards the God Vishnu and composed several songs expressing the same. These songs are still sung as an integral part of the prayers and worship in many Vaishnavite homes.  Andal's composition Thiruppavai is one such example.

This book  consists of  twelve short, well-researched and well-written biographies of  Poygai-Alvar, Pudatt-Alvar, Pey-Alvar, Tirumalisai Alvar, Nammalvar, Madhurakavi Alvar, Periyalvar, Andal, Tiruppan Alvar, Tondaraippodi Alvar, Kulasekhara Alvar and Tirumangai Alvar.

It also has extracts from their compositions which very well convey  the essence of their devotional outpourings.

A good read for those interested in spiritual/ religious literature.