Minutes of the book club meet held on November 26, 2014

Any new club or an initiative has good response. Every one wish to become part of it. Same thing happened with our book club. Initially there were many people who showed interest in joining the club, but as the days passed, only the genuine readers remained, rest of them left the club or were just enquirers!!!. It is almost 2 years since new member had joined. I had been wanting to increase the number of members, however there was some hesitation from the members. They were comfortable with each other and they preferred smaller group. We are seven of us. However, I was finding a very set pattern among the group and hence was looking for new entrants. I got this opportunity when the company decided to launch the hobby club.  I decided to register our book club also. 

Lo and behold !!!do members ke saath club ka khata khul gaya....Ms Siji Thomas and Mr. Parikshit Chitnis joined the group (at least showed the interest of attending the meeting and managed to attend the meet). 

Siji is an author of the book "Seema in Mumbai". She discussed her book in the meeting. She is in the process of penning down one more book...Kudos Siji...

Parikshit apart from an avid reader, is also a blogger, writer, artist, environmentalist, squash player......anything left???

Karthik lately has been an active reviewer. Currently he is reviewing 3 books. He discussed Love, job or country by Rohit Agarwal.

Pratibha and Vignesh both were busy with work and could not get time to read any book.

Deepali discussed One life is not enough: an autobiography of Natwar Singh. The autobiography talks about his experiences in the political arena. 

Amit discussed Dilip Kumar: The substance and the shadow: an autobiography. 

Is there anything to be learned by reading people's biography?...Vignesh pointed out that the surrounding and the environment of that person matters...There are some biographies from whom we get inspired, on the other hand some biographies might give an insight of that person's life.

I read Half Girlfriend by Chetan Bhagat. The story revolves around a Riya who is from a rich background and Madhav is sportsman from Bihar. Madhav Boy falls in love with the Riya but she considers Madhav as her friend and not a lover... There is a twist in the story...Will not reveal...

Sumit discussed The power of your sub conscious mind by Dr. Joseph Murphy. After reading a couple os self help books, Sumit summed up the essence very succinctly. I asked him to pen it down for me. He did an excellent job.

His take on self help books: 

After reading about 5-6 selfhelp books in a row now every book appears to me having same ingredients but differently put in order.

All the books had same thing to offer like

• Be positive
• Overcome Fear
• Imagine your Goal
• Repeat positive affirmations for 21 days
• How to have confidence
• Overcome your Fear

Etc. etc. etc.

There is big contrast between the approach mentioned by these authors and our ancient Indian text and books such as Gita.

Gita says not to have desire for fruits of actions whereas these authors suggest to imagine fruits first.

After going through both of these technique I think the technique suggested by Gita is better because there is less harm to your physical and mental space when you don’t get what you wish for.

When you think of fruits of action then all of your energy is frittered away with emotions and instead of using your 100% potential you use only a percent of that.

When you desire for anything you get attached,

When you get attached and you don’t get things you desired you get angry,

When you get angry you lose your memory,

When you lose memory you lose power of discrimination,

And then you get destroyed.

Instead have a goal but never think of dream of fruits you may get after achieving goal but just work on the goal and work incessantly.

That’s what Swami Vivekananda calls the person as “Master”. To whom biggest task is same as the lowest task, who whether he is President of Country or Peon in office he will work with same dedication.

It’s the Slave who gets attached to the work and cries if he didn’t gets satisfied.

If we work according to Gita way whether you are successful or unsuccessful you are happy and that’s what in “Power of your Subconscious Mind” book says “Success is when you have peace”.

Summary-Techniques suggested in self help book works and you achieve great heights but the Master technique is where you have peace, happiness from very start of your work mentioned in “Gita” and yes it was itself delivered by God “Believe in That” J

Amit questioned what about non passionate people. What about people who doesn't wish to do anything in life. what about lazy people?

Parikshit responded:  

There are two kinds of people. One is pasisonate. other is non-passionate. Non passionate people are like dry leaves of a tree. they will live and die.

Passionate people are like flowers or fruits. They will also live and die, but will add something to someone..and if not anything..then atleast make the world beautiful.

.

Self- Help books mostly say that one must go out and act. 

I moved your cheese author, wrote a whole book without mentioning the word cheese and it was totally against self-help books. So in the end he says, stop reading self-help books, start acting.

Which is indeed true!!!

Lunch Sponsor: 

Sumit