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A Happy Bookworm

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Archana Jahagirdar New Delhi
Last Updated : Feb 05 2013 | 3:21 AM IST
judges a book not just by its cover, and is richer by it.
 
When the world worked at a leisurely pace, reading as a pastime was apt for that era. You opened a book and lost yourself in the plot that unfolded over approximately 300 pages. This was the pre-BlackBerry age. Now, most people consider themselves lucky if they can read even just the front page of one newspaper.
 
Srinath Sridharan, head - lifestyle business, Wadhawan Holdings Private Limited (which has launched the fashion label Ed Hardy in India), always has more than one book handy to read. He says, "I have always been reading. You cannot live all the possible situations but reading fiction allows you to be in all those interesting situations." Biographies, says Sridharan, "help you learn quicker."
 
Sridharan's early reading years consisted mainly of prosaic stuff. He says, "Till high school, I had never read anything serious. My reading consisted of Sherlock Holmes, Perry Mason and the likes. Holmes lets you think out of the box. Holmes to me is also about tenacity." This despite living with well-read grandparents in Chennai. But that book-loving environment at home did sow the seed in Sridharan's mind. He says, "My grandpa would always be reading and the house was full of books." When Sridharan moved to Mumbai for college he started exploring real books.
 
If college was the inflection point, Sridharan's interest in biographies piqued when he started working. "Maybe by reading biographies I wanted to bridge the gap between boy to man, as I was encountering seniors in age and rank at work. A biography, any biography, gets through a concept in an interesting way." And he adds about books in general, "I wish I had time to read more." Travelling every month for work, spending quality time with his wife and little daughter keeps Sridharan away from books, though he says that it was his wife who got him the latest Harry Potter book. And adds, "There is always time for one's passion."
 
The Mahabharata remains Sridharan's all-time favourite book, and he describes it as "a book on strategy". When it comes to management and strategy, Sridharan also singles out Donald Trump's First Break All the Rules as worthy of a read.
 
Business, says Sridharan, isn't just about numbers, but success in that sphere is also predicated on the ability to understand culture. He cites the instance of a book written by an Italian that he picked up when he visited Italy, which gave him a better insight into the sensibilities of the people there. He says, "I try to pick up a book about the city whenever I travel. So this book gave many interesting tidbits about Italians. One thing I learned was that in Italy you don't order cappuccino after lunch. There's no logic to that but it makes you aware of these things."
 
The big gap in his reading list, according to Sridharan, is Indian writing. He says, "I wish I had more time to read Indian writers, though I don't like all these IITians who have taken to writing fiction. Maybe IIT graduates need to stick to investment banking or something."
 
Sridharan, like many other voracious readers, has two to three books on his bedside table at any given time. He says, "I read several books simultaneously. Every time I travel I pick up at least one book." Having just finished reading Ramachandra Guha's India After Gandhi, he says, "History contributes to your understanding of the present." But he laments that there aren't many writers who are able to present history in an engaging manner.
 
If purists are debating whether people are still reading, another debate that inflames passions is the mode and method of how the written word is now being presented with the help of technology. Says Sridharan, "I am not comfortable with ebooks." As an addendum to that he also confesses that he resists going to Amazon.com, the online books retailer, preferring the old-fashioned way of buying books by going to a bookstore and browsing for a while before picking up a book.
 
He explains this by saying, "Today there is an explosion of reading matter. There is so much to read that it's confusing, what to read and what not to read. Going to a bookstore makes it easier to choose." On one such sojourn he picked up a book on Vedic mathematics. He says, "That book was new learning for me."
 
Despite his keen interest in books, Sridharan refuses to be led by book reviews when he decides to pick up a book. He says, "I do try and read the literary reviews but I don't follow a particular critic."
 
Ask him if books will survive, and he says with sufficient passion, "Even though there is a multimedia explosion, books are here to stay." Words that need to be carved in stone, maybe?

 
 

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First Published: Feb 10 2008 | 12:00 AM IST

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