The Small Voice

The best self-help book I have come across I have always maintained that if one has a choice of choosing only ONE self-help book in one's life, then they would have made a good choice if they read just this one book by Viktor Frankl , titled " Man's search for meaning " . Came across this book in Stephan Covey's seminal work,"7 Habits of highly effective people". Mr Covey's book will be the second best.    Why a book on this subject? Many friends express surprise for my liking of such a serious (even morbid, according to a few) book.  As it is, i have noticed that in India,the knowledge of the holocaust and understanding of its deep tragedy is often poor, especially with the common average person. Maybe, its because that our nation was busy in its own independence struggle at the time of the WW II and the events preceding it. Nevertheless, let me explain why this book is such a favorite of mine. The events of Auschwitz concentration camp ...

Mani was late today and had to run to catch his train. Stupid rains, he cursed, as he got into the First class compartment. All the seats were taken, but there was space to stand. Inside, he noticed a Maharashtrian family of four, husband-wife and two girls of aprox 3 & 5 yrs of age occupying one full seat. Experience told him the chance of getting a seat on their seat was higher and so he edged nearer to their seat, in the hope of grabbing it once the family got off. He got out his newspaper, folded it in one half and got busy in reading. A while later, when he looked up he noticed that the family had suddenly gotten very busy. The younger kid had vomited, and the poor father had his shirt & hands soiled badly. But he was silent & calm and said not one angry word nor stare at the already sheepish kid. The mother produced a newspaper to clean up the mess, then a bag of tissue papers, then four handkerchiefs, a water bottle and finally talcum powder and perfume. In...

Sri was not happy. In fact she was downright frustrated. And it wasn’t due to that dunderhead Mohan, her boyfriend. It was her job. She had always been a bright student and prided herself on her hard work and focus. Her teachers and friends always had expected great things of her. And she hadn’t disappointed them. After her MBA in Finance, she had bagged an attractive finance job with a boutique mid-size investment bank. Her paycheck was average, but her work profile was exciting. Most of her classmates had been jealous of her “luck” on landing a pure finance job right away, while most had to be satisfied with sales profiles. Anyway, that was a few years back. After a couple of job hops, Sri landed at a really good position with satisfactory money and a great culture place. The exposure was great and her boss was intelligent and well respected in the industry. Her Boss believed in giving only directional inputs to the team and then allowed them to run free. But of late, thi...