BOOKS
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Secrets of Success
30 Indian entrepreneurs reveal all! Indian business leaders like Narayana Murthy, Shahnaz Husain, Rahul Bajaj and Subhash Chandra among many others are well known public figures. They’re constantly in the news for their business ventures, strategies, enormous wealth and fabulous lifestyles. Unfortunately, most often these are the only things we read about these famous people. As a result, most of us don’t know the real personalities behind these enormous businesses… and it’s about time that we did. It would be nice to look beyond their public images and learn how these business stalwarts actually achieved their dreams. Was it luck, inheritance, chance or hard work? I am happy to say that there is finally a book which answers all these questions, Added Value by Peter Church. Peter Church is the founder and chairman of the AFG Venture Group, a corporate advisory firm and is Special Counsel to Blake Dawson, a leading Australian law firm. In his book Added Value, Peter Church has written about the lives, trials and tribulations of thirty Indian business leaders who have added value to their own businesses as well as to India as a nation. After a successful launch in India (New Delhi) in April this year, Added Value was launched in Melbourne on 17 May by Anita Nayar, the Consul General of India in Melbourne. The book launch was held at the Sidney Myer Asia Centre at the University of Melbourne and was organised by Asialink which is a non-academic centre of the
Peter Church, author of Added Value
University of Melbourne, set up to initiate and strengthen Australia-Asia engagements. The two-hour long event was very well organised and attended by quite a large number of people ranging from journalists to the author’s business associates. Before the presentations started, the guests had ample time to have drinks, mingle and network with other guests and purchase a copy of the book which was available for sale at the venue. It was nice to see that the event was a house-full given that it was a rather cold evening on a working day. Anita Nayar praised Peter Church’s book for steering away from clichéd business families like the Tatas and Ambanis and
instead broadening the spectrum to other business leaders each one of whom have excelled in their own fields. Another interesting fact that Ms. Nayar highlighted was that Peter Church had about an hour to interact with and interview most of the personalities in the book. This, in her own words was “a commendable feat of journalism”. I absolutely have to agree! When quizzed upon his choice of subject, the author explained that his work and career had led him to be involved with many countries of Asia, including India. Having read and heard about these interesting entrepreneurs, he wanted to see for himself just what it is that makes them tick. The life stories behind the millions...the real people behind the brands! That was the idea, and the rest as they say is history. In his presentation Peter Church talked briefly about some of the personalities in the book and how even though each person had a different business and background, the common thread that ran among them was “focus, determination, dedication and timing”. He read snippets from his book about a few of his subjects YK Hamied (Cipla), GVK Reddy (GVK Group), Kiran Mazumdar Shaw (Biocon), Captain CP Krishnan Nair (The Leela Palaces, Hotels & Resorts) and Captain GR Gopinath (Air Deccan/Kingfisher). Mr. Church kept his presentation brief, interesting and peppered with amusing incidents that happened whilst he was
Anita Nayar, Consul General of India (Melbourne)
researching the book. I for one can’t forget his description of the grandeur of Shahnaz Husain’s house in Delhi and how that very grandeur extended to her personality as her staff referred to her as “Princess Shahnaz”. The end of the presentation was followed by a Q&A session and guests could get copies of their books signed in person by Mr Church. It was a well spent Monday evening indeed, and guests left feeling enlightened and exhilarated that someone had taken such keen interest in Indian business leaders, talking about them through a medium that is likely to be positively received internationally. To procure your own copy of this inspirational book, go to the AFG Venture Group website at: http://www.afgventuregroup.com/global/ publications_addedvalueindia.php Alternatively, you can purchase the book from the Melbourne University bookshop by contacting – Andrew Cerchez, Office Administrator Tel: (03) 8344 6217, Mobile: 0422 996 401 Email: a.cerchez@unimelb.edu.au Natasha Ghai
Tales of terror: An Aust-Indian collaboration Short stories from Indian and Australian writers on terrorism in its myriad forms
BY CHITRA SUDARSHAN
Fear Factor: Terror Incognito, edited by Meenakshi Bharat and Sharon Rundle, is an anthology of 20 stories by well-known and emerging authors from Australia and the Indian subcontinent. It includes names such as David Malouf, Salman Rushdie, Neelum Saran Gour, Tom Keneally, Rosie Scott, Jeremy Fisher, Susanne Gervay, Tabish Khair, Denise Leith, Andrew Y M Kwong, Devika Brendon, Gulzar, Meera Kant, Guy Scotton, Sujata Sankranti, Kiran Nargarkar, Temsula Ao, Jaspreet Singh, Janhavi Acharekar and Meenakshi Bharat, with a foreword by the well known Sri Lankan-Australian writer Yasmine Gooneratne. Meenakshi Bharat is a translator, reviewer and critic. Her special interests include children’s literature, women’s fiction and English studies – areas which she has researched extensively. Currently, she is engaged in translating a volume of Hindi short stories. She is also getting a volume of short fiction ready for publication. She teaches at the University of Delhi. Sharon Rundle is a writer, editor and lecturer. Her stories, essays and articles have appeared in various publications and have been broadcast on radio, in Australia and 32 <> JUNE 2010
internationally, since 1992. The book is an attempt by Indian and Australian writers to react to the impact of terrorism and tyranny on the world. The works are strikingly diverse and, as Meenakshi notes in the editors’ foreword, an “assertion of a shared humanity”. What is interesting about the book is that it is a unique collaboration between Australia and India – something of a first. The theme that purportedly holds the stories together is modern terror: the collection, it is claimed, represents the writers’ protests against it: ‘they lead readers along the hidden paths of an unfamiliar psychology [of terror] to make their own discoveries’. A joint publication with Picador UK and Picador India, Fear Factor contains some excerpts from already published works [Salman Rushdie’s contribution is from his 2005 book Shalimar the Clown] and others that have been written especially for this omnibus. Bharat’s own short story Compensation is quintessentially small town India in its evocation of the wily lower middle class woman who uses her wits to make a quick rupee from a terrorist inflicted tragedy. Some of the interesting stories – and
most relevant to the title and intent of this anthology – is the short story In Search of Essar by Kiran Nagarkar, which is taken from his most recent book God’s Little Soldiers. Nagarkar is unique among Indian writers in that he has written acclaimed novels in more than one language. His first novel, Saat Sakkam Trechalis (translated into English as Seven Sixes are Forty Three) was a critical success when it was published in 1974, quickly becoming recognized as one of the most important novels written in Marathi. His next novel, Ravan and Eddie, begun in Marathi but completed in English, was not published till 1994. His third novel, Cuckold (1997) won the Sahitya Akademi award. It has been translated into a number of languages and has become one of the most beloved contemporary Indian novels, both in India and in Europe. All his novels since Ravan and Eddie have been written in English. He and Janhavi Achrekar - whose story A Good Riot is included in the collection - are both Mumbaikars. Whereas Nagarkar’s story will interest anyone interested in fundamentalist terrorism, Achrekar’s story is much more local and strikingly Indian: a kind of pop social psychology of the petit
bourgeoisie basis of communal politics. Tabish Khair’s story – the very last one entitled Missing is hilarious – a cross between science fiction and comedy, written in the first person. Khair is a talented writer, whose latest novel, Filming: A Love Story (2007), examines memory and guilt against the backdrop of the Partition and the 1940s Bombay film industry. Ranked by Khushwant Singh as one of the best twenty novels in English by Indians or writers of Indian origin, it received positive and rave reviews in British and Asian publications and was short-listed for India’s main fiction award. A Danish translation, called Film, came out in the winter of 2009 to positive reviews in the Danish press. Born and educated mostly in Gaya, Bihar, India, Tabish Khair is the author of various books, most significant of which is the study, Babu Fictions: Alienation in Indian English Novels (Oxford UP, 2001) and the novel, The Bus Stopped (Picador, 2004), which was shortlisted for the Encore Award. He lives in Denmark and has become a thoughtful writer on Islam and Muslims in recent years. These are the short stories that sit well with the title of the book; so is the excerpt from Rushdie’s Shalimar the Clown. The other stories like Sujata Sankranti’s An Eye for an Eye, Gulzar’s Kauf – and the section by well known Australian writers – are all eminently readable in their own right, although one needs to stretch one’s imagination to fit them into the “Terror Incognito” theme. INDIAN LINK