Miditech president Niret Alva has a relationship with sharp, easy companions, which has been wowing him, challenging him, since forever? his favourite Books. Nidhi Jain is truly inspired by him and swears to become a bookaholic herself.

Who introduced you to reading?
My grandfather Joachim Alva had a fabulous collection of books ranging from biographies and autobiographies to works on psychology and dating behaviour and history. He loved giving and accepting books as gifts. After I was born, all new purchases had his name and my name on one of the first pages and the date of purchase. The implication was that he was leaving them to me.

At his bed side was a Bible (the most widely printed and sold book in the world) and the Imitation of Christ by Thomas Kempis. I've read both. The first many times. The second once. The first is my favourite book. It's a love story of the relationship between God and man, sometimes literal, sometimes metaphorical, with all the attendant ups and downs of faithfulness, betrayal, murder, war, redemption and restoration. In my life it holds supernatural power. I cannot start the day without it.

Joachim Alva was a journalist, freedom fighter, author and politician. He published the news magazine Forum in the heady days of the freedom struggle. Mahatma Gandhi read it and they often wrote to each other. We still have some of those handwritten letters. On Sundays, even before I was a teenager, I would take down in long hand his newspaper articles which he would simply dictate to me. He paid me a princely sum for each exercise and his reminiscences were published on Sundays in a column called Yesterday and Today.

I guess I got my love for books from him. I started reading really early. By the 6th or 7th standard I had read a fairly serious work called Pre-Marital Dating Behaviour. Forget who the author was. From my grandfather I inherited love for non-fiction across a variety of subjects. From the classic "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" (William Shirer) which took me a month and twelve days to read in the 12th standard, to the sheer joy of pouring over the printed Encyclopedia Britannica, building on what had started with Enid Blyton, Biggles, Hardy Boys... Alistair Mclean... Ian Fleming... the love for books was all encompassing and still runs deep.

When my grandfather died when I was 14, I lost a fabulous role model, somebody who had inspired me at various levels; intellectual, spiritual, emotional and even to excel at sport... he left me with an abiding love for books.

Kind of book collection I have
It's very eclectic. Some books I have inherited from my grandfather. I love their old feel and slightly musty smell. Some have survived battles with termites, but don't look so good as a result.

The Bhagvad Gita according to Mahatma Gandhi is an example. I have books on Karate (did it for 3 years), a page-weary, battered 30 volume Encyclopedia Britannica , a gift from my parents, Niranjan and Margaret Alva, books bought after reading reviews in the Economist (my favourite magazine), books for the spirit, for the mind, for the sheer joy of fiction.... Ian McEwan, Umberto Eco (what an intellect that man has), Vikram Seth (Golden Gate and Suitable Boy), Ben Okri? books on economics that are lucid and easy to digest... books on the environment....The Forgiveness of Nature and a Moment on the Earth for example... David Attenborough....

I love touching and rearranging our books. My wife Anuja Chauhan loves books too and reads more than me. Unlike me she rereads lots of books. So does my 12-year-old daughter Niharika.

Our book collection reflects the diverse interests of our family... from the latest Harry Potter that my wife and daughter need to buy almost as soon as it is off the press to Agatha Christie to Wodehouse.... we love books... can't get enough of them... keep asking my wife to make more shelves.....

Taste in books and how do you choose the books you read.
My taste in books is often incomprehensible. It's intuitive. It's spontaneous. It's sometimes governed by reviews I read. Sometimes it has to do with work. When we were doing a reality series for BBC World on a call centre in Bangalore, I quickly read... What's this India Business.... And I own it.

When I was writing the script for Operation Hot Pursuit, an undercover documentary on the illegal ivory trade and tracing it from South India to Japan, made by Miditech for NGC... Someone gave me as a gift, a novel by Wilbur Smith that seriously helped stimulate the writing...
Basically I look to buy books that will help me grow by inspiring me, wowing me, challenging me, pushing me, forcing me to state what I stand for.
None of this means that I only read high brow stuff. Some of my favourite writers, I read for the sheer mastery over their material... Dalrymple, Seth, Roberts (Shantaram), Mehta (Maximum City), Agatha Christie... others I read to remember my childhood... Enid Blyton... believe it or not... read two, two years ago... then I love to read food for the soul... enny Hine... Derek Prince... Tozer... Yancey... Tolle

On favourite authors and well written books
There is no hard and fast rule. My favourite authors are those who draw you into their world and hold you close to them as they lead you from page to page. They reveal a point of view and ask you to join it and be a part of it. No this doesn't mean they are all fiction. Take Jeremy Sachs... The End of Poverty... an incredible argument, very passionate for how we can use capital to solve most of the world's development problems. Right or wrong.....he hits you in the solar plexus and you are forced to re-examine what you believe in.

Read Jared Diamond...Guns,Germs and Steel and his more recent Collapse... wow... solid research... well crafted arguments and the climax. Boy, does he make you think! Rushdie and the way he writes is so compelling, you are not drawn, you are driven through the narrative by a rare gift that the author clearly has. Tom Sharpe can make you laugh till you cry with his Wilt series... he is really funny. Sainath (Everybody Loves a Good Drought)... a solid reminder that a large part of India is clearly not the radar of our so-called mass media.

Do you find interesting things in every book
As soon as I finish reading a book, I write down its name and the author's name in a note book. It's a "ritual" going back to the 1980s. If I own the book, I may underline stuff that I found seriously compelling or moving or something that I need to internalise. May copy it out too. Every book as its own secret it own magic. Sometimes a book is dense and not too easy to follow, or maybe my intellect isn't sharp enough.....time to pass.....a good book is like a good relationship...effortless....easy...companionable........

Self help books
Look I know they sell well and that there are people who specialise in that kind of writing. I don't read them anymore. Used to years ago. What scares me about some very famous self-help authors with respect to what they stood for is that they were not able to practice what they preached. One person who preached the philosophy of objectivism died in any asylum. Another author who tried to teach people how to tackle life, committed suicide. A third married 6 times or thereabouts.

The best so called self help books are those that stimulate you to find your own answers. Eckhart Tolle is fabulous... The Power of the Present Moment and his new book... A New Earth... Jim Collins... Good to Great... On why some companies become truly spectacular and others fail to make the grade... simple, insightful and beautiful.

Investments on books
Never consider buying books a waste of money. Think they are well worth the investment, though sometimes it pays to wait for the paperback version. Research shows that children who grow up around books tend to be better equipped for life. Anuja and I have three kids. Niharika (11 and a half), Nayantara (8 and a half) and Daivik (almost 6). The eldest loves reading the most but the second one seems to be picking up. Daivik hasn't really got into it yet.

Reading pace
Varies, depending on the pace. A thriller gets polished off. Romila Thapar's History of India, Vol 1 took ages... was trying to absorb lots of stuff while reading.

Browsing and e-reading
Does not work for me... personally. A book is about having and holding... in bed, at the table, on a plane, in a train, in a park....

Currently reading
Just finished Heaven is so Real by Choo Thomas and now savouring a History of the World in 9 and a half chapters by J. Barnes.

Books that don't hold
Dense, seriously complex material that my brain can't connect with or fathom... stuff that I may grow old trying to get through.

About the Author - Anand Bhaskar Halve has over 25 years of experience in advertising and is a founder member of chlorophyll brand and communications consultancy, Mumbai. An alumnus of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIMA), he also conducts advertising workshops there, and has been a visiting faculty a the Mudra Institute of Commnciations, Ahmedabad (MICA).

About the Book

With more than 50 million mobile phones beeping around the country, mushrooming brands at the supermarkets, and sprawling shopping malls all over, the challenge clearly for advertisers is to create powerful advertising that helps brands stand out in the crowd.

The book is step-by-step guide to producing a sound foundation for advertising : one that will serve as the springboard to inspire powerful creative expressions. Rich in cases from the living Indian context, Planning for Power advertising offers an understanding of how strategic advertising is created. It takes the reader through cases and analyses of what worked or did not work in the marketplace.

Anand Halve involves the reader throughout in exercises with Action Points at the end of most chapters - an approach that brings alive the concepts within, and helps readers discover the theory in practice.

Participatory and pragmatic in its approach, the key issues discussed are competition and the changing nature of the markets. Understanding differentiator and motivators - discovering what changes the consumer's mind. How to look, bend positioning and identify what can make your brand unique.

With a robust advertising brief, for students of advertising and marketing, planning for power advertising is a stimulation exercise from which they will learn how to apply the principles that will help them in their future careers.

Redefining Indian advertising by curing its colonial hangover and reaching out to the 1 billion strong Indian masses, by speaking to them in their own language. Piyush Pandey, Executive Chairman and National creative director, Ogilvy & Mather, talks to Nidhi Jain about the changing environment of work for leaders.

Lesson you have learnt so far...

Lessons that are more applicable and not lessons that were discovered afresh.
These lessons come from my sporting days, which got reconfirmed in my business days. I used to play cricket. Unlike cricket over here, we are only one member of the team and that included the captain also. The role of the captain is to get the best out of the team at one level and at the other level to perform well enough to justify your place in the team. Otherwise, no one will remain captain anymore.

So, in any organization where many people work, what is important is to work well yourself as well as get good results from others. So this is one lesson that got reconfirmed from my cricket days.

In a cricket team we have nothing to manufacture and in industry we only have people around with talent. So our job is to encourage these people and make them perform at the highest level. There are ups and down but we have to keep them motivated.

How do you pacify madness around you...

If madness had a method then it will not be mad anymore. Then we would know what to do tomorrow and would get the same results. The idea is not to kill anything just because we are the head. We have to encourage new thing without sacrificing discipline, of course. We very well know when it is out of context but that does not mean it cannot sell. In advertising, good ideas sell and we have to make others understand this.

People who have influenced you so far...

Many different kinds of people and not necessarily from advertising. I am very much influenced by Vivian Richards. He changed the rules of batting by playing different shots in different ways and challenged everybody. Similarly I cannot lead a stereotypical life. Experiment with new things and follow the one that suits me.

I also got influenced by my mother who did not believe that lack of formal education was a deterrent to her being knowledgeable. So she acquired a lot by reading books.

I also got influenced by my late cook who challenged every theory of cooking. Arun Lal, who is a commentator now, has also influenced me a lot because he is not at all scared of speaking his mind, no matter what. There is no one single person who influenced me in total. I have been influenced by life. There is a certain trait in every human which needs to be respected.

What according to you are changing rules of work...

Rules are challenged when they become monotonous. Self proven rules don't work everytime. So the idea is to question and challenge and adapt to something else. Have an open mind and be willing to accept everything. The older days had an assembly line in advertising where the client used to brief up everything to the client server and then client server used to brief up everything to the creative guy and vice versa but now we all work together and things have changed, so one should not follow just what is written in books. Rather, they should apply new ideas to the same thing.

How do you ensure that your team delivers...

There is nothing to ensure. They are all good people. We hired them because they are good and can perform. I have never been under pressure thinking whether they will do well or not. I am myself not sure whether each time I touch anything will come out well since I am not superhuman and neither are they. As long as we win more number of times, we are a good team. We are commercial artists and cannot be self indulgent about in it. I make them understand to respect others and have respect for themselves too.

Fun part of your business....

Fun part is meeting different people. I meet so many of them. Some seem bizarre at times and a few interesting. A lot of excitement of our business is that we are addressing 50 different problems so there is no monotony. Taking quick decisions and watching quick results is the fun here. Unlike in movies, in our case I come to know what I did in 20 days. Maybe I am impatient but that is what I like.

Piyush Pandey's leadership mantra - "A leader should never state that he is a leader. Others should know that you are a leader."

When it comes to discussing leisure time activities, there are many things that head honcho Amar Deb is into - be it books, meditation or writing but it's his weekend travelling which keeps him on an even keel. During the course of the conversation, I find out that Deb is a real cool `travelling man'. And travelling for him is not about taking off to some exotic foreign locations and checking into a luxurious suite; but it's about braving torrential rains, driving down to some dense forests and camping in his tent.

So, it seems like travel is real hard work for Deb. He says, "My real adrenalin chaser is to explore wild places, camp out at some unknown virgin beaches or explore the rugged Sahayadri terrain in Maharashtra. I've been doing this for years now. At least once a month, I along with my wife Nita and five year old son take off on a ultimate dream drive in search of some unknown location."

So, what are the dream destinations for this seasoned traveller? There are places that Deb rattles off as he relives the experience, "My wanderlust has taken me across the state of Maharashtra. I can still vividly remember our trip to Khadavli which is about 14 kms off the Nasik highway when I could show my son millions of stars while sleeping under the open sky. "

He goes on, "another place is Ambivali, a deserted place with thick dense and thick forest mangoes. Then, there are some nameless destinations which we discover along the way. It's like if we decide to go to Matheran then we don't camp at proper Matheran but we trail off to a place like say Jumapatti."

I see a dreamer in Deb as listening to him also reminds me of the much forgotten word - serendipity - the faculty of making unexpected and happy discoveries accidentally which many of us have probably left behind us in the hubbub of daily life. As I am transformed to the sylvan serenity of the countryside, Deb adds, "it's a beautiful feeling to meet simple and beautiful people, to have a cup of tea from a roadside dhaba and drink water from the fresh water streams."

My Childhood experience
I ask him about his growing years and it looks like the travel bug is really in the
Deb genes. Recalling his childhood experience, he says, "My father was in the Navy where life was pretty regimented. So, to break the monotony, he would often drive down to discover waterfalls, hills and camp sites.
In fact, as a five year old I remember touring the whole of South along with my parents and of course my pets - a dog and a cat. We drove around in a car and camped ourselves at various destinations from Kerala to Kanyakumari. But, those days it was less polluted and crowded, and everything was very clean and beautiful."

But can't things get a bit out of hand with this rather risky penchant for travel? There are memories and incidents that Deb still carries with him. "Yes, sometimes it can be, but somehow overall there has never been a major problem."

He continues, "As a child, I remember being caught up in a major religious riot when we were travelling down South. Then, I remember seeing a python and a leopard right in my tent. At Jumapatti, we were woken up by villagers to caution us about a lion in the vicinity. Once, I was with some friends of mine and since I had forgotten to build the trench around my tent there was more than six inches of water and our sleeping bags were almost submerged. Now since I travel with my family, I am obviously a bit more careful."

Maharashtrians' are a beautiful people
Though born and brought up in Bangalore, Deb has adapted to Maharashtra and its culture like a fish to water. "I love the state and the people. Maharashtrians are beautiful and vivacious people. One is treated like a guest wherever one goes. And for those wanting to explore the state, no matter what kind of holiday you are looking for, you will find it here. Whether it's peaceful self-exile in the awe-inspiring mountains, quiet worship at shrines, or revelation in cave architecture, art and culture or challenging treks or abundant wildlife thrills."

Deb's such a nature lover that he's even reluctant to reveal deserted beaches and places which he has discovered along the way. He tells me what normally happens is that once these places get written about they start developing as tourist destinations and the within no time people start buying property at such places. "I always feel people should learn to enjoy nature without possessing it."

I ask him how this sort of adds on to his life. He says, "The combination of a fantastic car drive and a great outdoors gives me a sense of grounding literally. And it's definitely a break from our hectic schedules.
" I typically wake up in a tent somewhere in the middle of a mountain and think of a wild idea and then come to office and ask my gang to work on it." Aha?..

What is this Ego and why is there so much of it everywhere?' is what Get the Ego Advantage examines?

Our ego is like an invisible but tangible bubble which we project around ourselves, based on our own impression of our abilities and worth. This book shows how our abilities and sense of worth combine in the ego to determine our actions and interactions.

Suffering toxic emotions while nursing ego-wounds, reacting, and regretting can all be prevented. Get the Ego Advantage! Outlines a simple approach that can easily be applied to real-life situations to help us understand the puzzling reactions we come across in other people. It also explores ego clashes in professional life, ways to balance individual and team identity, leadership, and issues such as rigid attitudes, prejudice, and alienation. The author provides illuminating insights into complex concepts like self-esteem, true love, parental love, arrogance, and narcissism.

With Abu, an original cartoon character, to guide through the book, it will be an entertaining as well as useful read for both the general and the professional reader.

 Description:

Anjana Sen, an Emotional Intelligence (EI) consultant and a medical physician who has authored this extremely interesting book, helps us to understand our reactions and feelings in the constant interplay of ego in our personal and  professional lives. She has likened the ego to a suit, which each personality wears much like a skin and describes the  ego as an invisible but very tangible bubble, which we project around ourselves like a hologram based upon our own impression of our abilities and worth.

 The author also provides insights into the convoluted concepts of:

 - Self esteem;

 - True love and parental love

 - Arrogance;

 - Happiness has now become a thing constructed. It is no longer intrinsic.

 "Self-esteem is not everything, but without it there is nothing." That is the essence of this short 14-chapter book, replete with illustrations by the author.

People in positions of power and responsibility particularly need to hone their EI skills. Says Sen: "As you go higher in the ladder, you need emotional competencies much more than technical competencies. Society is equipping people to get jobs; we are not equipping them to keep jobs."

Science of it

"Ego is wrongly interpreted as arrogance. Instead, Ego is inside us. When we bring it to consciousness, it is self esteem."

Even though it is based on science, Emotional Quotient (EQ) itself cannot be measured, though there are many instruments to measure it.

By Nidhi Jain

Brandon de Souza, managing director, Tiger Sports Marketing, is one of the most recognized figures on the Indian golf scene. In his 32-year association with golf, he has viewed the game from every possible angle. He tells Nidhi Jain about his taste in books.

Who introduced you to reading?
Runs in the family - mom, dad and two elder sisters being voracious readers. Before retiring to bed a few pages from a book was the order of the day so from Noddy & Big Ears, Famous Five, Billy Bunter etc., all became a habit.

Kind of book collection you have
Limited now to ones I have particularly enjoyed and still find practical in my day to day life. Mark McCormack's 'What They Don't Teach You at Harvard Business School, What they still don't teach you at Harvard Business School'. Jack Welch's 'Straight from the Gut', Shiv Khera's 'Winners Don't Do Different Things, They Do Them differently'.

Taste in books
Easy to read from Sheldon to Ludlum.

What do you think of self help books?
Do not subscribe to them.

Money and time spent on books
Limited as my friends' circle ensure we share all books worth a read.

Your reading pace
Really quick, mostly at airports waiting for planes.

Your first book
Noddy.

Browsing and e-reading
Often.

Currently you are reading
Freakonomics - Steven D. Levitt.

Books that do not hold you
Science fiction.