Key To My Life

A ritual that I adopted since 2021, inspired by Barrack Obama, is to create a reading wishlist at the start of every year and to reflect on the completed and abandoned book list as the year concludes.  The wishlist has served me this far as a  structure of goals that I am excited about for the year.   Here is my 2024 wishlist. The Maniac, Benjamin Labatut  Rebecca, Daphne Du Maurier  Humanly Possible , Sarah Bakewell (Audible)  The Best Minds, Jonathan Rosen  All the Sinners Bleed, SA Cosby  Wellness, Nathan Hill  Bittersweet, Susan Cain  Night Crawling, Leila Motley Think like a Monk, Jay Shetty The Adapted Mind, John Tooby There Are Places in the World Where Rules Are Less Important Than Kindness, Non Fiction, Carlo Rovelli Until the End of time, Brian Greene Short stories by Nobel Prize winners- collection The Ultimate Deepak Chopra collection (Audible) 2023 list:  https://deepthig.blogspot.com/2023/01/2023-book-list.html

Corporate Kshetra is a corporate satire written in the form of a multi-part series. The characters and the stories from the epic Mahabharat  are transformed and fitted into the corporate world to continue to give valuable lessons but mostly to tickle my artistic bones. Part 1:  https://deepthig.blogspot.com/2023/02/corporate-kshetra-part-1.html Part 2:  https://deepthig.blogspot.com/2023/11/corporate-kshetra-episode-2.html Part 3: Taking shape Part 4: Inception Disclaimer: This is a work of pure fiction and a figment of my imagination. Any resemblance to anyone you know is a figment of yours. Acknowledgement: And yes, very much inspired by  " The Great Indian Novel" by Shashi Tharoor which I read almost 2 decades ago  and  " The Difficulty of Being Good " by Gurcharan Das   which I read a year ago and The Mahabharat TV series on Doordarshan which I watched 30 years ago and re-watched during  Covid Lockdown.

Read Episode 1 here:   https://deepthig.blogspot.com/2023/02/corporate-kshetra-part-1.html Vy: "The drama unfolds"      "The training was over and all the candidates cleared this with flying colors. Based on seniority, Dhrit had to announce Yudhi as the next in line for the CEO position despite his own personal preference for his mentee Duryodhan . Duryodhan wanted to get rid of Yudhi and become CEO himself and he was ready to go to any extreme to make this happen. Thus started a series of political game that was to entertain and teach generations of leaders to come.     Duryodhan convinced Dhrit to lease more office space and move Yudhi s team there. Duryodhan had hatched a plan to get this office as a logistical nightmare for Yudhi that Yudhi and team decided to take a a sabbatical to figure out their next steps, rather secretively.   They learn of a major merger happening with the great leader Dru Pad with his organization. Meanwhile, universe works in wonderf

      It is one of those major conferences that everyone goes to, in order to post on social media and show off their networking capabilities. The Corporate Guru, Vysampayna is going to be present to deliver his experiences in working with the epic story teller, Ved   Wise . Zoom links are being tested, mic and podium are being adjusted, people are already yawning and looking to get their next coffee. A rather chirpy organizer of the conference, Jay M Jay comes in and ushers in the great  Vysampayna   for the epic story telling. "It is my pleasure to welcome you all to this amazing once in a lifetime conference. Please welcome, The Corporate Guru, Vysampayna ." Applause Applause. Vysampayna takes the stage. Vy : “Such a kick to be here. By the way, Jay,  we should all pledge towards better sustainability and environment friendly practices. I noticed that the welcome drinks are given in plastic glasses . Let us be conscious about  being more sustainable in the next c

Completed Books The Candy house by Jennifer Egan Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine, Gail Honeyman  A Thousand Splendid Suns, Khaled Hosseini The Joy of X,  Steven Strogatz To Paradise, Hanya Yanagihara Ageless Body Timeless Mind, Deepak Chopra Novelist as a Vocation, Haruki Murakami  The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath The Metahuman , Deepak Chopra Covenant of Water (Audible) , Dr Abraham Varghese Rumi collections Heads You Win, Jeffrey Archer Like a Flowing River (Re-read), Paulo Coelho Abandoned/ not attempted/ In Progress books  Black Cake - Not attempted Good Omens- Niel Geiman - Not attempted Rabbits - Terry Miles-  Not attempted Until the End of Time, Non fiction - Started sample The Mirror -  Not attempted The Book Thief -  Not attempted Think like a Monk,  Non fiction - Started sample Verity -  Not attempted The Gene,  Non fiction- started sample A Little Life -  Not attempted There Are Places in the World Where Rules Are Less Important Than Kindness, Non Fiction, Carlo Rovelli -  Not

The fragrance of old and new books- you ask any book lover and this stands apart as one of their indulgences. Cloud Cuckoo land is a story that celebrates the love for books and gives you a whiff of this fragrance, through words.  Set in three timelines and places (15th Century-Constantinople, 2020 - Idaho and in a certain unspecified near future timeframe in an interstellar ship), the book is a clever compilation of narratives from 5 protagonists whose destinies are interlinked to help uplift the destiny of a lost ancient text while the text in many ways becomes their beacon of hope to make progress in life and to march onwards. In a beautiful symbiotic relationship, the book saves them as much as they help resurrect the book. With his clever writing style, Anthony Doerr makes the reader work towards building that narrative  much like a jigsaw puzzle and that's part of the thrill of reading this book. Chapters are small yet very detailed in presentation, which gives the impression