One more item off the bucket list.
Recently after our home was redone with a lot of thinking
and effort from Jasmine and me (Jispa’s inputs as well). Afterwards Jasmine is
on a project to clean up each of cupboards. The big one she left at the end was
the one in which the books are kept. That is one massive thing to do. Slowly
but surely she removed all the books and placed them on the side. We then
classified all the books and then started putting them in the cupboards. This
gave me a chance to look at all the books that I had bought and read before the
advent of the kindle. I don’t want to part with these, partly because of ego,
partly because I think that I might need them again and partly because I think
that Jispa might one day read a few of them. This time around some shitty books
I definitely threw away, but they did not number in double digits. Yesterday
while I was giving them to Jasmine as she put them inside, I told her “you
know, some of these books are really bad” as I handed her Warren Buffet’s insipid
and devoid of any insight autobiography. “I can throw at least a third of the.
They are that bad. What say?”. Jasmine nodded and then answered “while we still
have space, keep them. When we don’t have space, we will see”. That was a significant endorsement from Jasmine
on all the books that I have kept over the years. More than anything she knows
what these books mean to me, from whichever perspective.
While rearranging the books, I came across quite a few
titles that I did not read then and I relooked at them. Many a times, the book
can wait till its time has come. Just because you don’t find it interesting at
the time does not mean that the book loses meaning. It simply means that
possibly the timing was not right. It like bosses. No boss is mean in an
absolute sense, it’s just that you and the boss haven’t reached a tuning that is
conducive to working together. Yes, it can be the bosses fault at many times,
but at a core level it’s a question of tuning. Or in the case of books, a question
of timing. In my life, there have been so many books that have worked for me at
a later time in life. So many times, that I have tried reading a book but have
left it on the shelf only to rediscover it years later and get its importance.
I was possibly just too naïve to understand it at the point. In any case, these
books have taught me a lot and I have learnt (as I have always maintained) more
to think in a certain way as opposed to really taking a point by point lesson
from it.
Now that Jispa is much older, I am happy that some of my
books are something that she finds some interest in. Once she came for one of my lectures and she
saw me talk about the book “why we buy”. Many times, people ask me, if there
was one book that they should read from all the books that I have read in my
life, one book that was the best ever, I reply without thinking “why we buy”.
It is the single most amazing book that I have read about marketing in
particular and management in general and is completely entertaining. The author
has done nothing but observe people shop and then proceeded to write a seminal
book on all his findings. How people shop, how they walk in stores, layout of
stores, how people behave with children, men shoppers, women shoppers, babies
etc. The lessons are simple. You observe and then you understand. Once you
understand the answers are commonsensical to anyone. Marketing is just that. Using
good research and solving issues you spot. This book also shows how shoppers
around the world are similar, dads around the world are similar. We all behave
in similar fashion if confronted with similar stimuli. In many ways shopping
seems to be a genetically imbibed thing amongst all humans.
So, after hearing my lecture Jispa was pretty excited and
wanted to read the book. She asked me for it. I promised her that when I climb
up and rearrange the books, I would keep an eye for it and get it for her. This
was the opportunity I was waiting for and I removed it for her, along with a
few more books. She started reading it and we started discussing it. Then one
night as she getting to bed, I showed her a trick that I often do with this
book.
I started flipping through it and asked to stop me at a
random place. Then I would randomly start reading any paragraph. The book is so
dense and full of insights that any random para starts making sense. You don’t need
any context or build up. It just makes sense. So, I read it to Jispa as she was
sleeping like it was a bed time story. She would suddenly say stop while I was
flipping and I would read her a para or so. No discussion required, no
understanding required, it just made a ton of sense.
What a lovely book and what a lovely moment for me. Reading
a marketing book to my kid as she slept – that too the best book in my life –
An item off the bucket list!
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