Reading

Some one once said – “A man who can read a book but does not is worse than an illiterate man” – well not exactly the same words, but you get the gist, don’t you? Books have always been a weakness for me.

 I picked up the habit when I was very young. Maybe as a single child, books were a solace. Thankfully I had access to books wherever I went. At Trivandrum, we used to stay in a flat. I was lucky to have the company of a friend who was a member of the Eloor lending library. We used to pool money and share books. There was also one family (actually relatives of mine) in the same building who had a library of their own.

 During summer, Onam and Christmas holidays, at my grandfather’s place, I was lucky to have access to a huge collection. One of my cousins of the same age was also afflicted with the reading bug.

 Reading habits and likes change with time and may a time indicate the stage in your life / priorities of the moment. As infants, we started off with coloring /  story books and then graduated to Tinkle / Chandamama, on to the adventures and youthful exploits of the Hardy Boys and the Famous Five, moved on to the humor of TinTin and Asterix, on to novels of the more serious variety.

 Then for a time the flavor was religion - the ISKCON books gifted by a Bombay aunt were the cause for this. Then for a while I moved on to junk novels –I should actually have been reading my text books then. After a brief period of exposure to the corporate world and return to college for post graduation, it was metaphysics – of all things!! A failed romance was probably the driving force!  

 A second entry to the professional world and it was time to read nothing but IT books – skills up gradation is a must in IT and one had to learn to cope with and pick up the flavour of the season.  After you spend a bit of time punching at key boards and looking generally busy and important, senior management deems you to be a ‘project manager’, after that the reading habits change to books / material on risk, estimation, people management etc. Once you get a hang of all that (once you get a hang of the jargon), the quality bug hits you. Read all you want but a few tips on impressing people -

 Good -> Talk about Just in time, Total Quality Management, Quality Management systems etc

Better -> Use the acronyms – JIT, TQM, QMS, ISO etc. -> remember to use acronyms with 3 alphabets and don’t bother to explain.

Best -> Use Japanese or Japanese sounding names – Kan Ban, Poka Yoke -> make it sound as funny as possible – the funnier the pronunciation, the more knowledgeable you will sound 

Remember I said that reading habits and likes change with time, well add to that one more point - they come a full circle at some point. I am back to reading coloring / story books with my daughter now. I am sure that Tinkle or its 21st century equivalent is not too far off :)