January 2018 – Page 2 – Abhinav Bhatt

Books I read in 2017

I am not an avid reader of books. I read a lot of articles, blogs, and ‘Terms & Conditions’ thoroughly on websites before clicking ‘I agree’. Alright, not the last one but I have not been a book reader types person in the past, even if I look like one. If you count articles and blogs maybe I do do a lot of reading and if you add all those articles up, they might constitute 2-3 books or so. But not proper books. I mostly end up reading 5-6 books a year, at max. This had been going on for a long time.

In case you are not aware, on the Goodreads.com site, there are Reading Challenges every year. People enter a number of books they wish to read that year. When you are done reading a book, you can mark that book as read. That’s a good way to check your progress from time to time.

Sometime in late 2015, I bought a Kindle. That helped a lot in increasing my book reading ability so I read 8 books in 2016. At the start of 2017, I aimed to read one book per month i.e. 12 Books per year. For actual book nerds, this might be a number they could be reading per month. But I am a normal person (some of us work also) so I thought one per month is a good number.

I would like to apologize by saying that I failed. 2017 ended but I could read only 10 books in 2017. Yes! That’s how life is, sadly. But I am very proud to say that most books I read this year had a profound impact on me. It was about quality and not quantity. These books not only reduced my social media time but also helped me become a better person. I also found my liking to non-fiction genre which I didn’t delve into much earlier. So, long story short, I am sharing the list of the books I read in 2017. The books which are bold are the ones I recommend. You can try reading them. No harm. As far as I know.

**The Secret of Leadership by Prakash Iyer**

**Faster than Normal by Peter Shankman**

Some of these have been reviewed here and obviously, those are the ones I recommend.

Promise Needs Patience

“They tried to bury us. They didn’t know we were seeds.”
Mexican Proverb

You might or might not have heard this story before, but here it goes. I’ll start with a question:

Does anyone here know about the growth pattern of a Bamboo plant?

When the farmers start growing Bamboo, they must nurture it, water it and take care of it during its first year. However, there is negligible growth. The farmers must have patience and continue to water it in its second year too. Even then, there is nothing much to see. They fertilize it with best quality manure so that they see something soon. But seasons after seasons, years after years, there is almost nothing to be proud of. It doesn’t even show proper sprout.

3 years pass. There’s still no motivation for the farmers to continue. But they continue to water and fertilize the plant. Even after the 4th year ends, there is still nothing. By this time, even the most motivated farmers give up. Who would keep watering the plant which shows no growth at all? But even then, the farmers persist.

Now, this is the time when the patience pays off. In the 5th year of its cultivation, Bamboo finally shows some traces up from the soil. Not only that, it reaches more than 60-80 feet up in the air in the same season itself. And then, it continues to stay strong, no matter how harsh the weather is. It bends, it twists, but it stays strong. In case, you don’t know Bamboo is a kind of Grass.

You know, all the years when it didn’t show any growth upwards, it was actually growing downwards. Yes, it was growing upside down. Its roots were getting longer and longer and they had eventually reached that length and gained enough strength that they could hold the soil to sustain 80 feet tall shoots of Bamboo.

Same is the way in which revolutions work and revolutions fail. If there are doubts in your convictions, your beliefs, and your aim, no matter what you do, you are bound to fail.

If you are doing things right with honesty, but you are not seeing any benefits, take some lessons about patience from the Bamboo. If you promise yourself patience and keep at it, it would need patience. It might take time, it might not show any positive results soon. But, if you keep working in the right direction, there will be a time that you will be really proud of yourself that you invested time on that very thing.

The above was used as part of my Presidential Speech Script in my Toastmaster’s Clubs Meeting. I had come across this story in this book: http://amzn.to/2CYG9O5.

Day 1 Year 2018

Happy New Year Dear Readers! (Yes, the 2-3 of you)

So, as I had promised, I did go to the office today. As expected, there was as much silence as there is silence in a curfew laden area.

When I opened my mailbox and saw a flurry of Working from Home emails, my sarcasm meter went haywire and I sent ‘Working from Office’ mail to many. Sarcasm getting charged up early in the morning is a good sign. Right?

Few good things happened though.

Even when the colleagues weren’t there, there were no abstainers from the helpers and pantry workers. That shows how much these celebrations meant to those who don’t have the privilege like us to skip work. (You may argue that you have earned this but do you think that time would stay the same.)
Someone came to my desk and wished me a happy new year. Who does that nowadays?
I bought hosting space for my domain. After much pain, it is finally live now at abhinavbhatt.com

What did the new year bring for you?