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.

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.

Subhajyoti Ray, president of the Internet and Mobile Association of India, has already penned two books and is getting ready for a third. And no, it's not the virtual world that his pen traverses but the historical one. 'Historian Subho' takes Nidhi Jain on a journey back through time.

What made you write this book?
My first book was Transformation of Bengal Frontier. Spanning a period between 1750 and 1940, this book analysis the socioeconomic changes brought about by colonial rule in a frontier area of Bengal, Jalpaiguri.

It started as a chore as it was my PhD topic and the project grew on me and I became so fond of it that at the end of the day I thought I had written a second PhD. I didn't want it to confine it to a library shelf as a PhD thesis. I went out of my way to get it published. When one is working on a PhD it's like a baby and the final delivery is when the book comes out.
 

The second book was more interesting, it was co-authored with Sharmila, my colleague at CII, and is called India Building Partnership for CII. The institution was founded in 1985.

Book and Character
I am a historian, interested more in things of the past than present. I wanted to write a corporate history with a different feel of the process and perspective at CII.

Crux of the book
First, it questions certain beliefs, prejudices regarding the agrarian labour industry in the country. It looks at the national movement, management control of labour, agrarian relations.

What's next on your agenda?
Translating a book, an autobiography by a Bengali author. It's a fascinating account of 50-60 years of his life. How he left his home in Uttar Pradesh, lived in Calcutta, then Mumbai, before the First World War. It will give you more insights into Mumbai than many other books written on the city.

Cartoon Network Enterprises India and South Asia director Jiggy George's think reading is greatest investment mind. An avid book reader tells Nidhi Jain it would allow writers to make a living and would keep India's smartness quotient in tact.

Who introduced you to reading?
Books are an enduring love. My parents fueled my interest for general knowledge by buying me volumes of the "Tell me why series" and encyclopedias. The idea was to balance/supplement academics and learning by rote. These books along with the Bible were introduced at a very early age. The progression in school saw phases?from the Hardy boys, Alfred Hitchcock adventures to a lot of abridged classics like Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Fin, Moby Dick, Robinson Crusoe etc. I remember a phase of obsession with Sherlock Holmes and his myriad adventures. I wrote a letter to Baker street asking him as to why he came as close as Nepal and never visited India. I was thrilled to get a letter back explaining as to how he would love to come to India and some mystery soon would see him and Watson there. Though precocious; I did not see this as marketing. This letter made an indelible mark and now working in a job that markets dreams to kids; the letter from Sherlock keeps reminding me of how simple ideas can fuel imagination and bring unbridled joy in a kid's life!
The one person who I believe has molded my life is my maternal uncle. He played cupid to my love for books. Bose uncle introduced me to the world of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Milan Kundera, Salman Rushdie, and Amitav Ghosh. Though he was struggling to make a living in Mumbai; he ensured that he invest in buying me books every month. It was his investment into me and it changed my world! I started my love affair with books. It got me traveling vicariously to different parts of the world and activated the theatre of my mind.

Kind of book collection you have
I am promiscuous when it comes to books and my collection is eclectic and reflects the obsessions and different phases of my life. From Classics, to travelogues, from humor to contemporary literature, from graphic books, screenplays, comics to biographies. A lot of music related books and of course corporate stuff. I am not very fond of Indian authors except for my complete love and respect for the works of Amitav Ghosh, Vikram Seth and Khushwant Singh.
I love humor and favorites include Kingsley Amis, Dave Barry, Bill Bryson and Douglas Adams.
Comics ?I love and have the complete Tin Tin's, Asterix, Amar Chitra Katha's, Calvin and Hobbes, Gary Larson , Scott Adams (most of them?)and Mad (all of them until 2005)
I recently got gifted a subscription to the Economist by a worthy friend. I love it and this again is now staple diet.

On favorite authors and well written books
This could take very long but?My current favorite is Nick Hornby and this genre of writing would so appeal to the youth of our country. Its not "high art" and pretentious and this genre of writing does not exist in India. "High Fidelity", "A long way down" and "About a boy" are all superb books!

Salinger's Catcher in the Rye, Gabriel Garcia Marquez- love in the time of Cholera, Hundred years of solitude and Chronicles of a death foretold. John Irving's "World according to Garp", " Zorba the greek " byNikos Kazantzakis, Michael Ondaatje's "The English Patient" and Ian McEwan's " Amsterdam", "To kill a mocking bird" by Harper Lee and even Stephen King's "Shawshank redemption"
"The Hitchhiker" series by Douglas Adams, Vikram Seth's complete works from "Golden gate" and "Equal music" to the "Suitable boy" and the wonderful travelogue "From Heaven's lake"

"The Hitchhiker" series by Douglas Adams, Vikram Seth's complete works from "Golden gate" and "Equal music" to the "Suitable boy" and the wonderful travelogue "From Heaven's lake"?

Every corpo type should read Seth's Hare and tortoise in his book "Beastley Tales". It is the signs of our times!

Amitav Ghosh's "Shadow lines", Rushdie are "Shame" and "Haroun and the sea of stories." The classics like "The Great Gatsby "by Scott Fitzgerald, "The Alexandra quartet" by Lawrence Durrell, "Brighton Rock" by Graham Greene, "The adventures of Tom Sawyer" by Dickens and "Don Quixote "by Cervantes.
I also liked "God of small things'?
As for business related books; I am partial to biographies and loved Richard Branson's Steve Job's and J R D Tata's stories.

I love Sidney Lumet's" making movies" and in recent times, Stephen Levitt's Freakanomics, Malcolm Gladwell's Blink and Lexus and the olive tree by Friedman were very interesting.

Do you find interesting things in every book, how do you choose books you read?
Most of my friends read and I trust their judgment of books. Besides, I check amazon.com, reviews of books and by browsing at bookstores. The people I love most have to live with my obsession with books- they get the same predictable gifts (a book again!) and have to live with being forced to read.

What do you think of self help books?
I don't think of them! I know it sells a lot of copies because all of us need help. I could not "awaken the giant within" even after trying to read Anthony Robbin's book a hundred times. I loved the Alchemist (if you put this in genre of self help) and I am an unashamed fan of some of the dummies series of books. I greatly benefited by the dummy's guide to Classical music, wines and yoga. I though Stephen Covey's seven habits was great when I read it n MBA School.

Money and time you spend on books
Money in this case can buy love! I spend too much money and rationalize it each time. In fact, I have been forbidden by the Home minister to buy any more books as it is impairing our social life. Fewer friends come home as there is no place to accommodate them!

Books-an investment
The art scene has got fashionable as its now a currency like the stock exchange. It's now cool to say you collect art. I wish this coolness quotient would translate to books. It would keep our writers and publishing industry in business. It would allow writers to make a living and it would keep India's smartness quotient in tact.
I think reading has been my greatest investment. The returns payout greatly at work as it has helped the process of being lateral, communicating better, dreaming up the road ahead, selling a dream!

Browsing and e-reading
Inspite of the fact that I like technology I have still not got used to the idea of e-reading. I guess I am a tactile person. I need to touch and feel books! I guess this explains my obsession with my job?I set up new businesses with brand Pogo and Cartoon Network- the vision being that kids can touch and feel the brands beyond the realm of TV.

Currently reading
Thunderbolt kid by Bill Bryson, TV Nation by Michael Moore, SRK's biography and my daily dose of comics and magazines.