Finance | One and a Half Minutes

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“After having gone through the book, you will definitely and convincingly realize that to achieve peace, true happiness, contentment, satisfaction and also to attain continuous progress in life in terms of material gains, respect and love, you need not depend on anybody in this world. It all depends on you. It is all in your hands.”—‘Saharasri’ Subrata Roy Sahara “Nobody does anything for anyone. All do for themselves either for more and more material gains or to save and escape from any kind of material losses or from mental-emotional dissatisfaction or for getting more and more mental-emotional satisfaction. Therefore, no one sacrifices for anyone. When no one does anything for anyone, there is no justification in expecting any returns.” The author goes on to explain that to make life truly beautiful, one also needs to understand the basic truths with which we are born or the basic instincts inherent in us all. So for a positive outcome one has to learn the psychological or the emotional aspects of life, in other words, the realities of life or the entire philosophy of life. As you get immersed in the potent energy of these ‘Life Mantras’, you will slowly find a change, a sense of fulfillment, a self-motivation coming in you. You will thus be led to the ultimate realization that the journey of life is indeed a truly blissful and an enlightening experience.

Review:

In Life Mantras, India’s top corporate honcho Mr. Subrata Roy shares real-life lessons by touching upon many aspects of human thoughts and emotions. Right at the outset, he begins by saying that every human is unique by himself. Thereby, he discusses the psychological and emotional aspects of life. Gradually he moves on to ways of achieving happiness, satisfaction, content life and more. While he talks about motivation, he boldly puts it forth that money does motivate just as esteem and love. He further grabs attention by saying that we only work for ourselves and our own advantages. Gradually as the book progresses, the reader learns that there are seven health stages of human being and four types of knowledge. And of course at the end, he writes about ego and its woes. Overall, ‘Life Mantras’ gives us a deep insight into the basic realities of life.

Mr. Subrata Roy Sahara laid the foundation of Sahara India Pariwar with mere 2000 rupees with three workers in the year 1978. But today his company boasts of 12 lakh fellow workers. Presently, he is in Tihar jail, from where he has written this book. To write a book in the prison isn’t an easy affair but for him this isn’t the end. Life Mantras is the first one in the trilogy, ‘Thoughts from Tihar’. As of now, this one is an exhaustive amalgamation of his experiences, observations, interactions and more.

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Image Courtesy: Amazon

An aspiring filmmaker. The dizzying heights of Bollywood and a strained father-son relationship.

Rayhan Arora’s long cherished dream is to be a filmmaker in the Hindi Film Industry but his formidable father has other plans a successful financial career in Corporate America and a marriage of convenience with Vanita, a medical student in the US.

In a final act of desperation, Rayhan abandons his promising life in California and secretly returns to Mumbai to work as an Assistant Director in Bollywood. The characters he encounters along the way become part of his journey of self-discovery – a self-proclaimed local goon with a penchant for acting; a powerful local politician who wants to marry Rayhan’s part-time domestic help, who in turn covets stardom; an angst-ridden, homosexual film director; ego-ridden film stars with twisted agendas; and the mysterious Viola who captures his heart.

HiFi in Bollywood takes the reader from the streets of Berkeley to the film studios of Mumbai; from red-light areas to police stations and from reality to dreams and back to reality again!

Review:

Being a lover of Bollywood, I hadn’t much choice but to read the book. As I’d grown up on a staple of Hindi movies, ‘Bollywood’ as we call it, seemed very alluring from a distance. Most of the audience looks only at the glamour and glitz of it, ever aspiring to be on big screen, rather than acknowledging the gruelling work that goes behind a film. Rishi Vohra, being an insider in Bollywood, decided to write this book, fictionalising parts of it, blending with some of his own experiences.

The story is of Rayhaan, it’s all about him actually. He struggles between his dreams of being a director of movies in Bollywood, but ends up with a Berkeley degree in Finance, due to his father. It is a struggle of father and son’s aspirations, not too uncommon in our country. Innumerable readers will instantly identify with Rayhaan, as they go through the same turmoil. I’ve met Graduate students in the USA, who perhaps wanted to be something else, but had to toil in a wrong choice of industry. Rayhaan is also set up with a girl of his father’s choice in California, and he ditches meeting her, instead landing up in Mumbai to pursue his dreams.

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