Ash Talks Books

I  read the next book on my TBR, Mr Vasudev Murthy’s ‘The Ramgarh Literary Festival.’ And what a ‘pick me up’ it turned out to be! Absolutely delightful! Slightly Wodehouseian and totally of interest to me ‘coz I love stories about the publishing world, and I’ve always loved Wodehouse. I loved when Mr Murthy referred to ‘Pupa’ publishers early in the book and made a remark about Sheelaa Dey in another part of the book. Sample a few dialogues from the book, which almost caused me incontinence at age 42: ‘Ticket to Ramgarh,’ I said arrogantly to the man behind the ticket counter, handing over the reservation form duly filled. ‘I am a key speaker at the Ramgarh Literary Festival.’ ‘You must be crazy, you old fool,’ said the rude person. In another place, this: “Dinner?” I inquired. He took off the lid off a large dish and I peeped in. Within was a small infant chappati. I asked about anything that might be sampled with the chapatti. He pointe...

# BookReview   # DontStartUp   # KarthikKumar   # Evam  I picked up Karthik Kumar’s ‘Don’t startup’ after seeing several promos on Linkedin. I wasn’t really interested in being an entrepreneur. I’m not good with numbers at all, so I figured there was no need for me to read this book. My TBR is long enough as it is. But one day, I saw his Instagram post, which advertised his book with his autograph. I still am not sure what made me reach out to him to get the coupon code for the book. It arrived soon enough and I delved into it. A little backgrounder: I had a colleague in Aptech who was involved with Evam( way back when I worked with the company).I also met a couple of guys on a trek to Munnar who were involved with Evam. I have watched ‘The odd couple’ by Evam since I like plays. I have some old classmates( who I’m not in touch with) from my school who are friends with Karthik. I interned in RK Swamy with Suchitra Ramadurai( who I’m not in touch with) way before ...