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FOR more than half-century, the IITs have been producing world-class products who are scattered all over the world, and Sandipan Deb goes tracking them in The IITians, published by Penguin (www.penguinbooksindia.com).

IIT was a great middle-class dream fulfilled, says Deb. "The only way, the salaried middle-class has always believed, that its children could get a fair chance to earn an honest living was to excel academically, do so well in their examinations that `pull' did not matter. And the IIT entrance tests were the greatest of all such examinations. Once you had the `IIT stamp' on your biodata, the lack of `pull' was not something to be bothered about at all."

Students from rural and underprivileged backgrounds who land up in IITs are exposed to a whole new world, says Deb. "The first thing they realise is that just because they spent their lives in a village does not make them any less bright than the kids from the metropolises. In fact, chances are that they are brighter than the urban students since they had to fight against far greater odds to get through the JEE. The second revelation is the incredible range of cultures and languages and lifestyles they have to deal with on an IIT campus."

A piece of insight from an IIT alumnus, Ananth, talks of a lacuna in the IIT system: That it focuses on cracking exams: "So a lot of guys don't ever ask themselves what they want to do in life beyond that. There are numerous guys from the IITs who come to the US to do a PhD, ace the courses, and then say: Now what do I do?"

In the last chapter, titled `Midnight's Brahmins', that Deb confesses as having been `incredibly difficult to write', he observes: "IIT is one of the few institutions in the country which Indians have complete faith in. And, for more than fifty years, IIT has repaid this trust by transforming the lives of thousands and thousands of families, both middle class and poor." The characteristic of the IIT system was to bestow upon its students "the power of choice with no vertical limit".

A great read.

Know your enemy

PAGES of endless philosophy seem to stare from Lee Harris's book Civilization and its Enemies: The Next Stage of History, published by Free Press (www.simonsays.com). A randomly-turned page throws this line — "Tolerance does not begin as tolerance, any more than a rose begins as a rose" — and it is immediately gripping, because we are already worried whether a yatra would disturb harmony, or whatever is there of it. Tolerance begins with men taking a chance to live with strangers without killing them, says Harris, explaining Hegel. For the author, the bygone century is one of dead-ends. "A historical dead-end occurs when a set of abstract ideas or ideals can no longer find anyone to embody them," writes the author. "They cease to have buyers — like a stock that has fallen out of favour."

Sadly, all dead-ends share a common trait: "They were all the work of a highly educated coterie keen to remake the world according to its own superior design."

These people had the maniacal drive "to make a clean sweep of things" and believed "that the world had waiting for their appearance in order to set itself right." Let them live in their own dreams, you might say. But here is a thought: "Violence is inevitable once people have set out to reshape the world according to their ideals — ideals that turn out to be nothing more than a kind of intellectual make-believe."

This mesmerisation with abstract ideals is due to an educational system that requires "mastery of a set of abstract symbols rather than immersion in concrete and practical life." Here is another problem when you are too peace-loving: Can you hope that by pretending that the enemy is simply misguided, or misunderstood, or politically immature, he will cease to be an enemy?

"This is an illusion," notes Harris. "It is the enemy who defines us as his enemy, and in making this definition he changes us, and changes us whether we like it or not. We cannot be the same after we have been defined as an enemy as we were before." So, what is the problem that confronts us today? "The ideals that our intellectuals have been instilling in us are utopian ideals, designed for men and women who know no enemy and who do not need to take precautions against him." That is why it is impossible to simply stand by and not take sides, points out the author.

A book that can stop you from dreaming.

Ghost hunt

AS AUDITOR you have an eye for ghost employees in the muster roll, phantom assets in the FA register, and phoney vouchers in the file. And there are ghostwriters of speeches and autobiographies, as much as of postal test papers and project reports. Now, here is a practical guide from Joshua P. Warren on How to Hunt Ghosts, published by Simon & Schuster (www.simonsays.com).

Intro begins stunningly: "Ghosts are real." All right, first let us define a ghost. It is "some paranormal aspect of the physical form and/or mental presence that appears to exist apart from the original physical form."

But the author agrees that the task of defining a ghost is "somewhat complicated" because the line between subjective experience and objectivity is blurred. You have not seen ghosts, but there are enough and more people who have an opinion on them, why?

"Unfortunately, there are lots of illogical people running around out there calling themselves paranormal researchers. Indeed, they have every right to do so, considering that anyone with enough motivation can investigate an unknown subject."

So, now you muster courage to go to the neighbourhood haunted place, but you need to know some basics:

"If a location is haunted by an entity, certain earmarks are exhibited. The activity will be spontaneous, erratic, and interactive. If it's an imprint, it will be non-conscious, predictable, and oblivious." And there are places where the laws of physics seem to be distorted, and reality behaves in unfamiliar ways. "This type of location is what is called warp."

See anything?

Sticky, fishy

TO MAKE you sleep, your grandma told you stories. Similarly, to get managers motivated, there are business parables. Fish! Sticks, from Stephen C. Lundin and his team is a story about adapting to changing times and keeping work fresh. Intro points out that external energy is required to catch our attention in a busy world and make change happen, but it cannot sustain a change. "That takes a different source of energy: natural energy."

A common problem is to think that we need to find the one well-worn trail that others have followed and that it will take us where we want to go.

However, "The truth is that we must blaze our own trail and all we will ever have as a compass is a set of commitments and our faith." Personal piece of vision is what the author calls IT.

"Organisational visions are often written in flowery and abstract language. They need to be written that way because of the many stakeholders involved. But your own IT needs to be more focussed, specific, and personal. And you find IT through conversation. In fact that is the only way to find IT."

The conversations have be both real and fierce says the author. "Real because they require an authenticity that belies pretence and posturing. Fierce because the amount of time we spend at work makes these conversations vital to a satisfying life."

A book to help make the change `stick'.

(Books courtesy: Fountainhead, Chennai. E-mail: fhbooks@satyam.net.in)

Tailpiece

"The chocolate I ate just now must have had a brand with a conscience... "

"How do you know?"

"It is getting in the way of mine!"

ReadingRoom@TheHindu.co.in

D. Murali

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