The Hindu Business Line : Mentors don't announce themselves or advertise

How is mentoring different from executive coaching? Should the mentor and the protégé meet often? What is the measure of effectiveness of mentoring? Does the mentor have to be in the same profession?

These are only some of the questions that Sunil Unny Guptan discusses in Mentoring, from Response (www.indiasage.com). "Mentors are people who make a significant difference to the lives of others, lifting them out of being ordinary and leading them to an almost magical transformation," writes Guptan.

The book has chapters on the mentoring process, mentoring schemes in organisations, and relevant competencies.

Having a mentor is not essential to existence and progress, concedes the author.

However, there are many benefits that mentoring can offer, he adds. "Mentors don't announce themselves or advertise. If you are out to find a mentor for yourself, the best course would be to look for one in the higher echelons of your own organisation or in your profession," advises Guptan.

A book to help you in your search for the right mentor!

Chandrasekhar limit

Year 1928. An Indian graduate student named Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar was sailing from India to England, to study at Cambridge with the British astronomer, Sir Arthur Eddington.

During the voyage "Chandrasekhar worked out how big a star could be and still separate itself against its own gravity after it had used up all its fuel," writes Stephen W. Hawking in The Theory of Everything, a special anniversary edition of which is out from Jaico (www.jaicobooks.com). "Chandrasekhar calculated that a cold star of more than about one and a half times the mass of the sun would not be able to support itself against its own gravity. This mass is now known as the Chandrasekhar limit," explains Hawking, narrating `the origin and fate of the universe.'

It seems Eddington refused to believe Chandrasekhar's result. "He thought it was simply not possible that a star could collapse to a point. This was the view of most scientists." Chandrasekhar abandoned this line of work and turned instead to other problems in astronomy. Yet, "When he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1983, it was, at least in part, for his early work on the limiting mass of cold stars," as Hawking notes.

Riveting read.

Tailpiece

"I told you not to choose a girl from an M&A consultancy!"

"Kyon? Kya hua?"

"She keeps looking for counter-bids!"

http://BookPeek.blogspot.com

D. Murali

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