The Hindu Business Line : Scanners' favourite food is learning

Scanners may be the compilations of past question papers that CA students study for exams. But Barbara Sher's definition of `scanners' is different. "Scanners love to read and write, to fix and invent things, to design projects and businesses, to cook and sing, and to create the perfect dinner party," she writes in What Do I Do When I Want To Do Everything? from Rodale (www.rodalebooks.co.uk).

"Scanners rarely think what other people are doing is empty. They're always curious to know `what's out there' and love to poke their noses into just about anything... 99 per cent of scanners spend a lot of time scanning the horizon, thinking about their next move." In contrast, divers are completely absorbed by one field. "These people may `relax' with a hobby, but they're rarely passionate about anything but their field." Bona fide scanners have no problem with the normal ability to focus, as opposed to those afflicted by ADD (attention deficit disorder), clarifies Sher.

To scanners, boredom is excruciating. So, you may find him yawning in `serious' meetings! "The typical scanner runs through his interests in record time because she has a big, hungry brain and her favourite food is learning. Scanners love learning more than anything else. And learning is what they're talented at." To try to become `normal' can be a heartbreaking misjudgement for scanners. "In an attempt to conform, some scanners even try to keep their talents hidden away and quiet, with all the luck they'd have hiding a box of puppies in a library," rues Sher.

A book that scanners may like to dive into.

Means test for `reservation'

Contrary to what some believe, Hindi, Sanskrit, or English will not harm Tamil, clarified A. N. Sattanathan in one of his lectures delivered at the University of Madras in 1981, on the Dravidian movement in Tamil Nadu. "The renaissance of language and culture is not peculiar to the Tamils... Such renaissance has taken place in Kerala, Gujarat, Bengal, and Orissa, to mention a few States," reads a snatch in his book Plain Speaking: A Sudra's Story, edited by Uttara Natarajan, from Permanent Black.

Of professional interest should be the info that Sattanathan `is credited with formulating excise procedures during his posting to the Collectorate of Salt Revenue and Central Excise in Madras in 1942-44, that were subsequently adopted for the rest of the country'. As chairman of the first Tamil Nadu Backward Classes Commission (1969), he spoke of the removal of the `upper layer' or `upper crust', and the prescription of an income limit for reservation. In 1992, the apex court was to use the phrase `creamy layer', as a means test.

Worthy read.

Tailpiece

"We have a controlled attrition in our company."

"How does that work?"

"By mutually agreeing with rival companies to poach and be poached."

http://BookPeek.blogspot.com

D. Murali