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HT Picks; New Reads
This week’s list of good reads includes a novel about Carnatic music and a family secret, a how-to book on exiting your business, and a memoir by a public intellectual and gifted playwright
What lies beneath
Yamuna is adrift. A long term relationship has come to an end. Her mother and she are at loggerheads about their ancestral home in Chingleput, which she loves and lives in. Even her PhD on early twentieth century music in Tamil Nadu seems to be going nowhere – until it leads her to an unexpected puzzle from the past.
During her research she comes to be fascinated by her enigmatic grandaunt, Lalitha, who rose to prominence as a Carnatic musician at a time when thirteen-year-old brides were the norm. And then she chances upon a letter written by her own grandmother to her grandfather that opens up another window into Lalitha’s life. She wants to know more. Only, the more questions she asks, the closer her family draws its secrets. No one will talk to her about the long-dead ancestor’s life or death.
What lies beneath the stories they are willing to tell? Beyond the letters that Yamuna manages to purloin from her beloved grandfather’s papers when she visits him in Banaras? What did this family do to Lalitha? Krupa Ge’s debut novel is an absorbing tale of an angsty young woman who must unravel the secrets of her family before she can untangle her own life.*
How smart entrepreneurs sell their businesses
“So what’s your exit strategy?” The question often leaves most entrepreneurs stumped. Running a business allows little time to think about anything else after all.
While business owners recognize that they may have to exit their business at some point, few give enough thought to how they will sell it. And fewer prepare for it. Invariably, when a prospective buyer appears or an offer is made, or when an unforeseen health of financial contingency arises, they scramble to respond. Even those rare entrepreneurs who have given thought to an exit often end up with seller’s remorse.
The Art of a Happy Exit helps entrepreneurs get prepared for all that selling their business entails. The book covers not just the outside game - positioning, prospecting, finding professional partners, negotiating, structuring and executing, but the critical inside game – the mental and emotional preparation needed even while retaining customers, employees and the business.
K Srikrishna tells the stories of 20 entrepreneurs from India and the United States who sold their businesses to varying degrees of happiness. Between the stories, he lays out the typical steps involved in a business sale, each with its own practical checklist. The result is a book that will help you gain greater self awareness of what you seek and how best to go about it, and ensure the happiness of all involved with the outcome.*
Life shaping experiences
Girish Karnad was one of modern India’s greatest cultural figures: an accomplished actor, a path-breaking director, an innovative administrator, a clear headed and erudite thinker, a public intellectual with an unwavering moral compass, and above all, the most extraordinarily gifted playwright of his times.
This Life at Play, translated from the Kannada in part by Karnad himself and in part by Srinath Perur, covers the first half of his remarkable life from his childhood in Sirsi and his early engagement with local theatre, his education in Dharwad, Bombay and Oxford, to his career in publishing, his successes and travails in the film industry, and his personal and writerly life.
Moving and humorous, insightful and candid, these memoirs provide an unforgettable glimpse into the life-shaping experiences of a towering genius, and a unique window into the Indian in which he lived and worked.*
*All copy from book flap.
