Book: Echoes of experience
Author : Dr Arshad Hussain Khuroo
Publisher: BlueRose One
Pages: 186
inam ul rehman
“Our kids,” writes Dr Arshad Hussain Khuroo in his self-help book “learn more from the internet than from us.” On the same page he trenchantly writes, “More likes on a Lie, is considered as a Truth in social media.”
Once a while one must read a self-help book to reinvigorate oneself. It is not that we don’t know or haven’t experienced what is written in these self-help books, but it is to refocus our energies on important things rather than on clutter. Dr Arshad, born in Sopore, has been working as a leading scientist in India’s largest pharmaceutical industry, Sun pharmaceutical industries limited, for the past 25 years. Here he leads “a team of 275 scientists scattered across different functions and the globe”.
“When one person in the team makes his or her individual goals more important than the team goals, we not only start hating that person, but we also lose interest in playing. The result is we get a defeat from the opponent.” This thinking of me being the all-important is common in our offices where individuals don’t think they are bigger than the institutions. The author in subsequent chapters explains it when he writes that it is the responsibility of the leader to foster a culture of trust at workplace. Without trust, writes he, “performance of people gets impacted and we hardly see any innovations.”
Dr Arshad’s chapter on crazy facts is spot on. He writes: “It is being said that leaders create leaders. But the problem is, in most of the cases, the created leaders abandon them.” The author at a few places comes up with an out of box solution. According to the author once you have put your energy on some start up focus everything on it. As humans we tend to lose focus when we have plan B!
But these are a few shinning examples of an ordinarily written book. There are plenty of typos in the book. The foreword of the book is written by Simrit Reyar. Like you I am also puzzled who is this mystery person.
The author claims he has narrated 30 insights from his life journey, but there are only 28 experiences! Two more experiences are added but they are written by his children! Which reflects badly on the author’s credibility. As an reader I feel cheated.
Author has goofed up at a number of places throughout this book. Sample this famous couplet:
Girte hain sheh-sawar hi maidan-e-jung mein.
Woh tifl kya gire jo ghutnon ke bal chala karte hain
He has credited it to poet Muhammad Iqbal! And then in a stunning murder of poet’s couplet has translated it as:
Horse riders only fall in the battle field,
The child will not fall as its crawling.
This couplet is written by Mirza Azeem Beg.
In fact goof ups start right from the beginning when he mentions a famous couplet without naming its poet!. The couplet in question is:
Apna too kaam hai jalatay rahei’n chirag,
Rasty mein’n dost ya dushman ka ghar mile
Many readers in Kashmir would be familiar with this couplet as it appeared daily on the editorial page of Alsafa newspaper. And I need not to mention again that its English translation is also appalling.
One hopes that next time Dr Arshad writes a book, he spends plenty of time in rehashing and reediting it before making it public.
The author is working as media technical staff at EMMRC, Srinagar.
