The Hindu Business Line : Reading is fun

Actually I'm a fan of Chase. He wrote with a distinct literary quality, which has been highly ignored. I don't like his crime thrillers, but love his psychological thrillers.

When you ask this voracious reader how he finds the time to read so much, he tells you the story of the person who was absolutely full at a feast. He declined more rice saying he couldn't take a grain extra. But when dessert was announced, he was the first to volunteer. When asked to explain, he said, "During the Dusserah festival in Mysore the place is choc a bloc with people. You believe you can't drop a pin. But the moment the Maharaja is announced, the crowd parts and makes way. This is true of your time too. You believe your time is closely packed but if you badly want to do something, the activities actually part," says G.B. Prabhat, Director of the Consulting and Enterprise Division of Satyam Computer Services.

He finds the time to read, as well as paint, and write... both fiction and non-fiction. "I spend a lot of time with my children and parents, and take care of nearly 1,500 people who work with me. The complaint about lack of time is a myth perpetuated by us. If you are passionate about something you will find the time for it."

Reading, he thinks, is in his genes, with his father being a professor of English literature. "Ever since I recall, reading has been an addiction with me."

He began with not only Enid Blyton but also classics like Tom Sawyer. "Of course, today I read a wide range; classics of literature and philosophy."

When asked to name his favourites from the timeless titles of English literature, this software executive turns to the section of his laptop containing a huge list of his favourite titles. With a sigh he says, "This is an exercise in futility. I don't know when I tried preparing this catalogue of my favourites, but now it looks like a lifetime endeavour."

His favourite titles have been categorised under novels, plays, short stories, and the like.

In the "novels" category, stalwarts like Mark Twain, R.K. Narayan, R.L. Stevenson, Somerset Maugham, John Steinbeck, Gabriel Garcia Marquez and E.M. Forster, share space with James Hadley Chase. Sensing the unasked question, Prabhat says, "Actually I'm a fan of Chase. He wrote with a distinct literary quality, which has been highly ignored. I don't like his crime thrillers, but I love his psychological thrillers. There is a very powerful book - Eve ... it was out of print but I was able to grab a copy at the Chennai Airport recently."

It is with a lot of passion that Prabhat relates his love for books. "There is a wonderful book by Alexander Raskin, When Daddy was a little boy. Each chapter is a tale told by the father to his little girl about what he did when he was a little boy. It's an amazing book. You can't forget it."

Understandable, for a man who has two daughters, and predictably, not only his daughters, but also his wife (who incidentally is the grand niece of R.K. Narayan) shares his passion for books. Many of these are read together and discussed. "One particular short story over which my daughters and I have been continuously laughing is Saki's The Lumber Room. By the age of eight, they had read Oscar Wilde's A picture of Dorian Grey, which is strictly classified as a short story and not a novel, even though it's rather long," he says.

Returning to novels, Prabhat's other favourites are James Hilton's Lost Horizon, ("it's absolutely captivating the way he gave the whole world Shangrila), DentonWilde's The Bridge of Dan Luis Rey, and John Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath, and E.M. Forster's A Passage to India. He has some Tamil favourites too in this category.

Coming to plays, he finds "one of the best I've ever read is The Oyster and the Pearl by William Saroyan, as well as My Heart's in the Highlands."

Competing with Saroyan in the plays category is Eugene O'Neil's A path to the Emperor Jones. Then comes Henrik Ibsen, "more for The Wild Duck than for A Doll's House, George Bernad Shaw for Doctor's Dilemma and August Strindberg for Father. "It positions Strindber as a misogynist but at the same time the play is absolutely captivating." Other favourites are Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett, and many of Tennessee Williams' plays, but he particularly likes The Glass Menagerie and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.

So is he fond watching his favourites being performed on the stage?

"Yes, very much so, even though I don't get a chance to see too many of them." Both in London and Chennai he has seen some of Shakespeare's plays. Though he often travels to New York he hasn't seen a Broadway performance yet. "For one thing you are zipping in and out, and for another, you also need a bit of a company to watch theatre," he says ruefully.

Coming to short stories, he enjoys those of Earnest Hemingway, and James Thurber's The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. "You can never ever miss it. More recently, I've reread Tagore's Kabuliwala. I also have favourites in philosophy and economics."

So how does he decide what to read?

"It is never a conscious decision. One good book invariably leads to another... either through the foreword or other details."

Prabhat buys his books both online as well as through browsing sessions at bookstores. "I spend hefty money on couriers. Getting books from amazon.com all the way into India is a very expensive affair. Often the courier charge is more than the cost of the book. For instance, I badly wanted to possess a copy of Bridge of San Luis Rey (Thornton Wilder). No copy was available anywhere in India, so I had to get it from amazon; the courier charge was $25, while the book itself cost $6! It is economical only if you are ordering about 20 books costing over $200."

He grabs reading time everywhere; in the car, at airports and in the aircraft.

"I am paranoid about carrying at least three to four books on all my trips and that includes business journals as well. I have to do a lot of reading just to stay in business. Wherever I find a bookstore, my weakness is to pull out my wallet and buy a book. Fortunately I am able to afford it because reading is not an inexpensive hobby, particularly if you want to buy books. But thankfully, in recent times the prices of books have crashed and Indian imprints of popular books are far cheaper than the original editions and are reasonably well produced," says Prabhat.

He has no problems reading even poorly printed books. But he doesn't pick up books from pavements "purely out of sanitation consideration. That is a big put-off for me. So I buy only from authorised bookstores."

So how many books does the family own?

"We started off with a 1,000-book collection at home, and now I've stopped counting. It must be close to 2,000 now. There is absolutely no space in my house now, so I'm building a new one."

As simple as that!

He has also written a novel (fiction), Chains, which a saga of NRIs in the US. His second novel is in the pipeline and he has published several short stories. "In fact my aspiration is to turn into a full time writer if I can afford it, but then writing is not a lucrative profession, particularly full time fiction writing, unless you are an Arundhati Roy!"

Picture by Bijoy Ghosh

Article E-Mail :: Comment :: Syndication

Stories in this Section
And the winner is...

Banking on Bollywood

It pays to pamper

Reading is fun

Of bus rides and irreverent poems

It's movies and coffee in Chennai

FM matters... in Mumbai

Creating common ground