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The last look-east warrior:
Bing explains why
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Oh-oh.
This book's late. Now the warriors of the world will have to stop
mid-action-their fists clenched, molars grinding, ears fuming, leashes
taut and scroes armoured-just to get an earload of this. Sun Tzu
Was a Sissy. The good part, the democratic part, is that it can
be airwaved across to everybody all together. Information age efficiency.
Sun Tzu was a sissy. A sissy, dammit. Got it? And once that's done,
somebody can scribble it on a ten dollar bill, roll it into a nice
aluminium pipe and drop it as a tip-off for CIA spooks.
Sooner or later, the message would get traced.
That's when Stanley Bing would have some real explaining to do.
Categorised already as a Fortune send-up artist, he would have no
option but to own up to the authorship of Sun Tzu Was a Sissy: Conquer
Your Enemies, Promote Your Friends, and Wage the Real Art of War,
and brave the knuckle-crackers. How did he get access to such classified
intelligence (the sissy bit)? Actionable intelligence, at that,
too?
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SUN TZU WAS A SISSY
By Stanley Bing
Harper
Business
PP: 211
Price: Rs 656
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Nor does it help that the name Bing evokes instant suspicion. Bing?
The very sound of it pricks ears up at airports. Bing-it's clarion-like.
Almost as menacing as Rip, which any survey conducted with medical-journal
diligence would promptly identify as the sound of a box cutter.
Hapless Bing could plead that this book is
about corporate warfare, the more prevalent internal kind. It's
harmless. If that doesn't work, he could plead double jeopardy:
his office crowd has already generated enough hostility in him to
last a lifetime, so any further roughing up would only be met with
blank stares.
If pushed really hard-say, into watching CNBC
round the clock-Bing could argue that simple logic led him to his
conclusion about Sun Tzu, the Chinese military strategist from ages
ago who's remembered well enough to be misquoted with frequency
reserved only for truly historic figures. "It's quite possible
that all the Tzstuff he talks about, the mincing dependence on hyperstrategy
and deep philosophical musings, the delicate calibration of where
when and how to strike, the weeny-hierarchical hagiographic view
of ultrasenior management-used to work," Bing concedes. But
in a world full of "unknown unknowns", he impishly sighs,
old Tzu is obviously too wimpy to be of any use any longer.
What then? "Anger yourself." There's
a five-step workout to do just that. "Quash the sissy spirit."
Some brawny advice on this too. "Don't skulk around."
Do stuff. Act. Now, dammit.
For those suffering a severe attention-deficit
order (from central command), the book is packed with charts. Sarcasm,
for example, is listed as a chart-topping weapon against peers,
partners and friends, but not to be used against grumpy higher-ups.
Insincerity, though, is for use against everybody. Bing uses both.
All the rollicking advice ends with the Booty
Call chapter. Boy, oh boy. And then, and then, just when the reader
gets all charged up for some hardy action, Bing goes all soft. He
throws in an afterword that sounds alarmingly humane. "And
so, as the sun sets slowly in the West, we bid farewell to our civilisation."
He sighs and sniffles over free enterprise, consumerism, dissent,
success, sex... This, this last part, is his real opus. 'Life is
live', one can almost hear him swaying to.
-Aresh Shirali
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REALIZING BRAND INDIA
Edited By Sharif D. Rangnekar
Rupa & Co.
PP: 188
Price: Rs 395
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Now, do you really
need a book (hardback in 188 pages, that too) to tell you that India
is no longer just a country of snake charmers, elephants, maharajas
and palaces? And how would you react if a dozen or so of truly your
own ilk (well, essentially hacks) get together to bring out this
anthology propounding that India is indeed shining (sic), and not
merely as a globally competitive knowledge economy, but even as
a contender in manufacturing, trade, music, arts and films?
Well, that explains the dollops of scepticism,
even an urge to trash the effort as a success only at luring a gullible
publisher, that accompanied my approach to Realizing Brand India.
But an attempted browse-through on a not-so-busy Saturday morning
extended painlessly well into the afternoon, and then evening. As
my guard slowly dropped, I realised it wasn't all that bad after
all.
In fact, some pieces, like Third Party Endorsement
by Financial Times' Mumbai correspondent Khozem Merchant, and The
Creative India by adman Santosh Desai, are very vivid in their des-cription
on how perceptions about India are changing-both abroad and here
in India. Merchant argues how India's information technology prowess
is introducing millions of foreigners to India in areas quite unrelated
to technology, and that India is becoming mainstream in the reckoning
of global media. Desai's piece is a reflection of Indian advertising
as a mirror to our polity.
And yet, you have an essay by New York-based
freelancer Vivek Rai, A Bite into the Big Apple, that promptly deflates
any sense of grandeur, arguing that India is on the Americans' radar,
all right, but only just that.
As with most compilations, the book could be
read non-sequentially, depending on what interests you. If it's
retail, you'll get a sharp and statistics-laden insight from Rumy
M. Narayan in Consuming The Retail Boom. Reforms, Getting It Politically
Correct by Abheek Barman is a must-read for an acquaintance with
the politics of market reforms in India.
Who is this book aimed at? Anyone, Indian or
not, who wants a quick prelude to post-1991 India. Even hacks who
want a quick revision before meeting a global CEO on a visit to
India.
-Shailesh Dobhal
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CELEBRATING 50 YEARS
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(L to R):
Reader's Digest's Publishing Director Ajay Shukla, Editor
Ashok Mahadevan, Deputy Editor Mohan Sivanand, India Today
Group CEO Aroon Purie and President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam
To mark 50 years in India, Reader's Digest, the world's most
widely read magazine, brought out a special commemorative
issue, which was unveiled by A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, President
of India. He received its first copy from India Today Group
CEO Aroon Purie.
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