Covid waves – our lifestyle from being Bangalore city folks, transformed as moved back to our town (near Trichy, Tamilnadu). Mornings in the balcony with Alexa pampering us with Ilayaraja music as we sip our tea in our favorite branded cups is a past now. The mornings expect us to clean the entrance, make rangoli with rice flour, tea in tumbler, charge your laptops and phones to deal with powercut and discuss the food menu in-between the TV news ads. A complete change – food, dressing, responsibilities, priorities, etc. And as I was chatting one day with my neighbor kiddo who is in grade 12, she said, “I need some company for night studies, hostel life used to be amazing with friends as we lit the mid night oil”. So, we decided to be each other’s company that week, meeting from 10 PM. I sat with my laptop as she took her chemistry book and to build the drama more, we sat under the street lights literally (which was just outside my house lol). With 10 long minutes of working and studying, we took our little 40 minutes break as Keethu asked me, “how did you become very successful aunty? I am sure it is after you moved from this hopeless small town which imposes so many rules for us, right?”, and I smiled before contradicting her, “not really dear, my big dreams started from this small town
Keethu. Proving my English vacob amongst Chennai kids during interschool competitions, participating in cultural events (infact being the centre dancer) in front of the District Collector during independence day/republic day, getting selected in the local TV show debates to voice out my opinion, the first time when I saw Siva anna and Lakshmi akka travelling to Singapore for work – there are many moments where this small town girl had bigger dreams – on work, on lifestyle, on presentations, on making a change in the society & certainly this hopeless rules imposing town has given me the required challenges to push myself and reach the dreams”. Keethu was awe-stuck with my response and our break extended for 2 hours before we dosed off to sleep.
It is less than 2 weeks since I got to know Haritosh Srivastav, a fellow TCSer, thanks to the power of networking via Linkedin. We connected over a youtube video featuring a common friend (Gaurav Gandhi) and very interestingly it was few days before his book launch & what was intriguing is how much I could personally resonate with the title, “Small town bigger dreams”. I was one amongst the first
few who got the copy in my kindle and read through the fantastic 21 concepts Haritosh has articulated very well in the book. Now, let me share few insights as book review :
What can you expect from the book :
- Clear strategies on life lessons for anyone to pursue their bigger dreams into actions
- A lot of real instances which are mistakes from the past, hence the best learning for readers is you get the experience without making the mistakes, so if you understand the depth, you can certainly avoid those mistakes in your journey. What I loved is the ‘giving advice’ and how to be cautious chapter, oh, I have my share of failed experiences on this and now I have settled up.
- TSL concept – Theory of the chapter, Story related to the theory and what is the lesson learnt from these experience. Infact I found this more like a lifecycle for each of us as we keep growing and going. My best pick on the TSL is Chapter 16, “Know Yourself(Find Your Niche)
- Perfect quotes to begin with. Simple yet powerful. My favorite “We don’t stop playing because we grow old, we grow old because we stop playing” – George Bernaud Shaw & now Narmadha too 😉
- Action items : Calling it out clearly for readers as take away to act upon. Especially for the young readers who are in the league of this journey, action items segment under each of the 21 chapters is a bundle of bonus.
- And simple language, infact it is more like having a coffee chat with the author as we discuss on the lessons and experiences.
- The conclusion was something that I read again as I could proudly say, I had followed it and it works absolutely right (this is me trying not to reveal what’s given in conclusion)
What you cannot expect in this book :
- Fancy lingua with fantabulous super complicated literature genius language (so in short, for the target readers who are the youngsters from small town, very easy to understand,
- no google search for synonyms)
- There are no pictures or frameworks, so if you are someone who looks for pictorial examples, nope.
In short, I am gifting a copy to Keethu and a few more kids in my small town for them to create bigger dreams and this book is certainly a guide for them to navigate on how to achieve the same. Pre-order link : https://www.amazon.com/dp/B096S59T72
A very purposeful work as an author Haritosh. Best wishes!
