Sunday, October 3, 2010

Same old wisdom from new age gurus

I entered a bookshop last week and I was struck by a trend I find in all such stores these days. There are not just shelves, but entire sections, devoted to books chalking out programmes to deal with the problems of life.

Decades ago when I was a student, there were self-help books like Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People. Then came books on subjects such as yoga and meditation, which were normally the choice of those in their 50s. A decade ago, spiritualism became the newly fashionable norm and authors like Deepak Chopra became the rage. Then we all gorged on Chicken Soup. Now, there is a younger audience out there and the new icons, in India at least, are Robin Sharma, Paulo Coelho, Jim Stovall, etc.

Why are we seeing such a surge of interest in self-heal books at a time when all our economic indices are at historic highs and India is the second-fastest growing economy in the world? The answer lies therein — that we as humans are unable to cope with such growth.

Full report here Deccan Chronicle

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