RESEARCH: 3/5
WRITING STYLE: 3/5
RELEVANCE: 4/5
ENTERTAINMENT QUOTIENT: 3/5
“The challenge of work-life balance is without question one of the most significant struggles faced by modern man, United States,” said Mr. Stephen Covey, a coveted author and one of the best keynote speakers of recent the United States or India, the situation is the same everywhere.
People are often torn maintaining the delicate balance between personal and professional life. Bogged down by their spouses or family, they are unable to prosper in their careers, and this is especially true in the case of Indian women.
Our generation is more at a loss because this issue would not have been so relevant at the times of our fathers and grandfathers, and thus not only we lack the wisdom to handle it well but are also unable to make the elders understand the sense of it all.
Disha, in her recently released book My Beloved’s MBA Plans, has decided to highlight this very fabric of our lives and has done so by providing the readers with a plethora of examples of compromise, understanding and support on part of the family members towards the successful professional lives of their sons, daughters, spouses etc.
It is a very unique and unheard-of concept, in which Disha specifically talks about stories of people who have done executive MBA after having worked for some time, with most of them married and leading a settled life.
Now, it is to be understood that in such a case, the support required from the spouse and other family members is much more because the “settled” life radically changes into “unsettled-bachelor-way-of-life”.
The writing style is interesting, with the narrations candidly conversational. The research is appealing, though not much informative in terms of statistics and figures.
I liked the agony-aunt-in-disguise sort of an appeal the book has, in the way that the chapters on the experiences of real-life couples will inspire and guide many who choose to walk upon the same path as those interviewed.
What I also liked about the book is that it is crisp and compact, and can be done within a single go. The advice which one gets from reading these stories is not like the unwelcome-unwanted-lecture, but rather like the guiding-teacher types.
The only qualm I have with My Beloved’s MBA Plans is with regard to the cover and the title. The cover is not at all attractive and gives you the notion that it is yet again a love story/college drama from yet another mediocre writer.
The fact that the author is an ex-IIM alumnus helps little. The cover will definitely never catch your eye and hardly lure you to open and glance at what is inside. Next is the title.
According to my opinion, the title does not do justice to the content. The fact that the MBA and IIM are generously pasted all over the cover, front-back and title is not a good sign.
After the unnecessary flooding of the market with such themes, these words do nothing but repel. But, what is done is done, I sincerely hope that some authors/publishers will heed my words and stop overdoing the IIT/IIM thing.
After all, we do want to repulse the audience, now, do we?