Ruchika Kumar’s career has given her the unique opportunity to look at marketing and business and journalism from a variety of perspectives. She started out as a Business Correspondent for afaqs.com, then was an Assistant Brand Manager on Femina in the U.K., then a Regional Head at Reliance Broadcast in Mumbai, and now is Head of Revenue and Strategy at MTV Indies where she’s connecting the youth of India to brands. You can reach her here.
Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner
I’m reading this for the wonderful insight it gives us into numbers and the actions people do and how it relates to something totally different. To give you an example, after reading the book I started understanding the correlation between wheat growing states in India and female infanticide. The relation is that wheat growing does not need many hands unlike rice growing and therefore having girls is not considered productive but a dowry burden and thus not required. The states where wheat is rampantly grown in India are Punjab, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh.
The Battle for Sanskrit by Rajiv Malhotra
The book is a totally different concept. It’s the understanding of the modern western Indology. The status of sanskrit in the world. The scientific qualities of sanskrit, in particular the tradition’s emphasis on empiricism etc.
I have read The Famished Road twice already and it is next on my radar to be read the third time. Okri attributes reality to a spiritual world without doubt. It opens your mind to the fact that there are more dimensions to reality… which asks the basic question, what is reality? In Okri’s words: “I’m fascinated by the mysterious element that runs through our lives. Everyone is looking out of the world through their emotion and history. Nobody has an absolute reality.” I love the continent he is from and there is a mystical vibe about him and his work and everything around it! Helps me immensely to think and question and imagine what is surreal!
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Feature header by the brilliant Jay Roeder. You can see more of his great work here. Portrait of Ms. Kumar by the scintillating Mike Caplanis. You can see more of his work here.
The Agency Review 