Thanks to Baradwaj Rangan (BR) for giving the idea for this blog post!! BR had a query to his readers on Books that changed you. I did call out the list of books that influenced me in his comments section. Here I am giving an elaborated version for your reading pleasure 😀

I grew up reading all kinds of magazines and books. During my school years, we got pretty much all Tamil weeklies, bi-weeklies, fortnightlies, and monthlies – thanks to the circulation library and to my parents. There are so many books I love, both fiction non-fiction, Tamil and English, and it is a long list. Started with Tamil magazines and comics, progressed to Tamil novellas and novels to English comics, fiction, and to non-fiction. It is not that every book you read will make a change in your world view. For a book to bring in a change in our perception, we need to be looking for something, our state of mind needs to be in receptive mode, receptors switched ON, and the book need to talk about that something. Most of the books I read I may find them interesting like Ayn Rand’s Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged but may not have an impact in my world view. As a book I still admire the topic the author discusses so persuasively but when it comes to did it influence my perception, the answer is a no. Many books did have an incremental impact on me, but there are few which had a huge impact, changed my perception and my understanding of the world.

Before I go further I need to give a big thanks and huge hug to my parents. Being born in a society with an illiberal caste system where your fate gets decided when you are born, religion you practice, your gods, rituals you follow, what you can and can’t eat, whom you can marry, etc., I was so fortunate to have parents who provided the environment and gave the freedom to explore my thoughts and questions. My search and questioning started during my teen years and still continues. These books are not necessarily read in the order listed here, I tried to group the books that worked similar in influencing my thoughts.

Renuka, a short-story by Sujata, Penn Ean Adimaiyanal (Why women got enslaved) by EVR, Annihilation of Caste by Dr.B.R.Ambedkar, and Why I am not a Christian by Bertrand Russell got me out of the comfort zone and enabled me to see out of the circle. Something doesn’t fit or something is not right in our society. What we study in school, Pirapokkum Ella Uyirkkum.. and what we see in the society are different. It changed how I view the society but I couldn’t figure out why we are like this and how we got here. That missing piece has to wait.

Reading JK, Richard Bach, and few more writings by Bertrand Russell took me to philosophy. I was mesmerized by JK’s one liner Don’t follow anyone. If you follow anyone, you cease to follow the truth. That one liner along with Epporul Yaar Yaar Vai Ketpinum Apporul Meipporul Kanpathu Arivu from Thirukural pretty much took strong roots in my thought process.

Then comes The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins, the book that gave a big jump in my understanding of how things evolved and did some rewiring of my brain. With Selfish Gene, there is a distinct Before and After Rad. Selfish Gene led me to Blind Watchmaker, Breaking the Spell, Guns Germs and Steel, Third Chimpanzee, and Sapiens. Put together these books enabled me to loop back, connect the dots, and get the answer to how we got here.

While the above ones had a huge impact on me, a Before and After, there are few others which did change my perception and how I think – Thinking Slow and Fast, Nurture Shock, The Hurried Child, India After Gandhi, Outliers, Innovator’s Dilemma, Small is Beautiful, and Talent is Overrated. Of course, my list is never complete without mentioning The Calvin and Hobbes and Hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy. Calvin forces us to think about our parenting, education system, life, freedom and why we need to view the world from Child’s point of view. And Hitchhiker gives us the answer to Life, Universe and Everything.

All these books not only just changed my view of the world, but were liberating too, I did manage to unlock and get out of good number of chains and conditioning. These books highly helped in removing the thick fog in my thought process, get the WOW moments as I move towards more clarity. The feeling is spiritual whenever that Ah…Aha moment is hit. What is more satisfying is that I can laugh at myself whenever I buy an expensive item – like that sunglass or iPhone or Bose sound system – that self-awareness of what drives me to do it 😀