BOOK REVIEW                                   WORK
CORPORITUAL
AUTHOR: RAJ BHOWMICK
REVIEWER: RATNADEEP BANERJI

The Rite of Corporate Passage

Quirk of fate, the corporate bandwagon has turned myopic en masse leading a lopsided lifestyle. The corporate sacrament has turned tardy. CORPORitual exhorts its readers to attain corporate enlightenment that is to become discernible Homo sapiens and thereby adopt a pragmatic approach towards life. Raj Bhowmick, the author sounds his clarion call to say it’s high time that we wrest free from the maddening rat race of corporate swagger and take a whiff of the exotic bliss that remains ensconced deep inside us. To strike a balance with other activities than profession and achieve a well-poised life with holistic development is the call of the day.

Raj wrenches his reader’s soul with – ‘from knives to Nuclear we have surely

graduated. But are we really progressing?’ Indeed the very notion of progress, development, and success has got contorted. What is the yardstick? That is the essence of underlying prudence. Under the garb of hi-man tag we are indulging in sheer buffoonery.  Whoever rules the roost by hook or crook is hailed the winner to hit the hallowed hall of fame. Be it a demagogue or an unscrupulous tycoon. Does successful career mean merely a cushy job or chugging a gravy train or domineering the docile underlings?

The most horrifying state of affairs shows ‘violence is everywhere; among the highly educated, the most primitive, and even among the intellectuals. …Neither education nor organized religion has been able to tame man’. Raj says so and holds out plethora of instances to corroborate upon his trepidations. It’s not his morbid fears or for the heck of writing that he is whipping up sensation or tilting at the windmills. We are indeed churning out mutant species with perversions galore in its worst sordid state and yet we boast of, ‘the present era is the best era to live your life in. If you are part of this era, feel lucky’. We fall credulous with the façade of snazzy sophistications but we overlook its insidious repercussions. Raj in his book shows the way to stem the rot.

‘The rat race has turned into a rat marathon’. ‘A balanced life is the only solution’ to this menace. Raj is not a luddite nor a straitlaced archetype. ‘It is not wrong to enjoy all the high-tech living and gadgets….but to find some “Time” with ourselves to balance this fast paced living, and enjoy the delicacy of the divines which we have inside us’. But then there is nothing wrong whatsoever in being ambitious and building castles in the air, he says. The truth is, “If you don’t build castles in the air, you probably won’t build them anywhere.” A fire in the belly will make a person to go chugging along. Dreaming is the hallmark of achievers. “I love the Nike slogan-‘Just do it!’ It’s so true!” and that’s the authors attitude as he himself for eight long years endeared the burning desire to write this book and then it did fructify. And so, ‘fix your course upon star, and you can navigate any storm’, thus spake Leonardo Da Vinci.

J. Krishnamurti had opined, ‘fundamental changes in society can be brought about only by first bringing about an individual change in the inner-self of a person’. Raj says, there are two types of knowledge: the knowledge of the self and the knowledge of the world. ‘Among the two, the knowledge of the self needs to be cultivated first, as a priority before acquiring the knowledge of the world’. He goes on to elaborate the rationale behind making this conjecture. Raj quotes Albert Einstein, ‘we can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them’. And so Raj advises, ‘if you are looking at a solution for the new era, it is time for a revolution’. He doles out a poem – ‘Needle for the soul’ to darn the gaping hole that let ajar the solace of our soul.

Raj Bhowmick hatches an ingenious technique, ’meet yourself in silence’ which serves a multi-pronged strategy to tackle problem of sorts. The ancient technique of meditation is also an instance of this. He says, ‘meditation is similar to the task of cleaning a mirror. Once clean, a mirror will reflect nothing else but the truth’. He goes on to explicate several types of meditation and their fruition. He lays increased emphasis on practicing compassion. ‘When you give, not for the sake of getting back, but out of pure compassion, then the joy which you receive in return, is not less than the joy of getting the most precious gift.’ This churns out to be the crux of all world-religions.

Every chapter of the book on its cover page carries a scintillating nugget of epigram. For instance, ‘CORPORitual living is the right mixture of the West and the East. Not too much of the East and not too much of the West, will give us any solutions’. Raj illustrates his ideas with anecdotes and poems making it alluring to make a perusal. He chastises ‘the scripture reading creatures’, those religious fanatics who put at stake innocent human lives and children alike. He pens down a poem, ‘Compunction’ wherein he laments, ‘How slow people learn….are all a matter of concern’ .

The book is a keystone to build upon a meaningful life. Irreparable damage has already taken its toll. Our present state is of sitting astride a veritable tinderbox. Raj Bhowmick reaches out a rare succour with CORPORitual that edifies the tack to avert the impending doom and receive the gleanings of lasting solace.