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Kafka didn’t warn me loud enough.

I had read The Trial before, but not like this. Not when your wrists itch from handcuffs, not when your name echoes in FIRs, not when your mind begins pacing before your body does. In prison, you don’t read books the same way. They stop being objects of admiration. They become objects of survival. Sentences aren’t just in the book anymore. They’re outside too.

Before, I would read to know and learn. Some people read to escape. Suddenly, I was reading to endure.

And that changed everything.

In Tihar and Presidency, reading hardly stayed a hobby. It was a hardware upgrade for a soul put to test. I saw men read Man’s Search for Meaning the way a drowning man watches bubbles - half-believing, fully desperate. I saw one man underline Kaufman and Kipling with a twig. I saw another recite Faiz with the stillness of someone being stitched back together - and they thought he’d gone bonkers.

We read for perspective. For pause. For parole of the mind.

The first few weeks, I couldn’t finish a paragraph. The brain twitches differently in a cell. It remembers everything you forgot, flings random regrets at 3 a.m., questions your voice, your choices, your chapters. But then something shifts. You stop flinching at time. You start attending to it. And you begin to read - your books, your thoughts, your past - with different eyes. Fierce, unblinking ones.

That’s how this book began. Not at a writing desk. But in the unlit corners of a barrack, where stories come not from muses but from those infant scars in your heart, and which better heal.

Yet, this is one book I never thought I’d write because I'm not into literature. Though I fancy myself as a storyteller - for I'm one from the copywriters' creed - one that runs out of gas after a few lines, and rests its case on billboards because it can’t rise to a bookshelf! I absolutely have neither the credentials of a reviewer or a critic, nor the calm or claims of a scholar. What I do have though, is a thousand books in my head, many of those that I have read in times in my life, when books could not have been a luxury - they were my saviors from the madhouse.

Kafka didn’t warn me loud enough.

I had read The Trial before, but not like this. Not when your wrists itch from handcuffs, not when your name echoes in FIRs, not when your mind begins pacing before your body does. In prison, you don’t read books the same way. They stop being objects of admiration. They become objects of survival. Sentences aren’t just in the book anymore. They’re outside too.

Before, I would read to know and learn. Some people read to escape. Suddenly, I was reading to endure.

And that changed everything.

In Tihar and Presidency, reading hardly stayed a hobby. It was a hardware upgrade for a soul put to test. I saw men read Man’s Search for Meaning the way a drowning man watches bubbles - half-believing, fully desperate. I saw one man underline Kaufman and Kipling with a twig. I saw another recite Faiz with the stillness of someone being stitched back together - and they thought he’d gone bonkers.

We read for perspective. For pause. For parole of the mind.

The first few weeks, I couldn’t finish a paragraph. The brain twitches differently in a cell. It remembers everything you forgot, flings random regrets at 3 a.m., questions your voice, your choices, your chapters. But then something shifts. You stop flinching at time. You start attending to it. And you begin to read - your books, your thoughts, your past - with different eyes. Fierce, unblinking ones.

That’s how this book began. Not at a writing desk. But in the unlit corners of a barrack, where stories come not from muses but from those infant scars in your heart, and which better heal.

Yet, this is one book I never thought I’d write because I'm not into literature. Though I fancy myself as a storyteller - for I'm one from the copywriters' creed - one that runs out of gas after a few lines, and rests its case on billboards because it can’t rise to a bookshelf! I absolutely have neither the credentials of a reviewer or a critic, nor the calm or claims of a scholar. What I do have though, is a thousand books in my head, many of those that I have read in times in my life, when books could not have been a luxury - they were my saviors from the madhouse.

From Plato's The Republic, influencing Martin Luther King Jr., and Henry David Thoreau's Civil Disobedience, and Tolstoy's War & Peace influencing Mahatma Gandhi, to Fyodor Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov inspiring Albert Einstein, there’s no dearth of examples of books impacting the lives and thoughts of the greatest of minds and leaders. It’s not trivial that some of the world’s greatest minds find succor and value in books.

There’s an entire body of research proving the power of reading. Kidd and Castano’s landmark 2013 study for instance, found that just a few minutes of reading literary fiction significantly improved readers’ “theory of mind” - their ability to infer what others are thinking and feeling. Participants who read short passages from works by authors like Alice Munro out-performed those who read nonfiction or nothing at all on tests of social reasoning.

That’s exactly why books are not mere collections of words or repositories of facts, information, knowledge and wisdom. They are proven tools of transformation of the human mind and civilization, and a weapon for revolutions.

A well-chosen book can indeed change the way we think, write, speak, and engage with the world. Books are our secret superpower. Reading builds intellectual agility, emotional depth, and a global perspective, making it our most powerful ally in personal growth and professional aspirations.

The Science of Attention in Reading

Beyond biology, reading sculpts the architecture of the mind in lasting ways. Imagine the brain not merely as a data processor, but as a richly appointed theater. Reading becomes the script, the cast, the set design, and the evolving plot - while our psyche acts as both director and engaged audience. This internal dramaturgy is where cognition and emotion intersect, lighting up neural corridors responsible for focus, empathy, memory, and emotional regulation.

Focused Attention vs. Cognitive Fragmentation

To read War and Peace is to engage in cognitive weightlifting. Sustained immersion in Tolstoy’s epic narrative requires the activation of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex - key to executive function, working memory, and selective attention. The process mimics what's known in psychology as deep work: prolonged, undistracted engagement in cognitively demanding tasks.

Each chapter you read without interruption trains the brain’s attentional control systems to resist novelty-seeking impulses. And each distraction frustrates neurons, diluting their enthusiasm.

Yet, every time we break focus - checking a phone, toggling between tabs - we invoke task-switching costs. The brain enters a refractory state, requiring time to reorient, which disrupts the formation of coherent mental representations. What Daniel Goleman calls the “attention economy” is in constant conflict with the slow, deliberate nature of reading.

How to Build Focus: Create reading sessions as “cognitive sanctuaries.” Begin with 10-minute distraction-free windows using the Pomodoro technique, then gradually extend. Use ambient tools like brown noise or minimalist soundtracks to enhance cognitive entrainment.

The Role of Eye Movements (Saccades)

When reading The Great Gatsby, our eyes don't glide over the page - they leap. These micro-movements, known as saccades, interspersed with fixations, are how the visual cortex assembles linguistic data into meaning. Each saccade is guided by the brain’s oculomotor system, particularly the frontal eye fields and superior colliculus, working in tandem to prioritize salient words. This process becomes more fluid with practice, leading to faster lexical access and improved fluency.

Reading and Emotional Resonance

Optimizing Saccades: I’ve recently tried digital tools like Spritz or Bionic Reading, and they do seem to work - likely by visually emphasizing central morphemes, training the eye for speed without sacrificing comprehension. You can try meta-guiding - using a finger or pen as a pacing tool to encourage smoother eye movement and reduce regression.

Empathy and Theory of Mind

When you step into Scout Finch’s perspective in To Kill a Mockingbird,
your brain engages the default mode network (DMN) - a constellation of
neural regions, including the medial prefrontal cortex, temporoparietal
junction, and posterior cingulate cortex. This network is central to Theory
of Mind, the ability to attribute thoughts, emotions, and intentions to
others. Studies using fMRI have shown that reading character-driven fiction significantly activates this network, enhancing empathic accuracy and emotional perspective-taking.

Books that place us in morally or culturally unfamiliar terrain act as cognitive empathy simulators. Toni Morrison’s Beloved or Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West did not merely convey pain or displacement to me - they immersed me in it - almost slam dunked, if I may - serving to rewire a few affective pathways linked to compassion.

In a world where algorithms script our choices and conversations skim the surface, reading remains one of the last acts of unedited humanity. It is not merely a pastime or a personal luxury - it is a private revolution. To read is to pause time, to step outside the noise, and to commune with centuries of wisdom, longing, loss, and hope. Unlike the shallow scroll of digital life, reading does not demand your reaction - it asks for your attention. It slows the pulse, and in doing so, helps you locate it again.

Books are not escapism. They are mirrors that illuminate blind spots. They are windows that frame lives not our own. And at their best, they are doors - quietly unlatched - that open into deeper intimacy with ourselves and others. They teach us to grieve, to forgive, to listen, to parent, to love better, and perhaps most crucially, to live more reflectively in a world that profits from our speed and distraction.

This chapter is not about reading for credentials or career - it’s about reading to be more alive. To build empathy, anchor your inner life, and construct meaning in the face of uncertainty. Because while books may sit quietly on shelves, their true architecture is interior. And those who build with them shape not just knowledge, but character.

We may realize little, but reading has the power to shape self-awareness and empathy like few things can. Books are both mirrors that reflect who we are, and windows that reveal lives and worlds far removed from our own. This dual function of reading makes it, like I said above, one of the most powerful tools for self-awareness and interpersonal connection.

The Mirror: Understanding Yourself

Discovering Hidden Dimensions: Reading autobiographies or deeply introspective novels - think The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath or A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman, for instance, can illuminate thoughts and feelings you didn’t know you had. These books hold up a shining mirror to our struggles, aspirations, and joys.

Clarifying Values and Beliefs: Philosophical and spiritual texts, like The Art of Happiness by the Dalai Lama, challenge you to confront our values.

They urge you to pause and ponder: Who am I, and what do I stand for?

Learning to Be Alone: Books teach us the art of solitude without loneliness. When you immerse yourself in a story, you find companionship in words and ideas, cultivating a sense of inner peace.

The Window: Building Empathy

Reading introduces us to perspectives we might never encounter in our daily lives:

Walking in Someone Else’s Shoes: Novels like The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini or a memoir like Becoming by Michelle Obama allow us to experience lives, struggles, and triumphs beyond our own.

Understanding Nuance in Relationships: Books like An American Marriage by Tayari Jones or The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman offer a nuanced exploration of relationships, teaching readers to communicate better and empathize more.

Bridging Cultural Gaps: Travelogues and world literature, from The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho to
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe,
provide insights into cultures and traditions that are vastly different from
our own.

At the heart of every great athlete lies a brain pulsing with patterns, decisions, reflections, and resolve. The body may win the point, but the mind reads the play - and reading, quite literally, sharpens that ability. It is no accident that so many of the greats - not just in coaching boxes but on the courts and fields themselves - have been voracious readers. Open, the searing autobiography of Andre Agassi, revealed how a racket-wielding teenager found emotional healing through philosophy. Kobe Bryant, in his short life, devoured books on leadership, battle strategy, and mental toughness - The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho never left his bag. And it’s no surprise that Pep Guardiola’s footballing brain was shaped as much by Inverting the Pyramid by Jonathan Wilson as by the triangles on his team’s training pitch.

This chapter also carries a personal echo. My son Aaryaman seems a gifted basketballer - about to captain his school, already being whispered about in city and state-level circuits. And as I watch him rise, game by game, I feel ever more certain that reading isn’t a distraction for him - it’s his edge. In a world of endless drills and infinite data, he needs the space to think beyond the scoreboard. And so I want to nudge him - gently, strategically - toward the pages of Eleven Rings by Phil Jackson not just to understand team chemistry, but to appreciate the Zen of performance, or, read Mike Tyson’s Undisputed Truth to fathom how to build the real and the right fight inside.

The point is: whether you’re a striker plotting runs into the box, or a gymnast perfecting your approach on the beam, the right book can sharpen your mind as decisively as the perfect warm-up. And in this
chapter, we’ll travel across locker rooms and libraries, from basketball
memoirs to swimming manifestos, to understand how reading isn’t just helpful for sportspeople - it’s becoming essential.

Because, like all truly powerful tools - and like I’ve been writing since the start - books don’t just inform. They perform.

At first, it’s the physicality that dazzles us - feet flying, hands reacting, muscles firing like instinct. But stay with a sport long enough and you realize: it’s not the body alone that wins. It’s the brain that decides - when to pass, when to press, when to pause. What looks like instinct is often memory. What looks like reflex is often recognition. And it turns out, reading - especially deep, engaged reading - is one of the most
powerful tools for building the kind of brain athletes depend on.

Science backs this with the same confidence as a coach reading a playbook. Studies have shown that literary reading enhances what psychologists call “theory of mind” - our ability to read situations, anticipate others’ intentions, and respond fluidly in real-time. Now translate that into the split-second world of sports: a midfielder picking up a teammate’s unspoken cue, a boxer sensing an opponent’s hesitation before the punch, a chess player spotting a six-move trap. The same neural circuitry that lets us track characters and infer motives in a novel sharpens our reading of the field, the court, or the ring.

And this is why great athletes don’t just train. They read. Consider Relentless by Tim Grover, the famed trainer behind Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, and Dwyane Wade. The book isn’t just a manual - it’s a manifesto on mental dominance. Or Thinking Body, Dancing Mind by Chungliang Al Huang and Jerry Lynch, which turns Eastern philosophy into a performance mindset. When players say they feel “in the zone,” what they’re describing is a deeply literate brain - one that has internalized rhythms, anticipated moves, and made calm decisions in high-velocity situations.

Even in sports like tennis or swimming, where isolation is high and distractions plentiful, books become companions in sharpening focus. Novak Djokovic has spoken about how reading helped him reconstruct his mental discipline during the toughest years of his career. He didn’t just stretch his body - he stretched his inner script.

The beauty is that this cognitive training doesn’t require a lab or a stopwatch. It just needs a book, a quiet half-hour, and a mind ready to receive. When Aaryaman reads Mind Gym by Gary Mack between games, or when Aditya scribbles thoughts in the margins of The Inner Game of Cricket by Rahul Dravid, they aren’t just athletes reflecting. They’re thinkers rehearsing. Because in modern sport, it’s not enough to read the game. You must read yourself. And for that, the page is the perfect practice ground.

Consider the lessons of history found in Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals, which details how Lincoln worked with a cabinet of competing egos, or the philosophical grounding provided by Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations . These books are not read passively; they demand engagement, reflection, and application - qualities central to any leadership journey.

Professional Resilience: The Quiet Strength

In every professional’s journey, there are moments of doubt, failure, and fatigue. Books act as silent mentors during these times, offering not just solutions but solace. The struggles of fictional characters, the persistence of inventors chronicled in biographies, the triumphs of entrepreneurs - these stories resonate, reminding the reader that setbacks are temporary and growth inevitable.

Consider the professional grappling with burnout, finding refuge in Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning . The book does not just inspire; it recalibrates. It reminds the reader that purpose is not something granted but something found, even in adversity. This resilience, fueled by reading, becomes the bedrock upon which professionals rebuild and thrive.

Professionals whose responsibilities are dominantly managerial and who need to lead situations and men. Reading for professional growth isn’t just about the quantity of books consumed; it’s about developing a discerning approach that amplifies the value extracted from every page. This segment will guide readers on how to approach books strategically,
choosing reads that align with professional objectives while leaving room for serendipitous discovery.

How to Choose Reads that Matter

The professional world is drowning in recommendations, with self-help books, business guides, and memoirs often topping the lists. But how do you curate a reading list that truly matters? The key lies in alignment: understanding what phase you’re in professionally and what knowledge, skill, or perspective you need to grow.

Map Reading to Objectives: Early-career professionals might prioritize books on productivity ( Atomic Habits by James Clear), communication ( Crucial Conversations by Kerry Patterson et al.), or foundational principles ( Principles by Ray Dalio).

Similarly, mid-career professionals could focus on leadership ( Leaders Eat Last by Simon Sinek), creativity ( Range by David Epstein), or industry-specific deep dives (e.g., The Innovator’s Dilemma by Clayton Christensen for tech leaders).

Indeed, senior leaders benefit from philosophical works ( Meditations by Marcus Aurelius) or historical biographies ( Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson) that offer reflective wisdom.

Diversify Genres and Eras: This is another highly effective idea to intensify reading. Mixing genres is vital. Nonfiction delivers insights, but fiction deepens empathy. Modern fiction, particularly from authors known for their detailed research - like A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles or The Overstory by Richard Powers - can enrich understanding of human nature and larger societal shifts. Classics, too, offer enduring lessons; works like Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen teach social dynamics as relevant today as they were centuries ago.

Why Leave Out Modern Fiction?

Indeed. Why are we obsessed with classics all the time? Modern fiction offers a bridge between creativity and reality.

Authors such as Margaret Atwood ( The Handmaid’s Tale ) craft narratives that resonate with contemporary issues, from AI and genetic engineering to climate change and gender dynamics. Fiction has the power to make abstract problems feel immediate, sparking ideas for professionals grappling with real-world challenges.

A policy advisor might find Atwood’s dystopian worlds useful for anticipating long-term societal risks. A tech entrepreneur might glean
insights into user behavior from Ted Chiang’s speculative short stories. A
healthcare professional might draw inspiration from Abraham Verghese’s Cutting for Stone to empathize with patients and colleagues alike.

Let’s admit it: books don’t always win. In fact most of the times they don’t.

They don’t beep with notifications. They don’t offer dopamine rewards every five seconds. They don’t auto-play. They require you to slow down, sit still, and engage deeply. And in a world built for scrolling, that can feel like resistance.

But here's the quiet truth no algorithm will tell you: the deeper joys in life - clarity, imagination, empathy, wonder - are still found in pages, not pixels.

This chapter is not about making reading easier. It's about making it irresistible again.

Because enjoyment isn’t just a personality trait - it’s a skill. One that can be learned, reawakened, and strengthened over time. You don’t have to be a “natural reader” to fall in love with books. You just need the right approach, the right rhythm, and the right reasons.

The goal isn’t to read more. The goal is to want to.

And once you rediscover the pleasure of getting lost in a good book, you’ll find something rare in our attention-starved age: the ability to lose track of time for the right reasons.

Forget what you’ve been told about “should-reads.” The fastest way to fall in love with reading is to start with what makes you light up - not what looks impressive on a syllabus, not what a critic called essential, not what everyone else is highlighting on Instagram.

The best readers didn’t start with Proust or Hemingway, or Martin Amis. They started with something that made them stay up past midnight without noticing. And then kept trying to find time to come back to it even at their busiest. They probably picked up a romantic flick or a senseless sci fi.

Ask yourself: What do I already love learning about? History? Space? Mythology? Music? Sports? Social justice? Politics? Espionage? The Holy Grail? Extraterrestrials? There’s a book for every niche. Start there.

Love epic stories? Begin with The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien - adventure, wonder, and timeless charm. Intrigued by history? Try The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman - a gripping, human account of how World War I unfolded. Fascinated by spycraft or politics? The Spy and the Traitor by Ben Macintyre is thrilling, real, and deeply readable. Or, to hell with the world and its prudes, just read Ian Fleming and imagine being James Bond!

The point is: when your book speaks to something you already enjoy, reading becomes affirmation, not effort.

You don’t always need a passion - you just need a spark. If a class, movie, or conversation made you curious, chase that. Just studied the Cold War? The Cold War: A New History by John Lewis Gaddis deepens the narrative with nuance. Curious about the mind? Try The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks - a blend of psychology and storytelling. Or, obsessed with space? Begin with Cosmos by Carl Sagan, and let it change how you see everything.

Reading is a scavenger hunt, not a marathon. Let your questions lead you. Never search for a read to find answers. Read to learn to make your own answers. Never allow anything or anyone to build an expectation about a book in your mind.