I kept it short at 99 pages, says author Dr Sheetal Nair on his latest 'The Midas Touch'

New Delhi: Books are a man's best friend, it is said because they take you into the world created by the author on the paper. Amid the lockdown due to global pandemic of the deadly coronavirus outbreak, staying indoors and reading your favourite book can be therapeutic. Dr Sheetal Nair's best-seller on Amazon titled “The Midas Touch -99 Pages To Acquire The Art Alchemy & Forge Champions,” talks about Leadership, Human Personality Development, and also focus on how to live a healthy life.  Here's an excerpt from his exclusive interview with Zee News Digital:

Q. What was the idea behind this book 'The Midas Touch -99 Pages To Acquire The Art Alchemy & Forge Champions'?

A. Leadership is a much used and abused word tossed around by anyone who has the mettle to sell a program for Transformation. I felt that one needs to narrow down the perspective to one specific skillset that focussing on a multi-dimensional outlook, and the tool to do that for anyone is supposed to be this book.

The book basically is inspired by the legend of King Midas, so the idea was to equate the transformation of an individual into something that is nothing short of the value that gold holds & of course hence the metaphor “Art of Alchemy” since alchemy is defined as “The medieval forerunner of chemistry, concerned with the transmutation of matter, in particular with attempts to convert base metals into gold or find a universal elixir.”

And 99 pages because I feel that the attention span of an individual is drastically reducing & this means that people don’t like to read something too long & in order to ensure that the reader is captivated & holds onto the book, I kept it short and at 99 pages.

When I wrote this book, I wrote with myself as a role model reader of this book, I kept it short & crispy. The advice in this book is so thorough that I had to write a journal specifically for taking notes while I wrote the book since I wanted to keep it short in the book. By the end, I wanted the readers to be not just energized, either — I wanted them to be prepared to make some meaningful shifts in their life without going overboard. If I wouldn’t have been an avid reader, I would’ve never been able to get this perception

Q. What is the source of inspiration behind this writing?

A. I was inspired by experiences and emotions from my past, all my training, interactions with corporates & people around me. All of my books contain personal parts of me while other parts I had to research. I can say though that like Echo, this book brings back my shared experiences to the readers.

The biggest inspiration for this book is my father, my first role model, someone who has forged me into what I am today, my father - DS Nair, the founder of DSS Group. The book talks about championship & nothing can ever compare with the efforts my father has taken to become a champion in life. I hope that my son too looks up to me the way I do to my father.

Q. Any future books in the pipeline?

A. Yes, I have already started working on my new book, another self-help book. I have a confession to make: I love self-help books, not just any self-help book, though. If it tells me that mindfulness is the answer to all of my problems, it’s going into my bin. If it insists that a change in attitude is all it takes to change my life, it becomes a paperweight. And if it uses the words “vibrational” or “manifest” more than a couple times? I’m having a bonfire with it.

So, my next one is a self-help book with 99 pages of amazing tools & knowledge to manufacture time!!! Yes, you read it correctly, manufacture time. I assure you one will be actually able to do things one never imagined they could and suddenly you will feel like you have more than 24 hours with you in a day. Sounds interesting? Then wait for my next one to come out.

Q. Who's your favourite author in India and globally?

A. When I as a reader enter the pages of a book, I  enter a world where dreams transform the past into knowledge made applicable to the present, and where visions shape the present into extraordinary possibilities for the future, And hence I have many, I wouldn’t know how to name only a few but here goes.

(a)   Charles Dickens – A Tale of Two Cities

(b)   Jeffrey Archer – Kane & Abel

(c)   Priya Kumar – The Calling

(d)   Mehrab Irani – Mad Money Journey

(e)   Amish Tripathi – The Shiva Trilogy

(f)    JRR Tolkien - LOTR

(g)    Héctor García, Francesc Miralles - Ikigai

(h)   Robin Sharma – 5 AM Club