Book Review: Chanakya in You!

India is one of the famous countries to have spiritual & historical heritage. With a history of leaders like Swami Vivekananda, Mahatma Gandhi and Chanakya, India are a country the world learns from!

Love for reading something non-fiction pushed me to get hold of this book to make it my next read. The book is well written by the famous author Radhakrishnan Pillai, making the journey through the book easier for the reader. As the name suggests what the book is about, the book talks about Chanakya and his teachings of Arthashastra.

When you get hold of the book, you take it with the mind-set of learning the Chanakya’s philosophies which you can use in your life, but unfortunately, this book doesn’t provide you with any of these. To my disappointment, the book nowhere talks about giving learning’s to the reader, but is actually talking about how the author became rich.

The style of writing used in the book is quite simple and easily readable. The intention to create such a book is to spread the knowledge to his readers. The thought of being an Indian and being proud about the same is what is kept in mind. The book has a few learnings but those are spread over the huge number of pages as 250 pages and is not justified as per the length of the book. Author is only able to say the reasons why someone shall study Arthshastra but doesn’t talk about what is there in the same much.

Calling it an autobiography will be very much wrong as the whole content is molded around the self-eulogy as the book talks about how the author saw Arthashastra. Rather, the book talks about how an aimless young fellow starts his journey of self – realization and becomes the richest man in the world. The author talks about himself and how he was led by his grandfather to follow the principles of Arthashastra to attain the success.

The book seems to be a little unclear as to what it is targeting to talk about making the facet lost. The book somehow loses the practicality of the life and seems to be like a cakewalk the author crosses to become the richest person. The book starts well with introducing about Chanakya and Arthashastra but somehow looses it’s track moving ahead.

One biggest lesson that I learnt from the book was that we should carry a positive attitude. Going for a job only for salary is not a good thought, but we should rather take it like an experience gaining activity we will be doing, which ultimately will be helping us later in our life.

Another remarkable learning from the book has been to become a king-maker rather than striving to become a king.

Although with expectations of reading a non-fiction book, I was disappointed to see that the book turned out to be a fictional one. The story that the author mentions seems to be real, but the omission of facts, names and other important characteristics, it ends up sounding more like a fictional book. It is good for the beginners though, as it gives them learning together with patience to read 250 pages with small chapters.