This week, the one day holiday for Diwali allowed me to indulge in two much - awaited books — Chetan Bhagat’s Revolution 2020 and Steve Jobs, the biography of Steve Jobs, the co - founder of Apple computers, written by the famed former Managing Editor of TIME magazine Walter Isaacson.

The first book I chose to read was of course Revolution 2020. Because Chetan Bhagat is always an easy read. The book was just 296 pages as against Isaacson’s 926 pages. Also I assumed Chetan Bhagat's Revolution 2020 would be interesting, insightful and “plausible” unlike our former President’s naïve “Vision 2020”.

However, as you read the book, you’ll realise that it is just a movie script. It was written for producers, not for young Indians looking to be inspired. The story line is quite predictable. The novel revolves around three friends — two boys and a girl. Gopal, the poorer boy becomes ambitious and takes the wrong path to richness; Raghu is charming and naïve and wants to change the world and the girl Aarthi is just juvenile.

Both the boys are in love with this girl. One gets the girl. The girl plays both the boys. Finally one boy sacrifices. The characters lack depth and are not very likable. So you don’t really care much for their tribulations and dilemmas, and hence never get sucked into it like you would into a good book.

Even the details in the book about the education system in the country are boring and do not show any research effort. There is romance that some boys can relate to — the boys who hang around girls masquerading as their rakhi brothers secretly hoping to become their boyfriends. Also, in these real estate boom - times many may relate to the character of Gopal who loses all hope of becoming rich until he meets a politician and his fortunes change.

Some may relate to the intelligent, handsome and self - obsessed Raghu indulging in impractical methods to start a revolution in the year 2020. And some girls could relate to Aarthi who is confused — money or love. Even worse, the title Revolution 2020 itself is misleading given there is no depth in the character of Raghu who wants to spark this revolution throughout India sitting in Varanasi. He just comes across as an over - enthusiastic youngster who can’t keep his girl friend from cheating and career from tanking.

This book is like a time - pass Hindi movie, bereft of reality and inspiration. The book is not of high literary standard. But it was never intended to be. Chetan Bhagat himself said, “I know I will never win a Booker Prize but I will win a million hearts.” But Chetan Bhagat is wrong. If White Tiger could win, why not a Chetan Bhagat book? After all, Man Booker Prize Jury Chairman Stella Rimington herself said that books were chosen for their readability over literary quality. But then isn’t the Booker Prize a literary award?!

So it makes us wonder if the recent shower of awards for Indian authors has something to do with India being the next biggest English - speaking urban market. Yes, indeed there are brilliant Indian literary artistes like Amitav Ghosh and Rohinton Mistry, but Chetan sells and appeals to the India’s biggest consumer — its middle class.

Chetan Bhagat may be ruthlessly critiqued but then does he care? After all, he writes books that are easy to read for a nation that is just learning to pick up English books. Heavy writing style may just discourage them. So until the young Indian reader matures in his choice of reading material, people like Chetan Bhagat are necessary to keep the habit alive and growing.

Finally, if you are a person who is easily entertained and are just moving up from reading Archie comics, this book is for you.

Sweet Apple, Sour Jobs:
Now coming to Steve Jobs’ story. I read this book on an iPad. What a coincidence that the first digital book I bought and read is from an application and on a device created by the man I was reading about. The book is well - written and gives a beautiful insight into the life of a man who has changed the way we consume media and interact in the modern digital world. In fact, Steve Jobs, as the author puts it, is a man who with his “passion for perfection and ferocious drive revolutionised six industries: Personal computers, animated movies, music, phones, tablet computing and digital publishing.”

Right off the bat, the information divulged will surprise the reader. Steve Jobs’ father was a young Syrian Muslim named Abdulfattah Jandali who met Steve’s mother Joanne Schieble at the University of Wisconsin. The story of how Steve ended up for adoption is a heart - wrenching one. Also his mother Joanne, while putting him up for adoption, specifically asked for the adopting parents to be college graduates. But the adopting parents in the last minute changed their mind and wanted to adopt a girl baby and Jobs ended up being adopted by a kind - hearted and ingenious high school drop - out mechanic named Paul Jobs and his wife Clara Jobs, a book-keeper. What a dramatic beginning to a glorious end!

The biography talks of Jobs’ experiment with religion and drugs in his early years. His failed visit to India to find a guru and then enlightenment. The action begins when he meets his partner Stephen Gary Wozniak. It is clear from the book that Steve Jobs was a volatile and petulant man who cried when emotionally affected or challenged on something he was passionate about. He was also known to be manipulative and a bully.

One of his girlfriends believed that he had Narcissistic Personality Disorder. In fact, sometimes he seemed petty. It seems the first show-down between him and Michael Scott, Apple President, was over employee badge number! Scott assigned # 1 to Wozniak and # 2 to Jobs. Jobs was upset and demanded he be given badge # 1. When it was refused, Jobs threw a tantrum and cried! Finally Jobs himself proposed a solution. He would have badge # 0. Scott relented for Jobs’ sake. But the Bank of America, the company’s banker, required a positive integer for its payroll system and so Jobs remained # 2.

The book also answered my personal question as to why Jobs stares so intensely in all his photographs (it seems it’s a technique purposefully employed by him to create a persona of intensity).

The book is complete with information and anecdotes — information such as why Silicon Valley is named so (because in the beginning, the area in San Francisco was full of transistor companies who used silicon instead of germanium and the term was coined by journalist Don Hoefler), why Apple was named Apple Computers (Steve Jobs had returned from an apple farm just a few hours before registering the company and couldn’t think of anything more creative. Also Steve chose an apple with a bite taken off as the logo because a full apple looked like a cherry). It also tells us how Steve’s obsession with beauty in technology brought fonts into the computer world and revolutionised desktop publishing.

The book talks about how he had a knack to get talent and push them to the limit. This move, though at times quite traumatic, made his designers to come up with the first trash can / recycle bin feature along with the icon on a computer, the first calculator on a PC, the first coloured interface, the first revolutionary “switching power supply”.... In fact, Steve Jobs had thought of touch - screen computing way back in 1984!

The author has been fair and given space to people who are not very appreciative of Steve’s personality and manipulative nature. They also talk about how in his desire to delight the user, he has resisted empowering the user. That is why one can’t even change batteries in an Apple product. It has to be sent back to the factory. But then it is a modern day compulsion, wherein if you leave your products unguarded, they are duplicated or the ideas that make it special are stolen. And Steve knows a thing or two about stealing ideas and technology and its effects. Just ask Xerox.

The book clearly shows that the original bad boy of Silicon Valley is not Bill Gates but Steve Jobs — both were hyper - competitive but Bill was more mature, not eccentric and became consumed with helping people. Steve Jobs, on the other hand, created great products but never attained philosophical maturity. Till the end he remained a brash, erratic and unpredictable visionary.

One may not like Steve Jobs after reading the book, but there is no doubting his contribution to the way we interact with devices. He helped modern man step into the 22nd century. Steve Jobs was not here on earth to make friends, he was here to make beautiful technology. To marry aesthetics with technology. And in that sense, Steve Jobs has done his job.

The book is a must read for any entrepreneur. It is a book for all students and teachers who think only stellar marks bring success — passion does too. And most importantly Steve Jobs’ story kills the derogatory adage “Jack of all, master of none.” Steve Jobs was a jack of all — electronics, marketing, product design and development; he wasn’t a master of any of these, yet he was a success. He was simply a wholesome visionary who understood all these things well and wove them together with his passion and intuition giving the world what it didn’t know it needed.

In his own words, “Some people say, give people what they want. But that’s not my approach. Our job is to figure out what they’re going to want before they do.” And so he gave us iPod, iTunes, iPhone, iPad and iCloud before we knew we needed it. Walter Isaacson has done justice to this volatile genius. “iLike”. You will too. Buy it.

Vikram Muthanna
vikram@starofmysore.com
Courtesy: Star of Mysore