One of TT Srinath’s most poignant memories is that of his father. “Every time my mother and I asked him for something that seemed expensive, he would say that he could not afford it,” says Srinath, who has just released his latest book, Creating Winning Relationships through Conversations with Self (Notion Press).
Many years later (his father had passed away, by then), an expensive car with Government insignia drew up outside his home, recalls Srinath. Inside it was his father’s former secretary. “He told us an interesting story,” smiles Srinath.
According to him, Srinath’s father had helped him educate his children. His son was now an IAS officer. “My father was defined by the people in his life and believed in investing in them” says Srinath. Even if it came at the cost of denying his family small luxuries.
The need to invest in people and forge those winning relationships is constantly reinforced in this latest book that was released at a private event at the Madras Cricket Club in Chennai on August 11.
Anchored by educationist Padma Srinath, the guests of honour for the occasion included N Sankar, Chairman, Sanmar Group; K Srinivasan, Managing Director, Carborundum Universal; Mukund Padmanabhan, Editor, The Hindu and Pradeep Chakravarthy, author and historian.
“This is a book designed for reflective reading,” said Srinivasan, on the occasion. It mostly comprises anecdotes, tales and parables suffused with metaphor and hidden meaning — Chakravarthy observed that it approached important subjects without being preachy.
Padmanabhan agreed. “This is not a didactic book,” he said, referring to the prose as“coming straight from the heart” and “persuasive in a gentle, understated fashion”.
Failure, a stepping stone
There is a candour and rare honesty about Srinath as he talks about failure. A postgraduate in Human Resources from XLRI – Xavier School of Management, Jamshedpur, he spent a large part of his career running businesses that, “I didn’t do well at,” he says.
The biggest learning he garnered from the experience, however, was this. “I realised that my businesses had failed and faltered, not because of technology or processes going wrong, but because relationships were not fostered,” says Srinath, who now facilitatesworkshops on human interaction.
He went on to train and get certifications from the Indian Society for Applied Behavioral Science; Sociodrama and Action Methods Training accredited by the British Psychodrama Association; and the Northern Rivers Institute of Gestalt, Australia, among others.
Hispersonal journey has impacted the way the book came into being, of course. While his background in Literature“taught me to explore the subtext of conversation”, his HR background deepened his understanding of human behaviour.
“My sensitivity to experiencing people altered,” says Srinath, who has been a human interaction facilitator for almost 17 years now.
He recalls the incident that triggered off this move. “I was travelling to Bengaluru when my co-passenger and I got talking,” he says. The conversation veered towards his perceived failure in business. The gentleman, who turned out to be the head of a company, found his story interesting.
“He told me that his company was not doing very well, mostly because there were people issues in it,” says Srinath, adding that the man went on to hire him as he knew exactly what went wrong in the relationships that caused Srinath to fail at his business. “I worked with him for a year and we turned the company around,” he says.
Putting it together
It is a slender black-covered volume with a steel-grey image on it, almost optical illusionary in nature. If you look very closely, you will be able to spot both a trophy-like cup and two people looking into each other’s eyes. A quick flip through the 100-odd pages reveals a number of short, heart-warming stories that segue into interesting revelations. The stories in the book, culled from ordinary incidents and familiar stories, may seem to be about the little things, but they have a strong base in the newer facets of organisational behaviour and positive psychology, says Srinath. He firmly believes that human existence is about choices. “You often do not have control over circumstances; what you can control is how you react to them,” he says.
Relating to the self T
hough the ideas expressed in the book have been forged and strengthened over the last five years (he has been writing a column for this newspaper in a similar vein), the actual book took only three days to write.
“I began writing on Thursday morning and was done by Saturday evening,” he smiles. He chooses not to classify his book — it limits the possibilities, he says, preferring to refer to it as simply a book that offers introspection and self-direction to the reader.
At its very core, it is about relating to people at a very subliminal level of humanness, he says. “Relationships are like poems,” he smiles, gently. “Myriad-hued, diverse, beautiful.”
