It is always pleasurable to read Rashmi Bansal’s books as there are true and inspirational stories in all her books. This book like her previous books is again a great motivation for everyone. Her first book that I read was “Stay Hungry Stay foolish “ when I started my business. Whenever I read her book, I get charged up. The way she writes the stories of ordinary people like us who with their passion have done something extraordinary, is really remarkable. She is one of the authors that people can easily connect with. In all her books you will find real life heroes and in every book, she has something different to present.
“Touch the sky” is a compilation of short motivational stories of 15 extraordinary women from different parts of India who have dared to push their limits and have written their own destiny remarkably. The book is divided into three sections named as Ziddi, Besharam and Bindaas. The ziddi section comprises of stories about women who were keen and adamant to follow their dreams. The Besharam section is about women who ventured into doing things that were not acceptable to the society. In the last section, “Bindaas”, you will find stories of women who just followed their passion without fearing about the results.
The book has 203 pages and it is a light read. You can easily finish it in one day. A good companion while travelling. The stories are very compelling and some parts are quite relatable. Though some lines are written in Hindi which might break the flow of reading and can be overwhelming sometimes. The author must have added these lines to keep the originality of the stories or give Indian touch. She has used simple English in the book so that it can reach more readers. These stories were crowdsourced and that is something special about this book. Rashmi and her team shortlisted 50 stories from more than 1000 entries sent by her readers and viewers of Zee TV. Finally these 15 stories were shortlisted from the 50 stories. In the book launch of this book the author mentioned how writing this book was an emotional journey for her. She had written books on business, entrepreneurship and social entrepreneurship but the pain of these women touched her. She explained further that it was easy for people to come forward and share their business stories in her previous books. In this project, for Rashmi and her team getting these women on stage to share their personal life stories and struggles was much more challenging. These 15 women shared their personal stories bravely. All the stories are short yet inspiring. My favorite stories amongst them are “Pizza Granny” “Lagey raho” “Having a Ball” “Ma ka Pyar” and “You can do magic”.
Why you should read this book
Why I feel it is important to read such stories because sometimes in our life we feel stuck at one point where we are clueless. By reading such inspirational stories we get courage to face the difficult situations and move ahead. If these heroes can face their difficulties courageously, we can also overcome our challenges and achieve great heights.