A recent internal exercise at a corporate house threw up an unexpected and heartening discovery. Employees across India were asked to name a book they loved and explain why.
Nearly 100 responded, many at length, reflecting not just on stories but on life, loss, ambition and imagination.
For the company, the response was an affirmation that reading still thrives — and a fitting prelude to Exide Industries, India’s largest automotive battery manufacturer, becoming the title sponsor of this year’s Kolkata Literary Meet, the city’s annual celebration of literature and the arts.
“It is a privilege, a moment of great pride — not as the CEO of a company, but as someone who was born, brought up and still lives in this city,” said Avik Roy, managing director and CEO of Exide Industries, at the inauguration of the Exide Kolkata Literary Meet, partnered by The Telegraph.
“I represent a company that has been anchored in Calcutta for the past eight decades. We expanded our footprint... but never shifted our corporate office, the centre of gravity, out of Calcutta. This was a decision based on choice, not compulsion, and we don’t regret it,” Roy said.
From Sunil Gangopadhyay to Sunil Gavaskar, Exide’s reading contest revealed an eclectic and wide-ranging list of favourites.
A sales trainee from Rohtak wrote about his love for The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch, a Carnegie Mellon professor who delivered a farewell speech after being diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer.
“This is not just a book about illness or mortality, it is a book about living, dreaming, and choosing how to show up in the world even when time is limited,” the employee wrote.
An employee in Calcutta said she loved Sunil Gangopadhyay’s Kalo Pordar Odike (Beyond the Black Curtain). “The boundary between life and disappearance, presence and absence, certainty and fear defines the depth of the novel. What is most striking is how it treats absence as a presence in itself,” she wrote.
Other favourites included Sunny Days by Sunil Gavaskar, The Secret by Rhonda Byrne, The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande, Lost Horizon by James Hilton, and The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi by Shannon Chakraborty.
While internal surveys are common in the corporate world — typically focusing on diversity, work-life balance or performance — a survey centred on books is rare. “We received close to 100 entries,” a company spokesperson said. The best responseswere shortlisted by a jury comprising author Kunal Basu, cultural entrepreneur Malavika Bannerjee and CEO Avik Roy.
The top three respondents were felicitated on the literary meet stage by Basu.
“The partnership with the Kolkata Literary Meet is a tribute to the city’s timeless culture of intellect and expression,” said Jitendra Kumar, president (legal and corporate affairs) and company secretary of Exide. “The contest, held in the run-up to the literary meet, was meant to encourage the habit of reading.”