A self-help book that promises riches and spirituality, Please?

MOVE OVER THE USUAL SELF-HELP BOOKS THAT PROMISE TO MAKE YOU RICHER, SMARTER AND MORE ATTRACTIVE. WE ALSO WANT TO BE HAPPIER AND MORE CONTENT. THAT’S WHERE BOOKS WRITTEN BY INDIAN SPIRITUAL GURUS SCORE OVER GENERIC SELF-HELP TITLES. WHAT MAKES THESE SELL THROUGH THE ROOF?

- Medha Shri

SOMETIME in October, Hollywood actor Will Smith posted a picture and a small video of his meeting with Indian spiritual guru Sadhguru, on Instagram. Smith wrote that he has been following Sadhguru’s work including his book, Inner Engineering.

That reminded me that my copy of that book as other books such as Himalayan Monk Om Swami’s Kundalini hadn’t returned to my bookshelf in five months. When the lockdown began, I started getting requests from friends and friends of friends and their friends who wanted to borrow books or wanted book recommendations. Everyone just wanted “valuable, meaningful” books that offered an actionable plan to become better, happier and content.

Yes, 90 per cent of the requests were for self-help books. But not just any, those written by spiritual gurus were the most popular. Turns out, Will Smith, Steve Jobs, and Julia Roberts aren’t the only ones who go about their lives with a yearning to be more, do more and have more. My friends, friends of friends and their friends also want to address this yearning to go beyond the worldly and there is no one better than India’s spiritual gurus who write best-selling self-help books.

“In the subcontinent, as a genre, self-help happens to be the largest selling,” says Sachin Sharma, Senior Commissioning Editor, HarperCollins India (HCI). “In terms of volumes, self-help is the second largest category after fiction… I’ll not be surprised if it becomes top category in trade books in next couple of years,” confirms Rahul Dixit, Director (Sales), HCI.