Picture this: 1980s India. An industrial township. A school filled with children of engineers, doctors, and professionals who knew exactly what success was supposed to look like. The hierarchy was unmistakable. At the top stood science and mathematics, undisputed. Beneath them sat English textbooks and exam guides, followed closely by the occasional self-help manual promising early success. And somewhere, almost invisible, were novels, dismissed as indulgent, irrelevant, even distracting.
That’s where I lived.
I was not the model student. Grades and I had an uneasy relationship. But while others mastered equations and memorised facts, I found myself pulled into stories, more so thrillers, mysteries, war sagas. To the adults around me, this was cause for concern. “Such a bright child,” they would remark, “if only he focused on his studies instead of those storybooks.”
Decades later, in my fifties, I see it differently. What seemed like a distraction was, in fact, an education, far richer, broader, and more enduring than anything I had consciously signed up for.
The University of Fiction
Through the works of John D. MacDonald, I discovered the Florida Keys, not just as a place on the map, but as a living, breathing world. His protagonist, Travis McGee, revealed the rhythm of coastal life, the ethics of survival, and the quiet codes people live by when they exist on the margins of society.
Then came Arthur Hailey, whose novels opened doors into complex systems I would later encounter in my professional life. Hotel and Airport were not just stories; they were blueprints of organisations. Through them, I understood how decisions ripple through systems, how unseen mechanisms sustain large enterprises, and how leadership reveals itself most clearly under pressure.
Louis L’Amour took me to the American frontier, where survival was not just physical but moral. His stories taught me that history is not a sequence of events but a collection of human choices often made under extreme conditions. Strength, I learned, was not just resilience but the ability to navigate ambiguity.
And then there was Tom Clancy, whose character Jack Ryan introduced me to the intricate workings of geopolitics. Through these narratives, governments became less like monolithic entities and more like living systems, complex, layered, and often conflicted.
Each book was a classroom. Each character is a teacher.
Learning Without Realising
What I didn’t grasp then but understand now is how deeply these stories shaped my thinking. Novels taught more than textbooks. It was this ‘basement education’ that was refined by reflection. The most important lessons were never in the Syllabus. I was told to stop reading fiction. I’m glad I didn’t. In praise of “Useless” reading. They didn’t just inform me; they immersed me.
While others memorised facts, I absorbed contexts. I understood ecosystems because I had wandered through them in fiction. I grasped organisational behaviour because I had seen it unfold in narratives. I recognised human motivations not as theories, but as lived experiences through characters.
Textbooks gave me structure. Fiction gave me perspective.
In my professional journey, especially in the world of hospitality and human resources, I’ve come to rely far more on empathy, observation, and an understanding of human behaviour than on any formula. And much of that foundation was quietly built through stories.
Stories teach you to see beyond the obvious. To understand people, not just processes. To recognise that every system, whether a hotel, a company, or a country, is ultimately driven by human choices.
A Note to the Next Generation
Today’s world offers an overwhelming abundance of information. Knowledge is accessible, instant, and infinite. But understanding that deeper, quieter knowing still takes time. If there’s one habit I would advocate for, it is this: read. Not just to learn, but to experience. Not just to inform, but to understand.
Because one day, you may look back, as I do now, and realise that those hours spent lost in stories were never a diversion; stories became my compass. Not just top of the class, but helped me stay ahead of the curve.
The article is written by the Executive Vice President and Head of HR at ITC Hotels Ltd.
