F?@K Knows
Shailendra Singh
Rupa
Rs.195
Pg 234
?So, got that? I don?t claim to be a master or a life coach. I don?t claim to have any answers. Actually, this whole book is about the fact that only you know the answers to your questions. Me? I?m just a cool dude, telling you cool things. I?m completely indemnified.? Shailendra Singh, joint managing director, Percept Ltd, likes wearing different hats, switching seamlessly between his varied roles as an advertising whizz, a sports marketing guru, a Bollywood producer and a music festival creator. And now, he?s trying on the hat of a self-help book writer. The opening lines of this piece are borrowed from the preface of his book F?@k Knows. Yes, you read that right. That is the title of the book. The first impression after reading one chapter at a time (as suggested by Singh in his primer on how to read the book), is that it?s a slapstick plate offering some off-the-street gyan on common sense, and questions that have been pondered upon over thousands of years.
Are you truly happy? What do you want from life? Are you on the right track? And so on it goes. Dumbing it down to make it appealing, and maybe comprehensible, to as many people as possible, particularly the non-literary kind, makes a lot of sense as far as the market is concerned. And this appears to be the driving force behind the style adopted in the book. Colloquial street lingo, candid and unapologetically brash?in short, everything we might encounter, or even practice, on a daily basis, but sneer and cringe at when bound and published. F?@k Knows is the chick-lit of motivational and self-help literature, and frankly, it doesn?t even pretend otherwise. It?s easy to read, overflowing with an overtly conversational style, and there are umpteen, yes umpteen, attempts at humour.
But in the process of keeping it simple, does it let go of the seriousness that?s usually the universally accepted hallmark of this genre? Perhaps, yes. But then, how many of those books does the regular bloke on the street pick up?
Singh has been known for thinking out of the box and employing disruptive innovation to break away from the clutter. F?@k Knows falls perfectly in line on that count. But will this style survive in this genre? Does the non-serious, uber-cool and overly-simplified writing render this book devoid of all seriousness? These are questions that one would perhaps want to ask Singh.
And maybe, he?ll respond, ?F?@k knows!?