During early 2000s, I used to read Hindustan Times. The newspaper used to roll out a Page 3 Supplement. Yash Birla and his wife Avantika Birla were a regular on the page 3 party circuits. In the pic captions , they were often hailed as ultra rich generous hosts, known for hosting great parties. But Yash Birla , an Industrialist, never conformed to the typical stereotype of a businessman. Rather, he used to sport a Salman Khan like muscular physique and soft mannerisms (effeminate), which he had no qualms showing to the World. In short, he looked more like a Bollywood actor or a fitness instructor, than the head of Yash Birla Group.

Yash Birla’s memoir “On a prayer Yash Birla” came out in February. And tell you , Yash Birla Group may not be doing that well, but Yash Birla himself has not changed a bit. He looks the same , as he used to look as decade ago. The age seems to have stopped for him. He doesn’t look 48 !

Does he Look 48 !

Yash Birla’s “On a prayer” are his memoirs about his life and people around him. The book technically begins at Yash age 22, when His parents Ashok Vardhan Birla and Sunanda Birla as well as his sister Sujata were killed in an air crash in bangalore in 1990. Yash studying abroad at that time, returns home , and sees himself entrenched in a battle with relatives, at the root of which was money.

The book spans 270 pages and is an easy & engaging read.

About the Book :

On a Prayer

by: Yash Birla
publisher: Penguin, published: 2014-02-01
ASIN: 0670085545
EAN: 9780670085545
price: Rs 299 

Twenty-two-year-old Yash Birla wakes up at the break of dawn to a phone call that changes his life a plane with his parents and sister has just crashed in Bangalore. Leaving his college in North Carolina on a flight to Mumbai, Yash finds out that they have all passed away. Everything he has known is destroyed and his world is suddenly torn apart.

Reeling from the loss, Yash is handed over a vast empire of companies that he is now at the helm of, where he has to fight for his rights and manoeuvre through relatives who have their own agendas.

This is the story of a man who overcomes one of life s toughest hurdles and lives to tell the tale. It is Yash Birla s journey from a state of oblivion to survival, where his deep belief in spirituality and his faith in true love act as a crutch for him to go on. Money, greed, God and an inside view of one of India s oldest industrial families . . . that is the story of On a Prayer.

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