In Manifest Anything in 100 Days, Dr Amiett Kumar breaks down the Law of Attraction into simple, actionable steps, showing how consistent mindset shifts and daily practices can help you turn your biggest dreams into reality.

***

Before we begin this journey of the Law of Attraction, let’s first get ready. Think of this like packing your bag before a trip.

The first step to using the Law of Attraction is to first understand it. So, before you move ahead, I want you to sit in a comfortable, upright position. Are you seated?

Great. Now, here is the Law of Attraction in the simplest way possible:

Whatever you think about the most, you will attract into your life.

Sounds too simple? That’s because it is that simple. Whatever you focus on the most—whether it’s your dreams, worries or fears—you bring it closer to yourself.

Remember that famous dialogue from the movie Om Shanti Om, where Shah Rukh Khan says:

‘Agar kisi cheez ko puri shiddat se chaho to puri kaynaat use tumse milane ki koshish mai lag jaati hai.’

This is exactly how the Law of Attraction works. But there is one thing that I want to bring attention to here.

You’ll find the same idea in The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. The book talks about a ‘personal legend’— your biggest dream in life. When you truly believe in your dream and work for it, the Universe helps you in unexpected ways. This isn’t luck—it’s the Law of Attraction at work.

This is what the Law of Attraction is all about. And this is where our journey begins.

But wait—did you already take the first step?

Not yet! You missed the Ready, Set, Go! moment.

It’s simple to learn about the Law of Attraction, but why do so many people struggle to use it? Why do so many fail to achieve what they truly want?

Here’s the answer:

Knowing about the Law of Attraction and actually using it are two very different things.

Learning about the Law of Attraction is like packing your bag before a trip. It’s just preparation.

But actually walking to your door, stepping outside and starting the journey—that’s action. That’s what makes the difference.

And that’s exactly what we’re going to do now. Now that you are starting to attract your dream life, why don’t you tell me what it is that you are attracting?

***

Get a copy from Amazon or wherever books are sold!

In Winning People Without Losing Yourself, Ankur Warikoo breaks down the subtle art of dealing with people and shows you how to navigate people with clarity, confidence, and self-respect.

***

Influence ≠ people pleasing

If you’re bending over backwards just to convince people, you are not influencing. You are auditioning.

Because being sweet is easy.

Being taken seriously requires a lot of work.

You won’t be remembered for always nodding along.

You’ll be remembered for speaking up when it mattered.

For asking the question no one else had the guts to.

For saying what others were only thinking.

Yes, people tend to like those who agree with them on everything.

But people follow those who are clear.

So be thoughtful. Be respectful. But don’t disappear trying to keep everyone happy.

Because influence isn’t about being everyone’s favorite. Influence is about being someone they listen to.

Influence ≠ control

Your relative posted fake news again.

Your temper flares.

You start typing furiously: fact-checks, ten links and a graph.

Take a deep breath.

Are you really trying to help or just win an argument?

Be honest.

Sometimes ‘I want them to know this is wrong’ is just another way of saying,

‘They should think like me.’ If the goal is to feel smart, be right, or control the outcome, you’re not helping.

You are just trying to win.

If you care more about proving you’re right than actually helping, then that’s not influencing.

That’s just arguing.

Ever feel like you keep saying the right things, but no one’s really listening?

We’re told influence comes from saying smart things.

Speaking with confidence.

Sounding sure of yourself.

Even when you’re not.

But you’ve done all that.

You prepared. Spoke clearly. Didn’t interrupt anyone. Made an important point.

And still! Blank stares.

People checking their phones.

Nobody is listening.

Five minutes later, someone else says the same thing.

And suddenly, it’s a genius idea.

Hello! What just happened?

Are you just background noise in everyone else’s day?

Here is the truth:

You are not ignored because you’re wrong.

You are not ignored because you aren’t smart enough.

You are not ignored because you aren’t loud enough.

They are listening for something that matches their moment.

Their priorities. Their mood. Their vibe.

People don’t listen when it matters to you.

They listen when it matters to them.

***

Get a copy from Amazon or wherever books are sold!

In The Alphabets of Africa, Abhay K. turns poetry into a map of the continent, tracing its civilizations, cities and cultural icons. Read an excerpt below.

***

Shaka Zulu

A military tactician, a songwriter,

a music composer, all combined in one

I often inspired my people

with music and songs

I had a premonition that the ‘white man’

would seize the Zulu kingdom

As a child, I was often mocked

for being born out of wedlock

my mother and I

were banished by my father

I trained as a fighter in the army

and soon became its commander

after my father’s death, I returned to my village

and became the King, deposing my half-brother

I named my people—Zulu, after my clan

and united them into a nation

I extended my rule to KwaZulu-Natal

Europeans called me a wild warrior

‘an insatiable and exterminating savage’

but Zulus counted me as a great king

for laying the foundations of a state

and building a great army

my wars against the rival communities

birthed new kingdoms of Zimbabwe and Lesotho

I remained celibate to govern my vast land

created an all-women’s regiment to gather intelligence

I invented assegai—the short spear for close combats

and devised the cow horn formation to encircle the enemy

death of my mother, Nandi, shook me to the core

and I decreed that for a year, no crops would be sown

and whoever would not cry enough

would meet one’s end

alienated people conspired to cease my tyranny

and two of my half-brothers stabbed me to death.

[Shaka Zulu (c.1787–1828) was a prominent Zulu leader who transformed the Zulu Kingdom into a powerful empire in Southern Africa. He is renowned for his military reforms, strategic innovations and brutal conquests, which led to the expansion of the Zulu Kingdom and reshaped the political landscape of the region.]

***

Get a copy from Amazon or wherever books are sold!

True balance in life lies not just in mastering a profession, but in developing the life skills that nurture the mind, body and spirit. In The Four Life Skills, Amit Agarwal examines the everyday skills that help us navigate life beyond degrees, jobs and professional success.

***

Typically, the word ‘education’ is used to mean learning. Sometimes, you may also come across the word ‘skill’ being used instead. However, the phrase ‘life skill’ is used sparingly. So, when I talk about the four ‘life skills’ that are essential for striking a balance between material success and spiritual growth, what exactly am I referring to? Moreover, how are these life skills any different from other skills that we can learn? Let us begin by outlining the differences between a ‘life skill’ and a ‘skill’.

Simply explained, life skills are essential competencies required for efficiently dealing with challenges in various situations and environments in our everyday lives. In contrast, a skill simply refers to expertise in a particular domain. The former is a broader concept; cultivating life skills will contribute to spiritual, mental, emotional and physical well-being and result in an improvement in the quality of life. The latter refers to specializing in a niche. So while computer programming, financial analysis, culinary arts, creative writing and graphic designing are examples of skills, life skills include critical thinking, decisionmaking abilities, building and sustaining meaningful interpersonal relationships, practising empathy and gratitude, time management and the ability to manage difficult emotions.

If you observe, the education system is geared more towards building skills rather than life skills. Schools create the foundation for college by offering streams such as humanities, science and commerce. Numerous college and university courses teach law, business administration, engineering, finance, medicine, marketing, hospitality and literature. Why is this so? This is because schools and colleges primarily cater to the job market, which will give you money and the ability to lead a good life. Now, think back to your own schooling—were life skills like empathy, public speaking, nutrition, personal finance or meditation ever part of the curriculum?

While specializing in skills is essential for employment, honing life skills is a much more critical aspect of personal development.

So, now the question arises: Which life skills will help us the most when it comes to marrying spirit and matter? There are four:

• Sales

• Mindfulness

• Personal Finance

• Nutrition

At the confluence of spiritual growth and material success is mastery of these four life skills. By harnessing their power, we can create a wonderful balance in every aspect of our lives. As you will see, they are deeply interconnected; without one, the others cannot reach their fullest potential. Now, let’s understand why each life skill is directly connected to your ability to enjoy a holistic life.

Sales

There are nearly 8.1 billion people in this world and if you think about it, each person is in the process of trying to sell an idea, a product or a service. Consider the following examples:

A sales director is giving a software demonstration to her prospective clients.

A financial planner advises his clients on which asset classes to choose from based on their risk profile.

Concerned parents are telling their teenager why constantly being on the phone can negatively impact his studies.

A twenty-four-year-old boy is about to propose to his girlfriend.

A forty-five-year-old is thinking about quitting his job and becoming a freelancer.

Can you identify the common thread in the aforementioned situations? They all involve connecting with people and influencing them to make a decision, a process I call the CID framework. Look around and you will begin to notice how thoughts contain the seed of an idea and, at every moment, we are selling that idea to a person, group or organization that will best serve its interests. So many times, like in the case of the forty-fiveyear-old weighing his options, we become both the buyer and seller of the product, convincing ourselves of the pros and cons of a decision.

In our various roles, we are selling either a product, a service or an idea. Thus, we all are in sales and hence sales is a life skill. As you begin to harness it, you will begin to communicate effectively both personally and professionally.

***

Get a copy from Amazon or wherever books are sold!

Are women free to fly, or are they still tethered by family, marriage and expectations? In Busy Women, Shinjini Kumar explores ambition, work, migration and the quiet constraints shaping women’s lives today.

***

Why Bother About Women?

Neena Gupta is an actress in art and mainstream cinema and a television producer and director. She gained a cult following in the nineties as a talented artist and a single mother; more recently, she made a stunning comeback in mainstream cinema and broke Instagram, saying it as it is. Neena told me once that a woman is like a cow tethered with a rope that keeps her within the perimeter of the family. The man, on the other hand, is like a bird, who can freely go anywhere.

It is not the kind of parable that I like to hear. Women younger than me like to hear it even less. You look at her and think: ‘What is she talking about? She has lived on her terms and is still doing it. She has got it all. Why would others not be able to do it?’ So, I want to prove her wrong. I want to prove that gender is not a barrier to a determined woman, and that she can do everything that a man can, including flying like a bird.

I am looking for the women who are indeed flying. And if ind them. But I also find the truth of Neena’s parable. Women’s lives are indeed circumscribed differently from those of men. For one thing, they rarely choose the space they get to live in. A small percentage of women, like me or Neena, leave their parental homes for education or work, and set up their own homes. For the large majority, leaving home is a given. But where they will end up for the rest of their lives is dependent on who they marry. Even if she finds education, work and money, decisions relating to her body, childbearing, career and asset ownership are often not her own. She may still be able to make a meaningful life for herself and her family, but the tether is firmly in place.

In more elite families, the frequent hypocrisy of raising daughters like a ‘papa ki pari’ (Dad’s fairy) and then giving them away with a dowry, while the business or property is inherited by the son(s) is a tiny bit less common than before, but certainly not gone away. The simple fact of marital dislocation has tremendous implications for the woman and the community. For the community, these implications are mostly positive. In a crude sense, it matches the free labour supply for household work, childbirth and eldercare with the demand. In more refined ways, there are extremely positive externalities to women becoming vectors of care and culture by being mobile. For the woman, they can be positive, disruptive or debilitating, depending on the combination of circumstances. T he question for me was whether the contribution of women within and outside home is being recognized and understood, or undermined and broad-brushed under age-old stereotypes?

This is an interesting but often overlooked fact. Men migrate for work. With rare exceptions, they follow professional opportunities and networks that are expected to help them in their quest of work, job, career, money. On the other hand, almost all women who move places, do so for marriage. Which means that they leave their networks and do not seize the professional opportunities best suited to them. Of course, they can get lucky. But more often than not, despite all the love and affection, they encounter a phase of darkness and confusion, before they begin to assess opportunities available to them in their new habitat.

This geographical constraint is accompanied by another unfortunate constraint, that of physical safety. The fact that women are not safe, for the most part, in most places and at most times, affects their lives in general and work life in particular. In addition, their life stages are very different from those experienced by their brothers and husbands. Even coming from the same backgrounds and families, women go through more disruption in work at early stages. Do all these constraints stop the women? Has greater access to education and skills allowed women to take advantage of opportunities in a growing economy? And what is this opportunity here and now after three decades of economic liberalization? Is the physical infrastructure generating advantage for Middle India and its residents, men and women? If so, what does it mean for migration and creation of many more urban centres with thriving urban culture across the country?

I started my travels with these questions and an open mind. Making my way through thirty cities over three years, I made friends, drank nimbu paani, ate dosas, wore sarees, took selfies, laughed, sweated, walked on pavements and promenades and collected personal histories of the soaring women, the tethered women and the women in between!

***

Get a copy from Amazon or wherever books are sold!

In Munger ki Rani, Manisha Rani recounts her journey from a small village in Bihar – where the birth of a daughter was often met with disappointment – to becoming one of India’s most loved social media stars.

***

‘Phir se ladki!?’ (Again another girl!?)
I was born in a village nestled in the rural district of Munger, Bihar, India, where age-old traditions and patriarchal conventions still reign supreme, and the birth of a daughter is generally welcomed with resignation. Slow-paced development, if any happens, has little impact on people’s lifestyles there. But in one poor home, a new story began to unfold—one of hope, defiance and the relentless pursuit of progress.

I am from a culture in which the birth of a girl is viewed as a financial burden. My parents, Ragini and Manoj, or Maa or Baba as I call them, already had a daughter. In a town where the community valued sons over daughters, the birth of another daughter was interpreted as a kind of curse. However, from the moment I was born my parents saw me as a beacon of light, a blessing in disguise. My mother recounts that when she cradled me in her arms after birth, she murmured to my father, ‘Our little Lakshmi has come to bless us,’ and Baba affectionately added, ‘She is our joy, not our burden.’ However, the town elders, mired in tradition, were not as welcoming. The whispers began almost immediately, as people speculated about my family’s future and the weight of the dowry obligations that my father would have to undertake. ‘Yeh to dahej nahi de payega,’ (He won’t be able to afford her dowry) was their verdict.

But Munger’s archaic habits did not overshadow my youth. Despite the murmurs and social pressure, Maa and Baba made a daring decision. They would provide me with formal educational opportunities and other possibilities that were mostly denied to girls in our community. They believed that a girl deserved to pursue her full potential, regardless of cultural expectations. My father was firm: ‘Our daughters will be educated. They will have options.’ Growing up, my mother constantly encouraged me, ‘You will learn, grow and choose your own path.’ As the years went by, the townsfolk watched all that went on in our family with a mix of curiosity and disapproval. While most girls my age were pulled out of school and prepared for early marriage, I continued my studies. My parents’ determination set them apart, making them a source of inspiration to some, but gossip to most.

‘She’s almost thirteen. Why isn’t she being prepared for marriage?’ asked one elder sceptically.

‘Education won’t help her in the kitchen,’ another scoffed.

Baghi aur Baghavat: The Rebel and the Rebellion

I thrived in school. My curiosity knew no bounds, and from very early on, I dreamt of a world beyond the confines of Munger. My parents’ firm support helped my ambitions grow, but the town elders’ expectations loomed large. In Munger, a girl’s destiny was often sealed by tradition and societal norms. As I approached my fourteenth birthday, the pressure really started to ramp up. I recall that almost everyone seemed to want me married off. You see, in my village, turning fourteen is a big deal—it’s when a lot of girls get married off, and their futures are decided by generational practices instead of what they wished for. People in the town began to question my parents going against tradition and choosing to keep me in school: ‘Ladki ki shadi nahi karni hai kya? Samaaj mein naak katvaoge kya?’ (Aren’t you going to get the girl married? Do you want to be shamed by society?)

‘Why waste money on education? She’ll just get married,’ another judgemental neighbour questioned.

Yet, my parents remained calm and composed. They were willing to face isolation, whispers and even outright disapproval for the sake of their daughter’s future. They believed in my potential and desired to give me a chance to pursue my dreams, no matter the cost.

‘Manisha deserves more than this town can offer. She deserves to choose,’ Maa asserted fiercely.

‘We will stand by her, against all odds,’ Baba added, resolute.

As I continued my studies, I became more and more aware of the sacrifices my parents were making. Their quiet rebellion against the deeply entrenched mores of Munger was both inspiring and a bit scary. I realized that my future was this delicate balance between my dreams and the harsh realities of our world.

***

Get a copy from Amazon or wherever books are sold!

Some stories begin with grand gestures. In While We Wait by Durjoy Datta, the story starts in the most ordinary place, like an airport queue where two strangers strike up a conversation while waiting for the people they love.

***

Raghav. 

I can feel the steam rising from people’s bodies around me. They are losing patience, their pulses quickening, their weight shifting from one foot to another. They are looking over their shoulder and hoping that the line in front of them moves quicker. People with hope. I hate that. I envy that. Hope should come from logic, not optimism. Which line have we ever been in moved quicker than we anticipated? I used to be like them. But that was before today. Hope’s nice, like a toy. But real life runs on being real. It’s in the phrase. I don’t know how I missed that for so long.

I want to tell everyone in the line that it’s going to take as long as it does. You’re just bitter, everyone will tell me. But I’m also happy. Can I be both bitter and happy?

‘Hey? Can you move ahead?’

I step forward. I want to tell her that we moved one tiny step, and that no one has moved away from the counter. We are still the same number of people in this line, but I’m still doing what Megha says I have started doing a lot—misplacing my frustration.

‘One more step,’ says the girl in a dark grey T-shirt two sizes too big, and a pair of jeans that are way too balloony, and over her shoulder is a backpack bursting at its seams.

This time I want to tell her off, but before I can say anything, her phone beeps and she begins to text. Phones are a great way to cut a conversation you don’t want to have. And common sense says she shouldn’t have a conversation with me. She’s 5’1” and I’m 5’10”, and the way we’ve broken the world, those numbers alone are reason enough for a girl to think twice before speaking to a man, even in a public space.

So I don’t move.

She looks up from her phone.

‘If you move up,’ she says, ‘there’s a fan there.’ She points to the one hanging precariously over the signboard that says, ‘Visitor’s Tickets, Delhi Airport’. She continues brightly, ‘The sooner you get there, the quicker you can stop sweating.’

She points to the rivulets of sweat pouring down my forehead and sweat patches forming under my arms. Fucking embarrassing. But I usually don’t stink. That’s because I already know I sweat like a pig and invest heavily in deodorants. But maybe she can detect a stink. She looks the kind—petite with a sensitive nose. I step away from her, move closer to the man ahead of me, and take a deo out from my backpack.

I’m about to spray it when she says, ‘My fiancé has the same perfume. I could smell it on you.’

‘So I’m not stinking?’

‘Why would you think that?’

She’s on her phone again. The line moves and now I’m right below the fan and the air is cool and I get what she meant. The line moves once more, but I’m still looking at her, still thinking if I should spray the perfume or not, when the cashier slaps the cool marble ledge and calls out to me. ‘Haanji?’

When I turn back to face him, he looks at me with irritation and outstretched hands. ‘Cash, 200 rupees. No UPI.’

‘But I only—’ ‘Only cash. Did you not hear? Next.’

‘I will pay,’ says the girl from behind me. ‘Two tickets, please.’

Before I can say anything, the girl has opened her bag, fetched two notes and paid. Tickets in our hands, we are politely shoved out of the line by the people behind us.

‘If you can give me your UPI details—’ She cuts me with a smile.

‘You can buy me a chai inside. Or a water. Whatever is 200 rupees. Or whoever you’re meeting can pay me back. Whatever suits you.’

‘Sure,’ I say to the girl who has somehow helped me twice in a matter of minutes. ‘Thank you for the . . . fan thing? And for helping me pay.’

‘You call that help? Are we calling basic decency help now?’

She’s walking away from me now, and I follow her. I feel like I should be talking to her, to make up for the stubbornness of not moving two minutes ago.

‘Who have you come to receive?’ I ask her.

Her face is suddenly even brighter. ‘My fiancé.’

Fiancé. The word warms my heart. So weird that a word can hold so much power. I’m thinking of Megha now. Her opened boxes in our new apartment. Those framed pictures of ours which we will put up together in the evening because she doesn’t trust me with their positioning.

‘You?’ she asks. ‘Fiancée too,’ I answer, savouring the word.

***

Get a copy from Amazon or wherever books are sold!