Subir Banerjee

Subir Banerjee

About

Subir Banerjee is settled in India with his family. Following his education in the country’s premier engineering college IIT, he led a successful career in information technology, culminating in various senior roles in the information technology industry, besides pursuing his hobbies of story writing and music in parallel. After a stint of work spanning two decades he decided to engage in creative pursuits on a full-time basis, resulting in the present novel With Bosses Like These, which depicts the travails of a man who encounters office politics and unfair, sadistic bosses and how he deals with them. The story is set in the backdrop of a nation ravaged by graft and infested with crime, overrun by corrupt, lawless people.

Learning to Breathe Fire: The Rise of CrossFit and the Primal Future of Fitness

Learning to Breathe Fire: The Rise of CrossFit and the Primal Future of Fitness

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Description

<p><b>The absorbing, definitive account of CrossFit's origins, its explosive grassroots growth, and its emergence as a global phenomenon.</b><br /> <br />One of the most illuminating books ever on a sports subculture, <i>Learning to Breathe Fire </i>combines vivid sports writing with a thoughtful meditation on what it means to be human. In the book, veteran journalist J.C. Herz explains the science of maximum effort, why the modern gym fails an obese society, and the psychic rewards of ending up on the floor feeling as though you're about to die. <br /> <br />The story traces CrossFit’s rise, from a single underground gym in Santa Cruz to its adoption as the workout of choice for elite special forces, firefighters and cops, to its popularity as the go-to fitness routine for regular Joes and Janes. Especially riveting is Herz’s description of The CrossFit Games, which begin as an informal throw-down on a California ranch and evolve into a televised global proving ground for the fittest men and women on Earth, as well as hundreds of thousands of lesser mortals. <br /> <br />In her portrayal of the sport's star athletes, its passionate coaches and its “chief armorer,” Rogue Fitness, Herz powerfully evokes the uniqueness of a fitness culture that  cultivates primal fierceness in average people. And in the shared ordeal of an all-consuming workout, she unearths the ritual intensity that's been with us since humans invented sports, showing us how, on a deep level, we're all tribal hunters and first responders, waiting for the signal to go all-out. </p>

Story Behind The Book

Several years ago a sales colleague in a private office narrated his experience about bribing an official to have his company's tender passed for a deal. Some years later, I heard in corporate circles about the chief information officer of a company being threatened due to his honesty and refusal to oblige the corrupt officials in his office and accommodating vendors outside. To protect his life, the CEO of the company provided him special security cover. That got me thinking about crimes in private offices and I kept an eye open for other incidents. I wasn't disappointed as these seemed to take place on a regular basis in our industry. In a later job I witnessed a senior management person embracing his secretary in his cabin, and heard rumors that he bought penthouses out of embezzled funds. Thus through the years, experiences of others and my own kept accumulating inside me, bubbling to come out in the form of a story. Seeing the general decline in political conditions all around and reading about scams, I felt that the political bosses in many countries weren't too different from some of the bosses in our offices. With enough on my plate, I got down to write my novel- in the form of fiction, with its quota of romance, shady characters and suspense, starting with the loving dalliances of a carefree, college going boy whose only occupation is chasing the girl of his dreams, before moving on to a touching tale of love and endurance, over which looms the shadow of harassment at the hands of sadistic bosses, that ultimately leads to revenge in a thrilling finish.

Reviews

Excellent build-up of the plot, with a smooth flowing narrative. The storyline is something many experience in the office and finally goes beyond it to paint a horrendous picture of the dangerous possibilities in one's professional life. The suspense keeps growing as the story progresses and kept me hooked till the end to find out what will happen - Air Vice Marshal (retd.) A. Chakraborty<br /><br />I liked the college atmosphere inside a typical IIT hostel. Over all, the romance described in the book is quite akin to the real life affairs which get depressing at times when your fiancee is hard to get. But as the novel gets into murky, professional areas of work life, it is scary to think how bright people are sometimes manhandled by their bosses mentally and in other ways too, leading to unpredictable outcomes - Joy (3rd year, engineering NSIT)