Thursday, August 9, 2007

The Godfather


By Mario Puzo



What should I say about this legendary novel by Mario Puzo?
I think most of us know about it. But still I will jot down my thoughts.

It was the novel I waited for 2 years to read. It was my father’s favorite and he used to tell me the excerpts from it since childhood. When I got into 11th Standard, the desire of reading became very strong. And to my bad luck, pirated copies were not available in my home city. And I couldn’t afford the original paper print. So, I talked to my dad about my wish. He simply said that wait for your admissions in engineering college, and then he will gift it to me. So, it happened I was gifted this novel by dad after two years of my request. And it was my first novel in life.

I liked the starting line among all the lines in the text. The line is “Behind every great fortune, there is crime”. Well I don’t totally agree to this, but it entices me.

The story revolves around Corleone family, which is strongest among five families controlling mafia of US. All these families belong to migrants from Sicily or better known as Sicilians. Godfather, Vito Corleone is head of Corleone family.

Godfather according to Christianity is the person who is responsible to take care of child next to his/her parents. But, Vito was not only known as Godfather by his godchildren who range from truck driver to movie stars but because of his conduct, his genuineness and balls.

The novel describes in management terms the whole Supply Chain of Crime. One can learn lot of things from it like Manpower Management, SCM, Change Management and what not. It was proper business set up and the only thing missing was legal entity.

Then to most of the youngsters’ page no. 28 will entertain a lot, animal like sex.

Number of movies has been made on this novel -Godfather series in English & Dharmatma, Sarkar, Atank hi Atank, Zulm ki Hukumat and many more in hindi. Recently I saw one real life movie City of Gods. I think it was in Spanish, but again the underlying situation and conduct was similar.

And I have read and heard lot of business tycoons, claiming that this novel is their mentor.

So, its one of the books that I gift to my friends who wanna start reading. And most of the times they don’t leave it till they finish it. But, still there are others who are unable to read it completely. For them, I will just say “If you can’t be interested by this, then you can’t be interested by anything”.




3 comments:

Shuchi Kiran said...

I think, more than management, it talks of organisation building, what makes it, what carries it, what drives it and how the top order thoughts and conduct percolate down the line and influence people at lower rungs. And I would also say it talks of , what happens when organisations built are people specific.

Prabal Aggarwal said...

i think u r rite shuchi. But all these are different elements of management only. Yes you can say that the family was built around people. And as per modern day research, you can't grow at extraordinary pace if you have systems driven company, but only via people driven company.

Vivek Nagpal, The Dreamkiller said...

I have not read Godfather yet, but I am still waiting for my chance to go for it. I have read 2 novels by Mario Puzo by now viz. The Last Don & Omerta. Yes, he is specialist in Mafia and a lot teaches us about how the experience, dexterity and person's adaptability to new environment helps to move fast in life and grow over others.

Though the modern research says that "you cant grow at extraordinary pace if you have systems driven company, but only via people driven company" but if we try to extrapolate and see the future, we need to have a company that is a combination of both systems driven as well people driven. System driven items helps to keep the things & directions clear while people driven helps to mantain and increase the pace. So a combination of two gives a higher pace by keeping the focus (or goals) clear and paced actions than a single factor based company.