BOOKS: Gurcharan Das, "The Difficulty of Being Good"

SAJA presents a conversation with Gurcharan Das, author of the international bestseller "India Unbound" and the brand-new "The Difficulty of Being Good: On the Subtle Art of Dharma. He was previously CEO of Proctor & Gamble India and Managing Director (Strategic Planning), P&G Worldwide before taking early retirement to become a full-time author.

Why should we be good? How should we be good? And how might we more deeply understand the moral and ethical failings—splashed across today’s headlines—that have not only destroyed individual lives but caused widespread calamity as well, bringing communities, nations, and the global economy to the brink of collapse? In THE DIFFICULTY OF BEING GOOD, Gurcharan Das seeks answers to these questions in an unlikely source: the 2,000 year-old Sanskrit epic, Mahabharata. A sprawling, witty, ironic, and delightful poem, the Mahabharata is obsessed with the elusive notion of dharma—in its most simplistic sense—doing the right thing. Questions to saja@columbia.edu