A big personal tragedy turns people either into dogooders or makes them live life with gay abandon. And spirituality can help justify both positions.

The timing of the launch of the biography of Yash Birla couldn’t have been worse. As the book is launched in March 2014, the group companies are under various stages of investigation for several alleged financial irregularities and delay in payment of salaries to staff. The debt pile up is huge.

Didn’t celebrity author and columnist Shoba De and Penguin know how Yash Birla ran his companies when the book was commissioned? Or did Yash Birla pay for the book to boost his credibility? Doesn’t credibility matter at all in publishing business any more?

The book’s promotion text says that it 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.”

Hope divine intervention works to help him sort his current predicament!