Some books take years. Some take months. This one took a lifetime — and then a little more.
The Boss Who Became a Collaborator
When I joined The Times of India, Dr. Bhaskar Das was already a legend in the building. He was President of the group — the kind of leader whose presence you felt even before he walked into a room. I reported to him. He was demanding, brilliant, and possessed of a clarity about people and organisations that I have rarely encountered since.
We went our separate ways — I left TOI in 2018, he had retired in 2012 to lead Zee, Republic, and other major media institutions. We stayed in touch the way former colleagues do — social media, occasional messages, a warmth that never quite faded.
Then in early 2024, he called.
“Will You Write My Book?”
He had an idea he had been carrying for years. A book about how professionals should view themselves not as employees — but as corporations. How Inc. — and about navigating disruption with a different mindset entirely.
He was getting treated for cancer at the time. He didn’t mention it as a reason to hurry. He mentioned it the way Bhaskar Das mentioned everything — matter-of-factly, with focus already on what needed to be done.
I said yes without hesitation.
We met, built the table of contents together, talked through the ideas, and got about ten per cent of the manuscript done. Then his treatment intensified. He was admitted to hospital. When he came home, he was too frail to work.
Dr. Bhaskar Das passed away in January 2025.
A Year Later, a Message
I had put the project to the back of my mind — one of those things that life interrupts and doesn’t always return to. Then, a year after his passing, his wife Somshuklla Das reached out.
There was a publisher ready, she said. The family wanted the book to exist. Would I be willing to finish it?
I sat with that question for a moment.
What I had was almost nothing — ten per cent of a manuscript, and the WhatsApp conversations we had shared during those early months of collaboration. No detailed notes. No recordings. Just fragments of a mind I had known professionally for years, and a voice I could still hear clearly if I closed my eyes.
That would have to be enough.
Writing as Someone Else — Completely
Every ghostwriting project requires you to inhabit another person’s voice. But this was different. Bhaskar wasn’t available for interviews. There would be no feedback sessions, no “that’s not quite how I’d put it.” I had to get it right from memory, from instinct, and from those WhatsApp threads.
I thought about how he spoke — the precision of it, the authority, the way he could distill a complex organisational truth into a single unforgettable sentence. I drew on my own years in business and media to create the characters and scenarios he would have used to make his points. I asked myself constantly: would Bhaskar say it this way?
The barometer, ultimately, was Somshuklla.
I wrote three chapters and sent them to her. Then I waited.
Her response came as a voice note. I still remember pressing play.
She said she felt as if Bhaskar was sitting next to her, telling her these things.
That was all I needed to hear. I went back to the manuscript with full conviction and finished the book.
The Launch — and the Moment I Will Never Forget
You Inc. was launched at the Das family home, in the presence of close friends from the media world — people who had known Bhaskar, worked with him, been shaped by him. It was intimate, warm, and quietly emotional.
At some point, I was asked to sign copies of the book.
I felt uneasy. This was not my book. My name is not on the cover. My ideas are not inside it. Everything in those pages belonged to Bhaskar Das — his thinking, his philosophy, his decades of hard-won wisdom about people and organisations.
And then something arrived — I can only call it an epiphany.
I picked up the pen. And I signed in his name.
Dear [Name], May you experience my presence through this book. Love, Bhaskar.
I don’t think I have ever felt more certain that I had done my job well.
What This Story Means for Anyone Thinking About a Book
Dr. Bhaskar Das had an idea worth preserving. He knew it. His family knew it. The publisher knew it. The only question was whether the right person could bring it across the finish line in a way that honoured him.
I think about this whenever someone tells me they have been meaning to write their book — but haven’t started, or started and stopped, or aren’t sure it will ever get done.
Start. Document your ideas. Have the conversations. Get the material into some form — notes, voice messages, rough drafts, anything.
Because the ideas in your head belong to the world. And the world deserves to read them.
I am R Sridhar — an executive ghostwriter in India with over 30 years at The Times of India. You Inc. is one of six books I have contributed to as author, ghostwriter, book coach, and research editor.
If you have a book inside you — fully formed or barely begun — I would love to have that first conversation.