Ravi, I am kind of curious how you landed in PerlMonks in the first place? It should be no surprise to you that the Perl Monks would advise... well... Perl. A couple of things to consider: What programming languages do they use in your shop? Do you have any programming experience at all? Do you do better learning from books and seeing examples or from a classroom course type experience?

If you have little to no experience, the book path works for you and you are considering Perl then I would suggest getting a copy of Learning Perl by Tom Phoenix.

Good luck,