Book Review at The Week

Writers' WorldMediocre But Arrogantby Abhijit Bhaduri, Indialog Price Rs 195 Pages 264Reviewed by Debashish MukerjiPure serendipity no doubt, but campus novels seem to be becoming a hot new trend in Indo English fiction. Where there was a void earlier, three have appeared within a year. Chetan Bhagat's surprisingly successful Five Point Someone, about life at IIT; Sudeep Chakravarti's Tin Fish, enshrining Mayo College; and now Abhijit Bhaduri's effort. The acronym formed by the title points to its subject: the business school world. In this case, under the thinnest of disguises, the renowned Jamshedpur based XLRI.All three authors have much in common: they are first-timers, successful professionals in diverse fields and alumni of the institutions they have written about. The books are similar, too: taking a wry, irreverent, but ultimately indulgent look at these premier institutions. In Mediocre But Arrogant, narrator Abbey joins the Management Institute of Jamshedpur, has initial misgivings, makes friends, finds girlfriends, works hard, plays harder and drinks a good deal to ultimately pass out of the institution and land a decent corporate job.It is a delightfully honest account, a meticulously faithful rendering of the arduous demands and delicious diversions of an elite management school, with its formidable curriculum—subjects like quantitative techniques, organisational behaviour.Its eccentric faculty—the likes of Father Hathaway or Professor Tathagata Chattopadhyaya are instantly recognisable; its in-house acronyms and nicknames; and its summer projects and placement interviews.Loaded with humour and narrated at a cracking pace, here is the insider's account of B school life, which the latter's sleek prospectus will never reveal.Source: The Weekhttp://www.the-week.com/25aug21/lifestyle_article4.htm