Love, Life & Cliches

The Deccan Chronicle carried a review of Mediocre But Arrogant. The review was done by Anjana Basu who works as an advertising consultant in Kolkata. Her poems have featured in anthologies published by Penguin India and Authorpress. Anjana Basu has worked on scripts with director, Rituparno Ghosh, for Antarmahal and The Last Lear, and has subtitled several of his films including Unishe April, Dahan, and Chokher Bali. Here is her review of Mediocre But Arrogant:

I remember the launch of this book in 2005 when it was first brought out by Indialog. Reissued by HarperCollins in an attractive format, it is a tribute to the fact that the book hasn’t dated. It fits right into a world ruled by Chetan Bhagat and movies like 3 Idiots.Mediocre but Arrogant is a spelling out of the MBA acronym to suit Bhaduri’s narrative and ‘poke’ the MBA types. The only difference is that its aspirants are slightly older than the usual since it’s set in the 1990s which means Facebook, mobile phones and the Internet are out of bounds. But the rest contains the usual suspects, nasty profs with a penchant for complicated question papers, a few quirky friends and the loyal local tea stall type who serves up a mean line in samosas courtesy his wife.If you’re an avid fan of this genre, or if you studied MBA, you won’t find anything really different about this tale of studies at the high profile Management Institute of Jamshedpur, a takeoff on XLRI where Bhaduri studied.Abbey the hero, whose name seems to echo that of the author, qualifies for admission with a little help from his friends beginning with the filling in of his entrance form. However, he never has the right answer at the right time, unlike his mentor Rusty who is a straight A+ student and who spends most of his time engrossed in things like the Illustrated Weekly. All the characters are real enough but Bhaduri has this habit of going backward and forward in time without warning, which occasionally makes me wonder if he’s repeating himself. He isn’t of course, but it always seems like déja vu. And even if it is the normal time travelling that one does in one’s own head, it remains confusing in a story.As expected there are all the problems of connecting with PYTs with raging hormones to confuse simple issues. Abbey is a pain where women are concerned, especially nice women like Priya who seem to take insults lying down because they are in love with him. If you’re strait-laced, you might wonder at the casualness of the sex and the relationships. Abbey seems to juggle his girls with ease flipping between Ayesha and Keya with sudden bursts of sex and no real reason why or why not. And somewhere in the middle of the book what should be a straight graduating and getting a job story goes a little out of control.Undoubtedly a great deal of heart has gone into the writing of the book, including serious commentary on the educational system though this is disguised by tongue in cheekiness. Bhaduri’s language is easy and he occasionally comes up with great one-liners with digs at consultants and their mysterious insights. There are line drawings of some of the characters with call-outs, which add interest to the pages. If you have a flight to catch and need to pass the time, this might keep you turning the pages for a while.Source: http://www.deccanchronicle.com/node/149532