IIT revisited...again??

First we had Chetan Bhagat with his endearing but admittedly lightweight story about what not to do at IIT, through the eyes of three misfits within the 'fucked-up system'. Then came Abhijeet Bhaduri with his b-school version, the cleverly titled 'Mediocre But Arrogant' (an acronym for MBA). And now we have a third book that looks similar on the surface: Amitabha Bagchi's "Above Average", the life of an IITan and his quest to become the drummer of a rock band. The novel was apparently released on the 12th of February.
http://www.aboveaveragebook.com/

The title itself is quite telling ("Five point someone.....Medicore but Arrogant...Above Average", do we detect a trend here?), but after reading this excerpt from an interview with Bagchi posted on the website, maybe he deserves the benefit of the doubt: " I was near the end of the first draft of Above Average when a friend called me one day and said that Chetan has written a book. At that point I had already been working on Above Average for three and a half years. So it's not as if I saw all these books get successful and then decided I wanted a piece of the pie. I guess I just got scooped by Chetan Bhagat." He also goes on to say that the book is intrinsically different from FPS, the latter being about life in IIT while his book is more about the growing up of a middle class student. The author, like Bhagat, is an alumnous of IIT Delhi but the interesting thing is he is employed as an Assistant Professor there at the moment. Wonder if that detail changes the reader's perspective, somewhat?

One thing's for sure, the book will sell very well initially, in the wake of FPS' popularity and for the same reasons will attract cynicsm from a lot of potential readers. The synopisis may leave a lot of us pursing our lips saying, "Not again!", but on reading some of the excerpts on the site, I must say the prose seems solid if unspectacular. Maybe the book does deserve to be viewed on its own terms. The shadow of its two 'predecessors' (Bagchi would definitely not appreciate my using that word, but I will reserve my judgement) will be very hard to escape, though. I will probably pick it up out of curiosity, when I next make a visit to India. If any of you happen to read it, I'd be interested in hearing your feedback.

One book on the IIT theme I would definitely recommend, however, is the non-fiction "The IITans", by Sandipan Deb, editor of the Outlook. I read about half the book a couple of years ago and it has since remained on my long list of incompletes. It was certainly well written, though. From what i remember, the author takes a look at how the IITs were formed, foreign collaboration and all, and how they have evolved over the years. He talks to IITans past and present, in all corners of the world, about what life was like in the IITs. Deb reserves special mention for those who left their cushy jobs in the states and elsewhere, and returned to work in the public sector as a path to personal fulfillment. There's even a chapter where female alumni recall what it meant being a girl in an overwhelmingly male-dominated institution, and so on. My memory of this book is pretty hazy, and I plan to re-read it from start to finish sometime. I'm sure you would enjoy it as well.