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If you are on IIT campus, you better think straight
Chetan Bhagat
OUTSIDE THE circle of the Indian Institutes of Technology and the Indian Institutes of Management, the crowd wonders what goes on inside. Forget the ambitious go-getter wannabe superkids. Consider what the ordinary man on the street feels about what goes on inside these institutions of repute, the brains who walk the corridors, the life within.
"Five Point Someone," screams someone called Chetan Bhagat from the cover of his first book. Chetan uses a "funny, dark, and non-stop" style to tell the world exactly what the layman is looking for. Chetan's book, basically a guide about how bad things can get if you don't think straight, was released at the city's Crossword bookstore on Saturday.
Pause, and think about all this brouhaha about a book with a whacky title like Five Point Someone. As the people in the know describe it, the book is "a story about three friends in the IIT who are unable to cope." No wonder, the book starts with a disclaimer: "This is not a book to teach you how to get into IIT or even how to live in college. In fact, it describes how messed up things can get if you don't think straight."
Here goes the synopsis: Three hostel-mates — Alok, Hari, and Ryan — get off to a bad start in IIT: they do particularly badly in the first class quiz. And while they try to make amends, things only get worse. It takes them some time to realise that if you try and mess around with the IIT system, it comes back to mess you up. Before they know it, they are at the lowest echelons of IIT society. They have a five-point-something GPA out of 10, ranking near the end of their class. The GPA is a tattoo that will remain with them, and come in the way of anything else that matters — their friendship, their future, and their love life. While the world expects IITians to conquer the world, these guys are struggling to survive.
Will they make it? Do underperformers have a right to live? A few words about 29-year-old Chetan Bhagat, the author: he graduated from IIT, Delhi, in 1995. At the IIT, he had a stint as the editor of the hostel magazine. He also has an MBA from IIM, Ahmedabad, from where he received the "best outgoing student award." He has been working in Hong Kong with a prominent U.S. investment bank for the past six years.
By Rasheed Kappan
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Life
Bangalore
Chennai
Delhi
Hyderabad
Kochi
Madurai
Thiruvananthapuram
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