Talking about Mediocre But Arrogant twenty years after it was published

This is a book that got published in 2005. It was a very very significant moment for me because I had dreamt of writing then I dreamt of getting the book published and there were like a hundred things that happened before it hit the shelf and more importantly when it got published it didn't even look like this. actually it got published with a different publisher at that point of time and I'm going to try and see if I can locate a photograph of that uh because I think I don't have that copy anymore. So if you do have that one you know you're holding on to a masterpiece but this is uh you know I I just think that I got really lucky uh with this book because it got a lot of encouragement from the readers. So, I'm just going to read out a couple of things. Like, for example, at the uh you know, when you look at the back cover, it says, "It's a quirky read about a confused MBA way laid by love and life. 3 years of college and Abby has no answer to the question, what next?" Luckily for him, fate. That chancy thing lands him in an MBA course at a top-notch B school, the management institute of Jamshedpur. At management institute of Jamshedpur or MIJ Abby finds his life turned upside down. What with professors like Hati and Chhatau and friends like Rascal Rusty and Papu and gorgeous girls like Aisha and Kia. Will the two years have being at MIG bag Abby a job? Will this be where he finds love? Question. Mediocre but arrogant is the story of being young in India. And I think that's really the essence of this book. It's about the roller coaster that is hostile life, bad grades, chai at the dhaba, old monk, thumbs up on special occasions, and not least being in love. Read on to know why MBA spells mediocre but arrogant. The week um actually put a quote. It said loaded with humor and narrated at a cracking pace. And the Dean Herald said the authenticity of the dialogues, friends, incidents, fatas, attitudes are the book's heart. Well, so what I want to do is to actually tell you a little bit about uh this book and u I'm going to try and sort of start by uh sharing a couple of different things. one is uh you know it begins with this little scribble from Aby's notebook. Uh the story is set in 1983. Uh the scribble it is called the MIG song and that's one of the scribbles which is there. The chorus is the two years I spent at MIG studying for my MBA. Precious hours spent with uh pals drinking the night away. Those term papers we had to write. Every professor had a strange quirk. It looked it took rusty time to figure out for each prof what would work. Some like quotes, some like graphs, some like humor in papers just for laughs. Chorus the two years I spent at MIJ studying Dadu's dhaba was our usual haunt whether for chai and cigarettes we would want when Arunes sung Dylan songs with his shiny guitar he would flaunt with his shiny Yamaha guitar he would flaunt it all this is scratched out so uh it says this song is dedicated to the QT class without which and then somebody scratched that out and said don't be mean um And you know there's a cat drawn and all that stuff you know very typical of what my notebook used to look like. Um you know so this is one of those scribbles you will see. Um but this is really what the story is all about. This was first published in 2005 by India log and subsequently Harper Collins which had you know earlier rejected this book. Yes. every single aspirational publisher that I wanted this book to be um published by, they had all said no to it and that's where I was. Um so I'm going to read out the first portion. Uh and I'm going to swap in between and sort of share some anecdotes as they get triggered. uh it's about the time that I spent at XLR which you know the only thing in common I guess is that both happen to be in Jamshetpur and both happen to be B schools so management institute of Jimshur is the story of Abby um well the behind the scenes portion which is there it says ever since mediocre but arrogant got published the question I've been asked most often is how much of this is autobiographical Well, there are some similarities I do share with Abby. I lived in the railway colony at SP Mark, studied economics at SRCC. I did my MBA at XLR Jamshedpur while Abby went to an MBA at the management institute of Jamshedpur, MIG. So, we are same same but different as they say in some parts of the world or maybe different different but same. Mediocre but Arrogant is really a story of growing up in India and anyone who has lived in a college hostel will recognize the characters in this book. Gopher who sucks up to every um prof and generally annoys the hell out of his classmates. Actually I must say that uh you know when I saw three idiots for the first time I kind of thought that um Gopher shared so many similarities with you know Chhatur of Three idiots. Arunes, the guitarist who plays songs of Dylan. The crazy roommate Papu who sleeps more than anyone I know. The enigmatic Rascal Rusty who has the most ingenious solution to life's problems. These characters live on in every college even today. To survive the terrible food in the students mess, there is Dadus Dhava where you are more likely to find the students than you would find in Professor Chatau's class. Chatau teaches the incomprehensible quantitative techniques that has been the nemesis of many a student and for generations of students. This is also the place where Abby discovered Aisha and Kia and he has a sneaky feeling that back home in Delhi his friend from college Priya loves him. That's so not all. Then again, isn't this what your college days were like? So this book is all about that. I want to say thanks to many people who helped me as I chase my dreams of writing my first novel. Nandini for being the first one to critique my ideas. My children for patiently letting me pretend that I knew what it meant to be a father. To my parents who taught me the basics of writing. And to my in-laws who bought the first copy of this book. Thanks Madukar and Gita for helping me make sense of the chaos over numerous cups of chai. And to the professors and friends from Exelar Jamshepur for all the good times. Thanks to Basan Pande of India log for bringing out the first edition of the novel and giving me a break as an author. To Ki Ramchandra who edited the first version of this book. Harper Collins, thank you for bringing out the latest edition of my debut novel Mediocre but Arrogant, the second novel, Married but available. It continues from where this novel ends. Thank you Kartika for editing both the novels that have changed what MBA stands for. So this is really what the book was all about. Um I'm going to read this out and uh tell me if you like it. I would love to continue to read out more of the portions but chances are that you have read this entire thing yourself and uh this is not going to be very different in which case you can tell me. So let me read a couple of pages today. Chapter one. I do not know why I landed in corporate India. Nobody in my family had ever ventured there and they were doing fine. Uh that it was a combination of serendipity and stupidity is what I think this was all about. Why I chose to do human resource development is another mystery. In fact, I did not even start off in human resources. When I joined MIJ Management Institute of Jamshit, Bihar in the summer of 82, the course I had enrolled in was called industrial relations and social welfare. At that time there was only welfare officers and that term really sucked. So some smart cookie must be like Rascal Rusty decided to tweak the formula, change the packaging and made a new commercial with a babe in the skimpier bikini as the marketing guys did with all this. soap and toothpaste brands every year. They called it a relaunch and that is how the new and improved version of the personal management and industrial relations PM and IR course positively near came to be called human resources and those who graduated from the institute were christened HR professionals instead of the previous personnel managers. After struggling through two years at MIJ and eventually completing the course in PM and IR, I was let loose on the corporate sector. In the course of time, I was announced the head honcho of HR at a reputable firm. All because of the stamp that MIJ had put on me, or as they say in management jargon, because I bore the MIG brand. In the good old days, cattle owners used to brand their cattle by using a red hot metal marked with their own name or initials or symbols in marketing terms. They were called logos. Slowly some such marks or brandings began to get associated with superior quality of cattle. And so customers looking for those brands when they were buying livestock, they would start looking for those brands. And that is how the term brand came to represent a particular standard, a quality, a method by which your products and services can be differentiated from those of your competitors because life is all about brands. For the next class, please come back with a thousandword write up on the brand I want to be. Describe the brand you currently are and the one you want to be in two years. The focus of your write up should be on the marketing strategy you will use to become that brand. Do not waste time copying your answers from some marketing journal in the library. I have read them all and will be able to instantly identify the plagiarized portions in your paper. If that happens, your assignment will not be graded. I want you to be creative and so on so forth. Thus speak professor Suri, head of marketing at MIG. His knowledge and sarcasm were both legendary and he was right. It was indeed all about brands. How else do you describe the transformation of scores of university graduates into much sought after branch in the corporate bazar? Now I want to actually pause and really give you a little bit of a context. The story is set in 1982. This is uh you know for all of you who were not born at that point of time uh then you know this is really the time where there were no cell phones uh you know the computers had not happened and yes it is true that we had professors who had you know at least that's the belief we had they had read journal which was there in the library so if they say that you know I've read them all and will be able to instantly identify the plagiarized portions in your paper. So, do not waste time copying your answers from some marketing journal in the library, they were probably right, you know, but those were there was nothing called Google. Uh there was certainly no chat bots and therefore life was much tougher as you can imagine that if you had to plagiarize anything, it just took an enormous amount of effort. So sometimes you know in a strange way it forced you to be honest because it was much faster to write rubbish on your own and get graded for honesty rather than to write something exceptional and instantly the professor would say you couldn't be that smart. So uh it was that element which I think uh you know I want to talk about. So this is the time and era uh you know life is very simple uh and and if I were to periodically compare my life with uh you know the life of Abby the protagonist in this book you will notice because I can talk very authentically about that time uh in 1982 and uh those are you know some of the things. So thus speak professor Suri head of marketing at MIJ his knowledge and sarcasm were both legendary and he was right it was indeed all about brands. How else would you describe the transformation of scores of university graduates into much sought after brands at the corporate bazard given the number of applicants every year. It seemed as if the branding machine at MIJ worked overtime though the earliest batches of MIJ students must have found it difficult to give themselves a distinct identity. You can imagine that conversation. Um so tell me what would you logically want to call the students of MIG? MIGN I mean that sounds like who we are trying to copy. INS creative. How about magicians? That would be a stretch. This is not a term paper, buddy. Give us real options. What do you want the students to be called? I mean, students of MIJ would be what? Midgets or were still mediocre? Bad P. Ah. Uh, this would all have become a big time branding issue had it not by not been resolved by Brainy Bala, one of our brilliant super seniors. He came up with the term MIGI which immediately earned the seal of approval at the students general body meeting. Even professor Suri approved of it and that became our brand. In future we would all be collectively known as MIGites. Despite its unglamorous name, MIJ had an impressive campus, a fancy library and a state-of-the-art auditorium where we held our annual oneact play festival. In the administrative block were the dean's office, the classrooms, and above them a large chapel. Next to it, believe it or not, was the girl's hostel, making it the butt of innumerable jokes. Hostel was a generous word. The girl's dwelling was not much more than a bigish hall with a few wooden desks and beds arranged along the walls. In fact, back in those days in 1982, all the buildings of MIJ were rather utilitarian. I couldn't think of a polite term. They did not have the distinctive style that is necessary for an institution to be taken seriously by the world at large. The way you dress creates a first impression on those who hold the keys to all the goodies in life. And MIG certainly didn't look like it met people's expectations of what a major business school should look like. Nor did it have the necessary spark that creates a major brand. Well, this is what the story begins like. Um, and it was fun writing it. Uh, also because I could sort of really think about a number of instances and uh, you know, all the characters that were there. Some of them were inspired by real life. Um you know but uh there were a lot of composite characters which means you took the characteristics of one person in real life and maybe a second and a third and fourth and created a character which is a composite character. So most of the characters here are composite characters um and with the exception of a couple of others. Uh so this is what the thing is. Let me know what you think of it and uh if you like it we will continue. So look forward to your comments. Bye-bye.