I MIGHT NOT BE GOOD LOOKING BUT I AM DEFINITELY ABOVE AVERAGE ……….
Yeah, right you are, Amitabha Bagchi. This book has a pretty touching comment in this line of thought, ” Accustomed all our lives to being lauded as exceptional, we were all scared that the true measure of ourselves, our unremarkable selves, would emerge one day. ……. My fear of being unexceptional was inextricably linked to a deep desire to be accepted as ordinary. The averageness that I was ashamed of showing became my most intimate friend. I started thinking that those people who were in touch with their inner ordinariness even while they went about the business of self-aggrandizement, which was the business of survival itself, were fundamentally okay. Those people were, somehow, more likely to survive the the trials life was to bring. “
The author, AB, tells da story of a delhi-walla bengali boy, of his home, his own locality mayur vihar, of the IIT-delhi where he graduates with comp-sc, and a little of US where he goes for PhD. The center of gravity is in da IIT, of course. And more specially, this book is about da subtle chemistry dat flows among friends, especially in the college-hostel life. Probably dat is why I can connect with da characters.
Well, well, u also get a true feeling of the typical dilli-waale lingo, overflowing with expletives, and the special phrases used only by iit-insiders, like ‘palo’-ing, meaning lolling around in free time, and the (seemingly) very very unlikely antics of the iit boys. This book is about feelings, and da little realizations they sometimes bring to us. The author has been honest to his readers throughout, and this slightly largish collection of many a short nuggets of stories.