Amitabha Bagchi...way Above Average

First of all thanks to Vinil, my colleague at Microsoft who reminded me that I have a blog which I realised I haven't touched for quite a while. Last week I read Amitabha Bagchi's Above Average. The decision to pick this book for reading was solely driven by the fact that it was lying on Crosswords's Best sellers of the month. I flipped around the pages of the book in the store and saw some reference of IIT, Computer Science ...I said thats it...thats what I came here for, to relive the memories of IIT. I picked the book and paid close to two fifty bucks and got it home. After reading the book, I think that book was worth every penny.
Amitabha though was narrating his own story, named the protagonist Arindam instead of Amitabha. I guess the fact that he was very candid in his language and exposing the "dark" secrets of his life drove him to at least change his name. Though in the beginning I thought its meant only for IITians who did graduation in CS but that would have made the target audience to few thousand people in this world, but as the story grew and I tried to imagine how different any other college life would have been, I agreed that any college student would have gone through most of all "this".
But I must confess his story was way more glamorous than most IITians would agree to. If thats not true I can at least talk on behalf of most IIT Madras folks who would probably concur to my point. Another interesting thing is that all the macho action in the story is happening to people around Arindam(the protagonist). Our man is mostly a silent spectator and an observor to all that is happening around him, except for the kiss he took part in.
The story doesnt have a really happy ending but its quite realistic.
In terms of clarity and detail, I would compare Amitabha with the stand-up comedian Raju Shrivastav. Amitabha has used each and every detail specially around IIT life to create humour which makes you laugh or feel pity on IITians at times.

Hats off to Amitabha for such a pleasant reading on anybody's college life.