THE PROFESSOR'S PEN

Is he a computer scientist who writes or a writer who computes?

- ANJULY MATHAI

IN AMITABHA BAGCHI'S best-selling debut novel Above Average, published in 2007, one of the characters, Karun, asks the protagonist Arindam, an IIT hopeful, whether he's done 'Loney' (referring to a book on trigonometry by S.L. Loney). When Arindam says no, Karun's friend Bagga explains, "The last few chapters are advanced. All the really hard trigonometric identities in JEE come from Loney. If you've done Loney then ten per cent of maths is yours."

"Do you know how much difference ten per cent can make?" asks Karun. Arindam shakes his head.

"Ten per cent," says Bagga, "can be the difference between computer science in Kanpur and electrical in Bombay."

"Or mechanical in Kharagpur and metallurgy in BHU," says Karun.

This machismo and false sense of superiority are the air that the characters in the book breathe. But Bagchi peels off the veneer to give a glimpse into the reality of life in IIT. "The battle for grades and academic achievement was just one small part of the larger war, the others being the battles to appear unconcerned, in control, well rounded, self-confident," he writes. "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."

There is a reason why