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If God Went to B-School
…Would love follow him there?
‘If God went to a B-School’ is a dark, brutally honest & deeply sarcastic tale of how the wheels turn at premier league B-Schools and how the 2008 recession impacted them. It is inspired by a true story.
If God Went to B-School Free PDF Sample
Read more about the book here…
BOP Writer 
If God Went To B School.
Anand and Mani Ganesh
Srishti. Delhi. 2010-08-31
Jayanto Bose must be congratulated for bringing before us a range of books from Srishti authored by young debutants. These debutants, usually young men from top schools and B schools bring forth a kind of psyche that we all guess but are not sure of. At the bottom of the psyche of such brilliant young men lie two things – rejection in love and inability to achieve. In other words, these are stories of not so successful persons in institutions that qualify to be among the very best in the country. For the reader, such autobiographical accounts bring about two kinds of feelings, one of deep sympathy for the young men and the other a kind of vicarious voyeurism because most of us will never be able to see the haloed portals of either the IITs, or IIMs or even the XLRIs or the FMS. Anand and Mani Ganesh’s debut novel, If God Went To B School is one of such publications by Sirshti.
Despite the deep self deprecation that sets the tone of the story, or an eclectic collection of stories, one cannot but observe that these young men are the creamiest layer of the batch for having made it to the B school in the first place. However, inside the B school they are subject to cramming and copy pasting of texts for presentations and examinations and are therefore, senselessly overworked. As lessons and assignments are recklessly jammed into these young heads the difference between the ones who get plum placements and the ones that do not get them is the singular factor – girls. While the successful students can overcome their anxieties over women, the ones who are left out of job placements are the ones who cannot do so. In that case, overcoming the fear of female rejection is the key to succeeding in the B schools once of course admissions are secured in the first place. The negative construction of women is so strong that the male contenders assume that companies are keener for women as sex objects even when the authors have explicitly mentioned that the girls were selected because they topped the batch!!
Srishti is for new authors or the bottom of the pyramid ones as Anand and Mani Ganesh call themselves and one cannot expect a steady handed prose from them. I admit that the authors have a very long journey in front of them before they can emerge as “real authors” and it remains to be seen how quickly they close their gaps with a Khalid Hosseini or even a nearer landmark, Chetan Bhagat. But the prose is brilliant when it comes to descriptions of cities Delhi and Kolkata, the former being fiercer but is more pliable because it means a certain letting go of life’s baggage while the latter weighs heavy with emotions, attachments and memories. The characters are true to life, exhaustive in their coverage of types found in B schools and the atmosphere of agonizingly taxing but ultimately meaningless curricula is portrayed excellently. Finally, the dream sequences of frying fish in which the protagonist becomes food for his new changed self in Delhi, the anarchy seen from the high building and the roadside vendor in an immaculate black suit selling junk bonds bear promise of commendable future works.
Do read…
Thanks ma’m
This is one book that I have been waiting for long and have not been able to keep it away from my mind ever since I have heard about the same. This weird sounding book is one of the best my-college life-experience books that I have ever read. If you have ever been to a b-school, you can easily relate to the madness that is described in it. It is like the wet mud that reminds you of the beautiful days of the rat race. Anand and Mani have beautifully captured the emotions of each milestone and integrated it with personalization of the cities. The entry to hell, CVs, lecture, break ups, hook ups, Placecom, recession, this book has colored every aspect of the MBA life. My favorite chapter is Joker & the Thief & the Night with the madness at its peak, it just reminds of that one incidence that happens in those two years which you love telling to the rest of the world describing your filmy – otherwise slogging – b school life.
At the end the book just left me thinking of HP, the guy that everyone wants to be in THAT moment of self realization but then abandons him for the fear of the social world around us. An awesome read for anyone and everyone who is or has ever been a student.
Thanksu Komal 🙂
Cool looking site, Anand!
Thanks Arul