Watch Out! We Are MBA

Seldom you come across a book which you just don't want to end. A book which gives you a sinking feeling as you turn its pages and you realize that the trip will be over pretty soon. But this doesn't happen to me very often. I am usually the type of person who loves to finish a book as soon as possible so that I can move on to the next one because I firmly believe that our lives are too short and there are just too many good books to read out there.

But it happened to me when I started reading Watch Out! We Are MBA by Nishant Kaushik. I finished the first 200 pages of the book within 2 days but then I realized I don't want this book to end, ever! I started going back and re-reading pages convincing myself that I haven't grasped them earlier (I know there is nothing to grasp, its a novel not some school textbook, right?!) Believe me, I took 3 whole days just to finish the last 3 pages and finally let go off the book after almost 2 months! Why didn't I want this book to end? Because this book took me back to what was easily the best 2 years of my life. My Nirma days. It made me feel as if I was again a part of Nirma MBA FB&E 2006-08 batch.

Watch Out! We Are MBA isn't some complex story or an intriguing thriller or something very profound where you'll find answer to all your life's problems (And I mean this in a nice way!) It is what it says it is. Its a simple and straightforward chronicle of what goes on in the life of a B-School student. But it is amazing how nostalgic I felt while reading this book. I can bet that anybody who has done his MBA or for that matter anyone who has done a graduation or post graduation course in India will definitely relate to this book. Some of them (like me) will relate to it entirely and some in parts. For me it was like I was re-living those 2 years in Nirma and I knew each and every character and incident in the book personally!

The language and the narrative of the book is very simple and lucid. Actually while reading the book I felt as if I am sitting with my best friend at the Tapri opposite Nirma and he's narrating the incidents to me over a cutting chai and maskabun just like we did in good ol' days. Nishant connects with the reader in such a manner which I haven't seen in a pretty long time. I don't know how to express this in words but his writing just makes the reader "Comfortable."

Another thing that I loved about this book is the overall structure and presentation of the book itself. The entire book (I have the latest 2011 paperback edition) has a sort of "MBA Textbook" kinda feel to it which I guess is quite intentional. The cover of the book itself has been designed in such a manner that if it was lying among some of the marketing and finance books that we had in MBA nobody would believe that it was a fiction novel. Even the chapters and headings in the book give it a textbook feel and the most innovative thing is that there is an Index at the back of the book exactly like we had in our textbooks! The index was simply a masterstroke to the entire presentation of the book. Really creative!

The story is quite simple. It is about a boy gradually turning into a man while studying in a B-School. How he grows to understand his responsibilities and consequences he will suffer if he doesn't fulfills them. The expectations that his parents and the society at large has from him as he is "A Future MBA In The Making." He learns and understands human relationships better and gets a whole new understanding about what friendship really is. It is about expectations a person has from his friends and Nakul's realization that friendship needn't mean the same to everyone as it does to him. It is basically a story of how everyone of us feels when we are inside the safety of the Utopian world of a B-School campus. The idealism, the dreams, the romance, the naive indifference to the "real" world is all beautifully captured by Nishant Kaushik. I actually read Nishant's second book, A Romance With Chaos which is sort of a sequel to his first book, before I read Watch Out! We Are MBA and it was funny to observe how different Nakul Kapoor's life turned out to be than what he imagined while doing his MBA.

Like I said, the book is quite straightforward and that is what I loved the most about it. Nishant Kaushik proves that you can write good Indian fiction and tell the story of regular Indian youth without turning it into a softcore porn as I have observed some other IIT-IIM type authors do in the recent times. There are no unnecessary sex gimmicks (if you may) or cheap humor or meaningless melodrama anywhere in the book. The narrative even though simple is quite gripping and I love the fact that the author hasn't tried to make everything right in the end and finished the story where he did.

If there is one thing I have to say that I didn't like in this book then that has to be Nishant's use of big fancy words where there is absolutely no need. I don't know, maybe my vocabulary isn't as great as it has to be or maybe as it was the author's first book and he got a little carried away while showcasing his extraordinary knowledge of words (and I say this without the slightest hint of sarcasm). I honestly feel that you can write a good book even without relying on big heavy duty words! My case in point being R.K. Narayan, Mario Puzo, Jeffrey Archer & John Grisham. All great authors, all rely on simple and easy to grasp language!

Nitpicking aside, Watch Out! We Are MBA is a great book by a great author and I recommend it to anyone and everyone who wants to take a walk down the memory lane and re-live their college days. I am now eagerly waiting for Nishant's third book "Conditions Apply" which I can bet will be even better than the previous two (if that is possible!)

A little note to the author in the end: "Nishant, thank you so much for writing this book. It was a great ride and thanks for tagging me along!"