Authors, Ho!

It has been said by many in my hearing that a lot of people seem to have mistaken the MBA for a Creative Writing degree, going by the number of authors who hail from that educational background. And there those others who murmur that, of course, it is a degree for Creative Communications for, after all, most of management is all about using learned jargon for common-place things. THAT is just envy, I tell you. (So what if I have said things like that myself? Did I ever say that I was NOT envious of others for being more capable? This habit of you guys, to think the worst of me ONLY when it suits you, is bloody irritating, I tell you.) Data is a funny thing. If you see the percentage of MBAs among highly successful authors it seems like all MBAs have flocked to writing. See the MBAs, who wrote, as a percentage of all MBAs and the story seems different. I mean, really, they cannot be flocking to writing because the money here is better! Comes to IIM-Bangalore, though, it seems really like there is some truth to all those canards about MBAs flocking to writing. I mean, yeah, Ravi Subramaniam is from there but really you do not know the story of my batch - the 1986-88 one. There is really reason to think that the wrong muse landed up when we were inducted. First there is this chap - R.V. Raman - who ended up writing a quartet of books for Hachette and followed it up with one for Harper-Collins. Look him up at this author page if you do not believe me. Then, with all humility (I CAN be humble, so there), there is moi. What was that? That writing a blog does not count, for that way most of the world will be in contention? I HAVE had a book published, drat you, even if the paperback was by a small publisher and the e-book was by me. Proof? Yeah, you will swallow ALL the fake news that anyone dishes out but ME you ask for proof? Well, then, you can check that out at A Dog eat Dog-food World. (I hope that none of my IIM profs see this. I daresay they will not be particularly happy to see that the ONLY use I made of my education there was to spoof management!) Then, there is the third - Bhaswar Mukherjee. Sneaky guy, ain't I? Sort of putting him in third, making it appear like I outrank the guy in writing credentials. The chap, who Amitav Ghosh calls 'A writer of Promise'; whose story Ashwin Sanghi finds 'compelling and captivating'; and who Vinita Nangia finds 'an engaging storyteller'. Some of that managment education must have seeped in after all, making me creative in communications! I wish the chap would have stuck to banking and acting in and directing plays. Why did he have to poke his nose into writing, especially if he will careen around getting selected by people like Neelam Saxena, Sudha Murty and all for publication in anthologies curated by them? And then go on to get into the top ten in FIVE of the contests conducted by TOI Write India AND even win one of them? I mean, how am I supposed to go and boast to my batch about MY writing? RV Raman made it difficult enough and now this guy! AND, now, he gets a selection of his short stories published by Readomania, some of which are the TOI Write India stories. Yeah, yeah, I know. Proof, right? Well, go check it out at It Happens. One thing is for sure. Three from ONE batch is bad enough. If there are more, I'm sure IIM-Bangalore will seriously consider replacing the certificates of management education for this entire batch with one for creative writing!