IIM-A & Funda of Writing Books

AHMEDABAD: Call it the management of words, a supply chain of thoughts or whatever. A new crop of alumni from the Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad (IIM-A) are not only re-engineering the corporate and financial world but also raising a storm in literary circles. Walk into a bookstore, browse through the shelves and you are bound to stumble on a bestseller by an IIM-ite. And, they don’t preach management fundas. These management gurus are the new-age literary dons, penning sagas of love, life and longing with as much ease as they go about doing business in the corporate world. If Chetan Bhagat, the 1997-batch IIM-A graduate and now well-known for his literary prowess after the stupendous success of his first novel – Five point someone – is making waves with his third and latest novel, The three mistakes of my life , Mainak Dhar, of the batch of 1996, is creating a stir with his novel, The funda of mix-ology . So is Vivek Agarwal, from the batch of 2005, who has released his collection of short stories, To catch a smile . Do B-schools inspire seekers of literary excellence? Agarwal feels it does make them communicate better. "It is not that the stories depict incidents or have people that I came across. The institute has groomed me in a manner that made me better at communicating to the masses what I am thinking about. These short stories, some structured and some abstract are things that have happened to me or things I have experienced," says Agarwal, now a senior consultant with KPMG, based in Mumbai. Dhar's latest book 'Mix-ology' is not based on the campus life, but is about the life of a guy after he passed out of the institute. "I have written three fictions and there have been people from the institute who have found a place in my books. My friends often become characters in my books and the story revolves around them." Dhar is working with an MNC based in Singapore. "IIM-A gets the best of the lot and I am not surprised that they have taken giant strides in the literary world. IIM-A students have great creative ability which is now getting manifested in the form of books and music albums," says IIM-A director Sameer Barua.