DORK - Sidin Vadukut

Dork could have been a fabulously written humorous short story, but alas like our typical Bollywood movies, the book just drags on and on with the same old bloopers that Mr Einstein commits throughout the book.

The book begins with Sidin's introduction of what inspired him to write this book. I actually believed his version of the story of finding a diary of Einstein hidden below the kitchen sink in Sidin's newly rented apartment! That part was hilarious, infact I even 'bing-ed' (yeah! these days I am moving from google-ed to bing-ed, because of the NOK-MSFT alliance :) ) on the net to check the validity of Sidin's story.

The story begins with Robin Varghese aka Einstein’s campus interview experience. He hopes to be roped in by McKinsey or GoldmanSachs, but ends up with a rusty consulting firm like Dufrense Consultants. The book takes you through Robin’s rat race of becoming an associate within a year, his goof ups, his love interest(s) and finally how he manages to get ‘the break’!

The book spans over a one-year period, starts off with the Day-0 placements and ends with the episode which makes Robin a management guru! Throughout this journey, Robin repeats the same blunders in different contexts, goofs up at critical junctures but magically is able to revive himself. The ball-bearing incident is a bit stretched. Yes there are people who will blindly follow theoretical frameworks, and the ball bearing incident indicates the same for MBA grads, but the whole incident seemed to bear too much of a resemblance to a terrible version of David Dhavan-Govinda movies!

Robin's multiple screw-ups of mistaking the hiring person from GoldmanSachs as his junior, mistaking his new boss as a waiter become very repetitive throughout the book. The office culture part also was a bit monotonous - there is almost a chapter dedicated to how Robin ensures that he is in office irrespective whether his boss is in or not whereas his contemporaries are actually street smart and work only to please the boss. The love-story angle again seemed to be force-fitted.

All in all, the book is a drag and gets repetitive. You can almost predict what will happen next - someone will get drunk and there will be another screw-up!