A tale of game and government with dose of wit and humour

[1]

By Sidin Vadukut [2]

Rs 199

Sidin Sunny Vadukut’s middle name should have been “Funny”.
In the Twitterverse, where he has 46,909 (last counted on November 20), followers, it already is: On the microblogging site @sidin goes by “5idin 5unny 5adukut” and in 140 characters (mostly even in just one or four characters) he keeps the funny side up with his random observations and ruminations on anything and everything — current affairs, media, politics, life, culture, travel.

In short, on Twitter, within the stipulated 140 characters, he does what he does best on his blog, Domain Maxiums (www.whatay.com [3]): write about random stuff with a good dose of wit and humour.
Vadukut’s third book in the Dork trilogy, Who Let The Dork Out?, is out.
His hero, Robert “Einstein” Varghese, who has been hailed as India’s Dilbert, comes to Delhi after documenting, in diary entries, his professional “disasters” in Mumbai (Dork: The Incredible Adventures of Robin ‘Einstein’ Verghese) and London (God Save the Dork: The Incredible International Adventures of Robin ‘Einstein’ Varghese).
Verghese, the Dork, a bumbling but endearing management strategist, is “older” and “wiser” in the final instalment of the trilogy that takes satirical digs at management consulting industry.
It is a “natural progression” says Vadukut, adding that the book is “a reflection of the author getting older”. Verghese has a lot of confidence, leading the Lederman team in India.
“Verghese is not perfect, but he is very likeable,” he says. Vadukut says that in comparison to the earlier two books, book three in the series has “tighter” humour that doesn’t interrupt the story.
In Who Let The Dork Out?, Verghese aspires to become the CEO by bagging a deal for his investment firm with the ministry for urban regeneration and public sculpture (MURPS). The backdrop is the Allied Victory Games 2010, a nod to the Commonwealth Games. In the 12 months preceding the Games, the ministry, specially appointed by the Prime Minister to oversee its preparations, finds itself in the centre of a media “shit storm”. Minister Badrikedar Laxmanrao Dahake, (modelled on who else but Kalmadi), finds himself in the toughest spot. Dahake’s only hope, as it turns out, is the one and only “master strategist, media expert and international financial wizard” Robin ‘Einstein’ Varghese. He must do something to save India’s face. But everything seems to go wrong at his own workplace and life. Would he be able to deliver? You got to read the book to find out. The book is a cornucopia of Verghese’s frustrations and failures, ecstasies and achievements.
But reading Verghese’s diary entries you realise that his frustrations are not his alone. Vadukut says that a lot of Verghese’s frustrations are his frustrations too.
And the frustrations of readers who could relate to the drama unfolding in Delhi prior to the Commonwealth Games.
Many critics have drawn obvious parellels between Vadukut’s books and Bridget Jones’s Diary. Vadukut says he chose the format to capture the ires and angsts of his unreliable narrator. “He’s very excited about everything. We know about happenings in his life, his emotional ups and downs, his outbursts and rants only through his perspective. The story happens in his head,” says Verghese.
Vadukut, who belongs to what he calls the “original set of Indian bloggers”, says readers, especially his female friends, ask him about Verghese’s love life, his family. But he feels that it’s easier writing about office than writing about family.
Vadukut says that though the main plot in Who Let The Dork Out? is the game and the government, he was tempted to write about family. But he largely stayed away from doing that as writing about family is more “upsetting”. He says: “We laugh at certain things at our workplace. But you can’t laugh off family. It’d be painful. May be I don’t write about family as I don’t find family situations funny.” He says that even if you’ve a funny family, there will be things that wouldn’t go down well with family members if you try humour at their expense.
Vadukut, however, is not just funny. He could be serious too. Talking about his reading habits, he says he reads a lot of non-fiction and is fascinated by the elements of Indian history and science. The book he is reading now is Abraham Eraly’s Gem in the Lotus: The Seeding of Indian Civilisation which lies at the table before him. He says he is working on a book on the elements of Indian patriotism. Doesn’t that sound too heavy duty for a man who created Dork? Vadukut laughs and says: “It’ll be serious but not boring.”
Vadukut loves travel stories, history. “We don’t know Indian history as much as we should,” he says. He talks about how he toys with the idea of writing erotica. “How about office culture erotica?” he asks, laughing.
Others may have made their careers out of writing campus novels but Vadukut, who is wary of writing for the market, says: “Kids write campus novels.”
According to him, writing should be more expansive and experimental. Some of the authors that inspire him are M.T. Vasudevan Nair, Vaikom Muhammad Basheer and Orhan Pamuk. Vadukut says he doesn’t get the idea of catering to market demands when it comes to writing.
His dictum is simple: “Publishers should take risks. Writers should write good books.”
Vadukut is a writer who writes in “bursts”.
He says that while non-fiction writing is “ponderous and slower” fiction writing is more “non-stop, impatient and breathless”.
Writing each part of the trilogy, he’d tell this to himself: “Now I’ll become Robin Verghese.”
Vadukut says he’s still learning the ropes (and tropes) of fiction: the economy of thought, the art of constructing “fantastic” sentences. While he may have found a voice with the Dork trilogy, he knows that it’s hardly his voice. It is the voice of the Dork aka Robin Einstien Verghese. And he, like his creator, is incredibly funny.