All the three novels have been well received by readers;Oxford Book Store put Garg’s ‘A Sunny Shady life’ on the top ten best selling novels list. Datta’s ‘Of Course I Love You…Till I find someone better!’ was on India Today bestseller list for ‘seventeen straight weeks’ and on the Hindu’s for four weeks. It was also Statesman bestseller number 3. The easy style of writing and the youth centric stories find easy connect with the young generation making the books popular.
With an exciting life of an author going good for them, why did they choose to do an MBA? isn’t management education a far cry from their creative profession of writing? On this Datta says, “writing is something that I love to do but I do not see myself doing it for a living as opposed to management which I want to take up as a career”. Garg is still “testing” waters in writing and thus wants a secure career which he thinks management can give him. In his opinion, with the training at MDI to work at several things at once, writing is something he can do with another profession.
Management education seems to be the chosen qualification by those in the creative field to give their careers a much needed organized structure. Many study MBA to rev up their existing jobs and many like the above in MDI take up management full time. Lack of money in professions like writing, film making advertising etc. (initially) is also a reason for them take up management; agrees, Shouvik, a student of PGP in Human Resources at IMI who used to make short films back in undergraduate college. He says “there is no money in film making, so MBA was the best option for me, I can always make films if I want to”. Indian culture too strongly demarcates between a ‘career’ as opposed to a ‘hobby’ hence, what you do for a living need not necessarily be something you enjoy doing. It can be argued in the contrary too; if you make what you like your profession, suddenly it ceases to be enjoyable.
Whether enjoyable or not, there is no dearth of books at MDI. Both Garg and Datta are working on their second and third ones; While Garg’s is still untitled and about the stories of eight people who go across the country, Datta’s is called ‘Of all the women I have loved…’ , plot of which is still in the developing stages.