realDesign: Design Stories About the Real - world/teams/products/users

When I order books from India,  I really look forward to  receiving the parcel, packed in brown paper, with a  handwritten address and with about a million Gandhi stamps on it. Above Average actually did not arrive in such a parcel. I saw the book advertised when I was looking at one of the US sites where they sell books imported from India (Prabaas , Indiaclub) and pre-ordered it.

Despite the fact that it arrived in a regular old fed-ex packet, it was a wonderful read. :)  

There have been other books about the IIT experience. And like most  other reviewers, I like this one better. It is written by someone who reads, and  can write  well. Almost everything that needs to be said about the book, seems to have been said already, however there are two points I want to mention only because they possess the virtue of  whimsy.

• The hero of the book, in grad school in the US is utterly delighted that his girl friend back home now has access to email. However, what actually happens is that he writes these long detailed letters (as one is wont to sitting in the grad school cube or lab, waiting for inspiration to strike, late at night), and after several days receives a one liner in  response. I remember writing something long and soulful, to be told after a few days that the movie The Titanic sucked, or  to see yet another copy of some joke, a pointer to some web page , or worse yet a singing e-card. If I had been in grad school a few years earlier, my buddies in India would not have had email when I was in grad school (thus, I suspect, reducing meandering and thoughtful emails from me). If I had joined grad school later, my peers would have had much free-er access to emails - (and this, I suspect would have lead a more even handed email exchange). The inability to re-connect with email , because the other party has access to the technology but not at their leisure - is, I suspect one of the  experience that defines me temporally. 
  

• The other self referential point of whimsy I wanted to mention?
  My bus routes in Delhi - 620 , 615 - feature in the book!! If only some one would write a book with DTC route 603 - my bliss would be complete.

 
Above Average also has a nice website. and i wonder if Amitabha Bagchi is still tracking blogs that feature the name of the book  :)