We believe that Joker in the Pack, our first published literary work, owes a lot to destiny. Both of us came from similar undergraduate backgrounds, 'excelled' in our respective MBA campuses, and, more importantly, harbored thoughts of writing a book one day. Added to that, both of us were lazy. Hence, destiny had to play a hand in the two lazy "geniuses" demystifying the IIM way for the benefit of humanity. We landed up in the same company working at the same location. It could well have been the case that one of us was in Sydney, the other in London, Gurgaon or Hong Kong. But destiny had it in store for us that we were both in New York. Thus began the journey.

After slogging all week and half the weekend at work, we would hang out with friends at the gym, apartments, subway, wherever, and have thought-provoking drinks sessions at weekends. The commonality that struck both of us, and generated mutual respect, was that both of us harbored thoughts of creating our own identity. The job was great, life was good, but we still had the urge to do something creative that would be branded as "our venture". And, as we got to know each other better, we realized we had a story to share. A story that would appeal to the educated and burgeoning youth community. A story that depicts all the fighters, geniuses and page3s who made it to IIMs.

It's easy to have an idea and a vision but then comes the tricky part of getting to the end goal. Here again, the hand of fate guided us. As we shared some of our past works with each other, we realized that even our writing styles were quite similar. This meant we could actually get down to writing different sections of a book and the work would still appear seamless. Professional life is indeed demanding and, though we had started working on the idea in New York, we were allotted new projects and travel was on the cards. But lady luck seemed to have fallen for our charms and was not ready to leave us. Both of us were packed off to Gurgaon for our subsequent assignments. We would slog on our projects in office for hours together, and then discuss the book over a coffee break. We would get up early on Sunday mornings and reach Kunal's residence. Kunal, an IIMB graduate of 2006, is a dear friend who lives alone in South Delhi. His bachelor pad provided us the perfect atmosphere for devoting our time and energy to our noble venture without being disturbed by the mundane chores of the world.

The entire process was a great learning curve for us as well. For instance, the first draft of the book had 14 "main characters". The final one has perhaps 4. Creating the story was only part of the challenge - finding the right publisher, coordinating launch events, marketing the book - everything was a challenge that took us way beyond our MBA learnings. We are indeed very thankful to our friends and family for all their support and guidance and inputs, for we needed all of it!

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