Neeraj Chhibba unplugged

Never before has IIT been written about from the perspective of someone who did not study there. But Neeraj Chhibba, the author of Zero Percentile, in his debut work has done that and more. Here's an exclusive interview. Never before has IIT been written about from the perspective of someone who did not study there.

What inspired you to write this book? 
There were quite a few things that inspired me. For one, I always wanted to write. All my friends had known for long that I will turn a writer one day. Whenever we talked of an alternate career, I was always very vocal about writing as an option after retiring from an active corporate life.

Apart from this deep-sitting desire, I wanted to write Zero Percentile for all the young people whose dreams are not fulfilled (I have put this into the story through the protagonist not being able to make it to the IIT) and they start despairing, not realising that there are so many other things which are equally satisfying that they could take up. Then, Russia has never been written about before from the perspective of a student. Like the myth that India is a land of snake-charmers and cows, it is perceived that Russia is the land of mafia and a largely unregulated society. I wanted to break this notion and let the world know that the Russians are as normal a people as all of us.

What prompted you to choose the title Zero Percentile? 
I know from research that a title which has a number is catchy and sticks to the mind. If you read the definition of percentile, it is the value of a variable below which a certain percent of observations fall. When I chose Zero Percentile as the title of the book, I wanted to say that after not being able to get into the IIT the protagonist felt that he had failed in life and considered himself as the biggest loser and the moment as the Zero Percentile moment of his life.