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Dork: The Incredible Adventures of Robin 'Einstein' Varghese

(Dork Trilogy #1)

Sidin Vadukut (Goodreads Author)

3.20 · Rating details · 2,871 ratings · 241 reviews

Alternate cover for this ISBN can be found here

In April 2006 Robin ‘Einstein’ Varghese; a stupendously naïve but academically gifted young man (he was ranked 41st in his class); graduates from one of India’s best business schools with a Day-Zero job at the Mumbai office of Dufresne Partners; a mediocre mid-market management consulting firm largely run by complete morons.

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Paperback, 240 pages

Published February 25th 2010 by Penguin (first published January 19th 2010)

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Start your review of Dork: The Incredible Adventures of Robin 'Einstein' Varghese (Dork Trilogy, #1)

Feb 22, 2010 Dk11 rated it it was ok

Well, writing a blog and writing a book is as different as speed dating and marriage. I liked Sidin's blog and hence ordered this book online, got it yesterday and read it in one sitting. Again the same theme so famous in this decade - IIMA graduate and his life , IIMA graduate author writes, IIMA graduate authors reflection and probably a peep into his own life... Common guys, now its becoming a cliche.
If u like masala movies, then u will like Dork. All those guys singing the 3 idiots anthem w ...more

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Jul 15, 2010 Sunil rated it did not like it

Shelves: abandoned-books-project, gasbag

Much against the advice of friends, I picked it up on a whim whilst travelling in India as I fancied reading some Indian fiction this year. I should have just listened to my friends.

I tried my best, I tried even using strategic breaks in between to finish it off but I couldn’t bring myself to read any more than about 100 odd pages. For all practical purposes I have abandoned it. Yes, it is really that bad.

First off I don’t think you could call it a book even if you stretch your imagination by a ...more

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Feb 23, 2010 Avid rated it did not like it

Recommended to Avid by: Jai Arjun

Shelves: read-in-2010, fiction, indian-author

This book’s popularity is spreading like fire. If you are even vaguely in touch with the world of books by Indian authors, there is no way you could have missed this book. The Dork, Sidin Vadukut’s debut novel, is about Robin ‘Einstien’ Varghese’s transition from a B-school graduate to an associate in a business consulting firm. Einstien is a typical naive-and-stupid guy who can be found in every batch of every single college that exists on this earth. He is the kind of guy who sports thick fram This book’s popularity is spreading like fire. If you are even vaguely in touch with the world of books by Indian authors, there is no way you could have missed this book. The Dork, Sidin Vadukut’s debut novel, is about Robin ‘Einstien’ Varghese’s transition from a B-school graduate to an associate in a business consulting firm. Einstien is a typical naive-and-stupid guy who can be found in every batch of every single college that exists on this earth. He is the kind of guy who sports thick framed glasses, has oil dripping down his hair, has a stupid grin stuck on his face all the time – you know who I am talking about, right? This guy can be found in every movie ever made on college boys and girls. BTW, that description is entirely mine, Vadukut does not give us a glimpse of how Einstien looks like.

The book takes the form of journal entries by Einstien. He has a habit of writing down the activities of the day where he treats his Diary as a confidant. He pours his heart out, bears his soul and is totally honest with his Diary. Through his journal entries, we get a glimpse of how Einstien’s world is, through his eyes, of course. The book starts with the journal entry for the day when Einstien gets a job – Day Zero job, mind you. It then goes on to show how he manages to goof-up at every point in his life, how utterly unaware he is of the world around and how innocent and naive he is. We have some hilarious incidents which include alcohol, a huge plastic duck and some puking. Another such incident has Einstien trying to solve the storage space crisis to store one lakh ball bearings. There are some smart-ass characters who are Einstien’s bitter enemies and some who he sympathizes with because they are not as smart as he is. Bring in a love interest and we have all ingredients for an interesting dorm story.

I bought this book after I read about it on Jai Arjun’s blog. His thoughts on the book:

Shameless plug: we both enjoyed the book hugely. The trope of the unreliable narrator is something I usually associate with serious literary fiction, but Sidin pulls it off very convincingly in a fast-paced comic narrative. His protagonist Robin Verghese is magnificently clueless about what’s really happening around him.

I have always found his reviews very helpful. I read We need to talk about Kevin after I read his review and I am grateful to him for introducing me to this book. But, this book…. I don’t know what he is saying. Unreliable narrator? We see through Verghese the moment he opens his mouth, I mean his first journal entry. The reader knows that what Verghese thinks about himself is not necessarily true. Is that what he means by unreliable narrator?

I am confused about this book. If it is supposed to be hilarious, then it is not. I probably laughed just once while I read the entire book. Satire?I think not. Are we supposed to laugh at Robin Verghese? I don’t find him funny, but irritating. Are we supposed to sympathize with him? I can’t because he irritates me. A literary master-piece which is disguised as a light-weight book? If that is so, then I totally don’t get it. There are quite a few positive reviews, so it must be just me. ...more

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Apr 08, 2012 Pawan rated it liked it

http://iandbooks.wordpress.com/

It is a perfect light reading book when you really do not wish to worry about literature or history. “Dork: The incredible adventures of Robin Einstein Varghese”, is a new age chick lit that leaves you laughing and wondering about consulting business as well. I should not be saying that Sidin Vadukut has followed the style of Chetan Bhagat but still there are many similarities in authors as well as writing.

This book is about a management graduate who gets into a jo ...more

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Nov 06, 2010 Aarthi rated it it was ok

Sidin Vadukut is one of the few, intentionally funny writers in India, who manages to capture the subtle nuances of urban Indian humour delightfully well. Our regional prejudices, (CWG Tweet - Welcome Srilanka, am Malayalee and both of us don't like Tamils or from the book - Einstein's mom goes, 'we should have sent him to a South Indian institute where he wouldn't have been influenced by spoiled north Indians!), educated middle-class attitudes are nicely satirized in his columns and blogposts, ...more

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Sep 19, 2013 Shweta Iyer rated it did not like it

Mediocre story with a clichéd plot. The narrative is shockingly bad. The language used is least impressive. Overall I would rate this book 1 star out of 5

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Oct 17, 2014 Lyazzat rated it it was amazing

Brilliant, funny, like a breath of fresh air!

The contemparory writing with a huge sense of humor plus relates the current economical situation.

Loved the book and will definitely recommend it

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Dec 14, 2010 Abhisek Pandey rated it did not like it

(1 point something out of 5)

An okay read to accompany your travel. This is the first of the trilogy on the adventures of a management graduate, who is stupid, irritating, somehow funny, obnoxious, but somehow makes a lot of things happen around him. The main character is very nicely developed but you don't quite connect with him, which I had expected before picking the book. However, considering the character's scale and nature, the story flow is mostly okay, barring few chapters where things pr ...more

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Dec 15, 2012 Bhumish rated it really liked it

I never read Chetan Bhagat's novels and I will never bother to read them. But reading Sidin Vadukut's "Dork" was fun and entertaining. On a not so serious note, the book describes the protagonist's journey while working for a consulting company. Robin "Einstein" Varghese aims to gain a promotion in a short period of time.

His transition from a B-school to working for a consulting company, experiences and (mis)adventures while undertaking the tasks, his encounter with loveliest lasses including hi ...more

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Apr 19, 2014 Dipesh Mehta rated it did not like it

To err is human. I erred BIG time when I bought this book. What should I write about this book...wait a minute...let me recall the story...the book is an absolute crap. I thought the book would be a fun read, but I was wrong, the book has nothing to offer for an average reader like me. The writing is awful and so is the character Robert 'Einstein' Varghese in the book, throughout my read I was just aimlessly cruising around the pages and finally manage to finish it. Too bad the site doesnot allo ...more

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Feb 19, 2010 Dushyant rated it did not like it

This one was a disappoint. Sidin's blogging prowess influenced my purchasing decision and I ended up fighting boredom to finish this book. The book is funny in pages, attempts a humorous narration of a grad school boy's experiences while he wades through his consulting job.

Reasons the book failed for me:
1. Attempt to hold the workplace & job as punching bag became a typecast
2. My brush with Chetan Bhagat's 2 States & 3 Idiots made this an overdose of the 'Post school experiences' stories ...more

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Jun 18, 2010 Ayush rated it it was ok

A really really boring book where you wish you could slap the protagonist. All attempts to make it interesting fell flat. Einstein sees the world completely oblivious of the way world sees him. I am surprised how someone as insane as him made it to IIM in the first place. If that was not enough, he manages to get a hot chick on his side too.

The stuff he mentions about management consulting firms, is that for real ?

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Jul 08, 2010 Saumya Gopi rated it did not like it

Sidin... Stick to the blog !

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Feb 21, 2011 Sumit rated it it was amazing

hilarious!!! enjoyed thoroughly!

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Jul 05, 2015 Karthick rated it it was ok

Shelves: time-pass-not-bad

NEVER TRUST ANYONE WHO WORKS IN YOUR COMPANY, IN A SUPPORT FUNCTION OR IN A COST CENTRE..
THEY ARE ALL BASTARDS!

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Feb 05, 2016 Abinaya rated it really liked it

It is definitely a mood booster! A hilarious light read.

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Jun 14, 2012 Srikanth rated it really liked it

The Dork By Sidin Vadukut

Did you any time in your life feel the humiliation when everyone around you, even after being less competent when compared to you, take away all the accolades. This book deals with life of “Robin Einstein Varghese” and how he felt when everyone around him treats him like a dork in his professional field. The author “Sidin Vadukut” tried to maintain the narration in a dark and humorous way. Reading an novel which deals with professional field/personal life can easily get The Dork By Sidin Vadukut

Did you any time in your life feel the humiliation when everyone around you, even after being less competent when compared to you, take away all the accolades. This book deals with life of “Robin Einstein Varghese” and how he felt when everyone around him treats him like a dork in his professional field. The author “Sidin Vadukut” tried to maintain the narration in a dark and humorous way. Reading an novel which deals with professional field/personal life can easily get on the readers nerve if not dealt well. Sidin succeeds to reach the readers in a big level. The author starts the narration with an author’s note where in he shares how he accidentally found someone’s personal dairy and how he go this idea about writing down the content of the dairy as a novel.

Basic Plot: The Lead character Robin Einstein Varghese is on the day zero of his campus recruitment process. It is like an do or die situation for him. Thats when he enters the interview for Dufrense and to everyone’s surprise he cracks it up big time. After that he visits his home town and starts waiting for the offer letter. Thats the time when this so called einstein gets the first shock of his life. He gets an email from the Dufrense people saying that they are planning to withdraw the job offer since they cant stand irresponsibility from its employees and that they felt robin had no work ethics. Reading that email robin’s life shatters before the computer monitor. He then calls up the Dufrense and inquires about the email. Dufrense receptionist tells him that they have sent him an offer letter to his college address 3 weeks back and yet did not receive an reply. Robin then somehow convinces the lady representative that he has called up to dufrense office and asked them to update his address to his home town. Then comes the big first day @ office and for robins surprise everything goes on fine. Robin gets assigned to a project and he handles it well. Just when everything seems to be going right an unusual thing happens at an project success party. “With heavy Booze comes great Hangover and even greater problems”. When robin enters his office the next day he gets weird reaction from his colleagues. Some colleague look at him in disgust, some looked at him in pity and some mocked at him. Robin looking at this feels that there is something fishy going on in the office. Thats when he comes to know that after 3- 4 vodka shots yesterday he acted real insane. He got on to a table and jumped on to one of his colleagues in wrestling style and this was video taped and uploaded on youtube by some unknown person from his office.

The readers looking at Robins strike rate with girls would have never guessed that robin varghese can ever have a girlfriend in his life but as some prophet once said that “dogs do date and every dog has a day “, so this dog got its chance one fine day. Gauri Kalbag it was, the ladylove of Mr.Einstein. They started dating and how, the shrewed Einstin used his cunning skills to “patao” this girl. She followed her, sketched a plan and used it to the tee. He was cunning i say, real cunning. So this dating thing went on but einstein would have never guessed wats in store for him in the coming months.

3 Major Shocks

The first one coming his way when he was selected for a project. The client asked resume of each and every candidate working on the project and the day of meeting, clientele asked dufrense to remove robin from its project as they felt that he could harm their reputation and their business. Robin world started rotating. He had no clue what those clients meant but once they showed dufrense people the youtube video which was taken when robin was under alcohol influence. Dufrense rep’s and robin bent their heads in shame.

The second shock. After the first shocking incident robin was absolutely sure that dufrense is going to fire him so he started sending resume to all well known companies who con pay him 12L per annum. He felt 12lacks for a real genius is pretty less. He got a call from babykutty’s friend and he said that he wanted dufrense to work for them and that he heard real good things about robin from babykutty(who was robins Malyali friend) and he wants robin to work in the project. Even after knowing that he is going to get fired in a day or two robin kept his kool and said that he will surely work for them and said that dufrense is a company on which they can blindly bank on. The next day the dufrense head called robin and said that he was happy Leonark (babykutty’s friends company) is going to be their project but dufrense cant take any risks on this project and that they cant include robin in this project, but they are not going to fire him. Hearing this robin had this mixed feelings in him. He felt like this was the second chance god has given him and he should not screw this up.

The Third and final: Booze gets out everything from ur mind. Booze bro Booze, we have got the best project of this year and this is all because of the Einstein, Robin Einstin Varghese said one of the representative. These were the last words which robin remembered as he got up from his bed next day. He then saw his phone with congrats messages and some voicemails. He had no idea wat happened the last night. As he entered his office, his colleagues gave him the same looks which they gave when they saw robins youtube video. As he sat down in his cube and opened his email he saw an voice-mail and to robins horror it was none other than robin speaking in that voice mail. Gawd wat did i do now were the first words to come up in robins mind. Then as he tried to recollect wat all happened last night. He slowly started to get it. After 3-4 vodka shots (see even here the culprit is vodka) robin started to loose his calm and started to act weirdly. He then went into an higher rep’s office and opened his phone and started to speak about how dufrense is misguiding their clients and how Leonark had many problems yet dufrense will just waste their time & money and on the last minute give them some silly suggestions and escape from there and after such hard hitting lines robin hit the number 0 on the phone keypad which sends the voice mail to everyone in the office. Recollecting what had happened last night robin in depression took his bag and started walking back to his house and once he entered his room his roomate said that the voicemail was being played on cnn-ibn. This was when robin really wanted to commit suicide out of this international humiliation.

The Conclusion: After this event, Dufrense’s higher rep invited himself to the Cnn-Ibn Office for an interview and stated in his interview that they are proud of robin as he has a clear idea about wat the clients needed and that robin wanted to push his c0-employees to work for the betterment of the client. He went on to state that ” He has the thinking of a genius and he is the future of Dufrense”. In one day Robin went on to become an international figure. He was then promoted to an senior associate position in Dufrense.

I give this Book 3.5/5 ...more

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Jan 20, 2021 Vidushi Gupta added it

Shelves: books-2020

One this is sure, Robin Varghese will remind you of your college days and the initial phase of first job. Right from cracking the placement interviews to proposing to your crush before starting the journey of endless presentations and deadlines, this book has everything you could imagine.

The book is in a form of journal entries by Robin Varghese, aka, Einstein, dorm name given by the seniors during his MBA, which will take you on a roller coaster ride as Einstein survives his first year in job. ...more

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May 21, 2018 Sonali Dabade rated it liked it

Shelves: 2018-reads

I'm not sure what to write of this book. It's well-written - the language is really good. But I didn't find it as humorous as it promised to be. Yes, the first few pages I did find funny. By the end of the book, however, I was and still am pretty irritated by Robin 'Einstein' Varghese. If he existed in real life, I'd give him three or four resounding slaps.

And maybe that is the whole point of the book - the blind, overconfident dork who doesn't know right from idiocy. ...more

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Jul 06, 2018 Karishma rated it it was ok

I think this book is called 'Dork' because 'Douchebag' is too long. A ridiculous, unfunny story about a repulsive, morally bankrupt toerag in an equally unappealing company. "Satirical dig at the consulting industry", my foot.

Note: Really a one star book at the very most, so the second star is mostly to make myself feel better about reading the next 2 books even though this one sucked. Completionist tendencies are the worst. ...more

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Jun 28, 2018 Haresh Bhardwaj rated it it was amazing

A hilariously entertaining read. A stereotyped, but largely accurate description of the consulting business. Engineers and management professionals will instantly connect with the protagonist. Robin 'Einstein' Varghese lives the life we all know. Making gigantic presentations and convoluted reports is something we excel at. ...more

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Apr 23, 2020 Shikha rated it really liked it

This book made me look so average, middle-class today. I was giggling on the train to work reading it. No exaggeration. Sidin has an amazing sense of humor, standup style. I have been following him on Cricinfo, Twitter etc since around 2010 or so. Love him! Before picking it up, I was afraid that it will get boring but no where did the book lose its steam.

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May 20, 2020 sreeram rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Great start, little boring middle, good ending.

It starts off hilariously. Any college guy would relate to it and laugh their ass off. After about 30% of the book it become boring in the middle. But the ending is good. And remember that if you go through this you get to read the next part, which is way way better and way way hilarious

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Nov 07, 2017 A Man Called Ove rated it liked it

A fun breezy comic read about an MBA who joins a management consulting firm. Very readable bcoz it has been written in the form of diary entries, mostly a couple of pages long.
On to book #2 in d trilogy.

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Feb 29, 2020 Jostin Tom rated it it was ok

I would not call this a humor packed reading material but it did have just the right amount of "please don't do that" situations. These situations were adequately inserted to keep the reader till the end in order to figure out how much more screwed up Einstein can make things for himself. ...more

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Jul 01, 2020 Prasanna Venkataraman rated it it was amazing

This is the 3rd time I am reading this book. It's super hilarious. I like the sharp, witty writing and I was laughing for every 2 pages. But many people didn't like the book. Give a try if you want to have a fun, light read. ...more

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Jun 29, 2018 Nita Bajoria rated it really liked it

Enjoyed it thoroughly.... good humour

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Jan 01, 2019 Samiksha Neroorkar rated it it was amazing

Hilarious!

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Jun 08, 2019 Gauri Parab rated it really liked it

Easy breezy read. Ideal for reading while traveling. Has a fair share of laugh out loud moments. :)

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Jun 09, 2019 Uthira rated it really liked it

A fun read

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About Sidin Vadukut

Sidin Vadukut

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Sidin Vadukut is a journalist, columnist and blogger. He has an engineering degree from NIT Trichy and an MBA from IIM Ahmedabad.

In a career spanning around a decade he has made automotive parts, developed online trading platforms, almost set up a retailing company and had a sizeable portion of a tree fall on his head. He is currently an editor with the Mint business newspaper.

Sidin lives in New D ...more